Jamie

A busy schedule holds too many people back from learning languages. And not because it means you don’t have time to learn a language. It means you think you don’t have the time to learn a language. Let’s talk about how many hours you should study per day to learn a language.

How many hours should I study per day? More than you spend on YouTube.

The first reason why you don’t have time to learn a language is because of YouTube. Lots of people come on here and post videos about how they spend however many hours every single day learning a language until they magically get fluent in like seven weeks. Is this possible? Sure. Is it reasonable? No.

It’s not reasonable for normal humans with busy schedules like you. But a reasonable schedule is not going to go viral. Thanks to these viral YouTube videos, people tend to think that language learning needs to be a part-time job for it to be worth it. It’s really easy to feel like you need to spend an hour or two every single day to learn a language to make it worth your time.

And we’re all adults. Nobody has that amount of time just hanging around. So you assume that you don’t have time to learn a language. You’re too busy. How many hours should I study per day? You don’t need a lot of time every single day, you don’t even need to every day because the truth is that spending hours every single day to learn a language is less conducive to learning a language than spending 10 minutes here, 15 minutes there, a few times a week.

Because language learning is a marathon. It’s not a sprint. It’s not something that you can sit down for hours on end and study and study and study without all your other responsibilities bothering you. And bam, you learn a language. That’s not how it works. A little bit goes a long way, a lot farther than you may think it does.

So if you want to learn a language, but you feel like you’re too busy because you have a busy schedule, you don’t have an hour every single day to commit to a hobby, remember that you don’t need to spend that much time every day. Consistency is the most important thing. And if you can’t consistently find an hour in your day every single day, that’s fine. But if you can find 10 minutes, 15 minutes, maybe even 20, every couple of days, you’ll be golden.

Because coming back to the habit time after time after time over the long term will get you there a lot faster than you think it will. Because, yes, there are people who can commit a part-time job’s worth of time to language learning. But they’re the exception, not the rule. Most language learners do not do that because it’s just unrealistic. People have to work. People have families. People have other hobbies.

Spend more time on strategies you enjoy

The thing to consider when asking “How many hours should I study per day” is what you consider “studying” to consist of. The only experience that you have about learning languages or learning any number of skills is sitting down with a textbook and reading and doing activities and being told what to do step by step by step, which is boring for most people.

You think you need to memorize grammar rules to a T, you think you need to have excellent vocabulary. You think that textbook knowledge is all of the knowledge you need. If that sounds like you, welcome to the 21st century. We have so many different ways to learn languages that are a lot more fun and they require a lot less sit-down time because again, we’re all busy people. There are audio lessons, there is music, there are books. There are ways to turn Netflix into your favorite language learning activity.

If I didn’t know about any of those strategies, yeah, I would feel like I was too busy too. I don’t have the time to force myself to sit down and go through another textbook. But if you have a podcast specifically made for language learners that you can listen to on your commute to work or whatever, learning a language becomes a lot easier and a lot more interesting. And it takes a lot less time because it’s time that you’re already spending doing something else, which is kind of brainless.

These days, learning a language means finding little pockets of your day-to-day so you can keep your normal real-life routine and not completely try and blow up your entire schedule just to learn a language. You don’t have to do that.

How many hours should I study per day? Fewer than you think.

The next thing to realize when asking “How many hours should I study per day?” is that you don’t have the patience to wait for it to happen. You know that learning a language is a long-term thing and you just don’t have the patience to do something for six months or a year before you see results, which I get. I don’t have that kind of patience either.

Fortunately for us, language learning is a little bit more nuanced than going from absolutely zero to native fluency. There are like a million different steps in between, and the important thing is being aware of those steps and being able to see when you reach them. So that way you don’t have to wait six months or a year or two years to finally reach your goals. Let me give you an example that a lot of my clients have gone through.

A real-life example

Let’s say that you want to have Spanish conversations. You know some beginner vocabulary, like you’ve probably gone through Duolingo, maybe taken some beginner classes in school, but you can’t say anything in being able to have a fully-fledged, confident, comfortable conversation just seems completely unrealistic and like it’s never going to happen.

Because of this, every single time you try and get back into learning Spanish, you give up quickly because why are you spending this time in your busy day-to-day life disrupting your busy schedule for apparently no reason? Because you don’t see, you’re not you’re not fluent yet. You can’t have conversations yet. So what a waste of time. You’re still at zero, maybe one in the language and you want to get 20. That’s a big jump.

So how about we take several steps back and focus instead on getting to level one or two? Depending on you and your goals, this could look like all sorts of things, this is what I teach my clients in The Method, how to plot those progress points in a way that makes sense for them in their language learning.

But level one or two can be something as simple as introducing yourself in Spanish because you may know the words, but have you practiced saying them at all? Have you opened your mouth? And this isn’t like a “you” problem. This isn’t something that you’ve done wrong. This is what traditional language learning teaches us to do, that learning to recognize the words more or less is what you need, and don’t worry about speaking them.

But can you confidently, and consistently introduce yourself in Spanish? That could be your step two. And then step three could be talking about your family, expressing how many siblings you have, where you live, how many pets you have, your favorite color, things like that, all that beginner stuff that you may know theoretically in your brain, but you’ve never actually used it because using the language is a part of language learning that a lot of traditional methods don’t focus on and don’t care about because it’s hard to measure.

So if you get to level two and you can introduce yourself in the language, can you have full-fledged conversations? No, but you are one step closer and that is a big deal. Because once you get that one step closer, if you’re at level two and you want to get to level 20, that’s two steps less, fewer than you have to do, you only have 18 steps left. And then you get another step where you can talk about your family and where you live, and that’s only 17 more. So you get closer and closer and closer, you take those baby steps, and all of a sudden you realize that you’ve reached your goal.

You don’t have to wait six months to a year to make progress. You can make progress in like 30 minutes.

How many hours should I study per day? As many (or as little) as you want.

The next reason why you don’t have time to learn a language is because you have so many other hobbies that are probably more useful and productive in your life. Maybe you’ve invested a lot of money in them, so you should probably do those first.

Now, this all-or-nothing perspective is really common. I mean, I struggle with this myself, feeling like you have to be perfect in a thing before you’re finished with it. Now, remember we already discussed that you don’t have to spend hours upon hours every single day learning a language for it to be effective.

You also don’t have to just learn languages. You can also do other hobbies. Doing other hobbies, and doing other things in your life does not make your language learning less valid. if you have a goal to learn Italian, for example, you can do other things in your life that have absolutely nothing to do with learning Italian. And that’s perfectly fine. This is a hobby.

You don’t have to spend your entire life listening to Italian, speaking it, reading books, writing in it, all that jazz. I mean, you are perfectly welcome to, and if you find it fun and interesting, you can plug your two hobbies together.

So for example, if you want to learn crochet, you can find somebody who teaches crochet on YouTube but teaches it in Italian. And you can do that, but you don’t have to. And both are fine.

I know it’s really easy to feel like you should be more productive, but it’s okay. You are allowed to just enjoy things and you are allowed to do it whenever is convenient and reasonable for your own life. And you don’t have to feel guilty about it.

We tend to make language learning something that should be a huge priority in our lives if we want to accomplish it. But that’s just not necessary. That’s why you don’t have time to learn a language because you feel like you have to get rid of everything else in your life and focus all of your energy on language learning. It’s just not true.

If you find 10 minutes in your day to think in the language talk out loud, listen to an audiobook, or listen to music or whatever it is that you enjoy doing, that is language learning.

How to spend less time procrastinating

That is an excellent segue to the next answer to “How many hours should I study per day?” is to understand how often you procrastinate. Now, when I say this is not to be judgmental, this is just a symptom of an underlying problem. What’s the problem?

Language learning feels like a giant world that is just very overwhelming and filled with lots of negative thoughts and criticisms and failure and vulnerability and fear. And just like a whole ball of like, stress. It’s really difficult for you to commit because you’re afraid that you’re going to be embarrassed or you’re not going to do it well enough or you’re not going to have enough time, or something as simple as if you start learning a language, then you’re going to feel bad every single time you’re not studying the language.

And all of that is so stressful that it’s easier just to scroll Netflix for an hour. And if this is why you don’t have time to learn a language, be kinder to yourself. You’re setting your expectations for yourself and your language learning way too high.

You don’t have to learn a language perfectly, actually, there’s no way to learn languages perfectly. That’s not what language learning is. You also don’t have to commit every single second of your free time to do it effectively. You are allowed to do other things in life. You are allowed to have other interests. You’re allowed to take a day off, take a week off, take a month off.

There are no real rules for learning a language, and as soon as you internalize this, then you will finally have time to learn a language.

If this resonates with you, I highly recommend you take my free quiz – it’ll tell you the next steps that you need to take in your language learning and the mindsets that you need to adopt to give you that time that you’re looking for to learn a language.

When you’re learning a new language, you’re not going to be perfect. The problem is, not being perfect and making a ton of mistakes is terrifying. So what do you do when you’re so terrified of making mistakes that you can’t learn a language at all? Don’t be afraid to make mistakes in language learning – let’s talk about how.

Don’t be afraid to make mistakes

Now, if you want to make mistakes in language learning so that you can stop making mistakes eventually, the first thing that you need to do is something that a lot of people get wrong, and that is you need to understand why you’re so afraid of making mistakes.

Step 1: understand why you’re afraid to make mistakes

So many people will say, “Just do it! Just stop being afraid.” That’s exactly like telling somebody who’s allergic to chocolate to just not be allergic. It doesn’t work that way. First, you need to understand what is causing this fear. This is a common fear, especially because most of us have been taught that when we make mistakes, it is a bad thing and we’re probably going to get criticized or judged or in trouble or any number of things. But basically, mistakes are a negative thing.

Those of us language learners with a more perfectionist mindset need to work hard on not being perfect and learn that it’s okay to not be perfect. And the only way to do that is to understand why you think you need to be perfect. And this can take some time to figure out.

So if you have no idea why you can’t be perfect or why you’re so afraid of making mistakes, it’s okay. Just take a second. You’ve got plenty of time to process this on your own.

Now, personally, when I used to be more afraid of making mistakes when learning a foreign language, it was because of a lifetime of being criticized about everything that I did wrong. That fear was paralyzing, so I wasn’t able to take any risks in my language learning, because I thought – my brain was trained – to avoid making mistakes at all costs. So as soon as I made a mistake, I punished myself. And punishing myself meant that I had to stop learning the language.

So that said, the first step is to understand what is holding you back. Why are you so afraid of making a mistake?

Step 2: mistakes are a positive

Once you understand what is holding you back personally from being comfortable with your mistakes, the next step is to learn to see mistakes as a good thing.

Now, you can’t skip the first step because even if you learn the second step and you learn to see mistakes as a good thing, it’s like a bandage on an open wound. You need to get the stitches first before you put the Band-Aid on it. You need to figure out why you’re so afraid of making mistakes before you learn to see your mistakes as a good thing.

It’s honestly, really a shame that we are taught that mistakes are a bad thing because in actuality, mistakes are a sign that we’re trying something new, that we’re learning new things. Mistakes mean that we are putting an effort towards building a new skill because before you can be good at anything, you have to be bad at it first.

You’ve gotta be bad at it, then you have to be kind of okay at it, and then you’ll be good at it. But you don’t go from absolutely zero to being fantastic at it. There are a lot of steps in between and you have to be able to go through those steps and make all those mistakes.

Step 3: make mistakes on purpose

While I don’t consider his ideas to be perfect for everybody, Benny Lewis from Fluent in 3 Months does get this part right where he intentionally makes as many mistakes as possible. And that is why intentionally making mistakes is the next step on the way to confidently making mistakes in language learning.

Because right now, if you are afraid of making mistakes, basically when you’re approaching language learning, you are trying to do everything but make mistakes. But mistakes are going to happen eventually because you have to learn the language to conquer it.

So many of us have been taught to see learning a new skill as success, success, success, success, success. And if there’s any failure in there, it’s like success, failure. And then you’re like back to square one and then you have to start all over. In reality, the failure is what allows you to succeed. The mistakes that you make in language learning are the best lessons you can find.

This is why when I talk about using group lessons to practice your speaking skills, one of the pros of that experience is being able to learn from other people’s mistakes as well as your own. Mistakes are the highest quality lesson you could learn. Because mistakes, again, mean that you’re trying.

I want you to think about it next time you are practicing your target language and you have that little moment where you’re not sure what to say or what to do or what to think, and you have this idea of what the word might be or what the sentence might be or whatever it is. But on the other side, you also have that voice in your brain that says, “But you don’t know for sure, so you should probably not say anything at all, just in case you’re wrong.”

Next time you’re in that situation, I want you to try the thing that you think might be the right answer, but you’re not entirely sure. Because what happens is either you’re right and you feel fantastic about it, and your confidence is just going to explode, or you’re going to be wrong and you’re going to learn more, you’ll learn better, and it’ll be a much more effective lesson to you than any bland lesson that any language teacher can ever teach you. That tiny little bit of risk that you can take will build up your confidence and show you that you can make mistakes and you can take those risks and they’re fine.

That’s the only way to learn a language is to make a ton of mistakes. Once you learn how to make mistakes in your language learning and you practice putting yourself in that vulnerable position and allowing yourself to maybe be wrong sometimes and maybe sound like an idiot sometimes, that is when you will finally succeed in your language learning. That’s when you’ll finally get more confident, and that’s when you will finally learn the language.

Because I know that avoiding mistakes feels safer and feels risk-averse and feels like the smarter option. But protecting yourself from making mistakes and learning to speak a language are not compatible forces.

It’s up to you to decide if you’re willing to accept that risk and allow yourself to maybe be embarrassed and maybe be wrong to eventually learn a language and be able to use it confidently regardless of whatever mistakes you’re going to make because mistakes are inevitable, fun fact!

No matter how hard you try, no matter how hard you protect yourself, if you are learning a language, you’re going to make mistakes. So the quicker you get confident and learn how to make mistakes successfully, the faster you’ll learn a language.

So if this video resonates with you a lot, I highly recommend you check out Mastering Mistakes. It’s one of my mini-courses that includes a more in-depth explanation as to why mistakes are so hard for us and also includes a notion template to help you brainstorm all of the things that I mentioned in this video from understanding why you’re so afraid of making mistakes and how to fix it and how to stop the cycle that you’re in, that is stopping you from learning a language.

How to learn grammar you can use

You need to work on your foreign language grammar, but the normal grammar drills just aren’t cutting it for you. Let’s talk about how to learn grammar without drills so that you can accomplish your language learning goals.

So the things that I’m going to talk about in this video are taken directly from phase two of The Method, an entire lesson where we talk about grammar, how to study it, and how to choose the right language learning resources for your language learning. Then we’ll end with a really important mindset shift that will change everything that you learn.

How to learn grammar with cloze exercises

So the first way to learn grammar without drills is clozes. Clozes are just a fancy way of saying fill-in-the-blank sentences. You can use clozes for all sorts of things, whether it’s conjugations, whether it’s certain vocabulary words, whether it’s differentiating between different words that may be used in certain contexts, but not other contexts. The sky’s the limit.

But I love clozes because not only are they a lot less boring than grammar drills, but it’s also really conducive to learning grammar rules and grammar structures in a way that you’ll be able to use them going forward.

Why clozes work

I mean, think about it. The way that we learn grammar is generally conjugation tables where you are conjugating different verbs for “you”, “me”, “he”, “she”, “it”, “they”, “us”, whatever it is, or you have like matching games and all sorts of things that treat grammar rules as if they are just grammar rules and you have to learn the grammar rules and it’s not part of the actual language. You have to just learn the rules and I swear it’ll work! When it doesn’t.

With a strategy like using clozes, you are given a sentence and you can see how that specific grammar rule interacts with a sample of the language. This also makes use of the grammar a lot more natural because instead of having to specifically define exactly why a certain conjugation or a certain word or whatever it is is used in a certain context, you kind of just get a feel for it and it becomes a lot more natural because something that a lot of us get wrong about learning languages is thinking that we have to have a very precise, easily stated understanding of grammar rules and vocabulary words and all that stuff, when in reality that’s not how language works.

Think about it: in your native language, you can’t explain why we use certain conjugations or grammar rules. We just kind of inherently know. So if you want to learn your target language in a way that just kind of feels intuitive and obvious and you don’t have to think about it, it just kind of comes out, then clozes are an excellent option because it shows your brain when to use different rules without your brain having to think about it.

It’s just like switching from learning vocabulary with translating to learning vocabulary within any other context where you kind of just understand the word because of the content around it, as opposed to having to memorize a specific translation. Clozes make a much more natural, engaging, and interesting way to learn grammar without drills because you can come up with any sentence, any content, and any subject that you want, which makes it interesting for anybody.

Language apps with cloze exercises

So how do you use clozes to learn grammar? Honestly, any kind of fill-in-the-blank activity works fine for this, but I would also recommend Clozemaster or Lingvist for clozes in particular.

I would say Clozemaster is a lot better with grammar and Lingvist is a little bit better with vocabulary because Lingvist is primarily a vocabulary-led platform, but they’re both excellent clozes and I love to use them to beef up my practice or learn new things.

How to learn grammar with immersion

The second way to learn grammar without drills is immersion, and by immersion, I don’t mean going into a foreign country, throwing yourself into life and conversations, and hoping for the best. Because in this day and age, there is more than one way to achieve immersion. Thanks to the Internet, it’s really easy to immerse yourself in almost any language right from your phone or computer.

Immersion is a great way to learn grammar without drills because you can experience the grammar actively being used in appropriate ways. So again, just like with clozes, you get more of an intuitive feel of how that grammar is supposed to work and the rules that apply to it without having to know exactly what the rules are and exactly what the exceptions are and all of that jazz, you just kind of figure it out. It’s what’s called implicit learning.

Why immersion can teach you how to learn grammar

By nature, our brains try to make sense of the world around us. So if you consistently immerse yourself in the language, you will eventually pick up the grammar without drills. It may be helpful to find explanations of grammar rules just to get you started, but I suggest focusing most of your time on things like clozes or immersion and things that will teach you how to use the grammar rules effectively, intuitively, and naturally.

Honestly, immersion is known as the most “natural” way to learn languages, because it’s true.

Language apps for immersion

So if you want to learn grammar with immersion, two recommendations I have for you are Language Reactor and LingQ.

Language Reactor you can use for most videos on Netflix and YouTube to get the subtitles and learn how to connect the dots by listening and reading the subtitles while you’re watching whatever video you’re watching.

LingQ is a book, almost. It does support a ton of different types of content but is generally like you’re reading an audio book and you’re picking and choosing the words. And like Lingvist, LingQ is more focused on vocabulary, but you can definitely use it for grammar as well, just to naturally intuitively pick up the grammar as you go.

Because these strategies are inherently intuitive, you can learn other things like vocabulary and get a little bit like 2% more experience every single time you see that conjugation or whatever grammar structure you’re looking at. So even if you’re not actively focused on the grammar with whatever you’re studying at any given time, if you are around the grammar, your brain will pick it up.

You might not realize it, but your brain is doing its thing where it’s connecting information for you to use later. So that means yes, you can technically learn grammar while you’re learning other things like vocabulary. If your goal is to improve your grammar, you can do that while also focusing on other things. So don’t worry about learning vocab as being a waste of time for your grammar. Everything is connected. So any exposure you have to your target language will help you to learn it.

Learn grammar with YouTube videos

The next way to learn grammar without the drills is through videos on YouTube. There are a ton of different creators on YouTube who post videos specifically about the different structures that you’re trying to learn so you can learn in different ways from different people who have different perspectives. And you can drill it into your brain by just getting all these different angles of the same concept because you never know which teacher you’re going to resonate with and you’re going to understand.

And bonus, if you find a language teacher on YouTube that you enjoy their explanations and it makes sense to you, a lot of them also have full online courses that will jump-start your grammar using the strategies, using approaches that they’re teaching on YouTube. So once you find somebody who you resonate with, grab their online course because you’ll love how they teach the whole language.

This is exactly how I came across German with Laura; if you are a German language learner and the grammar just doesn’t make any sense to you whatsoever, I highly recommend Laura’s German Foundations. She makes German grammar just kind of intuitive. If you’ve ever tried to learn German grammar by yourself, you know that is not an easy feat.

Have the right mindset to learn grammar

Now my final tip for learning grammar without drills is not so much a resource but a mindset. This is important because you can learn and practice grammar all you want, but without the right mindset, you’re only going to get so far. And with this next point, you’re going to understand why the first lesson of my full course, The Method, is on mindset.

And that last tip is to make mistakes. This might seem counterintuitive, but hear me out.

So many language learners are terrified of making mistakes and it makes sense. Generally, mistakes are like a bad thing. At the very best, you’ll be ignored and you’ll just hope that nobody’s thinking about it. And at the very worst, you’ll get made fun of or insulted or embarrassed for making the mistakes. So we tend to internalize that whenever we make a mistake, it’s a bad thing we did something wrong, so why bother trying, right?

But the thing is, if you never try, you will never learn the language. Every strategy, every resource I’ve mentioned so far is only going to be effective if you are allowing yourself to potentially say something wrong, do something wrong, or make a mistake.

Now, if this is something that you really, truly struggle with, like I used to struggle with in the past, I do have a mini course for you, Mastering Mistakes. With Mastering Mistakes, I help you to understand why exactly you’re afraid of making mistakes and what to do about it so that you can confidently throw yourself into the language without being so hyper-focused, concerned, and scared of saying something wrong.

Because the worst thing that you could do when it comes to learning a language is not trying at all. Even if your strategy is less than effective and you’re bored, it’s better than nothing.

You want to have fun with languages, but you always get so bored, that you just end up giving up. Let’s talk about why language learning isn’t fun for you and what to do about it instead.

Why you’re not having fun with languages

So why is language learning so boring for you? Well, there are two reasons for this. The first reason is that we learned to learn languages in school with a teacher who has, like however many hundreds of students every single year to teach all the same stuff. This means that whether you like it or not, your teacher cannot make language learning a personalized, interesting experience.

They have to use a certain textbook, teach you certain skills, and track your skills in certain ways. They have to strip language learning down to its most boring features, which means basic vocabulary, basic grammar rules, and a very strict scripted oral exam if you have those.

So you do that for a couple of years, and then once you finish school, you decide you want to learn languages yourself. And how do you learn languages? Well, the way that you were taught with the same boring, stiff methods that work for the intention of educating hundreds of thousands of students to take and pass certain exams. The second reason is for those language learners who decide to expand a little bit past those strategies and go for the more popular language learning resources that are out there.

So these are resources like Pimsleur, like Rosetta Stone, and Duolingo, the most famous, well-known oldest resources. Now, there’s not anything wrong with these resources per se. But they’re not for everybody. It’s not uncommon for language learners who try these resources to get bored. But again, they don’t know any other options or they think it’s their fault. There’s something wrong with them because there are thousands of language learners who use these resources to learn a language.

So if these ways to learn a language are not working for you, what do you do instead have fun with languages so you’ll stick to it? I want to talk about this in three different categories, and these categories are basically what you’re learning in school. I’ll give you some options to branch out of those boring, frustrating strategies that you already know and hate.

How to have fun with languages: grammar

The first one is grammar drills. When you’re learning the grammar of a foreign language and you usually, for example, if you’re learning Spanish or French, you repeat conjugation tables day in and day out. You memorize, ad nauseum, the different conjugations of different verbs, to “you”, “me”, “he”, “she”, “it”, “they”, and “us”. And you just do that over and over and over again. Not only is that boring, but it also doesn’t translate very well into actually using the grammar. So what do we do instead? There are a couple of different approaches.

Implicit language learning

The first approach is the complete opposite of these conjugation tables and these grammar drills, and that is implicit learning. On the one hand, you have explicit knowledge, where you’re going in a textbook and you’re being told exactly what to do and when to do it. And you have to memorize all the rules. On the other side is implicit knowledge where you’re just kind of figuring it out as you go.

The best example of this is Duolingo. Duolingo is well known for teaching you implicitly the grammar and vocabulary that you need to complete the Duolingo tree. There’s not going to be any grammar lessons for you to go through. You’re just given the words, given the sentences, and you have to figure it out as you go. Some people love this, some people hate this. It’s really up to you to decide if this is a method that works for you or if you need something a little bit more direct.

Explicit grammar

Now, if you need something a little bit more explicit, but you want to have more fun with languages than using textbooks, the Internet has given us a ton of less stale activities to help us practice our grammar in a way that will have you having fun with languages. There are so many different strategies out there for learning explicitly, so learning the rules and regulations of each grammar point, but doing that for like 2% of your time and spending the other 98% of your time using the grammar. So you’re learning the grammar rules by practicing it and not just learning the rules themselves.

So for example, we have clozes where it’s a fill-in-the-blank. You have a sentence and you have a blank and you have to conjugate the word correctly or you have to use the right vocabulary word or any number of different activities.

Clozemaster is probably the best resource for this, it’s also available in like a zillion different languages. But generally speaking, the more languages a language learning resource offers, the less in-depth the content is going to be. So Clozemaster is entirely practice. There’s not going to be any grammar lessons or any way for you to explicitly learn.

It’s kind of like Duolingo in that regard, because Clozemaster is just grammar and just repetition and just fill in the blanks. This is opposed to a whole bunch of different language learning resources that are excellent at grammar but only support one or two different languages.

So if, for example, you are a Spanish language learner, then I would recommend Ella Verbs for literally just the conjugations because I know a lot of Spanish learners struggle with conjugating verbs. Ella Verbs is the best way to do that. And if you’re looking for something a little bit more intermediate, or advanced, and you’re looking to expand your knowledge of grammar, then Kwiziq is excellent for Spanish and French.

And German language learners, German grammar is like, it’s hard. It’s completely out of left field. You have to learn so many different things, and my favorite option for learning German grammar in an engaging, interesting, not boring way is German with Laura.

Vocab

Now let’s talk about vocab. So the way that we learn vocab in school is translation. You have your word in the target language, you have the word in English, and then you learn to connect the word to its translation. And that’s how you learn vocabulary. This is great for taking tests, but unfortunately in real life, this doesn’t work at all because it introduces an extra step to you using that vocabulary word.

Basically what happens is you have a conversation in the language, but then you have to translate in your head and link each word to every word in your native language and then re translate your responses. It’s a mess. It takes like five steps. Instead, there are tons of resources for vocabulary as well, and learning it in a way that’s engaging, interesting, and useful for using it in real-life conversations.

And there are kind of two different approaches that I would say for this topic. It’s intentionally or unintentionally learning new vocabulary words. And I completely just made that up right this second. So it’s like, that’s not an official term or anything, but I feel like there is a difference.

Intentionally

The first one, intentionally picking up new vocabulary, is when you are learning new words, kind of one by one, you’re picking and choosing different themes, different categories. Maybe you need different types of vocabulary for different types of situations that you’re going to be in. It’s basically like when you start out learning a new language and you learn the greetings, saying hello, introducing yourself, all those things, that is intentionally picking those words because it’s more important to learn how to introduce yourself in a new language than it is to analyze a news article about climate change. You know that it’s it’s just being really intentional and specifically seeking out new vocabulary words.

These resources are generally a little bit more basic because, as I said, it’s like when you first start out learning a new language, you need to intentionally look for that beginner vocabulary. So this is resources like Mondly and Drops.

Lingvist as well is really good about this, and Lingvist is the only one out of those three that goes beyond beginner levels. So there is that room for growth.

Unintentional

The other side of the coin is unintentional, where you are consuming media, you’re reading or listening to something, you’re watching TV and a new word pops up and you can learn it within that context and you can search for more context, learn definitions, learn translations, all that jazz. But it’s within the context of a story, a TV show, or a song. This doesn’t mean that you’re not specifically looking for vocabulary, but it means that you are picking up new vocabulary more naturally within the context of the media that you’re consuming.

So this is, for example, LingQ, where you’re reading a bunch of stories and you find new words and use those words to build up your vocabulary or something like Language Reactor if you’re watching YouTube or Netflix for the show and then also happen to be picking up new vocabulary in a much more engaging way than just sitting there and copying down translations.

Speaking

And the final category I want to talk about in this video is speaking. So in school, this is so boring because it’s either just like a call and response kind of thing where your teacher is repeating words or saying things in English or whatever it is, and your job as a student is to just repeat the translation back.

Or if you have oral exams, those are super fun (they’re not), you literally just like have a script of a handful of words and your job is to put those words together and speak them and prove that you can speak a language. It’s horrible and boring.

The thing is, learning to speak a new language isn’t about showing off your ability to use a lot of words. It’s about communication and expressing yourself effectively. And if you’ve ever tried to speak a new language, you know this for a fact. It’s not as simple as putting words in your brain and spitting them out. It takes some time to change the process of how you’re using the language.

That said, it’s more fun with languages to use a resource that encourages you to express yourself and state your sentences, think about what you want to say, and learn how to say it in a new language. So something like Speechling, where you have the option to look at a picture and describe the picture and have a pronunciation coach listen to your speaking and tell you if there’s anything that you can improve upon or if you’re doing great.

Speakly is also really great for this. The entire intention behind the Speakly app is to get you speaking quickly. And it does because Speakly is very true in the fact that you don’t need to learn a whole lot of grammar and vocabulary and all that stuff. You just need to get speaking.

How to have fun with languages

So as you can see, there are a ton of different options to use to have fun with languages, and, how to make it more engaging so you stick to it long term. If you’re looking for more recommendations, use my language app search where you can search for language apps based on your target language, your level, and what skills you’re looking to develop.

How to learn to speak a different language

If you want to learn how to speak a different language, you need active language learning strategies. Let’s talk about what that even means, what strategies you should be looking for, and resource recommendations to help you get those language strategies.

First of all, let’s define some terms so that we’re all on the same page. With active language learning strategies, you are intentionally focused on learning the language and building your language skills as opposed to passive strategies where you may be more focused on something else.

You may be more focused on watching a movie or listening to a song, or even cleaning your kitchen and you’re only kind of like half paying attention. There’s nothing wrong with that. But it’s not an active strategy.

Don’t overthink this. The basic idea is to make sure that you are practicing the language in the way that you want to eventually use it. My best example of this is unless you specifically want to translate vocabulary words and you want to become a translator, you don’t have to worry about translating between your target language and your native language. That’s not an effective use of your time.

In this video, we are focused on building your speaking skills.

Learn to speak a different language by shadowing

So let’s talk about different strategies that you can use to build up your ability to speak the language. One mistake that so many language learners make is that they throw themselves into conversations and then they get overwhelmed and they shut down and then they can’t do anything because their expectations are way too high compared to their ability and their confidence level.

Fortunately, we live in a day and age where you don’t just have to throw yourself into a conversation. There are baby steps that you can take to build up your skills and your confidence to have that eventual conversation.

So the first active language learning strategy at the very, very bottom, step one, is talking to yourself. When you talk to yourself, you don’t have to worry about other people understanding you or the pressures of a conversation. You can focus on creating the sounds, creating the words, piecing together the words to create simple sentences, taking as long as you want, and experimenting as long as you want in as many different ways as you want.

When you’re learning how to speak a new language, half of the problem is getting the words from your brain out of your mouth. You know this If you’ve tried to speak your target language and nothing comes out, you have to take so much time piecing together the words, getting them out of your mouth, and then trying to move your mouth and make the right sounds. And it’s a mess. So if you’re struggling, just start talking to yourself.

And if you need a little bit more engagement and more prompts, as it were, to give you inspiration and motivation to find something to say, there are a couple of resources that I would recommend for that.

The specific strategy that I would recommend is called shadowing. Shadowing is just a fancy term to describe when you are listening to an audio recording of like a word or a sentence, you repeat the word or the sentence, and then you can compare your spoken language and the native speaker or the native audio. This can be a helpful way to work on your pronunciation because you’re focused specifically on matching up the way that you’re speaking to the audio.

Three language learning resources come to mind that will be helpful for shadowing, and that’s Speechling, uTalk, or Yask.

But uTalk is strict shadowing, which means there is just an audio recording and you try and mimic the audio recording. Speechling and Yask do have connections to people. So Speechling is when you are connected with a language coach that listens to your audio recording and lets you know if there’s any room for opportunity, or if you’re doing really well, and then Yask gives you a prompt and you respond to the prompt or you say the sentence and then the Yask community can help you by correcting you or telling you that you did great.

Using chatbots to speak a different language

Now if that’s not engaging enough for you and you want the next step to conversations, the next active language learning strategy that I would recommend is chatbots. This just means speaking to a robot speaking to somebody, but it’s not a sentient being so you don’t have to worry about being judged or criticized or, you know, any funny looks or anything like that.

With chatbots, you get a conversation with the computer, with that app, with the robot, whatever it is, and you get to participate in a conversation in a much safer and accessible way. The amount of flexibility in the chatbot depends on the language learning resource.

You have the most conservative, for example, Mondly offers completely pre-determined conversations where you are told what to say and how to say it, and you say it and you are participating in this conversation. There is not going to be any flexibility as to what you’re saying. You are told exactly what to say and there you don’t have to think about it.

Now, if you do want to have a conversation, but you want a little bit more flexibility, Lingodeer also has an awesome chat bot that is fun to use. And fortunately for us, as time goes on, these chatbots, and this tech is getting more and more advanced, and now you can use something like Trancy to have a full-blown conversation with a chatbot in your target language where you can decide where the conversation goes, how it’s going, what you’re going to say, how you’re going to reply.

And you can do it from the safety of being alone in your room, talking to a robot that cannot judge you, criticize you, or say anything. Now there are a ton, a ton, a ton of options like these for practicing your conversational skills, practicing your active language skills without the stress of a human being, and all of the stress and anxiety that can come from that, which I get 1,000%. If that’s where you’re at right now, I would recommend the resources that I mentioned when it comes to shadowing or chatbots.

Having your first foreign language conversations with a tutor

But eventually, if you want to be conversational in the language, you do have to expand to actual human beings. The next active language learning strategy that I would consider to be on the path from absolutely zero to having full-fledged conversations is working with a language tutor.

I would recommend this because while you are talking to a person, you are talking to a person whose literal job is to allow you to struggle in a safe space, to have a conversation, and to struggle to understand what they’re saying. Honestly, it feels so much better to struggle in front of somebody that you’re paying to watch you struggle and mess up words and all that stuff.

There’s less of an obligation of guilt on my part when I can think to myself, I feel really bad that this is such an uncomfortable and boring conversation for my teacher. But at the same time, I don’t feel that bad because I am paying them for this discomfort. It can help to put up a barrier between like, “Wow, I feel guilty that I’m taking up this person’s time” when you’re not because you’re paying for their time.

So what are the options for language teachers? There are quite a few, actually, and these can be split up into two categories. The first category is just one-on-one lessons. It’s just you and your teacher and you are building a relationship and they are teaching you how to speak the language. I would consider this the next step because it’s still a pretty comfortable conservative approach to speaking the language. After all, you still don’t have the pressure of performing for anybody. You have somebody who has a literal job of letting people struggle and not pronounce correctly.

This can look like a lot of things. This can just be somebody that you’re working with and you’re practicing conversation. This could be somebody who is helping you with grammar. This can be somebody who is giving you some direction as to what to learn. For if you want to learn by talking about articles or if you want them to give you some prompts for speaking or if you don’t know at all.

Now, when you start working directly with people like this, I would recommend you have an idea of what you want because any teacher that you work with will have their own strategy, their approach to learning the language, which is excellent, but it may not be the most compatible with your needs.

So if you aren’t able to communicate with your teacher, if they are going in a direction that you don’t like and you aren’t satisfied with and they aren’t willing to change it, it can lead you to hit a wall because you’re not enjoying the process anymore and you may not be able to articulate what exactly you’re struggling with and what exactly you don’t like. So clarity on your intentions, your goals, and your strategies and how exactly you want to accomplish your goals is vital if you want to make sure that you are intentionally building your skills the way that you want to.

And the next little sidestep on that journey is group lessons. You can find group lessons where it’s you and two or three other people who are working with a teacher and it’s doing the same thing as a one-on-one, except it’s with other people. And so you have to share your time with other people.

There are pros and cons to this. Of course, the major con is that you have to share your time with all the other students. But the major pro is that the other students also have perspectives and make mistakes that you can learn from.

For one-on-one lessons for any language. I would recommend trying something like italki or Verbling and if you happen to be learning Spanish, I would suggest Baselang. But group lessons can be a lot of fun just because you can make connections with other language learners as with learning languages, having different perspectives and having different people attempt different things is always more beneficial for your language learning.

The two recommendations for group lessons that come to mind are Lingoda and Babbel Live. Both Babbel and Lingoda are pretty limited in their languages. But if you use my language app search link below in the description to search for your target language specifically, if Lingoda and Babbel don’t support it, then you might find some other options there.

How to use language exchanges to speak a new language

Finally, the last step of the journey of building your conversational skills and your speaking skills using active language learning strategies is conversations with friends with peers in language exchanges. If you’re not familiar, a language exchange is a conversation you have with somebody who speaks your target language and is learning your native language and you exchange the languages.

In these scenarios, hopefully, you find a language exchange partner who is sympathetic, patient, and supportive of the mistakes that you make. And if they’re not, you can always find another partner, honestly. But outside of full-fledged conversations with anybody that you want to talk to, language exchanges are the final step.

These are a lot more flexible because you show up to whatever hangout, you get coffee, you get lunch, whatever it is, and you spend maybe 30 minutes on each language or you switch between them continuously. It depends on the approach that you and your partner agree upon. And resources for finding language exchanges like this are honestly a dime a dozen.

The most popular ones are Tandem and HelloTalk. They’re very very similar. Both are free language apps. They can help you find language exchange partners that you connect with and that you can rely on and meet up with, you know, once a week, twice a week, whatever works for you.

How to choose a language learning strategy

But as you can see, you don’t have to throw yourself into a conversation to build your speaking skills. There are several steps back that you can take to build your confidence before putting yourself in a situation where you feel vulnerable.

So if you’re interested in any of these active language learning strategies, but are looking for different resource recommendations to fulfill them, I would recommend starting with my language app search. You can plug in your language, plug in speaking, you can even plug in the level you’re at and find different resources that can support those strategies.

Now that you know exactly what you’re looking for, it’s going to be much easier to find a resource that will truly benefit you and won’t waste your time.