Want to make fast gains in your language studies? Most people will recommend you put in more hours, use more material and do more exercises. Sometimes, however, the answer is not to do more, but to actually start doing less.
If you’re not getting the kind of results you’re hoping for, try taking a stock of your language learning activities. What things do you do for it within the course of a day? A week? A month? Many times, you will notice you’ve been doing so many things within a short of span of time that you’re not giving any one of them enough attention.
One language student I know focused on a strict diet of memorizing just ten phrases a week. All of her language learning activities were geared towards supporting that goal.
- She selected ten related phrases from her foreign language software and wrote them down on her journal.
- All week, she restricted herself to studying just those ten. She didn’t open any other module in her language software other than those that taught those phrases.
- She made flashcards that had those ten phrases in and periodically pulled them out for a quick refresher.
- She practiced the pronunciation for those ten phrases during her scheduled language study time, doing nothing else but them.
Ten phrases a week for someone who visited their language efforts daily will seem like too low a target for some people. But it worked for her. The focus allowed her to really master them. As a result, her retention of those phrases remain at a high level even after months have passed by.