Language Learning Tips

Setting a number short term targets is much better than trying to set a single long term language learning goal. 

I often hear friends saying "I want to be fluent in Russian" or "I want to be fluent in Chinese" - of course, saying that kind of thing is fine but no one just wakes up fluent in a language. 

It's good to have an end goal that you strive for but equally you need to have a number of realistic and achievable short term goals that will keep you on track to achieving your long term goal. 

For me, my short term goals include X amount of vocabulary memorised within X amount of time, reading a book in X language by a certain date or taking a proficiency exam and aiming for a score of X. Some goals are daily, otherwise are weekly or even monthly but all are just steps on the way to fluency.

2 comments

aeterniti

I like this! My biggest problem is starting projects, like learning Korean, having a strong start, and then giving up when it seems too daunting. I bought myself a textbook, but now my goal is to do a little vocabulary review every day and work through one chapter a week. Not too much at a time! Let's see how well it works once school starts :)

3 years ago·Reply

Like 0

maryjane01

This is so important. I used to set myself targets of 5 new Chinese words a day and increased it to 10 when 5 was getting too easy. You should do a collection / set of cards for language learning tools that you've used