Tag: planning

Polylogger makes tracking your study hours easy. And it can throw up some revelations! Image from freeimages.com

Polylogger Revelations

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I finally boarded the Polylogger train and joined the enthusiastic activity tracking community a couple of weeks ago. And to tell the truth, it’s been a bit of a revelation.

Chances are you might well have beaten me to the best seats already. Polylogger already has a well-established, sizeable, active and very sociable fanbase on social media. In fact, it was on Twitter that I first spotted fellow language aficionados singing its praises, so it seemed timely to hop on board already. Better late than never!

Getting started was a cinch. It’s quick and easy to sign up, and the study diary tools are a piece of cake to use. When you get into the swing of things, logging – and watching those graphs grow – is real language geek fun. I love being motivated by what other people are working on, and have already spotted a couple of new resources I didn’t know about through community entries.

But to make the most of the tool, it was what I should be logging that I needed to sort out first and foremost.

That is, what counts as a study session? Just those substantial chunks of time, like hour-long iTalki sessions? Or every little thing, including the odd couple of minutes minutes here and there on casual language apps, or a brief podcast listen during breakfast?

The great #langtwt community, once again, had the answers. It should definitely include the latter. After all, those little bits and pieces all add up. So, off I went, logging my language learning life.

But what secrets did Polylogger have to reveal?

Polylogger : exposing your true habits

By far, its most scandalous exposé for me is the mismatch between what I think I focus on, and what I actually do spend most of my time on. Let’s call it delusion-busting, since I certainly had a very different idea about what I was getting up to. In my mind, I split my main language learning time equally between Greek and Polish. They’re my current active learning projects right now, and I’ve been having at least one iTalki lesson in both every week, as well as fitting in independent activities. I’d actually set Polish as my default language, assuming it was the one I was prioritising most, even attending extra group classes with my tutor.

The thing is, the Polylogger stats do not lie. Shockingly, I’ve actually been spending hours more on Greek. Pretty much twice as many, in fact. How could I not know that?

After analysing the diary stats, the reason jumped out (and was pretty easy to guess in any case). It’s back to that logging every little thing strategy. The numbers show that I naturally fall to Greek when I do my little daily pass-the-time activities like Anki, Duolingo and Glossika. In the long run, that was a massive added value for Greek, and none for Polish. Polish was certainly no poor cousin, and I was working in a couple of major sessions a week – just not the cascade of extras that Greek enjoyed.

No wonder I’ve been finding Greek easier and easier while my Polish level continues to edge along so gradually. Thanks to Polylogger, I can start to rethink my strategy and redress that bias.

Polylogger has been a revelation in itself, providing extra focus and deeper insights into my learning. Whether you’re new to the tool too, or a seasoned user, feel free to add newbie @richwestsoley to your circle!

Mountainous landscape - build some margin into your life and breathe in the fresh air. Image from freeimages.com

Building in Margin as Language Learners : Restful Gains for Real-World Brains

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Do you have enough margin in your life?

Margin is that bit of extra time you choose not to fill. It is the calendar slack, the breathing space, the room to manoeuvre – the opposite of ‘too busy’. It became a popular topic in the self-help and pop psychology world around half a decade ago. And it is as important as ever.

In fact, for the polyglot community, this band of extreme language learners, it pays to be aware of its importance. For all students, margin can make the difference between resilience and burnout. However, it can feel against the grain. If you love your subject, spending every spare hour of the day on it might not seem excessive.

But brains tire, too.

Funnily enough, that is something my very wise grandmother warned me about many times as a book-obsessed kid. Don’t study too hard! It seemed so counter-intuitive back then. For one thing, the rest of the world was screaming work your socks off, smash those grades! You snooze, you lose! Great, if you have the passion and the energy to keep that pace up.

As kids, though, we lack that regulator switch to tell us when to step back and recharge. We need it less frequently at that age, to be honest; youngsters have seemingly boundless energy and live lives constantly switched on. Nowadays, with a bit more wisdom (and a slightly older corporeal vehicle), I know exactly what Nan meant.

A finite resource

The hard lesson to learn is that brainpower is a finite resource, the brain an engine. And no engine is capable of perpetual motion. Like the body, the brain burns energy to do its work. And like the body, it needs rest and recovery. We can rest when we sleep! I hear you say. True, but building in some idle waking time gives you chance to enjoy it while you are conscious, too.

And so we have the gift of margin.

Sometimes, building it in simply requires a little mindful calendar management. When I first started using tutorial platforms like iTalki, for example, I gorged on lessons out of the sheer excitement of having easy access to native tutors. I would regularly book two – or even three – lessons on one day. They would often be in completely different languages, too. At just 30-60 minutes, I guessed they were pretty small chunks of the day, in any case. There was plenty of time between them.

The issue was that a lesson is never simply 30-60 minutes. There is the build-up, where you are mentally preparing yourself for the face-to-face challenge of speaking in the target language. Sometimes this is barely noticeable. But your brain is working on it, silently, in the background.

Then there is the post-lesson cool down. Aside from the obvious admin, like noting down new words and structures, a lot of processing is going on. Some of this will be purely about content – what you said, what the teacher said. But some of the involuntary replay is more about judging your performance in a social context. Did it go well? Is the teacher pleased with me? Am I even any good? Squashing impostor syndrome gremlins is a universal human task, and it takes a lot of mental energy.

Factor all that in, and two or three lessons are enough to occupy the brain all day long.

Rules for Margin

Now, realism is not a fun-toting party guest at the best of times. Any community of super-learners likes to think in Übermensch terms of anything is possible. And it is, within the limits of our own humanity. Our own amazing, unique humanity, but a humanity nonetheless limited by the regulation physical hardware.

To work with that, I find it helpful to set a few rules.

The first, you can guess: just one language lesson a day. It is easy to stick to that, and quite honestly, makes more sense if you plan your week by blocking your learning time. By extension, I also try to avoid three or more consecutive days with one-to-one lessons.

Similarly, it is helpful to respect the concept of a weekend, even if you follow a different weekly rhythm. Build in a couple of free, study-free days every week, whether they are Saturday and Sunday, or some other combination. Now, where I used to see an empty days as a chance to squeeze in another lesson, I try to savour them as commitment-free breathers. This takes away the feeling of relentlessness that can build up without thinking gaps.

Magical Realism

But here is the magic about margin: leaving time free is not the same as doing nothing with it. Not being committed is not the same as not using the time at all. And what you do in your breathing space might well be language learning itself! The only stipulation about margin is that it is free for whatever you might need it for – contingency time, in other words. If you get to it and have no other plans, maybe you will even feel like a bit of extra language learning. Or a walk in the park. Or a coffee with friends. It’s up to you.

Doing something because you feel like it can be a lot more replenishing and recreational than doing it because it is in your study calendar. In this way, margin becomes a great way to rediscover the joy of random study. Leaf through a book, watch a TV programme in your target language, read a novel. Just enjoy it as a recreational activity, rather than an obligation.

I have a ready list of time-fillers when I feel like a bit of easy language. Of late, I love watching random episodes of the BBC Gaelic programme Speaking Our Language. I’m learning bits and pieces as I watch, of course – but I also simply enjoy seeing different parts of Scotland I’ve not visited yet (as well as reliving early 90’s fashions). In the same vein, I often listen to the odd episode of Greek by Radio (hosted by Kypros.org) in my downtime. The Greek lessons are useful, of course, but those vintage productions have me revelling in those more innocent days of broadcasting. And, of course, there is Eurovision.

Whatever you find yourself pottering about with, make sure that it feels less like work, and more like fun. The most important thing is to exercise that self-care, and make some space for it in your routine.

Margin is a gift to your future self. Build it into your schedule to keep your brain in prime, language-learning condition!

A new calendar means new language learning resolutions. But how to stick to them? (Image from freeimages.com)

Calendar blocking: a little book to bust your rut

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Oh, how the days of a new year sometimes seem to melt into an ambling, amorphous mess. From the high hopes of resolutions to the January Blues, language learning motivation can be in short supply in this cruellest of months. Dry Vocabanuary, as one friend succinctly puts it. One thing is keeping me on track at the moment: calendar blocking.

You see, my natural, inborn tendency – despite the treasure of posts on language learning planning and productivity – is to veer into disorganisation. I try not to beat myself up too much for this. As Daniel Kahnemann explains in Thinking, Fast and Slow, human brains evolved to try and make it easy on themselves. They can make an effort when they really have to, but even then, only in short bursts, like a surly teenager.

What helps in bucketloads is a routine to act as a stricter, more explicit executive in charge of self-direction. So, every night, I put on Manager Ricky hat. I imagine my tomorrow self as a third-party employee to delegate to. With my larger objectives in mind, I plan my next day’s work and study in more-or-less hourly chunks.

The resulting plan is loose and flexible enough not to feel stifling, with in-built breaks (Pomodoro is your friend!). But it defines goals tightly enough to prevent focus-drift into an unproductive mush.

In short, it makes me a better worker and learner.

Calendar blocking with purpose-built pads

Now, who doesn’t like a new item of stationery? There is something exciting and motivating about a fresh, shiny, empty notebook that e-tools like Evernote – however brilliant – can fail to replicate.

To that end, I treated myself to the organisational geek’s perfect purchase for a productive 2020: this natty daily planning pad! This purpose-designed calendar blocking pal is simplicity to use. The star of each page is an hour-by-hour rundown of the day, with extra space for the most important to-do items. Being compact at just A5 size, it also discourages over-planning. The overarching ethos is keep it clear, keep it simple.

Calendar blocking with a brand new pad!

Calendar blocking with a brand new pad!

You don’t need a special pad, of course. I just like new stationery, so any excuse. But any medium will work, as long as you can map out the day in roughly hour-long sections, and cross-reference with key to-dos.

Your very own Hogwarts

So far, so good using the pad. In the most satisfying way, it does feel a little like writing your own special daily school timetable. If you are a fan of ambitious personal improvement regimes, or want to create your own personal Hogwarts of horizon-broadening lessons, then this will appeal greatly.

Admittedly, I am not quite at the point of scheduling lessons in potions and transfiguration. But there is always a sense that this is my à la carte plan for developing myself in ways that are magical for me. Namely languages – and if you are reading this blog, chances are that will be your magic, too.

Have you employed other productivity hacks into your language learning routine? Let us know in the comments!

A firework mid-display! Image from freeimages.com

New year, new goals: a language resolutions toolkit

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New year, new decade. And time again for lots of New Year language learning resolutions and great intentions.

Twitter is awash with plans, hopes and dreams from language enthusiasts far and wide. We certainly know what we want out of 2020. But how to best go about it?

Arm yourself with the right kit with these top tools for staying on track!

Get your streak on in Anki

One of the most motivating, keep-on-track features of platforms like Duolingo is the streak feature. However, this is not always available in staple, bare bones vocabulary drill tools like Anki.

That is, until Review Heatmap came along!

This desktop Anki add-on helps you keep daily momentum by offering stats like streak and past performance. The heatmap graph allows you to glance forward and gauge how many card reviews are coming your way in future. An excellent way for language geeks to stick to daily vocabulary resolutions.

Review Heatmap in lovely magenta.

Review Heatmap in lovely magenta.

Resolutions reminders

Establishing a new routine and changing ways can be tough as a typical creature-of-habit human being. Thankfully, there are plenty of to-do list apps to help organise our resolutions, and Wunderlist has been one of the best (not to mention free).

You can organise goals and subgoals using the rich, tiered reminders in the app. Personally, I like to take a weekly tactics approach, with regular repeated tasks. This is a piece of pie to set up on Wunderlist, with phone notifications to remind you when items are due to be ticked off.

Creating a regular language routine with Wunderlist

Creating a regular language routine with Wunderlist

Now, since I first began proselytising about the app, it seems to have caught the attention and imagination of the bigwigs. The upshot is that the company and app will morph into Microsoft To-Do by May 2020. So somebody was clearly listening!

Luckily, everything that made Wunderlist so great looks set to stay. So, jump straight into Microsoft To-Do if you want to give to-do organising a go with your languages. Existing Wunderlist users can easily import their data into the new app, too.

Evernote for ever-ready resolutions

Talking of list-writing applications, cross-platform Evernote allows for to-do tick lists as well, amongst a geeksome cascade of other features.

Evernote is as much a place to plan as it is to collect, study, write and do just about anything else you need language-wise. Clip a web article into it to translate and create a vocabulary list from. Create your weekly plan in it, and let the app notify you when a review is due. Email yourself a list of words while you’re at work to pick up and work with later. Or snap a page of exercises from a textbook, and complete your answers in the note rather than deface your book. You can even share that note with your tutor for marking.

However you use it – and there are as many ways as there are users – Evernote can be a real workhorse for language learning.

And it’s free to use on a basic plan!

Write to remember with apps and reusable pads

My love of lists and notes betrays my true colours. I am a big proponent of good, old-fashioned writing to remember (as no doubt many of us are!).

I just love a scribble. And one of my all-time favourite techniques to take advantage of this for language learning is the brain dump. Regularly recycle what you’ve learnt by letting it all flow, as creatively as possible, onto a single page. Incidentally, this makes for a great weekly tactic in your resolutions to-do list above!

Now, for the sake of saving paper, I enjoy using sketch apps on my tablet to splurge:

A brain dump of elementary Irish

A brain dump of elementary Irish

However, nothing quite beats traditional pen and paper. Thankfully, there is a tech-savvy way to work traditional media into your 2020 resolutions without working through a forest:

Rocket Pad - stick to your writing resolutions without wasting trees! Image from Amazon.com.

Rocket Pad – stick to your writing resolutions without wasting trees!

The best of resolutions

As a good rule of thumb, the very best resolutions are both well-defined and measurable. So, as you prepare to work with these fabulous support tools, ensure that you know what you are aiming for. Threshing out the detail of what your realised ambition looks like really helps you see the path to get there.

That said, before you set off, keep in mind the best of all language learning resolutions: have fun. Language learning should never be a chore, but always a joy. Explore, dabble, and never feel guilty for doing what you love.

Just revel in that love of words.

Good luck with all your language learning goals and resolutions for 2020. Happy New Year – and happy learning!

It’s a date! Planning for language success with extreme calendarising

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As a naturally busy (read: untidy) mind, the discovery of proper planning in recent years has been a godsend for my language learning. From happy-go-lucky, read-a-few-pages-here-and-there amorphous rambler (goodness knows how I managed to amble my way through university), an organised me rose from the ashes of chaos. The past decade or so has seen me become a much better learner for it. That bright but scatterbrained schoolkid who had to attend interventional self-organisation training at school finally realised the error of his ways.

The secret isn’t particularly well-kept, mind. Just the discipline to set weekly targets, combined with a bit of creative to-do listing using software like Evernote and Wunderlist, are enough to clear the path to a wholly more efficient kind of learning.

There’s always room for improvement, though. To-do lists are great. They’re just not particularly precise.

You probably know the issue well, too. You have a list of things you want to do by the end of the day. But come the evening, you realise that you’ve left them all rather late. That is the best way to turn tasks you might otherwise find fun or engaging into chores.

It’s a date

Recently, I came across an article about a woman who halted that drift into nebulous indolence by calendarising everything. Now, her example might come across as, well… a little extreme, as far as productivity drives go. Rising at 4:30am, scheduling time with family and friends to the minute – well, my life isn’t that busy. But there’s definitely something in this approach worth trying.

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been spending some moments each evening to schedule explicitly each to-do on the next day’s calendar entry. It’s a flexible schedule, of course, with plenty of slack built in (I’m neither monster nor machine!). But giving my daily plan some solid structure has made a big difference.

Planning a day of leisure and learning through explicit calendarising

Planning a day of leisure and learning through explicit calendarising

Following a plan you made the night before is a little like playing the role of both instructor and learner. In pre-planning, you determine the course of action for your future self. Following that route, there is a sense that this past self is instructing your present course of action.  And for me, that purposeful split personality, separating planner-self and learner-self, both busts drift and yields a solid boost for discipline.

Seize the day

As your own day-to-day educational planner, you are designing your own curriculum as you go along. The upshot of this is that the day view of Google Calendars suddenly becomes extremely useful. And that goes for that wealth of other free tools, which suddenly become invaluable planning buddies.

The idea of creating your own ‘personal college’ with a disciplined daily approach has relevance well beyond languages. It has gained some traction particularly in the US, where university costs have become prohibitive for some.

Super-learner Scott Young, for example, took advantage of free online materials to work through the entire MIT computer science curriculum in his own time. With a raft of free platforms and resources available to linguists, we are perfectly placed to do the same. Playing the role of your very own course architect and calendarising curriculum scheduler, you can reap similar rewards.

So am I cured of my chaotic tendencies? Well, I never want to lose that bit of slack I still build into my routines. I think a little bit of chaos is good, especially for creative souls. But a little extreme calendarising gives me just enough structure to balance things on the right side of discipline.

Variety is the cheese of life. Image from freeimages.com

Variety is the cheese of life : Acknowledge and bust your rut!

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Variety of approach has always been a hot topic for me in language learning. Changing up your sources and materials is one of the best ways to maintain high interest and motivation in a study regime.

But I discovered something more to that trick in recent weeks: the same guiding principle is an excellent strategy for keeping the rest of your life bubbling effervescently, rather than fizzling out into stagnation.

Someone moved my cheese!

In the classic productivity title Who Moved My Cheese, Dr Spencer Johnson details the very human tendency to fall into patterns of sameness. These patterns make us inflexible and impervious to change. In other words, they get us stuck in a rut.

Ruts are funny things. You can be stuck in one, yet not realise it. And it can take a big disruption to shed light on it.

For me, life was seemingly in perpetual motion. Working between several UK cities, the commuting rhythm gave the impression of a geographically open, free life. And don’t get me wrong; there is a great freedom in working both remotely and on the move, with a couple of weekly office days providing an anchor point between travels.

But what we do not see is how rigidly arranged everything is behind the scenes. Movement was ongoing, but within very narrow confines. It was motion, for sure, but it was always the same motion. I played the role of master of my own destinies, but in reality, it wasn’t me doing the managing. It was the train and plane schedules. Travel plans come with unique, prohibitive restrictions thanks to peak pricing, busy services to avoid (especially for someone who hates big crowds) and fitting work around family and friend commitments.

The result? I’d become a creature of habit without realising it. I knew exactly where my cheese was, and I always expected it to be there. The same trains, the same planes, the same routes.

Until they messed my train schedules up!

Desperately seeking cheeses

Yes: London Northwestern and Virgin Trains, in their wisdom, took a bulldozer to my well-trodden paths up and down the country. Obviously, there was some greater logic behind this. Some improvement or efficiency saving for the greater good. But my safety blanket, my familiar routine, was simply no longer there.

First, I felt panic. Then, realisation: I had been in an unknowing rut, always returning to the same spot for my little nub of cheese. In a life characterised by change, I had become inflexible to it, spoilt by the continuity I enjoyed up to that point.

It was time to relearn cheese-hunting.

Experiment and enjoy the variety

With nothing to lose – my original services were no longer an option, in any case – I started to change my calendar up a little. I experimented with a number of alternative routes, not settling on one, but going out of my way to try out the possibilities.

Crucially, I resolved to be brave, and particularly, to try routes I might not have ordinarily considered. Pushing yourself out of your comfort zone is a healthy habit in learning. And, I found, it can be just as helpful in day-to-day life too.

Somewhere in the mix, you hit upon some nice surprises.

Same place, fresh eyes

The treasure in the ruins, for me, was the discovery of some very cheap and empty early hours services to London. Instead of arriving at 9:30am, I would get to the capital at 7am. Ouch.

But wait. There’s a gift in there. It’s the gift of time.

Instead of racing to the office to get a good two hours of desk time before lunch, I could take my time. And it dawned on me that I could take my time in a pretty exciting place. London was mine for a full two hours.

It’s a wonderful experience rediscovering a place that you began to associate only with work. I planned walks, coffee stops, sightseeing detours. I got to know the city as a pleasure again, rather than a chore. The Thames. Westminster Abbey. And St Paul’s Cathedral, just a stone’s throw from the office! I’d been missing out on so much.

St Paul's Cathedral, London - my bit of variety this week!

St Paul’s Cathedral, London –
a bit of variety for me this week!

Coming full circle

Linguists, bear with me: these circumlocutions do come full circle, right back to language learning. On my London walking adventures, I stumbled back into the territory of Foyles, the magical book Mecca on Charing Cross Road. Foyles has, by a long stretch, the best language learning department of any UK bookshop. What a rediscovery!

And just think: if it hadn’t been for those pesky schedule changes, I’d never have stumbled across that Aladdin’s cave of volumes again – at least for a long while.

Foyles - the place to find variety in language learning books!

Foyles, London

So in life, as in languages, a change – forced or not – can respark the joy. Someone moved my cheese, but it reminded me that life is full of different cheeses for the hunting (and not just the corny song kind).

Keep movement in your life. Learn the lesson of variety. And stay on the lookout for fresh cheese!

Eat the frog - not literally, of course, but in a language learning sense! Image from freeimages.com.

Frogs for breakfast! Language planning and the early bird

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Do you ever get to the end of your language learning day, week or month with a heap of tasks to get through from your planning? Does your joy turn into a chore when you realise how many Anki flashcards have built up, or how many pages of your book you need to read to keep on track?

Then maybe it’s time to start breaking the fast on a bit of frog.

Before you baulk at the prospect, don’t worry! It’s not as gruesome as it sounds. The eat-the-frog principle is about getting big tasks out of the way early on. You would want to get that task out of the way as quickly as possible if you had to do it, right? Well, you can similarly prioritise lengthy and effort-intensive learning activities to do early in your planning.

Applying eat-the-frog planning to your learning, you avoid letting routine tasks queue up and become overwhelming later on. It is a stock technique of productivity coaches. Self-development author Brian Tracy has written a whole book on digesting your grenouille early in the day.

A more palatable metaphor?

If the frog image is a little too disturbing, then perhaps there is another way to think of this. Last year, I came across a wonderful idiom in Spanish: comerse un marrón, literally to eat up a chestnut. That chestnut is the unpleasant morsel to swallow, the tedious task to get out of the way. The sooner you get it done, the better you feel.

But, candied chestnuts also being tasty treats, perhaps this is a more apt way to think of our language tasks. Lovely, but leaving them all at once to eat at the end of the day will do us no good at all!

Eat up those chestnuts early! Image from freeimages.com.

Eat up those chestnuts early!

Language learners tend to place high expectations on themselves. To keep these many frogs and chestnuts as sweet as possible, it can help to combine weekly planning with a regular routine to tackle them systematically.

Build a morning routine

The business of simply living a life can really throw our language learning off the tracks sometimes. Job, family, friends, other interests – they all suck up our time. It’s tempting to leave our languages to the end of the day, after all that is done. After all, we love languages, don’t we? To indulge in them in the last, quiet hours of the day should be a treat. Right?

Well, in our passion for the subject, we forget how energy-intensive study is. Often, all I want to do after the sun goes down is chill. For sure, certain language exercises fit the bill – foreign language Netflix, passive podcast listening and so on – but more vanilla study activities like textbooks and Anki decks require our full attention and effort.

Moving some of these tasks to the morning can have a drastic effect on your study stamina. You not only have the benefit of a more fresher, less depleted you. You also avoid that sense of stress and urgency from running out of road at the end of the day.

Anki cards, for example, soon pile up if you leave them. It’s an uncomfortable feeling when, at 11pm, you realise that you have to shift 80 card reviews before the pile up on tomorrow’s to-do list. Then there’s the Duolingo XP that you need to get to maintain your streak – but it’s nearly the end of the day. That stress makes the task all the more uncomfortable.

Instead, swallow that frog for breakfast. On the train to work, at your desk before you start your daily tasks, during your morning break. Blast them when you have time and energy in abundance.

Micro-task regime

This kind of planning works especially well with smaller, more granular micro-tasks. These are typically standalone activities, taking 5-15 minutes each. Vocabulary review and online / app tutorial sections are a good example, although you could turn any activity into a micro-task. For instance, a ten-minute session of foreign language reading soon mounts up over time. This works particularly well if you are reading a book divided into very short chapters (like the Norwegian crime novel I’m currently reading!).

My own weekly language learning to-do currently looks something like this, with both daily and weekly tasks. As the foundation for these weekly planning lists, I use the 12-week year system, which helps focus my efforts on defined goals.

Planning a language learning week in Evernote

Planning a language learning week in Evernote

Before work tends to be my ideal time for frog-fighting. I try to get my 100-200 points on Duolingo then, as well as all of my Anki card reviews. One thing I know for sure: if I haven’t shifted the bulk of it by the evening, it feels like more of a chore. If I blast it in the morning, I not only have my routine learning / review done and dusted. I also get a feel-good buzz of “this is a productive start to the day!” from it.

If you follow a seven-day cycle like this, the same applies to your entire week. If, by Saturday, you still have a heap of weekly goals to tick off, the pressure mounts. The stress that causes is the biggest passion killer for a subject you love. Instead, try tackling your heftier language tasks, like active podcast listening, at the beginning of the week.

Language learning should never become a chore. Prevent your own frogs / chestnuts / other appropriate metaphors from getting big, ugly and stressful by building a structured morning routine. Frogs for breakfast – sunny side up!

A new calendar means new language learning resolutions. But how to stick to them? (Image from freeimages.com)

Five Ways to Stick to Language Learning Resolutions

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We are well into the New Year now, and – if you are like me – you probably have a list of language learning resolutions as long as your arm. But doesn’t cold, damp January feel like the longest and hardest month for keeping to them? It can seem far too easy to get discouraged.

Never fear: here are some sure-fire tips for staying on track (or getting back onto it). 2019, we are coming for you!

Set reminders

Set your watch for timely language learning

If it’s a case of simply not remembering to stick to your routines, you can employ a little digital help. Setting training reminders on your devices is one of the easiest ways to enforce a new routine and begin habit-building.

My to-do and reminder app of choice is Wunderlist, which is both free, and goes far beyond a simple reminders app. For instance, you can subdivide your lists of tasks into separate sections, like simply ‘Languages’, or even one for each of your languages. It also allows for repeated tasks, which are perfect for daily and weekly learning tactics. Ticking these off regularly creates a real sense of ongoing achievement.

If you are a fan of Evernote (a fantastic, yet unsung hero of language learning!), you can use its reminder feature to similar effect. I use Evernote for longer-term planning, and setting reminders for regular reviews of planning documents is a resolution-saver.

Also worth checking out are Coach.me, Streaks and, of course, your plain old smartphone to-do / calendar apps. Sometimes, the simplest solutions are the best.

Tie your language learning to other habits

Our lives are already complex webs of routine and habit. Leverage that by linking your new, desired behaviours into what you already do.

Jogging is a routine you can easily tie new language learning habits to. (Image from freeimages.com)

Regular walk? Use that to listen to target language material like podcasts. Regular commute? Make sure you have plenty of foreign language Netflix downloaded for offline viewing. Spare minutes after getting ready for work? Do your 5-10 minutes of Anki or Duolingo.

You can find multiple points where your existing habits can anchor your new ones, too. With apps, taking advantage of a variety of platforms gives you multiple entry points in your daily routine. I use the Anki app on my bus and train journeys, but open up the desktop app for a quick revise before I start work at my desk.

If apps feature heavily in your language learning life, try chaining them. Piggy-back your new platforms on the back of an already well-established one. Already doing 5-10 minutes of Duolingo every day? Try coupling your Verb Blitz or Memrise right onto the tail end of that.

Enlist help

Strength in numbers - enlist the help of others in your language learning resolutions. (Image from freeimages.com)

Strength in numbers!

Personal goals shouldn’t be a lonely business. Do you have friends or relatives who can lend a hand? A supportive partner to remind you to do your daily Anki every day could work wonders! Tell them how much it means to you to succeed in your language learning goals. Getting them on board will be an invaluable source of encouragement.

A popular concept in peer coaching is the accountability partner. This is a friend or colleague you regularly meet up with to compare progress on goals. Each participant’s goals can be quite disparate, as the function of the accountability partner is to act as a sounding board and motivator. All you need is someone else who is also working on self-improvement goals for 2019.

You can also help others to learn while helping your own goals along, too. We learn, and consolidate previous learning, through teaching. Even sharing an overview of recent progress with others can help you to reflect critically on your own learning. With that in mind, why not commit to sharing progress in your resolutions with your nearest and dearest?

It’s also worth mentioning the immense value a professional coach can offer, if you really want to bring in the cavalry. I circumnavigated some sticky learning impasses in 2018 thanks to working on my goals with a coach.

Get right back on that horse!

Controversial fact: the “New Year” in “New Year’s Resolutions” is the least important part of all!

The truth is that New Year’s Resolutions are lent a bit of artificial magic by dint of that special date of 1st January.

If you have slipped up, there is no need to write off your goals until the next year. The best time to start again is always now. As with a diet, saying “I’ll be good from tomorrow” is a delay tactic that you should never fall for.

It might help to regauge how you divide up your blocks of time. Let’s face it: an entire year is a very long stretch for goal planning. Instead, productivity writer Brian Moran suggests a 12-week cycle, which has worked a treat for me.

Don’t burn out too soon

Finally, make sure to keep yourself mentally and physically in kilter. Pushing yourself too hard means burning out, or worse, coming to resent your own resolutions.

Learning to build pace and pause into your routine is as important a skill as fully-fledged language learning work. Too much rigidity can stifle the most enthusiastic learner – aim for self-kindness by allowing for fluidity in your plan.

Regular audits of your progress help, too. It may be that you set the bar too high for January 1st. Be honest with yourself. Can you scale back slightly before stepping up again later? Better to do that, than give up completely.

A recent example from my own 2019 challenges illustrates the need to be flexible, and revisit / reformulate resolutions on a regular basis. One ambitious target I set myself was to make at least one overseas trip a month to practise my languages. Now, that might sound difficult, but it is quite possible on a budget; there are a number of tools to source cheap flight and hotel dates. But, alas, at the mercy of dynamic travel pricing, it looked like I might miss that target in the very first month.

Not to worry: I’ve reformulated that goal as: make trips to at least 12 different overseas destinations in 2019. Resolution rescued!

Whatever your goals for 2019, let these guiding principles keep you on track for language learning success. Here’s to a fruitful twelve months… and beyond!

Fireworks at New Year - a great time for Language Learning resolutions!

Resolutions and reasons to be cheerful : a language learning retrospective

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There is something motivationally magical about the turn of the New Year. That arbitrary line in the sand humans draw to mark the start of a new round-the-sun tour seems a better time than any to wipe the slate clean. Out with the bad habits, in with the new – and that goes as much for language learning as anything else.

However, when making resolutions, it is just as important to look back and acknowledge our successes over the past twelve months. It is too easy to say I will do better and to downplay what you already did so well.

Bearing that in mind, here are my reasons to be cheerful, which shape my language learning hopes for the next circuit round the solar system.

A place to call home

We all have places where we feel comfortable. That counts as much for our online learning spaces as hearth and home.

In 2018, I’ve continue to feather my nest on Anki. Few tools are as versatile as this behemoth of the language learning arsenal.

But this year, I started to extend my Anki home. I have made increasing use of the mass sentences site tatoeba.org, mining it for useful sentences to fill my decks. Finding a source of sentence-level material to supplement my single-item vocab approach has been one of the most effective changes to my learning routine in 2018.

2018 was also the year that I cosied up to the fireplace of Duolingo, like I owned the place. Its random practice feature alone has provided valuable structure and variety to my daily routine, and kept me coming back for more. The foundation of my Polish is much stronger for it, and continues to solidify.

There is a reason Duolingo regularly tops educational app charts across platforms; its gamification of learning really draws you in, if you let it.

Finally, offering a language home at home has remained the healthy domain of Netflix this year. The entertainment outfit continually churns out a wealth of compelling viewing in multiple languages. That is pure gold to the language learner looking to achieve that unifying spark between learning goals and personal interest.

Recent personal gems have been the gripping alternative history series 1983 from Poland, and, unexpectedly, French film Je ne suis pas un homme facile (recommended to me by a non-linguist, and serving as some brilliant French revision). I even unearthed some subtitled Polish comedy, which has been a fun way to experience some really earthy language!

Which platforms have you felt at home with over the past year?

Filling the shelves

You can’t beat a good book. And so it can be with language learning too, especially if you hit upon a structure course or guide that really works.

I must admit to becoming a bit of a fanboy to the Teach Yourself Tutor series over the past few months. They provide a much-needed update to the traditional grammar workbook format. Even more exciting: they are available in a range of languages that will delight polyglots.

The Polish version has been a great helping hand this year. But as someone perennially fascinated by how any language works, I have even acquired a couple for languages I don’t (yet!) study, like Turkish. Here’s hoping to more of the same – in new languages – from Teach Yourself in 2019.
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Planning to learn

Using Evernote to plan my language learning is second nature after a couple of years with the note-taking app. I preach the simplicity and utility of it to a fault, as it has been a massively valuable organisational tool.

And at the risk of sounding like a broken record: Evernote can be transformative as a habit-building framework for learners. I expect it to continue as one of my most diligent electronic workhorses in 2019!

Language learning on the move

As with many linguists, language learning and travel have always been inextricably linked for me. That pairing took me on some enriching, educational adventures this year, a trend I hope to carry over well beyond the next January 1st.

A highlight of 2018 was, of course, the Polyglot Conference in Ljubljana this October. In so many ways, it was a serious shot in the arm for my language learning. Above all, that raw feeling of community works wonders for your confidence, and is an amazing antidote to impostor syndrome. The 2019 meet takes place in Fukuoka, Japan; I hope very much to attend.

Otherwise, I continue to support my language learning (and thirst for adventure) with mini breaks abroad. As lavish as that sounds, it is quite possible to do short trips on a small budget. Germany has hosted me several times over the year, as I work on maintaining my strongest foreign language. I trust that the adventures will continue into 2019 (as I keep a cautious eye on the end of March, hoping that travel remains as friction-free as possible, given my very British circumstances!).

Blogging

Last, but not least, we come to this very blog. I started Polyglossic.com over two years ago, intending it to be a place to explore ideas and share experience around language learning. Writing my weekly Polyglossic posts has been a wonderful way to crystallise nascent thoughts, and develop a more unified philosophy to underpin my own learning. If others have found these ideas useful, that is hugely rewarding.

Regular posting has also drawn me into online dialogue through social platforms, and I continue to learn heaps from fellow language nuts. Over the past year, the online community has continued to show me the positive power of social media. That’s a great lesson in an age when we hear more often about the negative impact of the online world. There are some truly lovely people out there.

On that note, colossal thanks to everyone who has joined me on my Polyglossic journey again this year. I hope we’ll keep walking that road together in 2019.

What were your language learning highs of 2018? What are your hopes for the new year?

Language learning during busy times can be a bit of a blur. (Image from freeimages.com)

Give yourself a break! Fluid language learning planning for busy people

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How was your November? Mine was busy. Very busy. As fulfilling and rewarding as they usually are, work, family and friends ended up filling nearly every minute. And, if you’re like me, you’ll find that life, in these busier moments, can knock your language learning right off course.

Tools for staying the course

Now, there are plenty of great ways to try and keep on course. My personal go-to tool for weekly language learning planning is Evernote. I take time each Sunday to plan in tasks for the next week, basing them on my progress over the previous seven days. During the week, Evernote acts as the brain centre for my learning.

In our busier moments, however, our plans can become fixed and rigid. And that rigidity can sometimes overwhelm us.

Over a quiet Summer, your 20-point weekly to-do plan might be a piece of cake. But when life gets hectic, you might find yourself ticking off just a quarter of your tasks. That, quite simply, is demotivating. You feel like a failure, not coping, struggling to fit in your learning. Confidence knocked, you slowly slide into achieving less and less.

The answer? You need to accept that you are not a machine operating at a constant level of capacity, and add some fluidity to your planning.

Your capacity is not constant, but varying

In my case, I’d fallen into a particularly poor habit that was so far from self-care. Tired after a long week, and in total chill-mode on a Sunday evening, I stopped sparing the time to evaluate my previous week and plan the next. Instead, I simply copied and pasted the previous week’s plan to the next week, blanking off the ticks. An unthinking carbon copy.

The problem here is that every week is different. Expecting to take on an equal amount of labour at a constant rate is, frankly, putting an unreasonable demand on yourself. Our capacity is finite, and life’s demands are always changing. Pretty soon, I found myself filling in fewer and fewer of those ticks from a copied list that was based on my capacity months ago, and not today.

It was a shortcut, but a mindless, inappropriate one. It was actually costing me progress in the long run.

My engine was overheating, and I needed cooling down.

Strip off to cool down

First things first: in this situation, you need to force a break. You need to get off the ride in order to cool down and catch your breath back. It’s perhaps obvious, but as with many obvious things, sometimes we need to be reminded about them.

The easiest way to do this is simply to strip your weekly tasks right down to a bare minimum. What this bare minimum is, is up to you. It should consist of the things that are most important to you in your language learning, but things you can comfortably do in ’emergency mode’, without exacting too much energy from yourself.

Be honest about what you can realistically do right now, given your current circumstances and life events. In my case, my skeleton language learning plan was stripped down to simply these two tasks:

Now, that was quite a step down from the cascade of weekly tasks up to that point. Gone – for now – was the pressure to fit in X podcasts, Y chapters of a book, Z iTalki lessons. Instead, I recognised my need for space, and committed to maybe 15-20 minutes of maintenance every day instead of the frantic daily hamster wheel.

Back to full throttle – with care

Maintain this level for a week or two – just long enough to gather your thoughts and reset your pace. Then, with a constant eye on your energy levels, start adding tasks back in every week. Stay mindful of stress, and remain realistic about what you can do if things are still manic in the rest of your life. With a little care, you can work your way back to full throttle in a matter of weeks.

It can be hard acknowledging that you need some breathing space. But it is a vital skill to master in avoiding burnout. Self-honesty is worth its weight in gold for the self-powered learner. It should certainly count in your arsenal of language learning tricks, just as much as memorisation techniques and lesson preparation. The fluid planning that comes from it will pay dividends compared to a rigid, unyielding taskmaster approach.