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.
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
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
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!
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!
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