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New year, new goals: a language resolutions toolkit

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!

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

Happy New Language? Linguaphile Resolutions for 2018! 🎉

It’s that time of year again, when we take stock of the last twelve months, and formulate resolutions for the next. And a major part of my planning for the next year will focus on my favourite topic: language learning.

I’ve had a packed year when it comes to languages. It hasn’t always been a breeze, especially when trying new techniques or tackling new languages. But easy or difficult, it’s all been a valuable learning experience! Picking through the spoils of 2017, here are a few things I want to take forward into the coming year.

Try new techniques

It’s easy to get stuck in your ways. In 2018, I’ll be making a concerted effort to research and try out new learning methods. Particularly helpful sources of new ideas this year have included language guru Benny Lewis’ packed website and newsletter – highly recommended.

One technique I want to try over the coming months is bidirectional translation, popularised by polyglot legend Luca Lampariello and recommended to me by fellow polyglot friend Marcel, one of iTalki’s very best German community tutors. It looks like a great way to approach learning from texts in a systematic, efficient way.

But I’ve also made a pact with myself to continue old, tried-and-tested techniques. Why mess with what works? Even better if old mingles with new, like when pen and paper meets the digital.

Not get carried away

I have a tendency to want to learn anything and everything. I’m slowly coming to terms with the fact that I only have a single lifetime to fill, and am maybe better off focussing on a few, choice areas to excel in. That means a few – not a hundred – languages. (Boo!)

As such, 2018 will be about consolidation of my two lifelong ‘biggies’, German and Spanish. I’ll also carry on learning Norwegian (B1), Icelandic (A1) and Polish (A1/2). And maybe Russian. And perhaps a bit of French and Chinese? OK, I’m already mentally breaking this resolution…

Be a couch potato

Well, not exactly. But I want to carry on watching fab foreign-language TV series on Netflix and other platforms. I was late to the party, discovering these treasures in 2017, and I keep uncovering new gems with every passing week.

I’ve already worked my way through Norwegian Okkupert, Icelandic Hraunið and Brazilian Portuguese 3%, amongst others. I’ve just discovered the Cold War, DDR-themed Der gleiche Himmel, too, which I’m sure I’ll devour in a matter of days. Hopefully Netflix will keep the foreign series flowing throughout 2018.

In terms of audio-only entertainment, trusty companions throughout 2017 have included NRK’s Språkteigen podcast on the Norwegian language and ORF’s news journal radio programmes from Austria. They’ll continue to keep me company in 2018, and hopefully be joined by others. I managed to switch out a lot of my trashy TV watching for foreign-language entz in 2017, and I plan to carry on that trend.

Keep blogging

2017 was the year of the blog for me. And I’ve enjoyed it hugely; it’s allowed me to crystallise my own approaches to language learning in writing. Simply putting words onto a page can be a fantastic way to consolidate your thoughts and plans.

What’s more, it’s a great way to share. And the more I learn about the online polyglot community, the more I see that sharing reigns supreme in our world. I hope that my humble blog has also helped or inspired others to try new things with languages.

Set targets

Setting and maintaining targets, like my aim of one blog article per week, has been a great self-confidence boost. It’s all about about sticking to personal goals, which has everything in common with language learning. I’ll be keeping this up in 2018, making full use of productivity scaffolds like the 12-week year system.

We all have our favourite apps for doing this. Personally, Evernote, Wunderlist and Anki are my workhorses of choice, and I’ll continue to milk them for their maximum organising power.

Resolutions for fun

Of all my resolutions, one jumps out as the most obvious. Above all, I’ll continue to love learning languages, and enjoy travelling to practise them (on a budget, of course). It’s probably the easiest of all resolutions to keep, too.

Whatever your own personal resolutions, may your 2018 also be filled with success and language fun. Thanks for reading and learning along with me. I hope to spend lots more time with you on our learning journey next year!