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How to Keep Up Motivation Learning a Language

2025.01.20

Photo Credit: Cottonbro Studio @Pexels.com

 

As with learning anything - the guitar, calligraphy, yoga, cooking - a new language takes time to acquire. If you’re going to be a good guitarist, writer, yogi, cook or foreign language speaker, you need many hours of practice over a long period of time. Many people feel motivated to start learning a language in the beginning, but that motivation often falls away as time goes on. What are some simple ways to keep motivation up?

 

At the beginning, habitualise your language learning. Embed it in your day. Set your alarm in the morning to play a new English song every day. Prepare an alert on your smartphone every morning to read that day’s news or weather in English. Listen to regular English podcasts on your commute into school. These are three technology-based ways to bring language learning into your daily routine in a simple, regular, automatic way.

 

Further to this, reward yourself if you do these three things in any one day. Keep a record of it in your smartphone calendar or ‘notes’ app. At the end of the month, if you have done these listening / reading tasks every day of that month, buy yourself a prize like an English magazine or book. Rewarding yourself on a regular basis for your language learning efforts is a smart way to keep up your motivation.

 

Lastly, set a tangible goal. Download the next year’s calendar for the EIKEN or TOEIC tests in your area. Pencil in a few target test dates over the course of the year - for example, EIKEN in January; TOEIC in June; TOEFL iBt in November. Many of the most popular language proficiency tests are spread at different dates throughout the year. Having a few concrete test dates and a sensible target level will give you sufficient motivation to keep up your language learning all through the year. Measure your progress by taking practice tests along the way too.

 

Questions:

Q1. An action that you ‘habitualise’ is something you do…

a: At your own pace

b: On a regular basis

c: Only in your free time

d: Sometimes

 

Q2. True or False? Rewards enhance motivation.

 

Q3. A goal is ‘tangible’ when it is…

a: Sensible, achievable, measurable

b: Ambitious, difficult, expensive

c: Clever, motivating, impossible.

 

Scrolldown for answers




















 

A1. On a regular basis (B)

B2. True

C3. Sensible, achievable, measurable (A)

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