Language learning is a long-term activity. No matter how many YouTubers tell you they got fluent in a week, for most of us, learning a language is a commitment of months, if not years. This is especially true if you’re studying alone.
With no deadlines to meet and no external pressure, you might find your learning journey becomes derailed by the instant gratification monkey. You skip a day in your learning routine, which becomes a week, and eventually you forgot everything you already worked so hard to learn.
There will always be times when life gets a bit more difficult than usual. Maybe you’re working ridiculously long hours, or studying for a test. Maybe you’re working through a break-up, or a loss. Maybe you’re in physical pain, or your mental health has taken a dip.
It’s hard to be motivated during times like those, and if you’re already struggling to get out of bed and take a shower, then give yourself permission to put languages on the back burner.
However, if your basic needs have all been met, but you can’t face a 30-minute study session, here are 10 tiny actions you can take. When you feel like you’ve at least done something towards your language learning goal, the sense of progress will keep you motivated and prevent a complete language learning slump. You can complete any of these actions in 5 minutes or less.
Listening
- Listen to a song you like in your target language. If you don’t know any, find out how to say “[Target language songs]” in your target language, enter that into YouTube and listen to the first song in the first playlist that comes up. Maybe you’ll find something you love.
- Search for “Peppa Pig [Target language] and watch one episode – they’re usually under 5 minutes as they’re aimed at tiny attention spans. Bonus: you probably learned the word for “pig” in your target language now. Reading
Reading
- Log into Duolingo and complete 1 session in your target language. Or work on the session for 5 minutes, and if you can’t complete that 1 session, you have full permission to close the app. Taking action is more important than racking up points.
- Find out how to say “[Target language] news for children” in your target language and search for that. See if you can find a simplified news site and read a couple of headlines. (For advanced learners, you can read the MSN site for your target language’s country, or other national newspapers). Bonus: if the site is good, you can bookmark it and check it as a future 5-minute activity.
- Find out how to say “cute” in your target language and then search for that as a hashtag in Instagram and read the other hashtags and captions of the pictures you like. This is what I found when I searched for “cute” in Norwegian. I wasn’t expecting #cute (#søt) to be linked with #NorwegianFood (#norskmat)! Bonus: you can vary this for any hashtag to match your hobbies and interests.
Writing
- Tweet something in your target language.
- Send a quick message to a friend who speaks your target language. Don’t have one? Find out how to say “Who wants to practise [target language]” with me?” and tweet it or post it on Facebook.
Speaking
- Say something in your target language and upload it as an Instagram story.
- Practise what you’d need to say when you meet someone new in your target language e.g name/nationality/work/where you live/interests.
- Talk to your pet in your target language. They don’t mind what language you use when you tell them it’s dinner time!