In July 2021, I started a new project to practise my target languages: to write a tweet a day for 30 days. I set myself relaxed rules:

• Each tweet starts with the day and date. 
• After the day and date, I can tweet anything about my day or my life. 
• If I miss a day, I can catch up by writing a tweet about yesterday (or even the day before yesterday). 

I enjoyed the project enough to carry on after the first month. There were 4 main advantages to it. 

1. Regular Writing

I wrote (almost) every day in my target language, even if it was just a couple of sentences. 

2. Conversation Opportunities

Once in a while, somebody responded to a tweet with a comment or question, and I could then answer them in more detail. 

3. Speaking Preparation

Tweeting about my daily life made me more ready to speak about it – I had to craft the same information I’d use to tell somebody about my day. 

4. Practising Useful Vocabulary

There were so many categories of vocabulary I was able to practise with #30DayTargetLanguageTweet. 

Days of the week

These are words that I usually learn at the beginning of a language journey, and then don’t use much as I continue learning. So they tend to be part of my passive vocabulary only. Having to look them up and type them out several times over the course of a month helps to move them to my active vocabulary. 

Ordinal numbers

The same as days of the week, this is passive vocabulary that it’s useful to practise. I found I automatically thought of a cardinal number before finding its ordinal equivalent, giving twice the review! 

Time words

Today, tomorrow, yesterday, the day before yesterday, this morning, this afternoon, this evening, last week, next week. 

Weather

In true English fashion, I sometimes tweeted about the day’s weather. That way, I got to practise weather vocabulary relevant to my region (raining / cloudy / hot). More advanced learners could go into detail about whether it’s chilly, cool, a bit brisk or nippy, to move beyond basic vocabulary like “cold”. 

Tenses

I wrote most of my tweets in the evening, so I practised a lot of past tense. Because many common verbs have irregular past tenses, that was a great refresher. If I wanted to do the same target language for more than one month in a row, I’d probably switch up and do a month of tweets using the future tense. More advanced learners could focus on other tenses and moods e.g. past-perfect, conditionals, subjunctives. 

Family

As an adult learner, I find I learn and use words for family members much less than when I was learning languages at school. This means I get a bit rusty on phrases like “younger sister”, let alone less common words like “cousin” and “mother-in-law”. 

Real-life vocabulary

Since all of my tweets were about something happening in my life, I relearned or practised a lot of vocabulary that’s specific to me and not heavily featured in language courses. For example, I do a lot of crafts (like knitting and sewing) and I had to look up several of the words I’d need to talk about them.  

Next Steps

One of the keys to my success was that I gave myself permission to just do a double-tweet if I missed a day, so I didn’t put pressure on myself and then feel resistance. I’d like to continue tweeting in a relaxed way. 

When I’m repeating a target language, I could target specific vocabulary e.g. describe what I’m wearing each day to practise clothes and colours; describe what I’ve eaten each day to practise food and cooking methods. 

To practise pronunciation as well as writing, I’m thinking about reading my tweets aloud as Instagram stories. I’m much more comfortable communicating in writing though, so it might take a while to persuade myself. 

 

If you want to join me on my tweeting journey, take a look at #30DayTargetLanguageTweets. 

 

 Photo by Chris J. Davis on Unsplash