As you can see, learning a language requires a lot of time and commitment. Having good time management would ensure that you get the best out of what you decide on learning and would help you to escape the Common Regrets Of The Language Learning World. If you have a 9 – 5 job then you’d more than likely be one to say ‘I don’t have much time to study or practice.’ But what about you who don’t have? Asking yourself these very important questions might help you to plan your time and make a good calendar even with things that have nothing to do with language learning.
Here are the two categories from which you would choose your status depending on if you have a job or not. Reading and applying what you’ve read from the categories of which you fall under will help a lot.
I Have A Job
Among the many questions you could ask yourself as it relates to time, these are some of the more important ones.
1] WHEN do I have free time intervals and on what days do they most occur?
Say for example you have time intervals like awaiting official working time[30mins], lunch time[30mins] and going to the bathroom for maybe about 3 times for the day[5mins each].
2] WHERE I work[my environment].
Depending on your environment, you could learn to say simple phrases like ‘What time is it?’, ‘I am going for lunch now.’, ‘ I am going to the bathroom. This could better help you if its serves as a memory test. Having a friend you can practice with would be a great plus.
3] WHAT do I do in these time intervals?
Depending on what you are doing at what interval you could learn to say what you are doing. For example;
- Awaiting opening time – you could learn how to say “this [place] will be opened at 9:00”. As you can see, you are also learning how to say time in your desired language.
2. Lunch time – you could learn how to say “I am going for lunch now.” And learn how to say what you are eating.
3.Going to the bathroom – you can learn to say the inevitable “I am going to the bathroom”. Please be reminded that saying what you are going to do at this time is optional.[lol]
I Don’t Have A Job.
Seeing that you have more time than those who have a job, this might be a little easier for you.
Among the many questions you could ask yourself these are just a few of them;
1] An Hour A Day For Learning.
At this time, you could go for a lesson that you will have to use on that day or just any everyday Survival Phrases[link]. Making sure you spend atleast one hour on your studies would make sure your studies are effective and would become more and more effective as you get use to having an hour aside for studying everyday, later on you will be glad to extend it.
2] Lots Of Practicing
Using your time wisely is the purpose of this post, and seeing that you already have so much, you tend to spend most of it online, watching tv, going for walks or things you might not do for the whole day because after that you would end up where you started…just sitting down doing nothing much.
- A. Time online
Since you’ve decided to spend so much time online, you can get friends from other places online who are learning the same language as you or are native speakers of the language you’re learning. Another good way you could use up your time online to get more out of the time you spend on the net is just to find someone who want to learn your language and you want to learn their language, this process would have complete the name Language Exchange.
- B. TV Time
A good way (and probably the only way) of using the TV to aid in your language learning journey is to watch TV in a different language. I, for example, watch CCTV9 (Chinese TV station). Even though I don’t fully understand everything that’s being said I still goo ahead and watch it anyways. This way I tend to learn new words and new phrases, also I have heard some things I know from practicing so I use this TV time as a sort of sharpening method for what I already know while sharpening my listening.
This post was written by Oshaine. Visit Oshaynie’s Youtube to see him practice his languages. More videos soon. Clcik here for google plus.
