One of the most common pain points in learning a foreign language is a lack of time. (Or imagined lack of time.) In reality, we just have other priorities. Instead of doing our daily routine for studying our language, we often “invest”, hours a day, in news consumption, hanging out on social media sites, watching Netflix or chatting with friends.
All of that is perfectly legitimate. However, if we want to have some success in foreign languages, we need to rearrange our daily schedule a bit.
There are lots of books and online courses on time management. It will certainly be useful if you peruse one or more of them.
Let us focus on some basic principles, applicable to learning languages.
The 80/20 rule
Most of you have heard about the 80/20 rule already. There are many applications for it. In principle, it states that some activities have a disproportionate impact on results, compared to others.
Applied to language learning we can state:
• 20% of all grammar rules account for 80% of our communication;
• 20% of all words are used 80% of the time.
Such statements will surely provoke much protest among language scholars. After all, there is much debate as to what is the precise proportion, how to operationalize or measure this. Etc. etc.
Nonetheless, nobody denies that some words are used disproportionately more often than others, and that we use some tenses more often than others (say present continuous over future perfect).
If you had unlimited time, you would surely want to learn all the words in a target language, although you would have a hard time finding a complete dictionary on the market. You would learn all grammar rules you could find in the literature.
However, since in our earthly existence time is a limited resource, we need to prioritize. Which words and rules to learn first, second, and so on. And to determine which techniques and strategies will yield the greatest result.
Exercise: interview native speakers and update your grammar folder
Ask a native speaker of your target language, which grammatical tenses he uses most often. Show him or her the content table of a grammar book and ask him or her to put ordinal numbers of perceived importance to the various rules and tables.
Alternatively, do research on Wikipedia or language forums. Also, try to find out what aspects of your target grammar are particularly difficult, especially for native speakers of English.
Update your grammar folder, arranging the material from very important to negligible.
Make sure to include difficult topics right from the start. Remember: “Eat that frog!” Thus, you can be sure that you will not have any unpleasant surprises in the future. Instead, you attack the greatest linguistic difficulties head on. After that, everything can become only easier.
The same goes for vocabulary. There are many word lists with only the most frequently used 100 or 1000 words. You can find similar lists for your areas of interest and personal expertise. For example, legal or technological vocabulary.
Exercise: decongest your day
Make a list of three daily activities that you could either shorten or eliminate.
During the last six months, what did I reduce or eliminate?
• news consumption: from 2 hours to 10 minutes;
• listening to music: from 2 hours to 30 minutes;
I transitioned from haphazardly reading several books at the same time to just two books: from 1 hour to 30 minutes.
If you detect more, do not stop at three.
In fact, there are many moments during a typical day when we could be learning a language. On our commute to university or work, we could listen to some audio material; while waiting for the bus or metro, we could pull out our pocket dictionary and repeat our daily number of new words; we could close our eyes and just think in another language.
Those of us using the Pomodoro technique or just taking small breaks can then enjoy entertainment in our target language.
Recommended readings
Brian Tracy’s ”Eat that frog!”
David Allen ”Getting things done”
If you like the attitude of these
articles, please check out my online courses : at the
moment, German for Russian- and Romanian-speakers, as well as on goal-setting.
If you are interested in improving
your English in the area of business presentations, I know of no better address
than Tom Antion. Please check him out following this link.
Stay tuned!
Gerhard
About the GO Method
The GO Method applies research in psychology as well as principles
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About me
Psychologist and polyglot from Hamburg /Germany (*1979). Married
with children. MA in psychology from the University of Hamburg. More than 15
years of experience as a university lecturer in psychology as well as a
consultant for UNICEF, Terre des Hommes, IOM, the EU and private companies.
Coordinator of the GO Method network, with representatives in more than 90
countries worldwide.
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