Today I am bringing you my Top 5 Language hacks to learn your language of choice faster and more efficiently. I have been learning languages for years and I have tried a ton of different methods. I can say that there are definitely ways to make the process easier and not such a draining chore. Getting to your goal of fluency in a foreign language should be a pleasant experience and not something that feel like work. I have taken my favourite ways to make the language learning journey work within my lifestyle and I am going to share them with you today.
Label everything in your home with sticky notes. I have talked about this before and it is a very simple concept. It lets you constantly be learning as you go about your daily routine without even thinking about it. Whenever you open a drawer, walk into a room, turn on a TV or Computer, you will see your label and be burning the words into your brain.
Make the commute your vocal training. Every day most people spend over 1 hour on average in their car or on public transit. Many spend a lot more that. This is the perfect place to make a habit of instantly turning on your audio course. If you cant afford an audio course that is not problem. Spend some time at home recording voice memos while reading in your target language. Then follow it with the translations. These recordings are you speaking and working on the language as you commute. If you can also repeat everything out loud to train your mouth to make the right movements and sounds of your target language.
Every time you get in the shower ask yourself how your day was in your target language. Then follow that by telling yourself out loud what you did all day. This is great practice and can be done while you are doing something you do every day (or at least I hope you do every day :)
Make a personal vocab list. This is a great way to see faster progress. If you take a course they only provide what they thing most people will like to learn first. Why not learn exactly what you are interested in from day one. Why learn political terms if you are not into politics?
Make a language learning schedule and log it on a spread sheet. This isn't really a tip that helps you learn vocab. It is however, a tip that helps keep you motivated. Knowing you spend the time learning will get you to your goals and help you keep on track. There is importance in accountability. If you log your minutes spent each day it becomes a game and it puts a bit of pressure on you to never have a blank day with no logged minutes.
Bonus! Tell everyone that you are learning a language. My favourite way to do this so far was starting a YouTube channel. This let the world know I am learning and now it is really helping me stay on track. It makes it so you don't want to disappoint the people following you as well as ads pressure to make yourself not look like you failed in front of everyone. MAKE A YOUTUBE CHANNEL