Say no to monotony and lack of new impulses and challenges, and get back on track.
Buckle up ’cause in no time your passion for languages will be back. I guarantee you will feel the rush of emotions you used to feel in the beginning again.
In order to maintain your language learning motivation at an advanced level, you must switch up your studying habits when it comes to timing and resources. You have to intentionally look for challenges and new impulses.
Monotony
By the time you become advanced, you have established a routine, a ‘robotic’ way of going about your language learning. You use the same old resources to study and practice the same way all the time. Everything is the same and done the same. It can cause disinterest and can result in burnout.
In order to beat this, change up your regular learning schedule, find a new space in your day to do it, and try out new methods and channels. Do you always practice listening by watching a certain channel on YouTube? Switch to podcasts! Instead of always studying in the morning, study randomly thoughout of the day. Hate books and only read them to practice a language? Forget books, try reading a blog about a topic you are interested in! Have you been studying on your own? Maybe it’s time to join a group or hire a teacher.
Try to switch up one (or all) of these things:
- Resources (ex: podcast instead of YouTube, blog instead of books)
- Time (ex: varying learning schedule instead of rigid set time/ or set time instead of sporadic practice)
- Method (ex: learning with a teacher or group instead of self-teaching/ or independent learning instead of school lessons)
Lack of new impulses
When you start learning a language everything seems super interesting and you are bombarded with new things all the time. Once you become more advanced the novelty wears off and it can become very tedious to study. What you can do about it, is to intentionally set yourself up to have new impulses by:
- Meeting new people (through Facebook groups, websites, and apps)
- Going to events held in that language
- Through learning slang
- Through learning about the culture and history of the country
To motivate yourself, you can go to a restaurant, where they sell traditional dishes of the country, listen to music in your target language, or make a language inspiration board full of reasons for why you started learning the language.
Here are some practical things you can do from time to time when you need a little push:
No challenge
Lack of challenges can also be an issue. It can get boring when you always do exercises at your level or below. In Overcome the intermediate language learning plateau I talk about it in detail but basically, you have to adapt your resources and the way you practice to your level.
- Instead of reading and trying to understand a text even with a few unknown words aim to understand each and every word. Remember when you didn’t learn a word because it was too specific to a topic or it was too formal? Time to learn and use those words!
- Instead of just trying to be understandable and have a clear pronunciation aim for almost native-like pronunciation with the help of an audio resource and recorder app on your phone. Record yourself repeating sentences and compare it to the original audio with a native speaker. Ask a native speaker friend to help you with it.
- Challenge yourself by writing texts about more advanced, complicated, abstract topics, and try to avoid repeating words by using synonyms.
- Are there any situations you were afraid of when you were a beginner? Do them! Have that telephone coversation, take that online course in your target language, apply for that job where it is a requirement to speak that language.
All right. I hope the next thing you do now is to go and practice with a margarita or coffee in your hand,
Zsófi
Do you have any questions? Want to share your experience? Let’s connect!