I hope that everyone had a great Labor Day! How many of you labored today?
A small, private college where I taught a few classes is proud to say that they “labor on Labor Day”–meaning that they don’t take the holiday off. Classes, labs, and activities go on as usual.
Their philosophy of “learning doesn’t take a holiday” makes a lot of sense when it comes to studying a foreign language. If you’re serious about learning, you need to work at it every day. That doesn’t mean that you have to do grammar exercises and conjugate verbs and do vocabulary flashcards every day–ugh! That would be bor-ing! What it means is that you can really benefit from doing a little language work each day. This could mean reviewing your notes from the last class, doing a portion of the homework assignment, memorizing a few new words…just enough so that you don’t completely ignore the language you are trying to learn.
If you are using a textbook with a website, you can probably find lots of additional activities that are related to the chapter you are on, but that are more fun than exercises and drills. If there are links to real websites in the target language, excerpts from movies or tv, or music, you could find an enjoyable way to spend a few minutes of your free time. If you don’t have access to a textbook’s website, you can find the same type of material by doing a little exploring on your own.
Whether you have a lot of time to devote to learning the language of your choice, or just a few minutes here and there, the key is to work on it consistently, every day. The typical suggestion is that for every hour you spend in class, you should spend an additional hour outside of class reviewing, studying and practicing. Most introductory language classes are three or four hours a week–that means three or four extra hours of language work. (If you are learning on your own, you can tweak this suggestion to match your own pace). I tell my students that this recommendation is a good idea, but not practical for most people. I tell them that if they give me five minutes of review and practice a day (not including time to do assignments or study for exams), I’ll be happy.
