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Effective study habits for learners: 5 personal favourites

Weekly Topic: 5 effective study habits for learners

Sep 15, 2024

1. Study a little bit each day
To form a new habit is hard and takes work. Why not try and turn your language learning into a habit so that it's more automatic for you? We can spend a lot of time trying to decide if we want to study today. Maybe you tell yourself you will start in 1/2 an hour - all of this takes energy as well! So we can get rid of this indecision and turn our language learning into a habit. Just like brushing your teeth, we can include language learning into our every day lives by doing alittle bit each day. 

2. Consume content you are interested in
There is nothing worse then trying to study a news article or listening to a news channel if you have no interest in the topic. Do you like gaming, art or movies? Try to find study materials (articles, youtube videos, shows) in the areas that you are interested in so that studying time is more fun. Language learning is hard, make it easier by studying the topics that you enjoy or want to learn about.

3. Revise the easy stuff from time to time
As we get more advanced in our language learning, we can often think that we already learned 'this grammar point' or vocabulary. However, it can be beneficial to relearn concepts so that they are more concrete in our brains. Sometimes your brain needs a break from learning all new things too.

4. Listening practise
Similar to point 3, find content to listen to depending on your level. Don't be afraid of watching and listening to cartoons in your target language! There are so many options available on youtube now and it's inclusion of different vocabulary and short episodes means that cartoons are a great resource. Yes, even for adults!

5. Speak
Once you have some vocabulary and basic grammar, start speaking to native speakers. This takes out the fear of speaking very early. Like all the other skills (reading, listening and writing), speaking takes practise. It may seem easy to memorise grammar and vocabulary but to organise it all to make a sentence that can be understood (what order do all these words go in?!) takes practise and time.

These are my 5 study habits that I personally use in my language learning journey. Do you use any of these?

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