Practice this way once a day to take your language learning to a new level

Many of us have a desire to learn a new language, but we also feel that our lives are just too busy and hectic to take proper time out of each day to dedicate to a class or even self-study. If you’ve ever thought this to yourself, then we have some good news for you: you can take your language skills to new levels with short, once-a-day study methods that will help you practice speaking, reading, listening, grammar, vocabulary, and more?

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Can this be possible? Actually it is. What’s more, there are several different ways you can do this. In today’s blog, we’re sharing some fantastic and quick learning techniques you only have to use once a day to start making progress. Choose one that works well for you and see what a difference it can make, just once a day!

Read an Article or Blog in Your Target Language

While you’re having your morning granola, why not enjoy an article written in French, English, Chinese, Russian or whatever language you’re learning. It’s never been easier to find blogs, free news sites, and other places you can just quickly pull up something to read.

The best thing about a quick read is that you can find any material you want to suit your daily read. If time is short, a quick 300-word blog should take you no more than a few minutes to finish, even when your language skills are a bit rusty. If you have more time, then pull up something a bit meatier and more substantial.

One piece a day will showcase new words and sentence structures, keep your mind sharp, and let you see your target language being used naturally and correctly.

Listen to a Foreign Language Podcast

If you’re not in the mood for reading, then how about listening instead? During your morning or evening commute, you could make it a daily task to listen to one podcast in your target language. It’s a useful, but less intensive way to enjoy your language learning. All you have to do is listen and try to absorb as much as you can of what they’re saying.

You might find this one hard at first, especially if you’re starting at a fairly low level. However, over time you get used to certain voices and speeds, and will start to pick up more and more. Don’t blame yourself for not catching everything that they say, but rather focus on how much more you understood today than you did yesterday!

Review Your Day

For some speaking, vocabulary and grammar practice, how about a quick review of your day? The cool thing about this once-a-day method is that you can choose when during the day to do it in order to practice speaking in different ways. For instance, if you use 10 minutes in the morning to review your upcoming day and your plans, you can practice using future tense, and if you talk about what you’re doing now in your morning routine, and what you’re thinking about now, you can practice present tense. To practice past tense, just do your review at the end of the day and talk out loud about what you did and felt that day.

It’s important in this exercise to speak aloud at all times. What’s more, don’t stop at just listing the things you did, because that’s too easy. Each day, try to raise your game by adding descriptive details, emotional reflection, and personal opinions.

Spend 10 Minutes on a Language App

If you’re more into using technology to help with your language learning, then the best thing you can do each day is get onto your smartphone or table, even if it’s just for 10 minutes, and practice your words, grammar structures, sentences and more. Language apps work very well, but they require consistent use. Try to make your app time around the same time each day to help wire your brain to get into the right mindset as you start.

Write in a Journal

Finally, if writing is more your thing, you could keep a journal in your target language. All you’d have to do is spend 10-20 minutes a day writing in there about your day, your feelings about it, and what plans you might have for upcoming days. Think of it like the spoken review of your day as we described above, but a written version.

Day by day, try to make your sentences richer, longer and more advanced by trying new vocabulary and grammar structures. The more you use the content you learn, the better you will retain it.