🎉 Q&A: 100 Subscriber Milestone

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💌 Thank You For Subscribing

When I started this newsletter in January, my goal was to reach 100 subscribers by the end of the year. I honestly didn’t think that many people would subscribe or read. I also didn’t know what an achievable milestone would be. I’m grateful to all of you who have subscribed and continue to read each week.

Surprisingly, my post about why I started a language learning newsletter is the most popular letter I’ve written. I’ve found many language-related substacks and it’s been great to see the community grow.

📝 Q&A

1. I’m wondering if you could share any insight on language learning when studying daily isn’t as practical. It seems like most of the best-practice advice is always studying a lot, every day, and moving to the country of your target language 😅 but I’ve been trying to slowly build a routine around learning Chinese that is actually functional within my life. I find I go through more BURSTS and then droughts and it means I’m kind of stuck at a really beginner level. I know some of it is just the reality of “you need to make it a priority” but I’m always curious to hear how other people make time for consistent learning! 😁

I’d say that studying consistently is more important than studying a lot or daily even though I technically do “study” every day. When Mandarin was my only TL, I was averaging under an hour of learning each day. This was during University when learning Mandarin was something I did for fun in my spare time.

Since you’re learning Mandarin, I think my 5-year reflection on learning Mandarin may be helpful. In that post, I estimated how much time I spent studying Mandarin over those 5 years. It’s not a lot but I’m happy with my progress and where I’m currently at!

My advice would be to find ways to make learning your TL interesting. Do you like video games? Play a video game in your TL. Read a book or watch a show. Having a balance between using your TL and learning your TL can make the progress more enjoyable.

As a beginner, listening to my TL by watching shows is what made the most difference. Listening is also what has helped me retain what I learned in Cantonese throughout years of putting it on hold.

2. How do you count time spent living in a country whose language you are learning? 

I probably wouldn’t unless I was in that country for a short period of time and my goal was to use that opportunity to learn my TL. I’m not really sure how easy it would be to track daily interactions unless you were in a specific language class. If I really did want to track it, it may just be an estimation of how much time I spent using or hearing the language throughout the day tracked as “immersion”. If you’re in the country your TL is spoken, it’s probably more important to enjoy your time there rather than track your time. 😅

If you did want to track something, you could maybe document memories or milestones you’ve had in your TL such as using public transportation or ordering food at a restaurant.

3. Now that you have experience learning languages, what would be your go-to resources at beginner / intermediate / advanced level?

Since this question doesn’t specify a specific language I’ll give a general answer for all languages. Most of my experience is coming from being intermediate in Mandarin, though.

I shared reading resources for Mandarin here for anyone who is currently learning and looking for resources for different levels.

Resources + General Language Learning Tips

Beginner: TV shows, videos, songs, textbooks, vocab apps (Memrise, Anki)

• Focus on input especially if your TL is different from your native language or other languages you’ve learned. Watch videos and shows using subtitles in your native language. At this point, you’re getting used to the sounds and also learning how people who speak your TL communicate.

• Learn vocab however you like (physical flashcards, Anki etc). I’d say learning vocab with audio is the best so you can practice also saying the words.

• Depending on the language, start reading subtitles in your TL. This helps prepare you for when you start reading as you are now associating sounds with text.

• You can also use a textbook (for some reason I was averse to textbooks when I started learning Mandarin but I’m sure there are good beginner ones out there)

Intermediate: Language tutor, books/graded readers

• The language should sound “familiar” to you. What I mean by this is you have an understanding of what sounds natural and what doesn’t even though you can’t explain why.

• Resources will be the same except you can now start watching content with TL subs or without subs based on preference. Listen to podcasts (can help you focus on listening without visuals)

• Start reading articles or books/graded readers

• Make your own flashcard decks based on words you encounter in books or shows

• Start referencing grammar wikis or textbooks (for languages other than Mandarin, I think you can and probably should do this sooner)

• If most of your study has been self-study, and you haven’t been outputting, a language tutor is probably a good place to start using what you know

Advanced: Use your TL (Read things, write, talk to people)

• Do the things you like in your TL

• Challenge yourself to do a test in your TL for fun

  • If you’re feeling lost about what to do next, a proficiency test might help motivate you

4. Have you experienced being stuck / in a slump? How did you get out of it?

I experienced a slump when I was at the 3-4 year mark in Mandarin. I didn’t really know where to go or what to do to keep progressing. I’m not sure I believe in the intermediate plateau, but I think that’s what I was experiencing. How did I break out of it? I started dabbling in other languages, revived my Cantonese, and decided to relearn French. All of that brought back my excitement for language learning. By the end of my 4th year, I had more motivation to learn Mandarin and the other 4 languages I had added. I think being able to jump around from language to language keeps it exciting. It’s also comforting to be able to compare my new TLs to Mandarin and know I can get them all to the same level.

Stepping out of my comfort zone in Mandarin by writing articles for PTC and taking italki conversation lessons also helped me output instead of only focusing on input. In summary, changing up my routine and stepping out of my comfort zone helped me get out of a language learning slump.

5. How do you do when life gets super busy? Do you catch up later or manage to keep your weekly schedule?

I’m usually able to predict when my life will get busy or I’ll have low motivation. Most of what I set in my monthly objectives can be done in a few hours if I’m focused. While I have deadlines, I know that what’s important is that it gets done in that week or the following week so I’m not too far behind. If it’s too difficult to catch up, I decided whether it’s important or not and cancel it or postpone it to another week or month.

6. Any favourite words in your target languages?

Mandarin:

• 承让 (I like that there's a word said to be polite when you win a game of something which implies you only won because your opponent let you)

• 告辞 (One of the few words I learned in context and I haven’t forgotten it since)

French: I don’t have one yet but I do like many of the way vowels are pronounced in Québec French.

Japanese:

• ぺらぺら

Cantonese: It’s hard to pick a favourite word since a lot of them I like just because of how different they are from the Mandarin pronunciation of the same word.

Icelandic:

• Any words with the letters đ or þ

• Eftir

7. Do you think you'll learn more languages? If so, what's on your wishlist?

I'd imagine so. I don't have any that I want to learn right now, however, I did win a giveaway for 2 Korean language books. I was originally going to start learning Korean in December/January but I decided it was more important to improve my Japanese first. Based on the fact that I have those language books sitting around waiting for me, I think Korean is next up.

As for other languages, maybe my heritage language (Efik/Ibibio), Portuguese (heard a lot of people speaking it around me) and German (I visited Germany as a baby so I don’t remember much but it’d be nice to know a few phrases if I ever travel here).

8. Do you struggle at all by studying so many languages simultaneously? What do you use to study these languages?

Since Mandarin is my best TL and it's very similar to Cantonese and Japanese, I'm able to use Mandarin to learn both. Similarly, while French and Icelandic are newer languages to me, they're much easier to read and similar to English which makes learning them easier than my other TLs.

What I struggle with the most would be finding the right resources I can stick with for Cantonese. This has always been my issue even when Cantonese was my first and only TL. It's the reason why I started learning Mandarin with the hopes of going back to Cantonese.

For all my TLs I like to have an app or software to learn vocab. Usually, I start out with Memrise and then eventually make my own decks on other apps like Anki. For Japanse I use JPDB.IO, Ylhyra.is for Icelandic, Memrise for French and Pleco for Cantonese.

Most of my language learning is focused on input at least in the beginner and lower intermediate stages. I work on my listening and reading skills the most at the start of any language.

Thanks for all the questions! If you’ve got any more, or if I didn’t any your question well, feel free to ask more!

I’d like to know what made you subscribe. Are you also a language learner or do you just like reading about language learning?

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