It may be cliché, but it’s no less valid: if you fail to plan, you’re planning to fail. That’s as true in your language learning as it is in other endeavors.
If there’s one advice we can send your way, it’s to always have a plan of attack for your language learning. Identify the different activities you will perform and create a schedule for each of them, so that you don’t spend your days making up activities on the fly. Similarly, set milestones for each week and month, so you can watch your progress.
Some students I know refuse to plan ahead since it feels like a waste of time. According to them, it’s hard to anticipate how lessons will go, especially if this is your first time learning a new language.
While that last part is true, it’s not a valid reason to not plan. Creating a plan helps you organize your language learning; not doing so leaves you having to improvise on the fly. When it comes to effectiveness, the former will always leave the latter in the dust.
The trick to planning is to keep the plan flexible. If your initial plan is off-base (e.g. your language software lessons are proving much more difficult than you assumed), you’ll likely realize it early — you can then rework the plan, change your activities and create a new schedule. That approach is much better than doing everything by the seat of your pants, which leaves you with no structure to follow and no guidelines to base your actions on.
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