Learn Languages: 25 Ways to Learn Every Day
We all have the same 24 hours in a day. Here are some ideas to turn some time every day into time to learn languages. Select an activity or two that realistically fit into your life, carve out some time each day and track it over the next five weeks. You will be amazed at the progress you can make with investing some time in interesting activities to learn languages. Consider these ideas:
- Listen to audio courses on your commute. I love Pimsleur!
- Listen to audio courses in your car while you’re doing errands. Mark Frobose produces some great courses for beginners.
- Listen to audio courses while you’re exercising or walking. Earworms has created some funs short courses.
- Listen to short stories in the target language. I love Olly Richards’ short stories.
- Listen to audio courses while you’re cleaning. I love Michel Thomas’ courses.
- Listen to a course during your ride share time or while you’re doing errands.
- Read. Think pleasure reading-magazines, blogs, recipes, etc.
- Meet online with a tutor on italki. I love to record my sessions and listen to them later.
- Watch movies and TV shows in the target language. Streaming apps make that very easy and accessible.
- Spend time with realia. Watching cooking tutorials from the target language is a great example of realia.
- Journal every day for five weeks.
- Binge-watch target language content every day for five weeks. Youtube is one of the largest search engines in the world. Learn a few key words in your target language to find interesting content.
- Take a five-week language course at a private language school abroad. Consider getting a reward card from your airline and credit card company. I love my Chase United card. I get miles for purchases that can be used for a free flight.
- Hit the streets and talk to people in your community.
- Attend immersion programs, to include online immersion. Learn some key words to learn something new in your target language.
- Attend language classes.
- Language exchange.
- Do exercise classes in the target language, like yoga or Batuka.
- Phrase books-take those and travel to the target language country. Speak to people.
- Create your own language club. Meet regularly and practice your target language. Serve food and drink from the target language culture.
- Talk to yourself every day. Read words and dialogues, or test yourself for fluency when you reach the top of the novice level. Do the same thing with a journal. I love those beginning task journals we talked about Move into fluency journals as your fluency grows.
- Doodle, draw scenes and label the page. This is a fun and enjoyable way for the artist in us to build some language skills.
- Spend time with apps. If you’re driving, that might not be realistic, but you can do it in your free time. Duolingo, Drops, and Flash Academy are fun and effective.
- Listen to music. It is a great way to get exposure to sounds and new language.
- Do language exchange online.
Track your time regularly and watch your progress accelerate.
| Month | Time spent learning |
| Estimated time already invested | |
| January | |
| February | |
| March | |
| April | |
| May | |
| June | |
| July | |
| August | |
| September | |
| October | |
| November | |
| December | |
| Total |
Want to download your own time tracker? Go here: