Summer and holidays are back, the prospect of sleeping in is tempting, and the idea of taking a foreign language course doesn’t sound so appealing? But who says learning a language can’t be fun? If you want to stay motivated to achieve your goals while enjoying all that free time, follow our advice…
1 – Learn at your own pace
You can organise your progress during your course by making a checklist and prioritising your objectives and/or tasks for learning a foreign language or learning to teach it. This helps to clarify the things you need to do, and make them more manageable. Feel free to write down the smallest steps in your list, which you can then check off, cross out or highlight as you progress. This action releases endorphins in the brain, a hormone that reduces anxiety and brings pleasure. The satisfaction of progressing through your tasks and achieving your training goals increases your motivation!
2 – Measure your progress and reward yourself
Measuring and observing your progress releases dopamine, which gives you a sense of satisfaction and self-efficacy, and helps you to stay motivated. Feel free to reward your efforts as you wish, for example by taking a break or having a coffee after reading a lesson, as getting a reward stimulates the production of dopamine, and increases motivation. Measuring your progress can be done, for example, through intermediate language tests. Be positive and believe in yourself!
3 – Organise your time
Your time is precious! Define how much time you want to spend working on the language or language teaching. Set yourself limited and exclusive times to work, which you can, for example, put on a weekly timetable. During these times, keep outside distractions at bay to maximise your concentration. There are very simple and quick ways to learn with pleasure, for example by taking 5 minutes to listen to a foreign language podcast. You can multiply these moments of playful work in your day. It is also important to know how to stop to stay motivated to learn: by respecting the time limit, the work remains pleasant and comfortable for you, and you are all the more motivated to start working again when the time comes! Regular, good quality sleep also helps you to work in good conditions and to be efficient.
4 – Organise your workspace
A clean, tidy and practical workspace increases motivation and encourages people to get to work. Natural light is also important: it is good for morale and well-being, and allows the human biological rhythm to function properly. Also, don’t hesitate to change your working environment and routine! Go outside, get some fresh air, get some sun, sit comfortably outside or in another room to read your lessons… The change can do you good and motivate you! However, keep some space in your home just for relaxation, so that you can really get away from work when you need to.
5 – Beware of procrastination…
We know that it can be hard to always stay motivated. The temptation to put off until tomorrow what you have to do is the main enemy of motivation. Don’t let yourself be fooled! One tip is to plan the day before, which part of the course you are going to revise or which exercise you are going to work on, and then to start the next morning, when your motivation is at its highest. This way, in the morning, you don’t have time to think or be tempted to procrastinate: you can make progress in your learning, be satisfied with it and free up the rest of your time for other things.
There is also evidence that if you start an exercise or lesson you don’t like, the discomfort associated with it quickly disappears and is replaced by satisfaction. This increases your motivation tenfold and allows you to complete your project, in several stages if necessary: it’s a virtuous circle!
6 – And, above all, enjoy yourself!
Adapt the work materials to your own taste so that your revision remains enjoyable. All our foreign language courses are distance learning, and you can easily access them online from wherever you are. You can also receive the course content in paper format directly at home. Take your courses with you wherever you go, on the train or on holiday, for comfortable and effective learning!
To review what you learn in your language training in a fun way, you can also :
- Listen to the radio or podcasts in French
- Reading French media
- Talk to someone you know who speaks the language you are learning
- Watching films and series in their original version, with foreign language subtitles
- Taking a novel in its original version to the seaside.
If your training involves teaching a foreign language to children, students or adults, you can :
- Discuss the teaching of the language and the different teaching methods that exist with the people around you…
- Propose, for example in an association, foreign language courses…
Visit our homepage to discover all our courses, which you can follow all year round, even during the holidays!
