Learning a New Language is like sticking to a Horrible Diet

I'm learning a new language, and it's painful. It's dull as dishwater and at some point I'm sure it will end up like all those faddish new shiny ventures of mine, on the scrapheap. In the bin labelled, 'I just don't have the time'.

However, this particular journey (dare I say) is getting a shot in the arm of late. It sounds incredibly pretentious to say, but I may have stumbled on the perfect disciplines needed to learn a new language, and although some of these disciplines may sound trite, I wanted to share them nonetheless.

MORNINGS:

It helps if you have dogs. I walk the dogs for 20-30 minutes every morning, and I listen to two Spanish podcasts on my route. One is Coffee Break Spanish, and the other; Spanish for False Beginners. TIP: if you're just learning then set the speed of the podcast to 0.75 so you can hear the words more clearly. Even if you're picking out single words and the rest sounds like double Dutch, you at least get an idea for the rhythm of the language.

WORKOUTS:

In the later mornings I do 30 minutes on the Peloton. Instead of watching endless clips of great football free kicks and fat Americans fighting at airports, I now watch films with subtitles.

It helps if you have NETFLIX, currently I find that platform offers more in the way of languages and subtitles.

Currently I'm watching Schindler's List, and break down my 30 minute cycle into 3 blocks of ten.

1. 10 minutes with ENGLISH audio, SPANISH subtitles

2. 10 minutes with SPANISH audio, SPANISH subtitles

3. 10 minutes with SPANISH audio, ENGLISH subtitles

It's actually quite grueling because normally I prefer inspirational Rocky music to workout to, but this is where the discipline comes in. The struggle can be sometimes finding a film you like that has subtitles. TIP: The series HOUSE on Netflix is brilliant and has subtitles, I'll be devouring that next.

DUOLINGO:

I need to think on how I can get this regularly into my routine. As I say to the missus, I'm the king of the one day streak. At some point I did get it beyond 350 days. My current routine of doing it before bed just doesn't seem to work. I've tried dedicating Duolingo time to time spent on the big white telephone, but let's face it, there are days where I might not go!

Any tips on when to crowbar this into my schedule? Where do you find the time to do Duolingo?

THE DIARY

It's only a once a week thing currently, but I've started a diary. You can use Blogger like I have, but at some point I might just move over to Google DOCS or just email myself. I pen a couple of paragraphs of what I've been up to in the week, and what I propose to do for the week coming. This gives me a chance to speak in the past and future tense. Then I copy and paste that into Google Translate and study the text. I then share this with my teacher, which I'll get onto now.

PAYING for LESSONS

And finally, I've committed to paying for some private lessons. The best platform I could find was Preply. A starting price for an hour lesson usually begins at £20. I've found a good tutor and have since gone off the platform but kept her on a weekly schedule. Just watch out when subscribing. You pay for four lessons, and if you don't get them in that month, they don't roll over.

Paying for something means you want to get value. You set yourself bigger goals, and you have someone to be accountable for. I hate wasting money so I don't want to just speak Spanish one hour a week with my tutor, that will get me nowhere. I want to graduate to intermediate level by this time next year and to do that, one must imbibe as much of the Spanish language as possible.

Check in with me next year to see how it's all going. Hasta la pronto.