I'm an English teacher, but besides being an English teacher, I'm also a big language lover and every few years I like to switch things up and learn a brand new language. So in this video I wanted to talk about how to structure your learning and create a plan that will keep you motivated and consistent, so that you'll reach your language goals. So the first thing you need to do before you start anything is identify your learner profile. This essentially means:
who are you? and why are you learning your target language? For example, are you learning your target language as a hobby? Are you just interested in the culture? Do you like listening to the music? Perhaps, for example, you want to go to Japan one day you like the culture and the food so you learn Japanese. Or maybe you're a big K-pop fan, you want to sing along to BTS and other groups like, that so you learn Korean. Or perhaps your reason is for study. Maybe you want to do a
master's degree in that country. Maybe you want to be able to read research papers, conduct studies, in that target language. Perhaps it's for travel. Maybe you want to travel to different countries and you want to be able to communicate. Maybe you want to travel to a particular country where English is not really spoken that much, so you want to ensure that you can survive in that country and communicate with the locals. Maybe you want to go to a restaurant in that country
and order in the language. Or perhaps it's for personal reasons. Maybe you've got friends from a different country so you want to be able to talk to them in their native language. Or perhaps you've got family on your partner's side that doesn't speak your native language so you need to learn their language in order to communicate with them. There is no right or wrong long reason to learn a language, there is just your reason to learn it. So establish why you are learning
that language. Is it for travel? For personal reasons? Studies? or are you just a fan of the language and you like it? I'll give you an example of my learner profile for Spanish. So in my case I want to be able to talk to my partner's family. They don't really speak much English, so in order to communicate with them, I have to learn Spanish and I have to use Spanish with them. I also want to be able to talk to my partner's friends, as
well as my own friends in Spanish. I don't want to feel left out in conversations. I want to be able to go to shops and restaurants and talk to people on the street. When I'm walking my dog and another dog walker is trying to con contact me? Is trying to communicate with me, I want to be able to have a conversation with them. I want to feel confident enough and not be scared and just drag
my dog and walk away scared. I want to be able to survive and communicate with people confidently. One important thing is, as I'm living in Spain, I want to make sure that I'm independent here. I don't want to rely on my partner or their family or friends to do things for me. For example, while going through the visa process here, or the "residenshy" residential? Residency! That's
the one. While going through the residency process here, the entire process was in Spanish, nobody spoke English to me because they simply couldn't. So I had to go through the whole process in Spanish and thank goodness I know how to speak Spanish and I could articulate and get the help I needed. However, I do remember while being in the immigration office, there were some people in there who couldn't speak Spanish and they really really had a hard time. So I really wanted
to NOT be in this situation. I really wanted to be independent. I wanted to be able to walk into my immigrant immigration lawyer's office and talk to her. I wanted to be able to go into the police station, pick up my residency card, all in Spanish and have no problems. Is it in fluent perfect Spanish? No. But at least I can communicate and I understand everything that's going on. That for me is super important. And the last thing is that I simply just want to know
what's happening around me. I want to be able to read signs. I want to hear announcements, like alerts or things in train stations. I don't want to be that one strange person while an alert is going off and I'm just sitting there not knowing what's said and wondering why people are moving to another train platform, which has happened before. And you do feel really left out and you do feel a bit of an idiot. So I didn't want that to happen... again. I want to know what's going
on around me. So there's really really important for me. So that's my learner profile. So you see, with Spanish, it's is very very personal. While if we look at my Japanese learner profile, you'll see it's much more hobby centered.Sso for me, I want to learn Japanese because I want to go to Japan one day. I have an interest in the culture.
I also wanted to learn a language that was really, really different to the other languages that I'd learned in the past, which were mostly Romance and Germanic languages. So that for me was like a personal challenge. I wanted to challenge myself to learn a difficult language. Also it's somewhat study related. I also want to have that experience again of taking a language exam. So I am preparing myself for the JLPT N4 which is the equivalent
of the A2 exam, more or less. So it's also, it's not just hobby, but it can also be study related. So sometimes your profiles can sort of mix. They don't just have to be only study, or only hobby, or only travel, or only personal. They can be a bit of a mixture. So once you've established your learner profile, who you are, why you're wanting to learn the language, you need to then set your goals. Now there are two types of
there are your long-term goals, and there are your short-term goals. Your long-term goals are ones that you want to accomplish after, say, a year. So perhaps in the next two, three, five, ten years. These can be things like "I want to achieve the C2 certificate after two years" or "in three years time, I want to achieve the C2 and start my master's degree in English". Your short-term goals, on the other hand, are perhaps
within the next few days. So they can be, like, today, or this week ,or this month, or the next three, or four, or five months. These little goals can be, for example, being able to use the Past Simple. Or perhaps you're working on a difficult sound that you can't pronounce, so you want to dedicate a few weeks or months, perhaps, to that sound and set yourself that goal of being able to pronounce it. So in my case, for example, with Japanese my short-term goal is to be able to
use the "te" form. You won't know what that means if you are not a Japanese learner. It's just a way to conjugate a verb, okay? While my long-term goals are to take the JLPT N4. My long, long, long-term goals are to, perhaps, take the JLPT N1, which is the highest level exam for Japanese. So you see how these differ. My short-term goal is learning a bit of grammar over the next few weeks and trying to get my head around that
grammar. But my long-term goal is an exam. So the biggest mistake that many language Learners
MAKE) is that they focus too much on the long-term goal. They focus too much on "oh my goodness, I've got so far to go before I'm able to pass the exam" instead of thinking "well, in order to pass the exam, my long-term goal, I need to work backwards a little bit and I need to learn this grammar and this grammar and this grammar and this grammar". So if you start setting yourself very small, achievable, realistic goals, you'll be able to track your progress much
more easily. So my biggest tip for language Learners is to not focus too much on your end goal. On your long-term goal. Focus more on your short-term goals, because that will help you track your progress and help you feel less overwhelmed. And it will also make you feel like you're making progress, because sometimes when we have these really big goals that are so, so distant, they can feel so far away. And it can feel with each passing day, that you're getting no closer to that
goal. Well, if you have those short-term goals, at least you are completing little goals that are going to get you to your final goal. And when when you achieve these small short-term goals of yours, it doesn't matter how big, or how small, how easy,
how hard they are, reward yourself for them. So now you have your short-term goals in mind, which we're going to talk a bit more about in a moment, and your long-term goals in mind, perhaps it's an exam, traveling to the country that you're interested in going to, or whatever, okay? Now let's talk about assessing your language level and your capabilities. So if you already know your level, fantastic! Skip ahead a few seconds. If not, then there are two ways that you can find out
what your level is. The first way is by asking a teacher to assess your level, or the second way, which is a lot faster, is by taking a language test. Now, Preply do have a very short and free level test that you can take for English. I'll leave it down below in the description for you to go and try out. Just remember that there is no language test that is 100% accurate. Even official exams are not 100% accurate representations of
your language skills. However, this test is still an excellent starting point if you just have no idea what your language level is. Now, let's imagine that you take the preply level test and it comes back that you have an A2 level of English, however, you want a B2 level of English. How do you then know how much you need to study in order to achieve that B2 level? Mmhmm... well, I have something for you. There's a free study time calculator that you can use, which was also
created by Preply. Both the level test and the calculator are completely free to use. Let me show you how the calculator works. Let's say here, for example, I'll do it for me with Japanese. I'll put English, and I want to learn Japanese. Right now, my language level is an A1, I'm a beginner. But I want to reach an A2 because the exam that I'm going to take is A2. So here, my exam is in December, so I'm going to select December the 1st. I think the exam is on the 3rd,
but I'll put it on the 1st. Now, this question "here how many hours per week do you want to study?", this question is essentially asking how many hours do you want to have with a teacher? How many hours are you will a teacher actually studying? I have one lesson a week with a teacher and I also have a meetup that I go to where we actually practise and sort of study together. So I'm going to put two hours a week here. Let's see what it calculates it as... I need 176 hours
of self-study over the next 41 weeks. That makes the exam sound really close, it's really scary actually. In terms of lessons, and I need to do 82 lessons, or 82 hours, self-study 176 hours, over the next 41 weeks. So it gives you a really good idea of how realistic that is. I worked out that this is around, I think it was five hours a week that I need to self-study, which is completely doable, and I'll show you how because five hours sounds like a lot. I run
a business. I do a lot of stuff. I'm super busy. But I'll show you how I get around that and how I find little pockets of time to find time to study. So go and try the study time calculator to give you an idea of how much you should be studying each week, because that will help you with the next steps that I'm going to talk about. The link
for it is down below in the description. So now you know what your level is and you know how much you need to study in order to reach your goals, you need to now work out how realistic that is. For example, if you're A1 level and then and you put that you want to reach a C2 level within the next month, that's going to be a bit crazy, right? Unless you're studying quite hardcore for the next month. You now need to work out whether this is
realistically feasible for you. For example, if you want to study five hours a day, however, you wake up at 6am, you need to get the kids ready for school, you then go to work, you finish at 5 PM, you have your dinner, you take the dog for a walk, and before you know it you put the kids to bed, and it's 9 p.m, and you're shattered, and all you want to do is just watch TV. Studying for five
hours then isn't going to be feasible for you. So you need to be realistic, think about your actual life and your schedule and how it is, because this will also help you stay motivated, feel less overwhelmed. I'll talk about this a little bit more what I mean, and how to create an effective plan. But be realistic with your time and your capabilities. Also keep in mind if you are a quick
learner or if you are a slower paced learner. This is not a good or a bad thing, you are just slow or quick. With certain languages I'm very quick with picking them up, but other languages I'm very, very slow at picking them up. So sometimes it's not even just you, sometimes it can just be the language. So be honest with yourself there. If you feel you need to dedicate more time to studying things, then factor that in. Son't think "oh my God I need to study as much as possible and
be super fast like everyone else". Don't compare yourself to other people. Sometimes we watch these videos on YouTube with these polyglots who speak, like, 20 different languages, supposedly fluently, and they eat dictionaries and drink the tears of natives in order to speak faster. But don't compare yourself to these people. You have to go at your own pace and language learning is such a personal.... journey almost. It's such a
personal process and journey. So really, really internalise that message because you just can't compare yourself to other people. So be honest with yourself at how much time you can dedicate, acknowledge your capabilities, the pace that you can learn at, your memory, how good is your memory, and be honest with yourself, because this will really, really help you stay consistent with your language learning and avoid burnout,
which is a real problem. A lot of learners, they start out super motivated and they start studying like 27 hours a day, and they just burn out, they burn out, and then they stop because they feel overwhelmed, they lack the motivation and the energy and then they stop. So that's not what
creating your plan. The reason why you're watching this video. So by now, you should know your level, your goal, why you want to achieve this goal, and how much you need to study in order to achieve your goal, now it's time to create your study plan. So to simplify this, what I did is I took the number of the self-study hours needed that Preply gave me (176 hours) and I divided that by the number of weeks, so 41, and that gave me around four and a
half hours, around five hours, more or less. So I just rounded it off to five hours. So I knew that I needed to find five hours within my week to study Japanese. So depending on your schedule imagine you have a nine to five job you might find it easier with your type of schedule to come home, have your dinner, relax a little bit, and then every night at 8pm, same time,
you do some studying for half an hour. However, I don't work a 9 to 5 job, and I have other responsibilities and my schedule is quite chaotic. So for me, what I do is on a Sunday night, I look at my calendar for the week, and I actually block out bits of time. Now, am I strict with these blocks of time? No. I am a human. I am not strict with my time when it comes to doing little bits of
studying during the week. Sometimes I may block off the time and I might just be really tired, or I may have other priorities like "oh my God, I need to edit a YouTube video. It's due tomorrow and I forgot to edit it". So I may need to end up shuffling some things round. So long as I get my five hours in, it doesn't matter. But the best thing that you can do is try to break up your studying throughout the week. Don't try and do five hours of studying on a Saturday and then
do nothing throughout the week. Try if you can to break it up throughout the week. The reason why I suggest this, is because if you're only dedicating one day to studying and then a whole week passes, your memory is not going to retain the information as well as if you did, say, 10 minutes here, 10 minutes here, 10 minutes here, 10 minutes here. You need to make sure that you're doing little and often. Creating your schedule should be up to
you. You shouldn't be relying on other people, especially me, to tell you exactly when you should study. I get many people sending me DMS and emails saying "Emma please give me a schedule of when I need to study". Well, I don't know your work schedule. I don't know what responsibilities you have outside of your study and work life. Do you have children that you need to take care of? That you need to pick up from school? That you need to
feed? Are you at University? Do you have essays that are due next week? I can't give you a 30 hour long study schedule if you have exams to prep for. It's not realistic. So make sure that when you are doing your plan, there is no right or wrong way to schedule it, just ensure you're finding the
time. Now, if you're also a like me and you're a bit chaotic with your schedule, and maybe you can't block off the time, what you can do instead is find little dead pockets of time, like I... I kind of call them, like, pockets of time, or dead pockets of time, where you can do something in that time, basically while you're doing something else. For example, while I'm walking the dog, I listen to a Japanese podcast. While I am in the
shower, I listen to a Spanish podcast. While I am cleaning the house, I listen to Japanese City pop. Don't judge me, Or for example, the other day I was doing some squats, like I was doing some exercising, and I started to count in Japanese. So I was counting, like ichi, ni, san, like, I was counting in Japanese to help me practise how to count in Japanese. because
I still struggle with that. So finding these little pockets of time where you can dedicate it to practising the language, your target language, it means that you don't need to try and actually schedule time in order to practise. Studying doesn't necessarily mean sitting with a textbook and conjugating verbs. It can be listening to a podcast and just being really really fully aware of some of the vocabulary. Maybe you're listening to a podcast and you take away from it five new
words. You've learned five new words, my friend. That's still studying. That's fantastic. Or perhaps you're reading a book, you're just reading it, and you're thinking "what's that word mean?" and you just highlight those words you don't know. So it doesn't have to be sitting in front of a textbook to be studying, don't worry.
what level you have, what your goals, are and what your schedule is. Now, we just need to find out "what do I do in the scheduled time?" "how do I study?". Now you need to identify the gaps that you have in your knowledge and work out what you now need to study in order to improve and work towards your goal. A good way to work out what gaps you have in
1, asking a teacher, or 2, doing what I do, and doing some reading or listening. For example, while reading a text, what I'll do is I will highlight any new vocabulary or grammar. Let's imagine, you're reading a book, and you come across the phrase "I have eaten bread". Yeah, really exciting phrase, I know. But you see this "I have eaten" and you think "what does this mean?" I only know I ate". So you jump on Google
and you search "have eaten grammar". BANG. You get Present Perfect and you think "okay, I'm now going to learn Present Perfect today". Short-term goal! You then dedicate that study session, or perhaps the whole week, to working on Present Perfect. You take a look at videos, you take a look at resources online, you perhaps talk to a teacher,
and you practicse and you work on that. So, working on Present Perfect and getting confident with Present Perfect becomes your short-term goal. That becomes something that you study in those little pockets of time that you have scheduled. So perhaps after a few days of studying, you're quite confident with Present Perfect. But then you think "hold on. But what's the difference between Present Perfect and Past Simple? or Present Perfect and Past Perfect? or Present Perfect and
just the present tense. So you end up going down this kind of rabbit hole of grammar. You know, one question about grammar leads to another question about grammar and so on. And before you know it, you've ended up filling up a month of study slots that you have in your schedule with something that you had a gap in your knowledge about. And after a few weeks you think "ah! Well, I've now mastered Present Perfect. I now know the differences
between different tenses" and so on. Then once you finish that and you think "ah! There's nothing more to do with this", you go back to the resource that you were reading before, and you just carry on with highlighting that new grammar and the cycle continues with another piece of grammar or vocabulary. The same can be done with listening, so perhaps you're watching something on TV, you're watching a film, TV series, and you hear someone
using a particular structure. So you search that structure or you ask your teacher about that structure and then you try and work on it in your next study slots, your next study sessions that you put in your schedule. You can do this for any level. So despite having a high level with Spanish, I do this even for Japanese. So as I'm reading things in Japanese, I'm highlighting new grammar for me. As I'm reading things in Spanish, yes, the text will be more advanced, but I'm doing
exactly the same thing. I'm highlighting new structures and then researching them, asking my teache,r asking my partner, who's Spanish, and I always have something to work on. There is always something to study in those different time slots. So you also see that by having this very, very small goal of Present Perfect, and learning Present Perfect, it's super easy to track your
progress with this. Now. if you said to yourself "yeah, but I want B1 level in English" so yeah you're going to always be looking at "oh my god, I've got so far to go with this B1 level" instead of thinking "wow. I achieved being able to use the Present Perfect and I didn't know that before". So having the smaller goals in the meantime as you're working your way up to your final long-term goal, it helps build motivation and it helps build
consistency. It also helps you stop feeling so overwhelmed. Again, what happens is students focus on that end goal, instead of the little goals that they need to do to reach that final goal. So focus on those little achievable goals. The key to becoming a successful fluent and confident language user is not found in a secret potion or in a sound like a native in 3 months course... this is marketing. The key is held in consistency, which is what you're going to get if you stick to
your language plan. This is why it's so important to be honest from the beginning with yourself when creating this plan, because you don't want to burn yourself out. you're creating this plan in order to be consistent because that is going to equal a higher chance of success. the key is also held in your short-term goals, which are going to help you
keep motivated and also track your progress. and the final key is having the motivation and drive, which you're going to get by focusing, from time to time, not every day, on that final end goal. think about how you will feel when you reach that end goal. that final goal of, for example, passing that C2 level exam, as an example. how are you going to feel? Probably exhausted from studying so much, but you're going to feel amazing, right? That should be the motivation that
keeps you going. Keep your long-term goal in mind if you want to succeed, because this is the reason why you started, and quite often what happens with learners is they get started they don't stick to a study plan, they have no idea what they're doing, they get lost, they get overwhelmed, and their motivation goes out the window. So make sure that you're sticking to a plan, being consistent, and you're keeping that long-term goal in the back of your mind,
as it will keep you motivated. I hope this video has helped you. Please let me know in the comments what your long-term language goals are. They are going to be different for everyone. It's going to be really, really interesting for me to see what everyone's unique language goals are. Please remember to check out the
study time calculator by Preply. I will put it down in the description go and check it out because it will help you know how much time you need to dedicate towards studying in order to reach your goal. Just go and try it out, it'll take you 20 seconds. Enjoy the rest of your week and I will see you in the next video! Bye bye!