When you fall off language learning?

Unfortunately it happens to the best of us. Sometimes we go into our new language full throttle, then just get burnt out. One of my favorite language lovers of all time is Moses. I thought his Question of the Week was something that we should answer, or at least analyse in this blog post.

I think one of the answers to this problem, is to remind ourselves why we started learning the language in the first place.

My Response

On Moses´s video, here are some of the responses people left:

I started learning Arabic, Russian and Chinese 22 years ago. Because of my job and other responsibilities, I still have not made much progress in all this time. I may be able to find an hour or two to study and then I cannot get back to it for 7-8 months.

speakingoflanguages 

I first started learning Korean about 3 1/2 years ago. I studied about 4-5 months everyday for at least an hour a day. Life got in the way and I completely stopped until about 3 months ago. I just now picked it back up and I'm studying about 2-3 hours a week. I would say that it isn't just life getting away, but also the feeling that you are unable to learn. If the audio says listen to this 3 or 4 times before you understand it, but it takes you 300 times, you feel that you can't learn.

William Barker 

I started teaching myself Hebrew a few months ago (via book/CD kit), but even though I've already learned 6 languages & Arabic is my native tongue, I got really stumped by the fact that many characters can be pronounced in 2 different ways (k/kh, b/v, v/w, p/f, h/a) and that the letters looked so similar to each other. It really frustrated me, and the learning kit didn't give proper tips on how to overcome that difficulty. I stopped for now but hope to get back to it at some point.

alyoucha 

Almost a year ago was when I found your channel and started getting into language learning, and at the time I was starting Tagalog to speak with family. I didn't have any resources at all and I depended on my parents who unfortunately weren't interested in teaching me because they found that explaining things about their language gave them headaches (lol),,, I stopped about 2 months into it and decided to continue my Spanish which I started 2-3 years before.

filipino983 

Many polyglots run into this problem. Usually it is just life that throws us road blocks. Speaking for myself, having two babies, a husband and a house that always needs to be cleaned, it is very difficult finding time. I listen to languages on my I-Pod when I take the baby out for a walk in the stroller. 

Remember, we are in competition with ourselves. Polyglots are not competing with anyone else. The best way to get out of that rut, is to continue competing with yourself. Put your foot down, remind yourself why you started doing this. Moses uses his language learning as therapy. We all get something out of it. So if you have fallen off, tap into your own private motivation. 

Start printing and copying your study sheets. Make your own homework assignments. Pick up where you left off. You will be glad you did. I listed several printers and copiers below.