If you’re looking to learn French in the new year, it’s important to consider your strategies and mindset. From goal setting to habit-forming, here are seven strategies that can help you really get moving on your journey to French fluency in 2023.
Stick With It
This is one of the best strategies anyone can use when it comes to most difficult-to-learn skills. Just stick with it. If you consistently apply yourself, even if you’re not spending eight hours daily, you will eventually learn to speak French. Simply sticking with something is key, and the reason most people don’t hit their new year’s resolution is just that, they didn’t stick with it.
Try New Things
We all learn differently, and while you might have been trying to pick up French for a while from a mobile app or textbook, you might be finding yourself at an impasse, and this is normal when it comes to language-learning. It’s vital that you seek out new ways to learn when you hit these plateaus. Different options include conversation with a native speaker, textbooks, apps, in-person tuition or an online teacher. All of these can be useful tools when it comes to learning French.
Be Flexible with Goals and Expectations
Another massive killer when it comes to making progress is holding on too tightly to goals and expectations. The fact is, we all have a tendency to expect too much from ourselves, and this shows itself in the goals we set. The real problem lies in how you respond to failure to meet that goal. Seeing failure like this can really throw you off on the path to fluency, so it’s important to learn to be flexible with goals and expectations.
Test Your Language Skills
One amazing way to make sure you’re progressing at learning French is regularly or semi-regularly testing yourself. By putting yourself in a situation where you’re being externally challenged to use your new language skills, you make sure you’re making real progress. This could be an online test or chatting with a native speaker.
Utilize Other People for Learning
Whether that’s an in-person teacher, online teacher or learning with friends, having other people along for the journey massively boosts accountability and will drive results.
Build Habits and Depend on Them
If you find yourself slipping away from your crazy new routine of three-hours French practice nightly, it’s okay to default back to earlier, more manageable language learning habits, even if they’re not necessarily to best ways to learn. Keeping at it is more important than learning the best way.
Set Realistic Monthly Goals
Big goals are the number one reason people fail their New Year’s resolutions. The failure of not hitting these massive self-imposed goals massively throws people off, especially when it comes to something tricky like learning French. However, it can be really useful to set realistic, manageable monthly goals, allowing you to feel the successes along your journey with achievable expectations.
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