Hello, welcome back to how to learn a language.
And this time we're going to be talking about something that is kind of important, kind of like two things in one, but really go together very, very solidly.
Like bread and butter or Tom and Jerry or I can't think of any more duos, but we're going to get into it.
 And that thing we're going to talk about is how to manage your daily language learning habits  when you're learning multiple languages.
Now this is something that comes up all the time.
 So I often get asked, oh, should I learn one language to level X before I move on and  learn another language?
Or should I have one day that is one week, the one month that  is focused on one language and then move on and focus on another?

Or can I do multiple  languages all at once?
Is that okay?
Am I going to lose my mind?
Is it going to work?
 And there's lots and lots of reasons for this, right?
So we're going to dig in, we're going  to start with a couple of truths that really we need to know that are quite foundational  to all of this, to learning multiple languages.
And then we're going to go into some solid  advice that really is a case of interpretation so much and you're really going to begin to  pick this up by listening just to a few episodes of this show.

So much of language learning  is trial and error, playing, experimenting and figuring out what is your best way to  learn a language.
And that has to be part of the fun.
You have to enjoy that process,  right?
You can't just be looking to someone to tell you exactly what to do because that  isn't going to work for you, right?
You've got to figure that out for yourself.
And that's  the work that I do is helping you actually make that, figuring out for yourself a bit  fun and enjoyable.
So that's a bit of what we're going to do today as well.

And maybe,  you know, at the start of all of this, you might be thinking learning multiple languages  is too hard at once, is too confusing or is too time consuming, right?
But the truth is  that anyone can do this and the key is having, well, one of the keys is having the right  daily habits to keep you motivated and to keep you productive.
So this is my best advice  on how to manage daily habits for multiple languages.
 There are so many questions and options when it comes to forming daily habits that often  it stops us in our tracks and we kind of wait at the start line thinking that we have to  be perfect.
We have to have this flawless plan before we begin our new language learning  habits, our new routine, our new way forward.
That isn't going to work, right?
The most  important thing is to just get started because the best way, like I said, the best way to  learn about all of this is through this process of experimentation and just figuring out what  works and the way to do that is to just jump right in, both feet really, really go for  it.

So truth number one, the first thing we really need to know, there's no one way, right?
 There's no one habit set up that I can share with you here that will work for every language  learner.
Everyone has different learning styles, different needs, different situations that  you're in at any given time.
So it's really important not to fall into the trap of thinking  that there is a perfect routine out there waiting for you if only you could find it,  right?
The truth is just far simpler.
Every learner has their own unique combination of  skills, strengths, weaknesses, preferences, which means that everyone will have their  own ideal solution when it comes to forming good habits.
And if there's one thing that  I really want you to take away from this, and from everything that, you know, that I do  in general for Lindy does languages, it's that it doesn't happen overnight, right?

Building  solid language habits takes time.
Sometimes it's weeks or months, even before they become,  you know, part of your daily routine.
But once they're there and once they've been adapted  enough over time to kind of be flexible and to fit with your life, it allows us as learners  greater flexibility around how we spend our limited study time each day, because those  routines that we have allow us more leeway with less pressure
than ever before, right?
 So there's really no one way.
Truth number two, this one, you'll probably hear me say  more than once on this, on how to learn a language.
It is possible to be good at several  languages.

You may have heard that it's impossible or too difficult for adults to learn another  language, right?
You're too old, you're too busy or you're just and this is the real  one, not a language person.
Don't, don't, don't, because you didn't unlock the gift  as a child, right?
This isn't true.
So let's unpack this because there's a lot of research  into this whole children adult stuff.
So children have been found to do some things better than  adults when it comes to language learning.
Of course they have because equally, equally,  adults have been found to do some things better too.

We'll get to that in a minute.
But when  it comes to children, there's two big things that come out in a lot of the research.
And  mainly it's number one pronunciation and number two, openness to trying, right?
A lack of  inhibition.
And really you can kind of see that.
You can kind of see how both of these  things would work together.
Pronunciation, kids are going to be better at that because  in part they're still, you know, especially really, really young children still learning  to speak for themselves, still kind of stretching and flexing those mouth and speaking muscles  and everything.

And so of course this is something that's going to happen, right?
Open us to  trying a lack of inhibition.
That also kind of plays into that pronunciation thing because  as we just grow up in general, we gain inhibition, right?
We gain this awareness of people around  us.
And with that comes this closedness, I suppose we could call it, to trying and to  thinking, if I try that it's not going to sound right or I'm going to fail or I'm going to  look stupid, we gain that as we grow up.
Children have that less.
So that helps not only with  pronunciation, but also just in general with trying, with speaking, with giving stuff a  go, right?
Us as adults, when we know this, when we know that these are the two things  that, you know, primarily children do this better, we can think, we have, right?
This  is more, this isn't discussed when we praise how wonderfully children can learn languages.
 The advantage is that us as adults have, and the big one is age because age equals wisdom.
 So we know, okay, I'm now aware that children are often better when it comes to language  learning with pronunciation and with that lack of inhibition, right?
But with your age,  your experience and any encounter you've had with any language or learn anything, all  of that stuff has the potential to help you out when it comes to learning another language.
 And when it comes to intentionally improving your pronunciation or intentionally lowering  those kind of inhibitions that you've got built up around you, right?
Kids don't have  that advantage.

So there is something huge that we have as adults with age that is so  powerful, that is going to help us, not even at this point to learn multiple languages,  but to just learn one, right?
And sure, right?
There's an age where the power, shall we say,  of our brain and memory begins to decline because we have human bodies, not robot bodies, this  is completely normal, it's probably going to happen to most, if not all of us, but we  have time between now and then, right?
However old you are when you're listening to this,  hopefully we have some time between now and between that point of deterioration.
So that's  really one huge reason why now is the best time to learn a language, right?
Because we're  only going to be getting closer to that point where our brain, our memory is going to begin  to decline.
So let's do it now.

Or maybe as well, another thing here is that perhaps  you've been told you should avoid learning multiple languages at once at the same time,  because it will confuse you and it will set you back in one or more of the languages,  right?
But there's no real role of you have to get to be two before starting your next  language, you have to pass this exam before you even think about another, you're in charge,  right?
When you're learning a language independently, you are in charge of what it looks like.
So  you're in charge of when and how to bring in multiple languages, whether you learn one,  two 17 or languages, you can think of it, you know, kind of differently to help with this,  you know, you're not learning.
This is a different perspective on this.
And I used to think,  right, when I was often asked, kind of in the beginning of doing into those languages  and people would say, Oh, how do you learn multiple languages?
What's it like?

And honestly,  this is how it felt.
It felt like there was kind of boxes in my brain of like French  box, Spanish box, English box, and they could be opened, you know, when I needed one and  then closed.
But I've really changed my perspective on this since I've been kind of learning  a lot more about second language acquisition and all of that stuff.
And really, if we're  learning, you know, let's say French, Arabic and Gar, right, we're not learning French  Arabic and Gar as completely separate and unique entities.
What we're doing instead is increasing  our entire linguistic repertoire.
What is your linguistic repertoire?
It's all of your  language knowledge that naturally just as part of existing forms connection.

So it's  kind of like one big, let's think of it like I say, I was saying they were boxes, right,  for me in the past.
If we think of it as like a wardrobe, even like a walking wardrobe, and  we've got like a box of hats and a box of shoes and a box of belts, I don't know, stuff  hung up on one side and other stuff hung up on another.
It's a nice big wardrobe, right?
 The more languages you learn, the bigger your walking wardrobe of linguistic repertoire gets.
 And all of this stuff can kind of, you know, sometimes you might be reaching for your skirt  section, which is your French section.
And oops, you knock down the box of hats, which  is your Arabic representation and a hat falls on your head.
And Arabic word comes out of  your mouth, right?

I love me a good metaphor.
You'll also learn that from listening to this  podcast.
So with your linguistic repertoire, then what is this?
It's all of your language  knowledge that naturally forms connections because your brain isn't distinguishing French  from Arabic always in the same way that we've tried to organize and understand languages  on paper, right?
A language family really means not much to your linguistic repertoire.
 There's just you and your one language family that you're forming.
And sure, they're going  to be, you know, more connections between related languages.

So French and Spanish in my brain  probably have more little lines running between them than let's say French and, I don't know,  Korean, right?
But I'm still finding my own lines that run through.
And so when we accept  this, when we accept that actually, we're building something pretty cool, we're building  our own unique linguistic or repertoire in our brains.
That helps with one huge thing.
 And that huge thing is that we then know why we sometimes makes languages.
We understand  why this happens, which can honestly help calm us down.
Right?

It is not a sign of weakness  or being bad at languages.
If we accidentally mix languages or we can remember the word  in the language that we don't want in that moment, it's actually a sign of being pretty  cool because you're becoming multilingual or you are already, right?
So two key things  that we need to know before we talk about this.
Number one, there's no one way to do  this in terms of habits, in terms of multiple languages.
And number two, it is possible  to be good at several languages.
Okay, now we've got that out of the way.
I told you  being important stuff.

Now we're going to talk about how to manage those daily habits  for multiple languages.
So the first thing is to create a daily language habit tracker.
 And this doesn't have to be something that you keep forever.
It could be something that's  kind of scrappy, you try out for a week or a month or something and just see what it  looks like and compare that to what you want it to look like.
So with all of this, with  all of language learning, it's never about completely upending your life and changing  everything to suddenly fit 17 in different languages every day.
It's about thinking,  okay, what time do I realistically have that I could utilize better in my day, right?
 So by tracking what you're doing now, we can then be thinking about how we can adjust  later.

Does that make sense?
So you can do this, like I say, you can just use a simple  sheet of paper or you can make a habit tracker.
And I'll show you as well, I've got a version  of this in the solo language learner planner.
I'll link to that in the description too.
 But whatever you do, however you do this, it's important to make sure that your track  is a quick and easy to use.
You really don't want them taking too much time out of that  kind of real learning time, because otherwise it just becomes this other habit to maintain,  right?
We try to manage habits and we're like adding in a habit.

We don't want it to be  something huge.
We want it to be as quick and as simple as easy as possible.
And I've  just added as well my digital language tracker to the solo language learner planner, which  works on notion.
So if you enjoy having something that you can just quickly do, if you use notion  already as well, even better, you can get that now with the solo language learner planner  too.
So yeah, it's pretty cool.
But why do this, right?
Like I say, we're not looking  to add another habit.

We're looking to sort of monitor and see where we're going with  this.
Well, just take in a couple of minutes to track what you're doing really, really  helps by giving you something to check back on, kind of tally up how much time you're  spending on your learning.
And yeah, it's really a starting point of figuring out what we're  doing already, what can stay, what can change, how we're going to adjust it and all of that  stuff.
So that's the first thing.
Secondly, make your habits atomic and you're like atomic.
 What does that mean?
It's a book.

You may have heard of it.
I highly recommend this book,  atomic habits by James Clear.
So, so helpful for forming any habit, but especially if you  are reading this and you're thinking about language learning, you know, you'll be able  to apply just everything from this book to your language habits.
And there's a real  core to it.
I'll share with you now.
So his kind of four laws of habit formation, this  is going to help you know and he suggests that a habit needs a cue, a craving, a response  and a reward.
So to help that process, you need to make your habits obvious.

That's the  cue, attractive, the craving, easy, the response and satisfying.
That's the reward, right?
 So to make your habits atomic, all we need to do, dah, dah, dah, dah, think about making  them obvious, attractive, easy and satisfying, right?
Maybe you're like, okay, what does  that look like?
I don't get it.
What does it look like?
Let's go through an example for  wanting to develop a new morning habit of writing a journal entry in the language you're learning,  okay?

So this is our example habit.
If we want to make it obvious, well, we need that  cue.
What is our cue to do this in the morning?
We're going to be much more likely to write  first thing in the morning if your journal and if your pen are kept beside your bed,  right?
If they are tucked away on a bookshelf in another room, on another floor of your  house, then you're really going to do it every morning?
Probably not, right?
So keep  it as a cue, as a reminder and make it really, really obvious that that is what's going to  happen.

Making it attractive, well, what's going to make you want to do this habit, right?
 And this one, I feel can really be sort of triggered by different things for different  people.
So for example, perhaps telling yourself that you don't get out of bed until you finish  writing, maybe for you, that's going to make your habit of writing attractive because you  want to get out of bed.
Or if you're the officer and you like, there's extra few minutes in  in the morning, in bed tucked up, then what you need is to reframe this as a chance to  get a few extra minutes in bed when you're writing.
You see?
So we're just making it  attractive in a way that's really going to suit you.
Making it easy.

So in our example,  this is going to likely be affected by what counts as a journal entry.
So if you are thinking,  yeah, I'm going to write a whole page fully in the language I'm learning.
Great.
If that's  not a massive challenge and you're going to have to look at every word.
Because if so,  then you'll have it won't be easy and you'll therefore be less likely to stick to it.
So  you can build this up from as honestly as little as you want from one word, right?
You  can build this up from waking up in the morning.

You open up your journal that's by the side  of your bed.
You write one word in the language, the first word that comes to mind.
If it's  bonjour for five days in a row, great.
As long as you're learning French.
Not Japanese,  right?
But you get my point, right?
You're still building the habit.

It's easy to form  because all you're doing is writing one word.
And then when that feels like it's quite well  established and it's almost too easy, then we want to make it easy enough, but just a  little bit more.
So then we're going to maybe go for like one sentence, then a two-line  dialogue, et cetera, et cetera.
So as things gradually get easier, you can adjust that  habit enough to keep it easy but still useful.
you see where I'm going with this?
And then  finally, in terms of making it satisfying, I often find that this comes when the other  factors are in place.
So for example, if a habit was obvious, attractive and easy enough  to happen, then for me, it feels satisfying when it does happen.

Do you know what I mean?
 But again, it's all personal.
We're all thinking about how is this going to work for me.
If you  want a bigger or a more tangible reward, then go ahead.
So maybe it's a weekly or a monthly  treat of some kind for sticking with things.
If you get a full seven days in a row and you  are motivated by that streak and that feels satisfying and you need that reward at the end,  go for it.
Figure out what's going to work for you.

Okay, so we've got our habits kind of ticking  over their atomic.
We've read the book.
We're all good.
Next, you're going to be figuring out your  activity priorities and your language focuses.
So with multiple languages, it's very easy for us  to end up either in a few actually in a few different situations, right?
So it could be that  you're thinking, okay, I want to learn, let's let's keep it at two for now.
I want to learn two  languages.

They're brand new to me.
They're not in the same language family.
And I've got similar  resources.
So and this actually happened to me when I was doing my first year of my undergraduate  degree.
It was the French and Spanish that they had available for that first level.
I'd already  done previously.
So I was like, do I want to just repeat?

It's going to be kind of boring.
 Oh, hang on a minute.
They've got Italian courses here.
They've got brand new Chinese course.
I'm  going to do that instead, right?
So I was starting both languages from scratch, but Italian was much  easier for me than Chinese because it was connected to French and Spanish.
It was a lot of similar  kind of structure, etc, etc.

Right?
And I didn't take full advantage of the opportunity for  Mandarin for Chinese because I was just thinking they're the same.
They're from scratch.
I've got  the books in front of me.
I've got the exams and assessments at the same times, you know?
And I  didn't.
I was like, how old?

1920. I didn't really know what I was doing.
But now if I was to approach  that, I would wait that slightly differently, not just in terms of language focus, but in terms of  activity too.
So if a certain language learning technique isn't working for you, honestly, don't  be afraid to try something different.
And equally, if you're feeling stuck in the weeds with one  language, try another.
And this is the joy of learning multiple languages is that you can always  feel productive, right?
Even if you switch languages, it's like, yep, still doing something useful  with my time.
I'm not scrolling social media.

I'm not just like sat on the side for doing nothing.
 I'm learning this language instead of that one.
Still a cool thing to do with your time, right?
 And I've never written this down until now, but you can see this image on the blog article,  accompanying this episode.
But I've got this rough guide and I've always had it in my head.
 I wrote it down.
It's really helpful to write down.

But essentially, it's kind of like different  tiers of activity and language.
And it really, really helps, right?
So I'll talk you through this  so that you can kind of get an idea of how this works.
Because I know here we've got no visuals.
 So like I say, head over to the blog and you'll be able to see this.
But for now, I'll describe it  to you.
So across the top, I've got my languages listed.

And I've got a couple of focus languages,  a couple of play languages using the words that work for me to describe them.
So I've got focus one,  which is a new language, focus two, a steady language, play language one and play language two,  right?
So the new one for me is Arabic right now.
The steady focus is Russian.
The playing and  maintaining is French.
And the pure play, play number two, is Catalan sign language, right?
Then  down the left side of this kind of table of boxes, I've got the priorities.

So I've got priority one,  priority two and a passive priority.
So the way that this helps is that knowing and having written  down, okay, my priority number one stuff with Arabic is the teacher self complete Arabic book  that I've got the Arabic in 60 steps podcast, the language transfer lessons, priority two is  Duolingo and Arabic script Hacking book, right?
Whereas, oh, and then passive is music.
So passive,  what I mean by that is I'm not thinking music and I want to learn like we do in music my stroke,  making the description so you can see what I'm talking about.
It's more about just like a way  to enjoy the language.
Then with Russian, whereas we said for Arabic Duolingo, for example, as priority  two, with Russian Duolingo is priority one, because it's something easy because this is a sort of  steadier language for me right now.
It's something easy that I can maintain on a sort of more daily  habit basis.

So that is why it's in that first box.
Yeah, so you see how it changes.
And then as we go  along with the play languages, I don't have anything in priority two boxes.
I've just got one thing  for each in the top and then one thing for each in the bottom as well.
So you'll be able to see  that on the blog, but really it was very helpful to write this down for the first time.
It's always  been kind of in my head, but seeing it visualized really useful.
Highly, highly recommend because  when you understand where your language focuses and your activity priorities lie, it really, really  helps you to manage your daily habits when learning multiple languages because you know what to  prioritize right.

So when do you prioritize these things?
This is where it begins to very much  depend on you.
So you could study in language immersion blocks or don't.
Language immersion  blocks then.
This is a type of study technique that consists of focusing on one language for  several days at a time.
It could be one day, could be a week, could be a couple of weeks, whatever.
 For example, if you're learning Mandarin in Korean, you might say that you're going to study in a  Mandarin only mode for three days, then switch to Korean only mode for three days and I guess  take some way off.

The idea is to immerse yourself in the target language so that your brain can  focus on learning it without any distractions from other languages.
And for some people, this works  really, really well.
If you want to go all in as well and make all of your consumption, so music,  TV, film, reading, everything completely in that focused language too, then you've basically created  full on immersion wherever you are in the world.
Amazing, right?
For others, however, this can feel  restricting, right?
And they might prefer to keep things ticking over in multiple languages in one  day because sometimes that almost anxiety, if we like, of feeling like you're leaving one language  behind can weigh a little bit heavy.
So try it.

If it feels good, great.
If it doesn't feel good,  don't worry because there's still plenty of things that you can do to make your daily how  it's worked for multiple languages, right?
The other one of those other things that you can do,  and again, this is an all don't option, is to schedule specific times to study or don't, right?
 See how this is very much you that gets to decide all of this.
Schedule specific times to study then.
 So this is quite important if it comes to making things feel manageable, especially once we've got  our language focuses and our activity priorities drawn up with a bit of a schedule in place,  you'll know when to start studying and when to stop, which makes it easier to keep up with your  goals
every day, right?

And if that last piece of advice of the immersion blocks isn't for you,  this one might be more up your street.
If you're serious about learning multiple languages,  try scheduling two, maybe even three blocks of time each day dedicated specifically to each  language.
They don't have to be even.
It doesn't have to be, you know, like an hour in the morning  for language one, an hour in the afternoon for language two, and another hour for language three.
 It could just be that you've got 30 minutes in the morning, you've got about 40, 45 minutes in the  evening, but in the sort of afternoon lunchtime-ish in the day during the day, you've got little pockets  of maybe five minutes at a time.
So that's when you then begin to think, okay, well, for me, it would  be Arabic being the new language would be the focus, the thing that I wanted to get done  more than any others.
That's priority number one.

That's going to go in the morning block  because I'm more awake then.
I know that I do my best language learning then.
That's what the  morning is.
The afternoon kind of during the day for me would be Russian pockets on apps and stuff,  just little bits, and then in the evening, that's when it would be maybe French, maybe the Catalan  thing where I'm just, I'm kind of chilling out.
I'm just playing, right?
That's what works me.
If  you're the other way around, if you're like evening, thing brains on fire, I'm working hard, I'm doing  my best stuff, flip it around, right?

But the benefits of this kind of time-blocking is that you're  you're kind of telling your brain what to expect.
So it helps to make your habits easy.
It's like,  hey, brain, morning time, ready for some Korean, yes, right?
However, however, because there's always  a however, right?
However, some research has found that our expectations of same place, same time,  same resource studying isn't quite as effective as we think it is, right?
It's almost as if when  something is different about that, it keeps us on our toes.
So if the time thing really works for you  when it comes to maintaining daily habits, when learning multiple languages, having specific times  of day works, think about mixing up something else about that time, right?

So what is it that  you're going to do?
What's the activity that you're going to do during that time?
Where are you going  to do it?
What are you going to listen to?
What are you going to be drinking?
Having something that's  an anchor, but also having something that is unique and different can help to just, you know, keep you  active rather than just whoo, and we're in and we've finished the chapter done, you know?
 Alternatively,
of course, if you prefer not having such a rigid structure in place every day,  if it feels kind of like a bit intense, a bit too much at first, just set aside one chunk of time  each day, just call it language time, and whatever you feel like doing during that time, that's what  you do, right?
And your priorities here, again, come into play because you're thinking, well, do I want  to do my priority one for that focus language number one right now?
Not really feeling it, I just want  to hang out, I just want to play.
You can go to the other end of that spectrum of the other end of  that table and be doing something, right?
Just having your toes in the language learning water,  right?
But with something else.
So there's always ways to make it an enjoyable process and to,  you know, enjoy language learning because that's what it is about really at the end of the year.

 And that is it for this episode of How to Learn a Language, brought to you by Lindsay Does Languages.

 Thank you for listening as I mentioned at the beginning, a couple of things that I recommend  before I say goodbye, number one is to subscribe to this show wherever you're listening, that way  you miss zero episodes, number two, rate or review the show wherever you're listening,  that way more
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 Any links, anything I've mentioned in this episode will be in the description box, so have a little  click around and I'll be back very soon.
Thanks, bye.