Many beginners ask me for tips on learning language so I am going to release this as a series of short pieces of advice.

TIP ONE – Frequency over Quantity

Learning language is like learning an instrument. If you don’t practice regularly, it will take longer to improve.
Basically, it’s better to have shorter periods of study every day rather than one big long study session at the end of the week. If you can spend 30 minutes studying every day, it will benefit you a lot more than 5 hours on a Saturday – for two main reasons.

The first one is stamina. Some people can study for 5 hours but most people can’t! You will probably burn out after an hour or two. That’s why shorter periods of study are better than much longer ones.

Second is memory recall. It is a lot easier to remember something you looked at yesterday than it is to remember something you looked at last week. If you don’t repeat your study of something new regularly, your brain will not recognize it as important – and that knowledge will be diluted during sleep.

So it’s important to make some time for your study and put it in your schedule.

Your study time might be before breakfast, or maybe during lunch, on the bus or whatever –  keeping it regular is key to success.

Good luck! See you next time.