Even though Chinese is a huge passion, I still lose my will to practice once in a while. What are your tips and tricks to keep it going?
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By keeping it interesting. Yeah I have pushed to study more at times, but burn out after a while. Lately I alternate between reading, listening, reviewing flash cards, etc. When one starts to feel like a chore I move on to another.
I am still struggling with motivation, so I am not the best one to answer this question. However, I think just having a “minimal study session” helps.
Like, imagine your worst ever day: something like a day when things are hectic and you couldn’t even gather enough motivation to study. Now, try to make a routine that you can do even on such a day, and then promise yourself that you’d do at least that minimum study session no matter what it takes.
Of course, it’s too easy for that “minimum study session” to be the “default study session” so I’ve got other things that would at least make me do the “default study session” instead.
In my case, the “minimum study session” is just to do one Anki review for each deck I have. That’s it. My “default study session” would be “finish all reviews in all Anki decks”. I also have an “intensive study session” involving adding new Anki cards to my decks, as well as consuming stuff in my studied languages, but it’s been a long time since I did those.
TL;DR: Make it easier on yourself to stick to a routine; have something that you can do even on your worst days.
I used the Tandem app to meet native speakers of the target language who are learning my language.
Once I find a match, we set up calls on a regular basis. With one, we switch languages halfway through. With another, we alternate languages each call.
If you don’t feel ready for a voice call, you can text back and forth or send audio files.
Once you find a partner you like on Tandem you can switch to a different encrypted chat app for privacy.
Tell me about it, I’m still struggling with German grammar even though I have been in the country for a long time now. What I’m trying to do is to start consuming more and more german media, I think Chinese has a lot of it, you may want to look into that.
Yeah I have my study routine down, it’s just hard sometimes to find the will to practice. Unfortunately I’m not at a level where extensively watching native Chinese media really helps me.
not sure if this would apply to you, but I sometimes draw/do something else that’s fun in my language notebook?
IMO doing fun stuff is a big part of keeping your motivation for longer. I’ve noticed that by the end of my Greek-learning journey, my notebook became pretty much word list after word list, without many practise sentences, letters, etc.
