Learning a language is like truck pulling at the strongman contest: it seems nigh on impossible at the beginning, but if you keep practising and building up your mental strength you can feel yourself moving forward.   Then, as you overcome inertia, the wheels start rolling and you’re away, building vocab, grammar rules, listening, speaking and writing skills with each step forward.  As with truck pulling however, to continue making progress you must keep the process moving—however slowly—to avoid the return to inertia.  After a week or two away from the books the wheels start to slow.  After a month without flashcards you’re almost standing; and after two it feels like “what language?” (or “Damn that’s a big truck!”).  When that happens, the likelihood of you getting the thing moving again anytime soon is pretty slim and if you’re like most people (statistically speaking), it’s at this point your Tuesday evening Italian class becomes your pub quiz/Lost series 53 night (“just for this term”)…

Whether it be by keeping up with your Word of the Day, studying your books every night or hiring a tutor every week, make sure that you at least try and do something related to that language as often as possible (ideally don’t even let a day go by without at least thinking about a sentence in your chosen language).   By keeping the truck going (however slowly) over time you lock the language into your mental framework, it stops being something you’re studying and starts being something you do.  This is quite a different frame of reference when you think about it.  The first is something that you can give up because “it was too hard” or “I was busy”, the second however, is a part of who you are—it may not be perfect but you can’t give it up any more than you can get rid of your first language.

So, at the very least commit to something so simple you can’t possibly make an excuse not to do.  The word a day you’re learning will soon be 30 words a month and 365 words a year, not only will your language inevitably improve, as it locks itself into your mind it becomes something of a self-fulfilling routine, one that carries you through the inevitable ebbs of enthusiasm and lets you drive the truck forward when you’re back in the right frame of mind.

Simon