How to Have More Time to Learn a Foreign Language Part 3

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This is Part 3 of my mini-series dealing with time management and language-learning.

You undoubtedly lead a very busy life. I'm honored you found some time to visit my blog about language-learning.
Second language acquisition doesn't have to eat up all the hours of your day though.
I think most people have at least 30 minutes of unused time per day.

If you're washing or doing the dishes, how about playing the radio at the same time? A foreign language station can keep you entertained for hours.
While you wait for the water to boil, get that grammar book out. It may not be the most interesting book in the world, but reading it beats looking at water that's sitting in a saucepan.

You could also listen to some language-learning CDs and repeat the dialogs to memorize them. That way, you will work on foreign vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation at the same time.

Using these little abandoned chunks of time will help you become fluent in a foreign language. Thirty minutes of daily study is plenty. If you kept this up for a year, you would have accumulated over 150 hours of study!

Trust me, after 150 hours, you will be reasonably fluent in French/Chinese/Japanese/English/Spanish... I know that languages which use other writing systems take longer to learn at first, but 150 hours is plenty to learn all the basic kanji you need and some phrases/grammar/pronunciation.

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How to Have More Time to Learn a Foreign Language Part 2 Commuting

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This is Part 2 of my mini-series dealing with time management and language-learning.
Here is Part 1: http://fluent-language.blogspot.com/2013/06/how-to-have-more-time-to-learn-foreign.html

If you work or if you're still in school, commuting probably takes you a lot of time. Maybe you take the train or the bus if you're still fairly young. You might also drive to work with your own car (lucky you!).

What you have here is wasted time, even if you like to people watch. How about putting that time to good use instead?

Here are some language-learning tips for commuters:
* Put a CD into your car stereo and turn up the volume. Voilà, you're bopping your head to groovy Spanish music! (Or maybe not.)
* If you're more of a traditional language learner, you might like listening to audiobooks in your car. There are language-learning tapes out there, but they usually aren't any good. Play a simple audiobook instead, and your language abilities will improve quickly!

All those wasted minutes turn into hours if you don't harness them. Moreover, commuting is a lot more fun with a little music.
If you're alone, you could repeat the words to a song to practice your pronunciation.

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How to Have More Time to Learn a Foreign Language Part 1

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Most people waste a lot of time on a daily basis. I admit my time-management techniques aren't perfect, but I do what I can to use my time wisely. For example, do you *really* like all those shows you've been watching recently? If you do, that's great. If you don't, it might be time to stop watching so much TV. Or maybe you could try to find a dub of these shows in another language.

 I know some people are against watching a dubbed show just to get some exposure to a foreign language, but sometimes dubs are better than the original. It doesn't happen often, but it does happen. Hearing your favorite character speak Chinese or French is very interesting anyway. Sometimes they pick the quirkiest voices! Also, I think that watching reality shows in one's native language is a sure-fire way of wasting loads of time that you could be investing into language learning instead. Most American reality shows have been bought by other countries and are dubbed in foreign languages or were adapted for foreign television.

If you can, buy DVDs of reality shows or watch TV in French/German/Japanese. I'm sure you get a lot of foreign TV stations if you have cable TV!


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