4 Techniques for Switching Your Brain into Language Mode
Have you ever heard of a phenomenon called "Priming"? Priming is what psychologists call it when your brain adapts to the environment around it without you realising. For example, you might automatically walk slower in a nursing home than you do in a gym. The brain helps your body to adjust, and this also affects your memory and even your confidence and the whole way you interpret situations.
How Priming Helps You Turn on Your Brain
Priming is largely unconscious, but now that you’re aware of it you can also use it to your advantage when learning languages. The idea is to switch your brain into “language mode” and use cues from your environment to help you get into the right zone.
Want to learn more about how to be a productive language learner?
©morethanmaths on Flickr
How Subtle Prompts Help You Stay in The “Language Learning Zone”
When I was a German tutor, I’d teach many people in their lunch hour. They would stay in the office at their English-speaking workplace, close the door and open up Skype to start chatting German with me.
In those situations, I’d commonly noticed that it took them a lot of time to warm up, relax, and start chatting away. Having thought about the learning environment and what it means for your performance, I came to the conclusion that these students need to make a brain switch from work mode to learning mode.
In this article on Wired, the author describes how a mere glance at the native speaker will prompt them to blurt out native words.
The different role you need to play as a language learner.
And there’s more at play than just the language you’re speaking.
Many people who work in management or office-based roles are in an environment that looks a bit like school, but demands a completely different behaviour. “Professionals” don't just go out and try things. They are expected to control their creativity and maintain a professional image at all times.
When you think about the good mindset for language learners, it's a contrast: You'll do well if you can combine curiosity, discipline and a complete disregard for embarrassment!
How to Start Switching Your Brain Into a Different Mode
Switching up a part of your environment can help you become a better learner, with simple prompts that take seconds to implement.
Try out some ideas that learners and teachers can use to make priming work in the right way:
1. Listen to Target Language Songs and Watch Movies
I will not promise you that watching an awful lot of films in a foreign language will magically beam fluency into your mind.
The real benefit of surrounding yourself with the target language is that you stay engaged with it and develop knowledge of the country. In terms of the priming benefit, it will work magic. Plus, you get to do it while putting your feet up or driving.
2. Find a Suitable Slot in Your Schedule
Schedule your learning sessions for the right times. For example, I like doing my chatting in Spanish on the drive back from Zumba - partly because the Spanish lady is captive in my car, partly because we've just spent an hour having fun and dancing around. Others also swear by having a nice glass of wine to relax or using breathing exercises.
Another great tip is to create a learning corner in your home - somewhere quiet, free from distractions and full of positive associations.
3. Visualise Your Life as a Successful Language Learner
School classroom teachers have known for a long time that putting up posters and displays around the classroom can get pupils in the right state of mind for learning. They don't have to be written in the foreign language, but just reminders of what's great about the country you're learning about.
Take a tip from this and create your own language learning displays full of things that interest you about your language. They could be recipes, tickets from old trips, tourist brochures or printouts from the internet. I particularly love vintage posters.
You can find more inspiration on my Pinterest boards for German, French and Russian.
4. Warm Up in Your Target Language
In my teaching role, I try to start my lessons off easily with some smaller warm-up activities like asking students how they are or offering them a drink.
Recently, I received the great tip that using the same warm-up activity every time for regular students is actually helpful - here I was worrying people would get bored, but the learner's perspective was that knowing "what's coming" allowed them to prepare and feel confident at the start of the lesson. That puts every learner in the right state of mind for success.
A Festive Take on Using Your Environment as a Study Aid
Click here for my article on learning a language at Christmas (even if you don’t celebrate it)
First published July 2013. Last updated December 2021.
Language Tracking Insider: How To Move Steadily Towards Your Next Breakthrough
You love learning languages, but sometimes you're wondering if all that work will ever really add up to anything? Then look no further and start building a powerful tracking routine today. Tracking doesn't have to be complicated, and with these 4 cool tips you'll quickly get into a true language habit!
Language tracking is so important. It allows you to stay on top of your studies, master busy periods and see your own progress towards fluency. It’s not just an exercise in discipline or productivity.
When you find smart ways to track, it will enhance all the work you’re doing and become one of the greatest motivators out there. And since I recently built and shared my own best practice templates for tracking in the Language Habit Toolkit learners, I’ve been hearing back from students who have some incredible ideas for making this even more effective.
Check out the following creative tracking tweaks and see if they can transform your language learning, too.
1) Track Life Events That Affect Your Study Routine
We all know that rules are made to be broken, and this is true for study routines too! Big and small events such as trips, conferences, and birthdays can knock you off your routine and even break habits.
Look out for these types of events at the start of the week and make a note in your tracker. Give yourself permission to drop off the routine and pay attention to getting back on track in the days after your event. For example, you could schedule 20 minutes of writing for the day after your birthday.
How To Add This To Your Tracker
My favourite trick comes from Catrin, one of my expert testers.
As Catrin started tracking her studies every day, she made little notes of what’s going on in her life.
Remember that it is okay if you are just too busy to study sometimes.
Developing a language habit is not about perfect records of focused study every day. It’s about more than that: Making language feel natural, building structure, and helping you go further simply by coming back to the project every week.
2) Code In Your Activities
The next trick is from Mark, another expert tester. Mark used to be a runner, and found that regular tracking was a key to his training regime. Taking the method into language learning, he built on his tracking expertise by adding little extras to show what he did during those sessions.
Here are a few easy ways of enhancing your Habit Tracker:
- Use different colours to track which skill you trained that day (vocab, grammar, listening, speaking, reading and writing..)
- Use numbers or letters to shorten descriptions of your resources, for example 1 for Duolingo, 2 for Glossika, 3 for your vocab notebook, 4 for a video chat, and so on.
- If you are studying more than one language, highlight which languages you were studying on which day. On the right, you can see how I reserve every Thursday for training French instead of Welsh (using the Language Habit Toolkit, printed at 50% and pasted into my Moleskine notebook).
3) Add A Review Box to Your Habit Tracker
The next tip was shared by Toolkit user Colette. She shared a tweak she uses to make sure she stays on top of what she’s learnt so far.
When you are just finishing a lesson with your tutor or a timed study session, the temptation to close the app/book and do something else is at its highest. You have earned your break! But with just one or two words of new vocabulary, you can hugely increase the benefit of what you just learnt.
Colette’s idea takes this review system one step further, as she decided to write down one word to review from her vocab routine right on the Habit Tracker every day. Just think: If you review just one vocabulary word extra every single day, you save yourself 365 reviews a year. Your Memrise buddies will be very impressed!
How To Add This To Your Tracker
In the Language Habit Toolkit, your Study Tracker sheet also comes with a “What I Learnt” section that prompts you to make a quick note of exactly what you added to your knowledge on this occasion.
Making a note while it is fresh in your mind will help you realise that even just a few minutes spent on a flashcard review can take you further towards becoming fluent.
4) Log in Advance
The final trick in today’s round-up comes from me, and it’s my classic way of kick-starting any activity when I feel like I’m procrastinating a bit too much. I’m a person who can struggle with overwhelm, and sometimes I get nothing at all done because I don’t even know where to start.
One thing I’ve learnt is that I can usually get myself unstuck by creating dedicated times in my week. It doesn’t work if I say “I will study every Monday from 6 to 7”, but it does work when I look just a few days ahead and decide where important work will fit in.
The most effective way to “advance log” is to become extremely specific. Don’t just write “read in Welsh” - it has to be “spend 8 minutes reading MADRON comic”. Instead of saying “do Memrise”, make a specific note of the level you want to complete or the mini-goal you have.
Related article: How to Learn a Language With Smart and Useful Goals
Want To Get Ready-Made Language Tracking Templates?
You’ll find two in-depth tracking worksheets to print and use in the Language Habit Toolkit. These trackers are professionally designed, developed with language learning experts, and will give you an instant set-up for effective tracking.
Find the Language Habit Toolkit in Fluent’s Learning Section.
Do you keep track of your language learning sessions in detail, or do you prefer to sail along and set big goals only? If you’ve got a tip to share, let me know in the comments below!
5 great reasons for language learning with a buddy
When you are learning a new language, your motivation is often rooted in appreciation of how people connect and communicate. Language learning is social by definition, and it's clearly most fun when you can practice and learn with others. All good on paper, but what if you don't know any fellow learners?
5 great reasons for finding a learning buddy
Just like a lot of language learners, I'm not averse to a bit of a challenge. Teaching yourself from books is definitely one of those, but my advice would be that you stay away from challenging yourself to learn in isolation. Here are 5 good reasons why sharing the language learning journey with a buddy (someone at your level, a friend or tutor) makes a lot of sense.
- You'll open up
Expressing your feelings is super-beneficial, no matter if it's through talking, drawing, writing or singing. In the context of language learning, this means you will benefit a lot from speaking about the language learning experience. Shared frustrations and worries are often halved when you have the chance to talk to someone who knows what you mean. - You'll keep going
Giving up is much less of an option when people know about your commitment to really making this work. Yes, this tip is just one of my whole library of tips that work both for diets and language learning :) - Double the research power
Have you been on the internet these days? It's so full of great resources and media and music and articles that I barely have time to watch Game of Thrones! Even if your chosen buddy isn't one who shares your fluency ambitions, they can help you by keeping an eye out for the best resources, recommended tutors or fellow learners. A network is a powerful thing, and it's so easy to start. - They can quiz you
There is rarely a thing more efficient than asking a friend to quiz you on your vocabulary lists - they'll be able to engage with your experience with all the pressure taken off, play teacher, set challenges or even grade you.
I can imagine that this works particularly well in married couples - wouldn't you just LOVE to have the licence to educate your other half?! From my own experience, I also love how it enables my partner to help me with things like my Russian, without having to understand any of it himself. - You might save money
From borrowing dictionaries to taking cheaper private classes with a tutor (like me), you might find that sharing the language learning experience can really save you a lot of money. This doesn't have to be an expensive experience and not every book or course will do the same for all people, but even if you spent no coins at all on it, you might benefit from a shared cost trip to the exciting destination of your dreams!
How to make it work
There's no straightforward recipe for success for learning with a friend or loved one. Some of us are reassured by having fellow learners, others feel particularly shy about it. You might also want to learn at a different pace to your friend, or work best at different times. If you aren't attending classes together, consider texting in the other language or sitting down just for a monthly catch-up. And if you have found someone who is not a learner him- or herself but wants to cheerlead and support you, how about planning that great trip together?
If you found this article useful, maybe you'd like regular emails from Fluent Language Tuition with more information my ideas, workshops and courses. Just use the sign-up form below :)
Eurovision is letting language learners down
It's the best song in Europe, honey!
What were you doing last Saturday night? If you are like 125 million Europeans, you may have spent a few hours in front of your television following one of the continent's best-loved TV traditions: the Eurovision song contest! It features bilingual presenters, entrants from European countries such as Azerbaijan and Morocco, and one of the largest tele-voting networks outside the USA.
Eurovision stage ©wikimedia
Is Europe ruled by English?
But there is one thing that bugs me about the contest: The rules were changed in 1998 to allow countries to submit entries in any desired language. As a consequence, a lot of countries opted for the widely understood English language. And the numbers don't prove them wrong - the Economist reports that most of the winning songs were sung in English, only followed by French on a far-off second place. The article says "whether you find this linguistic convergence cheerful as an Abba
foot-stomper or depressing as an Icelandic fishing trip will say as much
about your politics as it will your views on language."
“Most winning songs were performed in English - songs (mostly) in English won 24 times. French is also popular, with 14 victories. Dutch and Hebrew songs won 3 times each”
Why Eurovision entrants should sing in their official language
This may not come as a shock to Fluent blog fans, but I say let's get the old rules back and give so many countries a voice in their own words.
- Europe is one of the most beautifully diverse continents in this world (top 5 I'd say!) and its languages are one of the strongest symbols of that diversity. If we don't support languages from every country, we risk losing them.
- Eurovision is not a popularity contest - or at least it shouldn't be. In a world where the voting is so skewed by silly political considerations, I believe that singing in English can mean trading in a little bit of your national identity for bland conformity.
- Inspiration can strike in the language learner anywhere, and this is one of the most famous platforms for some countries to show off their beautiful languages. The brave countries took the decision to submit an entry in their native tongue this year, and to me, each of them stood out: Iceland, Estonia, Italy, Spain, Greece, I salute you!
What do you think - is winning the Eurovision with a bland English-language track better than flamboyantly celebrating what your country has to offer? Are there any entrants that combined both?
Read more about Music and Language Learning on the Fluent blog:
Where to look for inspiration
Musical Language Learning Hacks
And you can see me speak 25 European languages on this Youtube video:
