Although I easily get bored while watching TV, I do really enjoy listening to videos or other audio (for some reason at 2x speed when in English, or else I also get bored) while working, whether that be putting together a PowerPoint for my students or painting my photo album cover. Lately my drug of choice has been linguistic videos again, and it is really inspiring me to put more effort towards my language learning journey. A few YouTubers, like Lindie Botes, for instance, often discuss how to balance multiple languages at once, and it makes me realize I need to better organize myself to actually make substantial progress. I keep jumping around languages too often, losing progress in one while I focus on another, then vice versa when my interests or needs shift again.

While Lindie and some others promote not having a harsh schedule for yourself for mental health reasons, and I completely agree, I also know myself enough to say that when I give myself an inch, I take a mile. After some consideration, I decided that I would give myself one language per day to focus on, but I would not be strict in what I do for each. Maybe I want a passive learning day where I only listen to music, while others I may want to sit down and finally do some Polish grammar drills. Que será, será.

Circling back, my plan is to assign myself a different language each day, so a total of 7 per week. While this sounds like a lot, some of my languages are developed enough that I just need to consume media or write in the language to keep them up. Some also just haven’t been used in almost a year and I need to refresh things I already am comfortable with. I also am trying language stacking for the first time. This is when you use an L2 to learn an L3+. I am studying Italian again, but using Spanish as my main language for part of the time. My Italian book is in English, but the websites and resources I am using are not for English speakers. I have heard mixed reviews on these methods. Some say that when the L2 and L3 are closer together, it is actually easier because you can make direct comparisons. On the other hand, I was also told that it can be a bit of a time waster and doesn’t have much effect either way. I briefly tried to learn German through Spanish but was not content given German has more English cognates than Spanish, hence why I decided to do SP–>IT. As I like to joke, Italian feels like Spanish with a pizza accent, so it makes sense I would try to take advantage of the situation (for legal reasons that was 100% me just being silly, Italian and I are cool). We will see, but so far I like it. Anyways, here is my tentative plan:

Sunday – Spanish

Monday – Polish

Tuesday – Italian

Wednesday – Lithuanian

Thursday – Tagalog

Friday – German

Saturday – Arabic

Although it looks somewhat random, I did have a method to my madness here. First, I tried to separate languages with similarities. Polish and Lithuanian get very mixed up in my mind due to their cases, as well as Italian and Spanish with their Romance family ties, so they each have a day in between them. I also tried to put certain languages on days that would allow me to get the most out of them. It is easier for me to put aside 20 minutes to watching Spanish YouTube videos on a Sunday, than, say, a Tuesday where I am running around from the gym to teaching to lab to orchestra. Since I care more about developing my Spanish than Arabic (I am only revisiting how to write currently), for instance, it makes sense I would essentially schedule more time for it.

I am keeping track of my studies with an Excel document right now, so I will try to update as time goes on with my opinions on this, in all honestly, kinda ridiculous method. Can I even call it that? It is really more like a little concept, one that probably won’t promote even halfway decent language acquisition. But, who knows? Maybe I’ll figure something out about my journey with languages by doing this.

Happy reading,
-Beppa