3 Common Bad Habits That Prevent You From Ever Becoming Fluent

Learning a language takes time. That’s the only difficulty there is.

Nothing else in language-learning is as hard as never giving up(сдаваться).

I’ve given up learning a language many times. 10 times to be more precise. I also now speak six different languages and am learning two more. The difference between those eight and the ones I’ve given up?

Three simple aspects I overlooked(пропустил).

If you struggle(бороться) to learn a language and ever hope to become fluent, then you need to change these three things in your own regimen(режим).

1. Being More Passive Than Active

This is among the most common mistakes new language-learners make. It’s no surprise. We all learned it from school: sit to listen or read.

Every time I see someone make that mistake, part of my heart breaks. This awful habit is a plague(чума).

They watch TV shows hoping to become fluent. They read grammar explanations in hope of understanding everything. They read and reread wordlists, sometimes repeating the words out loud to make themselves feel like they remembered.

All this doesn’t work. Well, it could. If you didn’t stop there.

I’ve written in the past about how I became fluent in English in one year by watching TV series. But that article missed two important things. The first was that I often wrote down words or expressions I wanted to remember. The second was that I already had a good knowledge of intermediate grammar and still had English classes 3 times a week, where I had to write essays and solve exercises. I wasn’t “just” watching TV shows, I was also using the language.

I was being active.

Every passive task helps can’t be enough. Stay passive for too long and you’ll lose all confidence in yourself. You’ll start believing the lie that you “can’t learn a language”.

Anybody can. You too. You just need to be more active about it.

Write texts. Have written and spoken conversations by yourself and with others. Actively search for expressions you want to know in the language. Talk to yourself in the language. Create your own example with new grammar patterns. Write essays about topics you love.

Anything will help, as long as it’s active.

2. Being Random About the Language

I’ve made that mistake many times. More than I like to admit(признавать). I think I’ve learned my lesson now but, who knows, I might make the same mistake again in the future if I forget it.

If you’re learning a language, you need a clear and important goal. You need direction.

If you learn your language without direction, you’re bound to give up. One day, you’ll feel lost. Wondering what to learn next, you’ll reduce your time studying. It’ll happen more and more as time passes. And, before you know it, the language will just be erased(стерт) from your daily life.

Is that what you want?

Randomness doesn’t work in language-learning. Direction does.

If you’re trying to move to the country to work, then you’ll know what to focus on. You’ll recognize politeness levels as important. You’ll learn certain common email formulas. You’ll master vocabulary about your professional sector.

If you’re trying to understand TV shows, you’ll notice more commonly used expressions between friends. You’ll remember how to introduce yourself without sounding overly polite.

If you want to speak the language of your partner, you’ll know to first focus on daily, house-related, topics. These words and common expressions will remain in your brain with more ease.

Direction gives the journey meaning.

Your direction will never be the same as somebody else. You have to look for it yourself. And then reflect on it often to let it evolve with you.

I began to learn Japanese to understand basic sentences in anime — and because of my curiosity(любопытство) for its characters. Later on, I wanted to live in Japan so I learned to speak the language with more ease. Then I wanted to work there so I learned more structured and polite Japanese.

Find where you’re headed.

3. Constantly Being Inconsistent(непоследовательный)

One of my best friends has been wanting to learn Japanese for almost as long as I have. Yet he can barely read hiragana and say a few common sentences, while I passed the highest level of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test.

I’m not more intelligent than him. On the contrary even. He often had better grades than me in school without ever studying as much as I did. But when it comes to language learning, I’ve since then discovered the power of consistency. He hasn’t.

He’s spent entire weekends studying Japanese before not touching it for 2 months. Then, he studied it for an hour a day for 2 weeks before letting it slide for the next half a year. He even tried to improve while living in Japan for 3 months and then didn’t touch the language for over a year after going back to France.

Inconsistency is tricky.

Every time you find the time to study a lot in one session, you feel as if you’ve improved a whole lot. “That’s it. I’ve understood the most important”, you tell yourself. A month later, you barely remember a word of what you studied.

Consistency works much better.

If you only study 10 or 15 minutes here and there, you might feel like you’re not improving much. But in reality, you’re slowly building blocks in your brain. Each session adds a bit of cement between each. Each time is an opportunity to correct a wrong memory of what a word means.

It’s also much easier to find 15 minutes every day than 2 hours on one day. Life often gets in the way. You can move around short timespans. You can’t do it with longer ones.

I’ll say it again. The only difficulty in learning a language is to accept that it takes time. Apart from this, it’s not that complicated. After all, if babies can learn a language, then why couldn’t you?

To become a better language-learner and a fluent speaker one day, take a step back and look at your processes. Ask yourself these three questions.

• Are you more passive or active?
• Do you have a precise goal and direction in mind?
• Are your study sessions inconsistent?

If your answers are the wrong ones, then you’ll never be fluent that way. You’ll need to change things.

It’s not too late.

Do it now and your future fluent self will thank you. Probably in the language you’re learning