Rest Days and Language Learning
For all sorts of reasons, there will likely be days when you just don’t feel like spending time learning a language. The important thing to remember is that, if you don’t do any that day - or even that week - you shouldn’t worry, and certainly shouldn’t be angry with yourself.
Life’s not easy, even when it’s going well. If you need a day to switch off from everything, or if you need a day in front of the telly with a takeaway, that’s fine. Catalan, Hindi, Turkish, whichever language you’re learning, can wait. If you start laying in to yourself for not spending time on a given day, you’ll stop enjoying the process.
If you find for whatever reason you haven’t been able to do any for a few weeks or months, don’t worry, you can come back to it. Of course, the more consistent you can be, the better, but your health comes first, and if that entails taking the time to rest or focus on other things, that’s what you should do.
Fortunately, you may find the resources you immerse in so enjoyable they’ll actually become a part of the times when you need to unwind. You may want to watch a Dutch or Vietnamese series with your takeaway, and you may even find listening to Greek or Italian radio on the way to work helps you switch off from the pressures of the day ahead. You may find talking to Spanish speakers an enjoyable way of detaching yourself from the stresses of daily life.
Active study will likely be quite hard on days when you need to unwind. You might find it an ideal distraction, but if you’d find it arduous when you’re needing to relax, by all means give it a miss that day. If possible, have a quick read of the sentences collected from a previous day, and practice saying them aloud, and leave it at that. But even if this feels too much on a given day, don’t worry about it. Just focus on unwinding. If this happens to be with a Korean film, grand, but it doesn’t matter if it isn’t. The most important thing is you look after yourself - first and foremost because you deserve to, but also because it will help you to learn a language in the long run.
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Red Panda by Sonny Ravesteijn on Unsplash
