Whether you've studied for many years or a single month, you'll have experienced the highs and lows of motivation. One day, you're super focused, and everything makes sense! The next day, you're so frustrated by your slow recall that you want to give up.
You're not doomed to this cycle of ups and downs forever! While some days will always be better than others, there are tricks to keeping up your motivation and, in turn, consistency.
These tips not only help you learn at a sustainable pace but can also make your study sessions more effective. Read on for three common motivation problems and how to solve them!
Table of Contents
- Your Spanish Learning Routine
- When You Hit a Plateau
- Maintain Your Studies Long-Term
- Tools That Support Consistent Spanish Learning
Your Spanish Learning Routine
To make real progress with the Spanish language, you need to establish a good study routine. Those vocabulary lists won't learn themselves! Plus, by using a routine to keep your learning consistent, you won't just learn more but also do it faster!
What type of Spanish study routine should you create? A good routine balances two things:
- How much time you can set aside to study
- How quickly you want to make progress
This helps you find a routine that's sustainable and set goals that are achievable. For example, you may want to reach practical fluency in a year. But if you can't set aside 1.5 hours every day, then that's not a reasonable goal. Choose a goal and amount of study that work for you.
Once you've settled on a sustainable amount of time to study per day or per week, you need to decide how to use that time. While studying from a textbook is a classic approach, it works best when combined with other techniques. For ideas on how to use your time, see our full article on creating a Spanish study routine!
When You Hit a Plateau
Even with a fun, effective routine in place, there's one obstacle that can kill your drive – plateauing.
A language learning plateau is when you feel like you're not improving despite studying consistently. It can be very frustrating to feel like you're not making progress and not know why!
How can you overcome a plateau and kickstart your motivation?
The first step is to understand the plateau. Sometimes what feels like a plateau isn't really a plateau at all! The more advanced your Spanish becomes, the harder the next steps are. It may feel like you're not making any progress when, in reality, your progress is good considering the complexity of the subjects you're currently studying.
In addition, when you're studying more advanced Spanish, you have a lot more knowledge to retain than a brand new learner! So it's perfectly understandable that you'll learn at a slower pace, as your brain is also working to retain all its previously studied knowledge.
If, however, you really have hit a wall in your progress, there are many things you can do to get out of the rut. Read our full article on overcoming plateaus to find ideas that work for you.
Maintain Your Studies Long-Term
Now that you've got a good routine and have overcome a plateau or two, what's left to conquer?
Keeping up your motivation long-term.
The more Spanish you learn, the more you'll understand how much you don't know. This feeling can be overwhelming, especially if you feel like you're learning slower and slower.
When these feelings threaten your consistency, how can you fight back? Here are our top two tips:
- Don't measure your progress day to day
- Don't be afraid to change up your routine
When you're months or years into your Spanish learning journey, the day-to-day improvement in your skills can feel small. So don't measure your progress day by day! Instead, use further apart milestones to measure your progress.
And make no mistake, it may feel slow, but you are making progress. So the habits that worked beautifully in month one may not suit you as well a year later. As your skills advance, you'll also need to incorporate new techniques and learning methods into your studies. While it's important to stick to a routine, remember to keep this routine flexible as time goes on.
For more tips and ideas to keep up your motivation long term, see our full article on long-term learning strategies.
Tools That Support Consistent Spanish Learning
Throughout these tips, we've mentioned the power of using the right tools and techniques to learn Spanish. And we know where you can find them—right here!
All of our Spanish learning resources are designed by expert, native Spanish teachers. They've spent their careers helping English speakers master Spanish and have created the best possible lessons and exercises so you can too!
To get started, create your free Progress with Lawless Spanish account now!
