After taking a couple of weeks off, during the Christmas holiday, from intense language learning, my motivation significantly dropped. And yet, I knew that I needed a motivation revamp. For me, that meant coming up with some new language learning ideas and goals.
Like:
1. Talking exclusively in French, even to my husband, two days a week.
2. Recording my verbal retelling of stories several times a week, then listening to them and writing them out with the corrections I observe, and then having the writing checked by a French speaker.
3. Getting a membership to a workout club where I can attend exercise classes that are instructed in French.
4. Reading furiously at my reading level, not worrying too much about words I don't know but rather surmising their meaning from context.
5. Taking a few verbs per day which I use to build sentences in several different tenses and conjugations.
What are some of your ideas for building up motivation after a period of discouragement?
I love your #3 gym membership idea. How is it going for #1--exclusively in French even with Chris?
ReplyDeleteUsing creative, dumb, silly sentences is very motivating for me.
Laughing a lot--at myself, at the story being told in target language, whatever!
You are so right! Laughing is hugely helpful, it keeps stress levels down and has been a great blessing to us in building deep friendships with French speakers. Giving them the freedom to laugh hard with us when we say stupid things also gives us a better understanding of the social significance some of our errors have.
ReplyDeleteTalking exclusively in French two days a week is actually going well, although sometimes the tension does rise a bit because there are more misunderstandings. But I am sure there will be less over time. It certainly is great for just getting comfortable with expressing all sorts of things that one runs into throughout the day.
Tell me more about your creative, dumb, silly but motivating sentences. Is that how you play around with grammar to see what works?
By creative, dumb, silly, I meant lots of sentences we would come up with in SLA labs. I guess I used them to play around with grammar to see what works, but that's not mainly what I meant. (Hey, great idea!) I just used them for practice. You know, "Goldilocks eats the three bears." hahahaha hilarious laughter breaks out.
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