5 Ways to Turn Negative Habits into Positive Language-Learning Opportunities
By: Mathias Barra
Tags: Inspiration, Language, Learning, Education, Habits

Too many people believe learning a language is about sitting down to study lists of vocabulary, grammar, and tables of conjugation. It can be sometimes, but that’s not it.

Learning a language is about living it. You need to use it to create context and erase the feeling of “foreign-ness” it first has. This means you must make the language a part of your life. A regular one. Just like you’re using your native language daily.

We all have certain bad habits. But what if you could use some of them to transform them into learning opportunities? What if you didn’t have to become a perfect human being to learn a language? I’ve got good news. You, indeed, don’t have to become one.

Watch Netflix With Subtitles

Netflix may be the worst gift for those who plan on being productive. Start one episode of a show and, before you know it, five hours have passed. It may also be the best gift that ever existed for language-learners.

Netflix has subtitles for almost every single video. Use them. Better still, use double subtitles with the Language Learning With Netflix extension. If you’re watching a movie in the language you’re learning, you can set the subtitles to both your target language and your native language.

Even when there aren’t subtitles for your target language, set double subtitles to see a language you think you could be interested in. Even better if the movie itself is in that exotic language. This will tickle your curiosity. It can then have two results:

You’ll want to start learning more about this new language

You’ll be motivated to go learn your original target language, without really knowing why you do.

Both are fine. What matters is that you become even more entranced by language-learning.

(Re-)Play Video Games

I spent 250 hours on Zelda: Breath of the Wild and more than 750 hours on Super Smash Bros Ultimate. That’s just a small glimpse into my geekiness. I love video games and sometimes forget to stop.

Luckily, nowadays, you can change the language of display for pretty much any video game. If you’re learning one of the “main” languages (like ones from Europe or East Asia), almost all games allow changing to them.

If you’re only a beginner in the language and you’re playing an adventure game, try changing the audio to the language you learn and keep the written text in a language you understand. Then, play the game again completely in the language. You’ll struggle but you’ll already know what to do. This will allow you to understand more based on the context. You’ll also remember more.

If you’ve already been learning the language for some time, give yourself a challenge and play it in your target language from the beginning. Take your time and only look up words that seem important or appear a lot. By the time you finish the game, you’ll have improved more than you could have imagined.

Master Cigarette Breaks

If you’re a smoker, you’re bound to be alone for a few minutes, having a cigarette, at least a few times a day. If you’re a heavy smoker, you’ll spend more than 30 minutes alone smoking.

What if, instead of scrolling through Instagram or watching YouTube videos, you were learning words or expressions in your target language? That’s what Anki, a flashcard Spaced-Repetition Software, can do for you.

Anki brings back flashcards just when your brain is about to forget their content. Depending on the size of your deck — or how many you have — one smoke break could be enough to handle it all. As time passes, though, it’ll take a bit more time, thus filling more cigarette breaks.

I’ve been doing this for ten years and this may have been the reason I improved in all my languages. I’m not proud I smoke, but I am proud I’ve used this bad habit to learn more. You could too.

Change Your Social Media Language

If you’re a heavy social media user — who isn’t really? — then this tip might be for you. Switch all your social media platforms to the language you are learning.

Let’s be honest, you barely need to read the interface anymore anyway. After changing the language, your eyes will notice the new language. You had to search how to comment years ago, now you can look at the cell directly and see how it’s said in the language. A few weeks in, you won’t even remember you changed the display language.

You can even start following more people or pages in your target language. That will give you even more opportunities to see the language and potentially interact with it. Follow things that concern your other hobbies and you’ll even be excited!

Polyglot tip: If you learn more than one language — or plan to — set each social media platform to a different language.

Learn Vocabulary With Coffee

If you drink a lot of coffee, you could associate your coffee to expanding your vocabulary. Robin MacPherson always takes a coffee while he learns languages. You can too.

Depending on the time of the day you take your coffee, it could even enhance your memory performance, according to a study published in Frontiers in Psychology.

If you’ve already reached a level high enough to read books — or even graded readers, — associate drinking coffee to improving your language through reading. Make your coffee taste even better by feeding your brain too.

I often drink my morning coffee while reading an article or two in one of the languages I learn. It’s a simple habit. And it’s not like I’ll stop drinking coffee anytime soon so I can be sure I won’t give up.