I often get asked how I fit my language learning into my life, and how much should you practice. I’ve made previous posts about this topic…and this post will be about how to actually plan out a schedule!

I’m learning 9 languages right now, which can be a lot to fit into a week.

This was my old schedule when I was learning 7 languages, over the past few years:

French- daily

Spanish- almost daily

Italian- once a week

Chinese- small amounts almost daily, and then a bigger practice once a week

Polish- I tried to practice once a week, but it didn’t always happen

Icelandic- I tried to practice once a week, but it didn’t always happen

ASL- I practiced when I felt like it/had time

So I would make time in the mornings and evenings to practice, and often multitask. Listen to a podcast while washing the dishes, for example. With 7 days in a week, I usually hit my goals for the amount of practice that I wanted to reach. But of course there were weeks where this didn’t work out. I was using a language habit tracker with a weekly set-up only. When I don’t have a trip or specific project/test coming up, I don’t tend to create monthly or yearly objectives for myself.

Now that I’ve added German and Japanese, I’ve decided to revamp my language learning schedule. There aren’t 9 days in the week, so I had to make a decision to double up on certain days, or to spread out my schedule. I chose to spread things out! I think this will be a more relaxing set-up and more kind to me, because if I don’t get to all of my practice sessions in a week, I’ll keep that in mind for the next week to try to catch up. Here’s my new schedule:

French- daily

Spanish- almost daily

Italian- once a week

Chinese- small amounts daily, and then a bigger practice once a week

Polish- this is now bi-weekly, but I’m watching youtube videos when I feel like it, so I’m keeping in touch even on weeks when I’m not sitting down to do a bigger practice

Icelandic- this is now bi-weekly, but I’m watching youtube videos when I feel like it, so I’m keeping in touch even on weeks when I’m not sitting down to do a bigger practice

German- this is technically bi-weekly now. But since it’s a new language, I am more excited to be starting to learn it, so I have been learning little bits here and there too.

Japanese- this is technically bi-weekly now. But since it’s a new language, I am more excited to be starting to learn it, so I have been learning little bits here and there too.

ASL- I now have a goal to do 1-2 practices a month, to make sure that I am still learning it little by little. This way, hopefully I’ll have more accountability. Compared to before, when I just practiced when I felt like it.

I’m also creating a monthly schedule in my tracker, before each month’s weekly spreads. This way, I have a general idea of which weeks I should be working on which languages, and it reminds me to stick to my bi-weekly schedule for my lower-priority languages.

I hope this gives you some insight into how to plan out your language learning schedule! So far so good for me- I started my new schedule in January. It’s almost the end of the month, and I’ve been able to keep up with my language learning the way that I’d like to.

À bientôt xx