How to Actually Learn a New Language in 2022 (month-to-month guide)

“This year I will finally learn Spanish”. That's something we hear constantly at the start of every new year. A lot of new users sign up for our language course with the best intentions. They have an amazing new year's resolution: they are going to learn a new language. We think that's absolutely awesome. But the problem is that many of them will give up after a few weeks and forget most of what they've learned. Please don’t let this happen to you. The start of a new year can be used as a source of motivation, but you need the right mindset and techniques to actually make your goal happen. Here’s a month-to-month guide that will show you how to finally get it done this year.

January - Find a Good Course & Form a Habit

Find a Good Course. The first step to learning a new language will be to discover how you will learn it. You need to follow some kind of course, method or plan. The method you choose will affect your entire learning process, so make sure to take the time necessary to do your research. Finding a course that fits your learning style is essential. The OUINO method is a great option, but you can use any method or course that's complete enough to take you to a point where you can easily learn from things you enjoy. A good course will teach you everything you need to become independent in the language you want to learn. Once you have a good course, we need to start forming a language-learning habit.

Form a Habit. This is the number one thing that will determine if you fail or succeed in the coming weeks. You need to create a sustainable routine. Make sure this new routine can realistically fit your lifestyle. It's better to make smaller, but sustainable changes, than to turn your life completely upside down and give up after a few weeks. It should be a marathon, not a sprint. You'll see that weeks add up fairly quickly.

Try to make small, but sustainable changes. It should be a marathon, not a sprint.

Make sure to be particularly consistent for the entire month. It will be harder in the first few weeks, but once a habit is formed, language learning will become an integrated part of your life. Try to find a time of day that fits well in your schedule. Base your learning activities around the same time. Try to associate learning activities with aspects of your life that are already part of your existing routine. For example, you may want to study for 30 minutes before breakfast, listen to audio books on your way to work, or watch 20 minutes of television after dinner. If you associate learning activities with things that are already part of your life, it will eventually start to feel strange not to do them. Your first month should be all about forming a habit.

February-March - Knowledge Building.

Now that you've found a great course to follow and have started to form a learning habit, it's time to focus on building your knowledge. For the next two months, you will spend most of your time working through your language course. Before language immersion and exposure can be truly beneficial, you need to learn the basics. The language is still a mystery to you. You need to get out of that difficult beginner stage. It's a lot to take in at first. This is the period where you will probably doubt that you'll ever be able to speak this language, but if you stick to your established routine, you'll see that it pays off in a big way.

April-May - Knowledge Building + Entertainment.

After three months of knowledge building, you are no longer a complete beginner. The language should start making a bit more sense to you. This is where comprehensible input comes in. At this point, you need to continue learning some theory with your core method, but you should also start adding more entertainment and external sources into the mix. Make the language part of your life in many ways. Find simple picture books, or children television shows in the language you’re learning. Start listening to audiobooks during your commute.

All these things will reinforce what you have learned so far. Memory has a way of fading if things are not reinforced. When you hear the words you've learned over and over in different ways, they will become fossilized in your brain. People often wonder why they are having trouble remembering the words they've learned. There's a very simple answer to that: they haven't heard it enough! How many times have you heard the English word for "green" in your lifetime? Thousands! Plus, dipping your toes in the language outside of your learning method will increase your interest for the language. This will help you stay motivated throughout the year.

June - Keep Your Schedule and Start Speaking.

After about 5 months, you should start feeling more comfortable with the language. This is a good time to see how much progress you've made. Have at least one 30-minute spoken conversation in the month of June. This is a big step in your language-learning journey. Having your first conversation in a new language can be very stressful, but it doesn't have to be. Don’t put too much pressure on yourself. Try to have fun and have a good sense of humor about it.

Many people actually surprise themselves with their skills! It is extremely satisfying to finally be able to speak the language in real life. Yes, you will struggle to find your words, but you will be speaking a new freakin' language! A language you knew nothing about only a few months ago. Be proud of yourself. If you don’t have anyone to speak with, you can easily find people online on websites like italki.com.

July-August-September - Time to Step Things Up.

As you learn a new language, the time you spend with it becomes less difficult. You won't need to concentrate as much to understand and learn new words from context. It won't be nearly as draining to spend time with the language. Over the summer, you should slowly start increasing the amount of time you spend with the language. There are many things you can do in your daily life. You can change the language of your phone, write notes or lists to yourself, watch more television, think in that language, and even speak to yourself out loud whenever you have the chance.

Many activities you do in your native language can be changed to be done in the language you are learning. Simple, little things really do add up and will help you progress quickly and without much effort. You don’t need to go crazy and change everything in your life, but the more you include the language in your life at this point, the more progress you will make by the end of the year. Try to include a few conversations in your learning schedule whenever you can. You need to live and breathe the language.

October-November - Focus on Your Weaknesses.

After learning a new language for several months, you will become aware that some aspects are more challenging for you. You can spend the next two months focusing on your weaknesses. For example, if you are having trouble understanding native speakers when they speak at full speed, try to spend more time listening to the language any chance you get. If you are learning the language to be proficient in a particular field, you should start consuming material related to that field. A language is an incredibly wide subject, and by focusing on your individual goals and ignoring things that are irrelevant, you will make a lot more progress.

December - Keep Learning and Think about the Future.

The year is almost over, but it's not the end of the road. Not even close. Learn to have fun and start thinking about what is coming next. Far too often, people put a timeline on language learning. The fact is, you are never truly done learning a language. Notice and enjoy the tiny amount of progress you make every single day. We often say that learning a language is not like building a house; there is no real completion to it, you’ll only constantly get better. But after a year of study, the process becomes a lot more natural. It is simply a matter of making the language part of your life whenever you can. It will be much more casual. Just make sure your freshly learned language doesn’t completely get ignored next year.

Once you reach a conversational level in a language, it becomes part of you. Each time you have a conversation, watch television, read, or do any other activity in that language, it will become a tiny bit stronger, for the rest of your life. Enjoy it, take advantage of it and for the love of languages, please never stop using it. If you are looking for an amazing language-learning method that will give you a solid foundation in French, Spanish, Italian and German. You will love our language-learning program. You need to check it out. You can find us at OUINO.com. Thanks a lot! :)