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    • 2 min read

Things I sooo wish I’d known about learning a foreign language

If you're here, I'm assuming you're trying to learn English. Has it been frustrating?


🇫🇷 Some years ago, I spent several years diligently trying to learn French, but now I can’t say a thing. I spent hours every single day doing my homework and prepping, but I have nothing to show for it. 🤯


In the last few months, I’ve been learning Spanish, and I can already talk about myself, my family, talk about different professions, the weather, and a bunch of other things. It’s going well! 🤓 🇲🇽


So how can this be? Why such a huge difference?


Doing something is not the same thing as doing what needs to be done. Back when I was attempting to learn French, I was studying hard, not smart. 


My goal with this series of posts is to help you avoid common mistakes when learning English (and other languages), potentially saving you years of effort.


The image shows a woman in an office setting, kneeling on a desk while placing colorful sticky notes on a large window that overlooks a cityscape. The sticky notes, which cover much of the window, are in various bright colors like orange, red, and green. The city view outside suggests a high-rise building with a bustling urban environment. The scene portrays a dynamic and creative work environment, possibly related to brainstorming, planning, or organizing ideas.

"My memory sucks!"


When you learn something, you practice it, and soon after, you forget it. I used to think that I just had a terrible memory. The reality is that if you forget something soon after you learn it, your memory is completely normal.


It usually takes a lot more than just learning something and practicing it once to remember it long-term. If you learn that your friend is getting married or has lost their job, you will probably remember it after the first time you hear it because this may have a huge emotional impact on you. But if you learn a grammar rule or a lexical chunk (=phrase), it’s highly unlikely that you will remember it after the first time working on it. Soon you’re going to forget it.


The image shows a depiction of a black hole in space, with stars scattered across the background. In the center of the black hole, a page of text is being sucked in. The text on the image humorously labels the black hole as "a black hole" and the text being pulled in as "the stuff you learned in your English lessons." The overall concept plays on the idea of knowledge being lost or forgotten, with the black hole symbolizing the place where learned information disappears.

Does this mean that there’s nothing we can do, and we’re just going to forget everything we learn?


The good news is that that’s not the case. You need to practice something again, and again, and again, in new ways, and the gap between practice sessions should increase.


So learn something today and practice it. Struggle with it. Work on it again tomorrow. Then in a few days, then in a week, then in a few weeks, then in a couple months. Over time, it will stick.


Knowing that it's completely normal to forget means you can and should adjust the way you study. You need to take into account the absolutely normal way your brain creates long-term memory.


Stay tuned for my next posts where I'll share more evidence-based information on how you can learn English more efficiently. God I wish I'd known all of this years ago when I started learning foreign languages! 😅


Teacher Tina from SpeakEnglish2day.com

Tina is a professional English Teacher with a Cambridge education and 10+ years of teaching English to adults in-person and online.


She wants you and English learners like you to develop a solid understanding of what you need to do to start speaking better English faster (and not fall for English-in-a-month scams).


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