How Often Should You Study The Language You Are Learning?

The amount of time it will take to learn a language is huge. But I am often asked how often you should study?

The real answer is you should try and study often, and as much as you can. However, you need to recognise your limits and make sure you do not burn yourself out.

Little and often, is the best approach. Keep doing this over the long term and you will see success.

Study The Language Consistently

Being consistent it the key to success. There is no magic amount of time that I can tell you for how often you should be studying.

So long as you are consistent with it you will be fine.

Maybe you can do every day, maybe every couple of days, it doesn’t matter. Just stick to your routine and in the long run, you will reach your goals.

Mastering a language comes down to practice and the more you can practice, the sooner you will get there.

However, as it’s a large task, you need to break it up. If you take lessons every day, they will all add up and you will reach your goal with time. You just need to consistently chip away at the language and put the work in.

Be Realistic With How Often You Can Study A New Language

Making a routine is easy. Being consistent with the routine can also be easy …but only if it is realistic. 

Ive already said that you should try and study often and as much as you can, but you need to be realistic with this.

Just because you have 4 hours free every night after work, doesn’t mean you should be studying for 4 hours every night after work.

This is just not realistic and you will burn out within days at that rate. For some people they actually might be able to handle this, but I know for a lot of people this would be too intense. You will not be able to consistently keep this pace up for long.

If you make a routine that is more realistic, you will be able to keep it consistent.

Try And Study Your New Language Daily

You should try and dedicate some time every single day to your language learning. It doesn’t need to be a lot, even 10 or 15 minutes can be enough.

I find spending this smaller amount of time is totally manageable. You can always learn something in this amount of time. Even if it’s only a few new words or a phrase, that’s still great and being able to dedicate this amount of time is very realistic for everyone.

However, to be honest, doing only 10 minutes a day is going to take you a long time to see real progress in the language. You will find that you need to increase this study time, but as a beginner you will find doing more is too overwhelming.

As you get used to studying and it starts becoming a habit you can put more and more time in each day.

Recapping Is Still Studying

If I am ever too tired, overwhelmed, lazy or just too busy I won’t let this stop me from studying. I can still always find 10 minutes a day to put some work in. This small goal is realistic and I also want to keep it consistent.

The problem is if I am too tired I can’t learn, so what I will do instead is dedicate this small amount of time for recapping something I already know.

It’s always nice to be continually learning new things, but do not worry about always having to be learning, recapping things you already know is actually very important.

I am just the type of person who struggles to learn new things every day.  I get very fatigued and overwhelmed throughout the week. I just can’t take in any new information at times.

This is where daily recapping is perfect. Recapping makes sure I am still practicing my language skills and strengthening them.

When my brain is feeling less tired, I will learn new things. This way no matter how I feel, I am always consistently doing something every day. Obviously I would rather be learning every day, but this isn’t realistic.

You are better to be realistic and consistent. It will take a little longer to get to the goal, but this is totally fine with me. 

Immersion Is ‘Extra’ Study

You should really be including immersion in your daily studies, which means reading or listening to the language.

I don’t really consider this as study, it is a little more passive (although you do need to pay attention),it’s more just trying to use the language and enjoy it and is more like practice than learning new things. Although you will come across plenty new things while doing this.

I probably spend 10 minutes trying to learn some new words or a grammar point, then later on I will try and watch some videos in my target language. In the beginning this may only be another 10 minutes, but like studying, this should increase over time.

You want to be watching or reading material that you can comprehend. This will be pretty basic stuff at the start but being able to understand what is going is really important. You are going to be encountering words and grammar that you have learned and you will see them in action.

(You can read more about – What Is Comprehensible Input In Language Learning?)

Sometimes, Studying Less Can Be More

Although I have just said you should aim to do a little every day, sometimes, less can be more.

This is usually in relation to more intense types of study. For example, if you have dedicated lessons with a tutor, you should try and space these out, especially if you are a beginner.

Your brain needs a little time to digest and absorb everything new you have learned.  (This is exactly why some days I just do recapping and not learning) and intense sessions like this can be really draining.

You can kind of compare it to exercise. If you do a huge weight session your body needs a rest to get over the muscle pain. However, like building muscle, you have to be consistent.

So long as you are studying regularly this will be perfect, you will quickly be able to tell if you are doing too much or too little, and as I said above, you can use the day’s in-between to do some gentle recapping of what you have learned. It’s like stretching out your muscles.

As you progress you may find you can study more often as you need less time to recover from intense sessions so you can adjust how often you study as you go along.

I would still try and immerse everyday. Just watching videos in your language that you can understand should not really be that intense for you, so this is something you can do a lot of.

Create Language Learning Habits

The best way to build consistency for anything is to turn them into habits.

Intergrading learning into your life so it becomes a part of your usual routine is going to ‘normalise’ studying. You will feel strange if you are not doing it. This simple mindset will really help you to keep learning and will make sure you put in enough practice.  

Making your learning a habit is going one of the easiest ways to keep it consistent and as I’ve said, consistency is the key to long term language learning succes. 

(You can read more about – How To Build A Language Learning Habit).

It’s Down To You to Say How Often You Should Study A Language

Language learning is a very Individual process. No two people have the same journey. What works for me might not work for you and vice versa.

The only thing you need to do is find what works for you and do this consistently. Maybe you can handle multiple long lessons a day, or maybe you need to do a lot less. It doesn’t matter.

Just keep pushing yourself and keep trying different things. You will quickly learn what works for you and what is too much. You can always start small and build up your pace. I first started learning French and I could only focus for 10 minutes until my brain was fried. Now I can study it for a few hours and I’ve added Japanese on top, but right now I can handle that for about 30 minutes before I am fatigued, but I know I can build this up over time.

Fluency is not a race, so do not worry about how quickly you will get there. Just keep putting the work in.     

Conclusion

As you can see there is no real answer for how often you should study.

You just need to be realistic and consistent with your efforts. Push yourself as far as you can without burning out and you will start to see some real results after a while. You will need a little patience as it can take a while, you might not be able to go as fast as you want as its easy to get overwhelmed, but you will reach your goals if you keep working at it.