Why Should You Spread Out Your Language Learning Throughout The Day?

Learning a language is a long and slow process. You will need to show up every day and put the work in.

This can be tough and it’s made worse by most people trying to set a block of time aside so they can sit down and study. This can be great at times, but it can be hard to always find this time and even harder to stick to it over the long run. 

It can actually be easier and more effective to spread your study out throughout the day. It can seem a little strange at first but it really does work and I will go through some of the great benefits you will get from studying like this.

There Is Less Time Between Study Sessions

One the best parts about breaking your study down into smaller session is that you will now have less time in between each session.

A lot of people think this is bad, but it’s actually not. Think back to school when you had language classes. There was usually a few days in between.

Do you remember that feeling of having to sort of remember what happened in the last class and everything was a little blurry at the start. This was simply as there too large a gap between your sessions and it usually took a few minutes to sort of adjust your mind back into the language.

You could also compare it to riding a bike. If you have not done this in a while, you will still remember, but you are going to be a little wobbly for a minute until you get comfortable again. If you are riding a bike every day, you don’t get this; you just ride it normally right away.

Having less time between sessions keeps everything fresher in your mind, so you have less that blurry feeling and don’t really have to readjust yourself back into the language again. 

It’s Better For Your Memory

When you learn something new, you will pretty much forget 90% of it within a few days. However, if you come back to the same information again not long after, you are less likely to forget it.

This is exactly how SRS systems (Spaced Repetitions Systems) like Anki work. They purposely try and show you flash cards within a certain time to make sure you don’t forget them.

Breaking up your study throughout your day is basically taking this to the next level and really making sure you are getting constant exposure to what you are trying to learn, so it’s less likely to slip away.

If you only study once a day, there is 24 hours between your sessions and while that is much better than studying once a week for example, it’s still a long time. You probably will still remember a lot, but there is still enough time for things to slip away.

If you are looking at your language every couple of hours, even if it is for a short amount of time, you are still getting that increased exposure. This is going to help you to remember things better, since it’s only been a few hours since you last had contact with the language.

It’s like you are constantly topping yourself up though the day and making sure your memory doesn’t fully dry out in between sessions.  

It Is Easier To Stay Motivated

Staying motivated while studying a language can be hard. Sitting down and trying to focus on a language when your life is busy and stressful is not fun.

If you have set an hour aside in the evening to study, it will take a lot of effort to make that actually happen after coming home from a long day at work. You will want to just relax instead and it can be too tempting to just skip that session. If you do this enough times, you will give up learning all together.

Break your session up into smaller pieces fixes this problem as the task will seem far less intimidating. Doing a quick 10 minute flash card review is easy, it’s short and simple, you can just smash it out and get back to whatever you were doing.

Of course you have to do multiple of these little sessions, but when they are a few hours apart it’s really not a problem.

I do this daily and it’s very easy to put an hour’s study in without even realising as it’s intermingled throughout the day. 

I just have a list of little tasks I need to do and by the end of the day I’ve seamlessly got everything done and studied an hour without even realising.

(You can read more about – How To Stay Motivated In Language Learning)

It Makes The Language A Part of Your Life

I imagine some of the reason you want to learn a language is so that you can just use it daily. You can just switch between languages as you want, and that is exactly what you should be doing.

If you treat your language like some separate activity, it will never become part of your life. Having an hour set aside a day makes it seem like this very separate task. You have your life, and then you have this hour block outside of it.

This is why making the sessions smaller is better, it makes slipping the language into your life really easy.

In the morning you can read the news for 10 minutes …in your target language and then maybe at lunch time you go social media during your lunch break …in your target language. You want to listen to a podcast on your way home …do it in your target language.

you can very quickly see how these activates are just things you would do anyway as they are part of your life, so switching them into your target language will kill two birds with one stone. You are just living and using the language.

Don’t wait to get good at your language to do this, you can do it now, and as you get better, it will get easier.

When I did this it really changed how I seen the language. It was no longer something I was just trying to study and became so much more. It became a part of my life.

(You can read more about – How To Make Your Language Learning Study A Habit)

Smaller Sessions Avoids Burnout

Smaller sessions actually make it less likely that you will get burnt out. I found trying to sit for a solid hour was too much for me as a beginner. After 20 minutes my brain was maxed out and I was basically unable to take any more in.

The smaller sessions totally changed this. I would focus for 10 minutes and then would have an hour to rest and recover before going again. At the end of day I had done an hour, but it was a full hour …not the 20 minutes of good focus on 40 minutes of nothingness that I had been suffering from before.

I know some of you like to get into a flow state and you can get a lot done. If you can do this, go for it. This is also something you should try and build up to. Now I can study a full hour no problem. I have built up the stamina, but if you struggle with this, smaller sessions will save you from the mental exhaustion and overload.

(You can read more about – How To Prevent Burnout When Learning A Language)

You Will End Up Doing More

I have genuinely ended up doing more every day because I spread it.

As I’ve already mentioned, doing blocks of study would cause my brain to just melt by the end. I was exhausted and an hour was a real struggle for me.

As soon as I split things up an hour was easy. It just got intermingled with my day and I’d often get to the early evening and realise I had achieved everything I needed to, but I still had plenty of time and energy to do more …so I would.

There was no stress at this point, I had done all I needed to so it didn’t matter if I did 2 minutes more or 2 hours, it was all a bonus at this point.

Most times I just did a little bit more immersion, but all those extra minutes extra every night all added up and I know I reached my overall goals faster as I was doing more each day.

It’s quite strange how doing smaller sessions adds to up more, but it really does.  

It’s Easy To Study This Way

It doesn’t really matter what your study plan is, you can easily study this way. Even if you wanted to do a solid hour, there is no reason why you can’t split that up and as I said above it will probably help you focus for longer since the sessions are shorter.

Most people study in a way that involves multiple things, such as little reading practice, a little writing practice and so on. This makes it even easier as everything is naturally split already.

Even if you are doing immersion, just space your videos out throughout the day, or do your anki cards and then your immersion later.

There really is nothing difficult about setting your day up in this way. Everything will fall into place very easily. Some of you may need a little list to tick off for the first few days, but pretty quickly you will get into a routine and will find it easy to remember what needs done and when.

Conclusion

Hopefully now you can see the benefits of breaking your study up throughout your day. It really can change how much progress you are able to make.

If you are not already doing this you should give it a try, I think after a few days you will agree that it is a better way to go about things and it will be something you want to stick to long term.

If you want to know how to actually do this, you can read – How To Use Your New Language Throughout Your Day