Like many of you, I find learning a language to be a hobby, a challenge, a marathon, and a puzzle all wrapped up into one adventure. Between connecting with different culutres and people or learning the history of the speakers, the rewards seem to be endless.
I’ve recently set out with a goal of becoming a english tutor. I hope to help those learning english feel welcome and support their journey. I have recently finished an online TEFL course and learned alot. I now feel better equiped to learn a language now that I understood more of the principles and techniques for teaching my native language.
I had been learning german for quite some time. I took it for three semesters in college and enjoyed passivly learing it in my free time through podcasts like EasyGerman, or t.v. shows like Kleo, and music such as Die Toten Hosen and Santiano. However, I decided I wanted to lean into my Spanish journey. I had taken one semester of it in college as an elective (it didn’t require papers or large projects or midterms). I decided to try and create a weekly routine that wasn’t too demanding, allowed for passive learning, and didn’t keep me stuck in one mode of learning. I figured myself an A1/A2 level and thought that I should make my first goal to reach a B1 level as defined by the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR).
Below, I’ve attached my plan below for 8 weeks of atleast 1 scheduled hour of learning a day. The main goal for these first 8 weeks is to add a more structed learning schedule that is outside of a college course. Next, I hope to find what works, what doesn’t work, and where are some key areas of my Spanish knoweldge that needs more attention.
Weekly Plan
| Day | Task | Skill Type |
| Monday | Learn 50 new vocabulary words with article, example sentence, and meaning | Receptive (Reading) + Vocabulary |
| Tuesday | Record yourself reading all 50 sentences aloud | Productive (Speaking) |
| Wednesday | Write 50 sentences using vocab + listen to story in Spanish only | Productive (Writing) |
| Thursday | Write short story (50 sentences) including the week’s vocabulary | Productive (Writing) |
| Friday | Record yourself narrating the full story out loud (or perform it). Do this 2-3 times. | Productive (Speaking) |
| Saturday | Passive: listen to podcasts, music, watch content, review flashcards | Receptive (Listening or Reading) |
| Sunday | Optional: same as Saturday OR reflection journal / vocab review | Mixed (Optional) |
Here’s how I found the first 2 weeks
The first two weeks suprised me in how accessible this weekly plan was. I thought that it would be difficult to complete the activities to work on the skill types each day. And in some cases it was, however, I mostly found it quite doable and it inspired me to do even a little bit more learning outside of this schedule. I believe the key was to ensure that I did some sort of practice, even for just 10-15 minutes, in the morning before I left for work for the day. That made it much easier to come home and do another session or two of spanish in the evening. If I waited until the end of the day to do the full hour, it was quite difficult to find the motivation. Like anything, proper time management and minimizing procrastination is key.
With that said, I have found personalizing my language learning as much as possible quite helpful in keeping an interest. If you’re constantly trying to understand what other people are saying, or what other people are telling you to understand, it can be difficult to maintain interest. Especially when you don’t undertand all the material. During these first 8 weeks, I am developing topics each week that I want to learn vocabulary and phrases for. I then turn these phrases into short stories to help myself visualize the phrases learned. As I become more proficient, I aim to make the stories more interesting, more in-depth, and more complex.
Moving forward, I will break down each day throughout this plan and further describe what my weekly TL is, the activities to learn this target language, and what I would change with my plan in the future. Thank you for reading and I wish you the best of luck with your language learining journey!
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