Newsletter 14 - Summer

It's Summer, you might not be on vacation but things have possibly slowed down at the office. Or you are on vacation and still you're reading this newsletter, which is amazing.

This is a great opportunity for you to set yourself some goals for your language learning.

But before you set yourself some goals, think about your vision:

• What do you want and why?

• What would you like to see happen?

• Why is it important for you?

In coaching this is the only time I would ask a "why" question.

If you go deep into why you want to learn, improve, or learn a language then the HOW will be easy to put in place.

The more precise your vision, the easier it is to put in place the actions you need to take in order for that vision to become a reality.

Not sure what I mean by vision? There are different ways of figuring it out: 

• Work with a coach (Me of course)

• Close your eyes and literally envision the perfect situation.

• Make a list of why it's important to you. Write what you feel or how you feel. Maybe you will only write "because I have to? for work". Then “why?”, why do you need this for work ? “because my boss told me”, “why does your boss want you to improve your English?”

Here's a real life example:

I'm in Greece right now and I can't talk to the owners of the place where I'm staying. They are so nice, smiling, and trying to connect and I can't do anything other than smile and say “good morning”, “good evening”, “excuse me” and “thank you very much”. It's frustrating, I admit.

My vision is that when I'm back in Greece in a couple of months I can have a (very) basic conversation? WHY?

• Because it will make me feel better

• Because I love to connect with people

• Because I’ve been coming to Greece for a few years and it's about time!

• Because it’s fun, I have fun learning languages

• Because it’s so good for my brain!!

Now I have this down,  I can go into my HOWs:

• How will I do that? I’ll start writing the most useful sentences for me in a situation like this

• How will I reach that goal? By being very consistent

• What actions am I going to put in place? I have an app I love (Language Transfer). And if I have a more specific question, I can ask my friend Elli ;-)

• When am I going to start, how many minutes a day? I’m going to start today, for about 8 minutes (that’s how long the lesson is on my app

• When during the day? Good question – I need to think about this or observe my day and note when it makes sense

• What habit can I put in place? My app every day and a new expression every 3 days

Sounds like a lot? It's not. I'm not going to spend more than 5 to 8 minutes a day on this.

And most importantly, it's summer, make it light, make it fun, make it something you don't mind doing every day. Don't make it tedious.