One of my favourite things about this time of year is the same “Woah! Where did the year go?!” conversations that happen every year. I love reflecting and thinking about what’s happened. This year, I’ve mixed things up for languages and so I’m sharing 10 things I did differently for language learning in 2015.

Set study time each day

My old routine used to allow for a busy working week with the odd bit of Memrise et al followed by a mega language learning session on the weekends – sometimes lasting the best part of 2 days!

This worked well when I was studying for my degree and had assignments to do, but this year I changed things up a bit and instead gave myself an extra hour before starting work in the morning to fit in my language study each day.

Not only do I not get burnt out so easily or run the risk of missing one session and consequently going two weeks without study time, but I also feel more satisfied in finding time for something I love each day.

Will I do it next year?

Absolutely! Having that daily time that is set aside for language learning keeps me happy, helps me progress quicker, and is now part of my routine so there’s no chance of it going anywhere next year.

Went to meet ups in real life

We used to live between two small towns with a significant lack of hip and happening social activities.

When we moved to Milton Keynes, I knew there must be something out there for language learners. I found a couple of groups on Meetup.com and have been to the Spanish one numerous times.

I’ve found it really great to meet people in real life and practise my Spanish. I just wish there were more opportunities close by for other languages.

Will I do it next year?

Yup! I hope to continue going to the Spanish meet up when I can and look into the French one too. Who knows – I might even start my own for speakers of any language…watch this space!

Focused on one language at a time (more or less!)

2014 was a mixed year for me in terms of languages.

I had French and German on the go with my Open University studies and picked up Portuguese, Dutch, and Japanese on my own. At the busiest point, I had 4 languages on the go.

That sounds kind of crazy! But to be honest, I do love that.

However, I knew that 2015 had to be serious business with my final year of university study so I opted to focus on perfecting my Spanish and nailing my last course (Which I did. Distinction, baby!) and restarted Japanese again on its own later in the year.

Will I do it next year?

So, here’s the deal. Focusing on just one language at a time is HARD for me.

I’ve got lots of languages I want to venture into in 2016 and they’re all ones that I’m happy to get to just a basic level with. So I’m going to dabble. Not tooooo much focus on just one language next year for me.

Satisfied my language wanderlust

Knowing what I’ve just told you, I wanted to find a way to satisfy my language wanderlust without jeopardising my Spanish grade.

That’s why I did the Language Script Challenge.

It worked! I normally find focusing on just one language hard – after all I’ve been studying at least 2 simultaneously since I was 13.

Language wanderlust in 2015? Well and truly satisfied.

Will I do it next year?

Of course! As I mentioned, next year will be more of a dabbling year, exploring new languages, going a little deeper than I have with the Language Script Challenge but nothing too serious. I think I’ll be happy with that.

Didn’t force it

One New Year’s resolution I set myself was to listen to at least 3 hours of foreign language radio each day. This didn’t quite happen.

But I’m ok with that.

If you don’t want to do something, don’t force it. The worst thing that can become attached to language learning is a negative feeling of boredom, frustration, or annoyance. Boo.

I didn’t want that. So if I wasn’t in the mood for it one day, I’d try listening to foreign music or just plain old English music instead to get my work done.

Will I do it next year?

Yes and no. Towards the end of the year, I found myself feeling that I wasn’t doing enough passive listening.

Now I’ve found a solution that works for me. I listen to the short daily NHK World news podcasts in different languages in the morning when I’m working.

Once I’ve cleared my unplayed podcast list, I consider myself free to listen to whatever I please. It works. So I’m going to stick with this for now.

Shared more active progress

Instagram and Snapchat have been so good for this.

I regularly share snippets of my daily language learning on both platforms and find it helps to keep me going.

Instagram has a great positive community of people who will help you when you make mistakes. Snapchat doesn’t have comments so you can make as many mistakes as you need without running the risk of a “What the heck?! You sound rubbish speaking that language!” onslaught. Phew.

Will I do it next year?

Indeed! I’ve been slacking a lot lately on Snapchat but I am planning to get back to it more in the New Year as I’ve found it a great tool to speak pressure free throughout the day.

I’ll be sharing exactly how I use Snapchat for language learning in January – look out for that one!

No language exchange

I used to have regular language exchanges with a Spanish partner and even a German and Dutch partner at one point.

Moving house and lack of Internet put these things way out of schedule!

And, for whatever reason they never really made their way back in.

Will I do it next year?

I think language exchange is a great way to regularly practise speaking the language you’re learning but right now I can’t see it fitting in with my schedule.

I have been using HelloTalk and Tandem to get some text and voice language exchange but not in real-time. This suits me right now so I’ll stick with this as we go into 2016.

Weekly writing tasks

As part of my additional studies for my Spanish university course, I blogged weekly right here!

Sometimes they were teeny tiny blogs, sometimes they were discovery, but they were always in Spanish.

Writing is often a neglected skill from language learning (understandably given our modern day needs and tech we now have to “write” for us!) but I knew that it was something I wanted to spend some time doing. So I did.

Will I do it next year?

I enjoyed it. In fact, I now write my own sentences pretty much every day for Japanese. Although I’m not yet at the stage when I could write a whole blog post in Japanese, I do enjoy the creative aspect of writing my own sentences.

I don’t think I’ll start blogging multilingually but I’ll definitely write more in my notebooks.

Set monthly goals

In January, I knew I wanted to share my personal language goals with you here on the blog and so decided to start a monthly blog update sharing my progress of the last month and looking forward to the next month’s goals.

Half way through the year, this became Clear The List as I joined Esther of Local Adventurer, Mariah of Food, Booze and Baggage, and Shannon of Eurolinguiste to co-host my first blog link-up.

It’s fun!

I love reading your monthly goal-setting posts and have found that setting myself goals on a monthly basis helps me to get stuff done too.

Will I do it next year?

Absolutely! You can too. Join us? Look out for the next Clear The List post and if you blog, check the instructions at the bottom of my post for details on how to join in.

Regularly reviewed my progress

As part of Clear The List, I’ve also looked backwards to consider how things went in the previous month.

Reviewing where I am with my languages on a monthly basis is really productive and helps me to realign and stay motivated each month. Yay!

Will I do it next year?

You bet! I’ll continue to review my progress each month as part of Clear The List.

It’s been a great year for language learning for me and I can’t wait to take what I’ve learnt into 2016 and share everything I learn with you. Yay!

What has been different for you this year? Will you continue with it next year? Share in the comments!