Foreign Language Course: The Daily Cycle

1. You’ve set some goals,
2. You’ve recruited a mentor (or two),
3. Now you are ready to start practice.

Use this five-step learning cycle over and over to learn precisely what you need to know when you need it. You might think of it as the “just in time” approach to language learning.

The language learning steps are: Decide what you want to learn this week. Do you need to be able to buy stamps, buy groceries, or talk about daily events during fika? Explain to your mentor what you want to learn and ask him to prepare a dialog in his language.

Using drills and role playing, practice until the dialog rolls smoothly off your tongue. Then communicate, using the dialog in real life situations. For example, go to the post office and buy stamps. The final step is to evaluate how the communication went, rework the dialog if necessary, and check your progress. Let us look at each step of in depth.

Step 1: Decide what you want to learn.

Step 2: Prepare a dialog.

Step 3: Practice your dialog.

Step 4: Communicate using the dialog in real-life situations.

Step 5: Evaluate how the communication went.


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