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.

If you're ready to get started, we recommend that you download the Walkabout Language Learning Action Guide. It will take you step by step through the Daily Cycle. You'll learn how to rate yourself and track your progress. Find out how to choose a mentor, and learn useful tricks to improve your new language. Or, if you want to read more about the Daily Cycle, click on the links below to look at each step 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.

Next step: Get more ideas from Ultimate Language Secrets

Read More in this Series

• Ultimate Language Secrets
• Is Learning a Second Language Just for Fun?
• 10 Tips to Learn a New Language Faster
• How to Get What You Need from Tandem Language Learning
• Overcoming Shyness during Community Language Learning