My language learning goals for 2019

I'm ashamed to admit that 2018 was the year that I was utterly, ridiculously lazy about language learning. I graduated in July 2017 and though I did manage to keep up a certain level of fluency in the months after university, I lost the motivation to keep it up once I stopped commuting to London.

The one and only good thing about my long journey to work every day meant that I had time to devote to language practise with podcasts, books and Duo Lingo; sometimes I would even save news articles to my phone to read on the tube if I was feeling particularly keen.

I don't have a proper excuse as to why I fell off the bandwagon - I simply became lazy. However, over the last few weeks, I've bumped into Spanish-speaking people and I've overheard French people chattering away on the Northern line and I finally started to miss using my languages. Living in one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world, I literally have no excuse not to take advantage.

This year, I want to make more of an effort to make friends from other countries and force myself not to revert to English when I struggle. When I first moved to London, I did make friends with some lovely French and Spanish-speaking people, but after a while, I would chicken out and speak in English when it got too difficult to keep up the conversation, which stubborn old me never would've done at university.

To be fair to myself, I left uni exhausted from studying and exam pressure, so I have to say, I did enjoy the break. Now I have the opportunity to get back into the habit for the enjoyment of learning languages, and to make the best use of my skills. 

And so, I've given myself a few goals to work towards in 2019. Nothing too demanding of myself but a few changes none the less. These include:

• Meet regularly with French and Spanish friends and talk fully in the language, no matter how difficult this feels at first
• Pick up Italian again - I started learning basic Italian towards the end of my year abroad 
• Visit French, Spanish and maybe an Italian-speaking place for a holiday to practise (depending on how the money situation pans out this year of course...)

I've tried to create goals which have a feeling of continuity, given that learning a language doesn't work like a checklist. You'll never be 'done' learning because languages are always evolving and changing. Let's see how 2019 goes! 

Thanks for reading! Do you have any language-learning goals for 2019? Perhaps you're thinking about learning a new language or picking up French again for a holiday. Tell me about it in the comments!

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