Incorporating a foreign language into your daily life

The topic of this post is incorporating a new language into your daily life. When you don't have a friend, a colleague or someone else who speaks the language of your interest, maintaining a foreign language can be quite difficult. Below I have explained some simple and advanced techniques to take a your skills to another level.

The 'sticky notes' technique;
This is a perfect technique for those who live by themselves. You write words on a sticky notes in the language you are learning and paste them all around the house. For example you can make notes for doors like; bathroom, toilet and bedroom. But the possibilities do not stop there, they are endless. You can basically stick the notes onto everything, the more sticky notes you have in your house, obviously the more you learn. I do admit this can look a little weird to your friends and family but it's for good cause right?

Shopping;
There's a lot to learn with this simple daily task. You can make shopping lists in the language of your interest and you will learn not only many nouns but also counters!Try to name the items you see when you are outside. If you don't know the word, write it down in English and look it up later. This method is not too challenging but adds some fun in the study process (which can be quite boring sometimes ). When you get home you can apply the 'sticky notes technique' and label all your bought items. While labelling the items you can even write down expiry dates or  the country of origin (for fruits).

For the die-hards;
This is for the people who really want to take a language to the next level. Adjust your phone settings to your chosen foreign language. This will be really challenging because you will experience a lot of head scratching situations, but you can learn so many new words! Just put a shortcut somewhere on your device which links to Google Translate and don't forget to write down how to put the settings back to normal.

Find native people to talk with;
If you have access to the internet you have access to people. Finding study buddies or native speakers is easier than it might seem. If you don't know how to take the first step I recommend you to read my blogpost here. I explained two easy ways to find native speakers and study buddies in that post.


Good luck!

~Mei mei

I wish we had more Japanese snacks in Europe