Without the day’s noisy distractions, these hours can be pure gold for learners. Consider every minute of the day prime time for language study, and that includes your nighttime hours, too. I know do my homework a number of language learners who adhere to the technique of listening to languages while they’re sleeping. Play music, turn on some lessons or let the foreign-language films play while you rest.
One way to achieve this goal is to create a private learning space in your home. You’ll also need a specific time of day that you’ll devote to studying. That will make your brain ready to accept the information it gets, so you’ll notice you’re starting to learn much faster by the day. Treat learning a new language differently than you would studying for an exam. There are more effective ways to memorize information that improve the likeliness of long-term learning, such as spaced repetition software .
Of course, you won’t be able to do all of these things in one sitting. But each time you review the topic, use a different resource or method – you’ll learn faster this way. Your sleep may be ineffective, you may have too much stress, or you probably don’t understand or know the material. Or, your eyesight may be poor and you need more light or even spectacles. Another possibility is that the reading work is hard and you get tired trying to understand the concepts — that is normal for most people, you just have to take breaks and keep trying. If you are a visual learner, you learn by reading or seeing pictures.
I therefore put off studying embryology and got lower practise test scores. Once I knew my scores were lower I planned a few days diving into the topic and doing focused practise questions. Amazingly not only did I realise that it wasn’t that hard after all but I actually found it really interesting and it helped me to better understand certain diseases and how to manage them. My perception and bias that embryology was hard was a limiting belief and I should have attacked it head on earlier. If there are certain areas of whatever you are learning that you don’t enjoy as much or you find hard challenge your assumptions and attack them first. Finally, it means you’ll be slower today, but 20 times faster two weeks from now.
Try to remember that learning is a process, and no one is born understanding difficult subjects, like math. Try to focus on small goals and the progress you’ve made so far instead of getting overwhelmed because you don’t know everything yet. Making slight adjustments while learning helps you pick it up quicker.