Sometimes, it’s not enough to just want to learn another language. Often, we’re discouraged to put in the necessary efforts by the smallest things. However, some habits may be of help in keeping your motivation healthy. Studying another language is a long-standing process that requires constant focus and concentration. You can’t just lose your goal and inspiration all the time and hope you’ll learn the language efficiently.
Haitian Creole may not be challenging to learn, but the same idea applies. The same difficulties occur, and you can use the same habits and tactics to elude them. It’s essential to establish routine-based rituals and routines that enforce your learning process regularly. In other words, really care about your habits, and ground them into your daily life.
Flashing cards during waiting times
One of the best habits you can adopt is leaving flashcards somewhere you know you’re spending time every day, and you have some free time to spare. It could be the kitchen, near the toaster, while you wait for the toast to be ready. Or it could be near your microwave while you’re waiting for the food to warm up. Those few extra minutes that you usually waste can be put to good use with flashing cards.
Review sessions are great when learning Haitian Creole, so use them during your day whenever you have the chance. Instead of wasting your time, you’re making the most of it using your trusty flashing cards. Or you could use a language learning app on your phone. Duolingo still hasn’t fully fleshed out its Haitian Creole program, but it’s not too far away. Their app is one of the greatest to use when learning a new language!
Cues, patterns, and rewards
You can form new habits every day, which you can further reinforce, so they become methodical and routine-based. From a point on, they come naturally, and you don’t have to insist any more. For the first weeks, consciously take 3-5 minutes of your day to learn Haitian Creole or review your learning process. Like a ritual, you need to do it consistently, so your brain identifies it as a habit.
Ideally, it would be best to associate the learning habits with outward cues that you interact with daily. Such as the toaster or the microwave we were talking about earlier. At the same time, try rewarding yourself for the extra effort you put in. It’s a form of sacrifice to cram some productivity during your free time, and you may not enjoy it initially. That’s why you need to keep your motivation up with a reward system.
Fortunately, the cue-based habits we talked about have inherent reward systems in them. For instance, while waiting for your toast to finish up, you can review your flashing cards and refresh your memory. When the toast is ready, that’s your reward! You feel as if you truly deserve that toast because you’ve been productive enough during the waiting time.
Discipline and willpower
In the end, it all boils down to two things – discipline and willpower. Without these two, you can’t build any habits or keep your motivation up. Haitian Creole is very similar to French, being a vernacular French language and all that. If you know French, it’ll feel effortless to learn Creole. If you don’t, the process may take a longer time, but there are no shortcuts to good things in life.
If you want something to be quality-done, you need to put effort and time into it. With enough discipline and willpower, we trust you’ll make it!