This year, I'm studying
a different language
every month of the year.
Keep watching to find out
why I'm doing this challenge,
how I'm doing it,
what I expect to happen
and what I've already learned so far.
If you're new here, hi, my name is Jamie.
I'm a language coach
and my specialty is helping
online language learners
figure out how to learn their language
in a way that makes them
happy and successful.
So if that sounds good to you,
make sure you subscribe
and hit the bell to be notified
when I post a new
no BS video just for language learners.
Why am I doing this challenge?
Why would I set myself up
to study a different language
every single month? I have a few reasons.
The first reason is based on a pattern
that I see a lot of language
learners do like constantly,
and that is that we put way
too much pressure on ourselves.
So while it may sound
like studying a different language
every month puts
a lot of pressure on myself,
it's actually the complete opposite
because there's no goal
or intention really
besides just studying it.
I'm not saying that
I want to accomplish a certain thing.
I'm not saying that.
I want to have conversations
or be able to read something.
I am not saying anything
about my end result,
except that I just want to
learn a language for a month.
That's all. I'm keeping it simple.
Without the pressure of achievements
and results and goals,
I can get back to actually
enjoying language
learning for the sake
of learning a language
and what makes it fun
and interesting and a hobby
and not a job, which is what
a lot of us make language learning.
I believe in leading by example,
and so I want you and all of my clients
to follow me and not necessarily
learn a language every month.
But learn a language for the joy of it
and not put so much
pressure on yourselves.
The second reason I'm doing
this is because my job as a language
coach is to help language learners
from all different kinds of walks of life
and all different target languages.
So while the specific language
that they're learning
doesn't really require
any specific treatment or advice.
I want to be able to connect
with all my clients
and all the people that I talk to
on their personal struggles
with language learning.
So, for example,
I mean, if somebody comes to me
and they're learning Spanish
and they're frustrated over
the preterite and the
what's the word imperfect and
the imperfect tense,
then I 100% understand
and I can get right on board
and I know exactly
what you're talking about
and why that's so difficult.
On the other hand,
if you start talking about cases
or things like that, I have no idea
and I can do my best
to listen and support
and be what you need me to be.
But I want to be able to connect
with your struggles on a deeper level.
The third reason I'm doing this challenge
is that I want to vary
my knowledge of language
learning in general as a whole.
So at the moment, most of my language
learning knowledge is romance languages,
so Spanish and French.
While that's great,
that completely ignores
the majority of the world that speaks
non romance languages.
Yes, romance languages are very,
very popular around the world.
And you know, you open yourself
up to millions of native
speakers of the language,
but there's so many other languages
that I want to get to know
and learn the patterns of and enjoy ,
you know, the language, the culture,
TV shows, things like that.
And when I focus just
on romance languages,
I'm like handicapping myself
and I'm stopping myself
from learning all
these different perspectives
just because it's difficult.
And plus, after learning
French last year,
it was really, really boring
because, Spanish and French,
they're like cousins.
There was no really.
It was only fun because
it felt easy to get things right.
But it doesn't last very long
in order to accomplish
those three things.
What's my plan?
How do I plan on doing this?
Because a year is a very long time,
and that's twelve languages.
That's a lot of different languages.
A lot of different resources.
Who knows what's
going to happen in my life
in the next year or so?
How do I plan on doing this?
For one,
I am doing my best to pick languages
from completely different language trees
that I have never come across before.
So for January, I picked Russian.
I have no experience
with anything Russian
or anything related.
So it's a really good challenge
and I get to learn things
about different kinds of languages.
So theoretically, by the end of the year,
I'm going to have a really good grasp
on so many different kinds of languages,
which will help me so much in the future,
both with my own personal language
learning and with my coaching.
Also, for each of those languages,
I will be using either a resource
that I've never used before
or a resource that I've used,
but I've always wanted to dig
a little deeper into.
I'm actually trying to use resources I've
never used before,
like primarily so
that I can, you know,
explore more resources and show you
what to expect from
different kinds of resources. But.
It's not always possible
I do my best, and no,
I do not have all twelve
languages planned out.
I have a collection of like
five to six languages
that I'm interested
in learning this year,
but month to month
I'm keeping it flexible
and I'm not going to
make any hard decisions
until I get closer
to that particular month.
Because remember,
one of the points of this challenge
is to relax and enjoy the process
of learning a language.
So if I'm having a hard month
and I already set myself
up to learn Japanese
the next month, I'm
setting myself up for failure
and I'm not going to be able
to relax and enjoy it.
That being said, what languages
do you think I should learn this year?
Let me know in the comments section
with this year-long challenge,
what do I expect?
What do I expect to happen?
What do I expect to learn?
What do I expect to experience?
Well for one, I expect to leave this year
with a lot more language
skills under my belt than I would have
if I had stuck to one language
or two languages.
While I'm not expecting to be able
to have full fledged conversations
in any of these languages.
I'm going to be able
to pick up different things, much easier,
going to be able to pick up
different patterns and alphabets and.
Accents, I don't know.
I also, like I said, expect
to be able to connect
with clients more deeply.
And that's already happened actually
after the past few weeks
of learning Russian,
I was able to connect
with a client who was learning Russian.
We could talk about specific things
and specific struggles
that we both experienced,
even though that client
isn't a native English speaker.
She was able to talk to me
about the difficulties
that she's experienced,
and I could connect with her on that.
And the big thing
is that I expect to be pushing my brain
a lot.
Now this is different
because I mean, we
can push ourselves to study
for eight hours a day
and be confident
having conversations in a month
if we really want to.
That's one way to push your brain.
Or you could start learning new things
constantly that are like
new concepts to your brain.
I really expect to be pushing my brain
to figure out things
that I could have
never possibly imagined,
and I'm really, really excited for that.
And finally, what have I learned
so far being almost a month
into this challenge?
I've learned a lot of things, actually,
and it's really, really exciting.
one thing that I learned
and kind of reminded myself of
was how easy it is
to fall into doing something
that you don't actually like to do.
So one of the things
that I teach you guys
and I teach my clients
all the time is that
if you don't enjoy doing it, don't do it.
If you don't enjoy that resource,
if you don't enjoy that strategy,
if you don't enjoy that language,
you shouldn't force yourself to do it.
For Russian, I started out with a course
and from the get go,
I didn't really like it,
but I really I really do want
to see this course through
because it's a different approach
and I want to be able to,
like, experiment with it.
And, you know, go from
I can theoretically understand
what it's going to teach me,
but I want to be able to be sure
that's going to teach me that.
And so I was I was really stubborn.
Basically, I was really
intentional about
trying to finish that course.
But what ended up happening
was that the course
itself stressed me out
so much
that instead of being excited
to study Russian,
I was avoiding the course,
I was avoiding the stress
and the energy that
it was taking from me.
So I was avoiding it,
and I really loved that
it reminded me of what language
learners go through,
beginner language learners.
I had a client who had found
an italki teacher
that she really, really loved.
But after a couple months,
she realized that she wasn't enjoying
going to that tutor
because at some point
the direction that the tutor was taking
her was different from the
the direction that she
had set for herself.
And it can be really, really
easy to get lost in that and like,
pull yourself out and,
you know, make sure
that what you're doing
is actually serving you.
And the other thing that I learned
was to remember that
if something if the language
that your learning the
if the concept you're
learning of the strategy you're using,
if it feels too hard,
then it is, and you need to switch up
how you're approaching it.
The course that I started out with,
it started out with teaching Cyrillic,
which is great, the Russian alphabet.
But it was painful.
It was terrible.
It's really, really difficult.
Fortunately, somebody on Tik
Tok told me to try this other app
just for Cyrillic.
The app was Learn
Cyrillic in three hours,
and it's just a simple,
free video course, that
I really, really liked,
but it worked so much better
than the tutorials
that were in that course.
And it was a really great reminder that
if you are pushing yourself too hard,
you really don't need to do that.
It does not have to be difficult.
I mean, up to a certain point,
of course, language
learning is hard,
especially when you go into
language families
you have no experience
with into new alphabets, new sentence
structures, things
like that is going to be hard,
just like inherently.
And if the strategy,
the approach of the resource
that you're using
is making it more difficult,
you're not going to stick to it.
The language itself is difficult.
Don't add more pressure
and more difficulty by using an approach
that is also difficult.
If you want to follow
along with this challenge
that I'm doing all this year,
make sure you subscribe
and hit the bell
and also follow me on Tik
Tok, @multilingualmastery,
because that's generally
where I'm posting things
and I share my
my thoughts and experiences
and feelings day to day.
If you like this video.
Make sure you check out these videos.
I highly recommend them.
Otherwise have a wonderful day
and I will see you next time.
The one day that
it's gloomy
and doesn't look like Florida.
It is what it is.
And oh yeah, I am wearing a shirt.