In my experience,
the difference between people who are successful at learning languages and people who are not is this:
People who often give up approach learning languages with a couple of specific questions.
They often want to know:
How long exactly is this going to take me to do
and how much of my time am I going to have to give every day
in order to be able to do this.
The reason why is because they don't really like learning languages.
They like speaking languages and they like the idea of the benefits of it,
but they're not necessarily enjoying the process of learning them.
In order to make your language-learning a lot more fun,
I think you should focus on the things that interest you the most.
If you want to learn the language to learn more about the culture,
then you should be watching films, you should be reading and enjoying those things that are available.
It's also important to reward yourself for the learning that you're doing,
so make sure that you give yourself a little treat
and maybe even plan a holiday or a trip to the country where they speak the language,
so you can actually see how much progress you've made since you started learning
and how far you could still come in a similar amount of time.
The other really important thing is to set realistic goals
when thinking about learning a language.
That well may keep you much more motivated through the language-learning process
and make sure that you stick to the commitment that you make.
So, an example of an unrealistic goal is:
'I want to be able to speak German fluently.'
That's very, very difficult to achieve and it's gonna take you a long time.
But an example of a realistic goal would be something like:
'I would like to have a ten-minute conversation with a native speaker about something very simple and easy.'
Or, for example: 'I want to be able to watch the news and understand fifty per cent of it.'
That's something that is very clear and that you could work towards
in order to make sure that you keep seeing how much progress you make.
Share your language-learning tips and experiences by leaving a comment below,
and make sure you check out the other videos in this series.