Language Challenges & Maintaining Your Streak

The advantage of a challenge is that you're saying, okay, for the next

30 days or for the next 90 days, I'm gonna push myself a little further.

Hi there, Steve Kaufmann here.

Uh, today I wanna talk about the next series of challenges at LingQ, 90-Day

Challenges or 30 Day Challenges.

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So, uh, I have been involved in a number of language challenges at LingQ.

Why do I do it and why do I think it's a good idea for, for learners

to push themselves in this way?

Um, you know, one of the main issues, in fact I've said before that the,

the with language learning is a function of, of attitude and of

time, time spent with a language.

Uh, so attitude.

A large part of attitude is of course our motivation.

How keen we are.

And in an ideal world, every day we wake up and we just can't wait

to start learning our language.

We can't wait to listen.

We can't wait to read, and we're happy and everything is, you know, on the up and up.

Unfortunately, that's not always the case.

There are days when we don't feel like listening to our,

whatever we're listening to.

There are days when we're discouraged, when we're busy, we invent all kinds of

reasons why we needn't bother, and yet we know that, you know, staying with it.

This idea of continuity is so important to language learning.

Even a little bit every day is gonna keep us moving in the direction of fluency

or whatever, you know, our goal is.

So that's one of the reasons why at LingQ we have a number of sort of,

call it tricks to keep people going.

Uh, the statistics in themselves are motivating.

They're motivating to motivating to me.

How many words have I read?

How many words have I saved?

In other words, how many LingQs have I created?

How many hours have I listened?

When I look back in my profile page, and I see when I started and when

I was active and how active I've been over the last little period

all of this is motivating to me.

So the statistics are in themselves motivating, but the advantage of a

challenge is then you're saying, okay, for the next 30 days or for the next 90 days,

I'm gonna push myself a little further.

And one of the things that I think the LingQ team has done that's, that's really

good now is that whereas before you had to have, you know, you had specific targets.

Like you had to save so many words.

In other words, create so many LingQs uh, you had to read so many words,

you had to listen so many hours.

There are very specific, you know, activity related, uh, targets.

And that's a bit unfair because, you know, as I often say, you wanna keep

doing the things that you enjoy doing.

So some days you're more inclined to listen or maybe

you only have time to listen.

Some other days you're more inclined to read.

Maybe you're reading material that you've already gone through.

Some other day, you're going through new materials, so you're,

you're creating new LingQs.

And so by kind of merging, funging, every...

every activity into the, the concept of coins, as long as you maintain the

target you've set for coins, uh, which you can do in a variety of different

ways, you are able to maintain a streak.

So not only is the target important and the idea that you're committed,

30 or a 90 day, uh, challenge important, but I found this desire

to maintain my street kept me going.

And so you wanna be careful that you set a level in terms of the coins per

day that is sufficiently challenging without being too difficult, so

that it's kind of, you're pushing yourself, but it's not too easy.

And if you're able to do that, then you get a great sense of sense of satisfaction

because we know that the brain, if the brain is confronted with a task that's

a little difficult and is able to do it, there is a great sense of satisfaction.

If the task is too easy, then there is very little stimulus from that.

If the task is so difficult that we simply can't maintain that level of

activity, then it's discouraging.

So it's important to choose a level that that works for you, that pushes

you without being too difficult and occasionally I, what I do, if I fall

behind and I lose my streak, then I'm able to take the coins that I've earned

and use them to repair my streak.

So if I, if I have a streak of 30 days, and then for whatever reason

now I wasn't able to do anything, the next day I'm able to repair my streak

so that I now have a 31, 32, 33.

And just keep that streak going.

So, you know, and some of us may be into several languages, so

that's a bit of a disadvantage that you can't merge across languages.

So the solution there is to set, not to tough a target in each of two or

three languages so that you're able to maintain your activity in those languages.

And so, uh, let's say, Uh, gonna have a tougher sort of goal in, say,

in my case, Persian and a somewhat lower goal in Arabic and Turkish.

Then I don't have to spend a lot of time on the minor languages to maintain

that lesser, you know, goal, maintain my streak, but at least I'm staying

in touch with those languages while I focus more effort on my main language.

So check the, uh, uh, challenges at LingQ.

Commit yourself to a challenge.

You'll be happy you did.

And then you can follow how other LingQ members are doing by going to

the community page and seeing who, you know, who has the longest streak,

who has, uh, you know, created the most LingQs and so forth and so on.

So it's, it's a fun way to connect with others, which also is important

in language learning, because sometimes we can feel that it's a bit of a lonely

activity, but once we realize we're part of a larger community that, uh, are

working on whatever language it might be, the language you're learning or some other

language, you can see the sort of, uh, level of activity in different languages.

I find that quite motivating.

So with that, I would encourage you to get involved here in the new year

in, uh, some kind of a challenge, 30 or 90 days push yourself.

Not so hard that you can't keep up, but not so easy that you don't really

feel that you've achieved very much.

So best of luck to you on your challenges and uh, you'll see in these, uh,

videos that I'll leave with you that I have had challenges in a number of

languages and it has pushed me forward.

So good luck to you.

Bye for now.