Five things busy people can do to learn a language

If you're a busy person you might relate to these. It's hard to sit down and find time to learn a different language. Where do I even start? What should I do when I do get the time? Surely I need to sit down and study grammar tables to be able to speak anything in the first place? Whenever I get this hour or two a week to sit down, it just doesn't happen.

There are many activities you can do, that you might not have known you could do, to get closer to your language goal, whether that's reaching a conversational level or getting fluent. The more of them you do, the closer to fluency you get. All of these are free, though you can choose to pay for one of them.

1. Listen to a podcast in your target language when you commute

Many people spend an hour or more a day going to and from work. If it's half an hour each way, instead of just sitting on a train or driving, you could be listening to a podcast in your target language. I'd recommend one you're interested in. If you like football or darts or cooking, listen to stuff related to that, because the last thing you want is to hear about politics. It's boring. Keep it interesting so you enjoy it.

If you want to get conversational or fluent you need to train your brain and your ears on what sounds mean. When you're learning Spanish and you hear Spanish, it sounds like a mess at first. But if every day you're listening for half an hour each way, you don't have to understand a single thing. Over time your mind recognises patterns and sounds, because as babies we want to understand the context of what's happening around us so we can make sense of the world. Your brain is naturally good at figuring out patterns. Gradually you'll notice you understand more and have to think less, and you translate less in your head.

• The downside: most people going to work already listen to the radio or Spotify or their favourite music. You can listen to the podcast on the way there and music on the way back. Have a happy balance. If you don't enjoy it enough, at some point you'll think, "I can't be bothered listening to Spanish today, I'll just listen to music." This isn't a one-week solution. It's the next few weeks and months, so make it as enjoyable as possible.
• You don't have to listen actively. You can listen passively. If someone says something you can be daydreaming about your day ahead, and that's fine, because subconsciously your mind still recognises the words. If you hear them in a different context in the future, it will have heard them, whether you were consciously listening or not.

2. Use your language app when you're queuing

If you're queuing for something, get out your favourite language app, whether it's Duolingo or Memrise, and do an exercise. If you've got two minutes spare, perfect. Waiting in the queue at McDonald's, or picking up a friend in your car and they're late getting ready. Most people are on their phones anyway while waiting. You'd normally scroll through Instagram or check your emails or WhatsApp. Swap that for your language app, and you'll keep your mind refreshed on the words, because pretty much every app has a spaced repetition feature that reminds you of words you might have forgotten.

Frequency matters more than intensity. Two minutes a few times a day is better than setting one hour a week. It's like brushing your teeth. You do two minutes every morning and every evening instead of waiting till Sunday for a big tooth-brushing session.

3. Have 30-minute video calls with a native speaker

It's all well and good listening to podcasts and using your favourite language app, but you will not get fluent if you don't practise speaking, coming up with words and phrases, and having conversations with native speakers. If you're learning a language just to write in it, that's fine, you don't need this bit. But if you want to communicate, you can't get around it.

Thirty-minute sessions are so much better than one-hour sessions. The default for a lot of people is to book a one-hour lesson with a native teacher. Half an hour is better for two reasons:

• You can fit it into your schedule more easily. You come home from work, and an hour of trying to speak your target language might put you off. "I can't be bothered, I don't feel too good, I'll cancel." Half an hour is much easier to fit in, and mentally easier, because after half an hour it's over.
• Our attention spans aren't that long. After about 20 to 25 minutes we start daydreaming, and every minute after that is less effective. Half an hour is the sweet spot. Do maybe three sessions of half an hour a week rather than one hour.

If you pay a native speaker on an online platform it might cost between $5 and $15 an hour depending on who you're looking for. There's a free version, Tandem or any language exchange app. The caveat is you spend half the session helping someone in your native language, because it's an exchange of time. If it's half an hour, you might do 15 minutes in your target language and then swap. The downside is it's harder to get commitment, because you're not paying. If you pay someone, they'll be on time. With an exchange you also need a lot of text conversation beforehand to build trust before a video call.

4. Listen to music in your target language in the shower

I really like this one. Many people enjoy their showers, and I'm one of them. I love long showers, so what better use of time than listening to music in your target language? Many people say music helped them learn language, especially English music. I hear a lot of Spanish and Italian people who know lyrics of English tracks I don't even know the lyrics to. Everyone has a shower at least once a day, you'd hope, so five or ten minutes is a perfect use of time. It also puts you in a good mood for the day.

The only downside is some music is sung really quickly and is quite informal and colloquial. If you don't understand everything in a song, just enjoy it for what it is, because you'll understand the rhythm and intonations and get value from it anyway.

5. Focus only on content that's relevant to you

Say I wanted to learn Spanish for navigating around a city centre, or being on holiday next year. The words for grandma or granddad or cat or dog won't be relevant to me, so I'm not going to learn vocabulary that isn't relevant to what I want to use it for. But "left", "right", "second left", "where is it", "how far is it", "how long does it take to walk to..." is perfect.

It depends what stage you're at. If you're just starting out, focus on ready-made phrases, where the grammar is already constructed for you. If you find grammar boring it'll put you off. Memorise a phrase and test it when practising in your 30-minute sessions with a native speaker. In general, if you make grammatical mistakes you're understood by native speakers. You'd be surprised how wrong you can be constructing a sentence and still be understood, based on context and body language.

If you focus only on the content you need, you're not wasting time on stuff that's irrelevant. My time is focused on what I'll actually use, and it takes less time to reach my language goal than trying to learn the whole language. Over time, as you learn enough for your current scenario, you can expand on it, and you will, because naturally you'll speak to more people and learn new words. You'll have more confidence by then, because you can navigate around a city centre. That gives you more motivation to continue, because you've told yourself "I can learn Spanish". More words and vocab and sentence structures get built on top of that, but that's your starting point.