We are all humans. It is not natural to expect we follow our plans perfectly when we study a language. Life happens, and sometimes languages that we love fall to the wayside. Sometimes people take breaks intentionally because school or work got too hectic, and other times, our motivation dried up like a river in a drought. Regardless of the reasons, it’s best that we return to those languages when our lives give us enough time to do so. What are some ways we can return to a language after a language hiatus?
Don’t overwhelm yourself
It’s not necessary that you return to exactly what you were doing when you studied last. When you return to exercising after a while, it is natural that your muscles will feel sore from all the movement that they missed. Your brain is the same when it comes to languages.
If you go too deep too quick, you risk burning out faster. Your burnout tolerance was at a certain level before, and this break lowered your ability to combat burnout significantly. As such, it is important that you return slowly.
In the early days of you learning this language, you did not learn conjunctions and verb tenses and adjective agreement and noun declensions all in the first days. Then, why do you think you can do it when you return to the language? Of course, you won’t start from zero. However, you will need to start at a slow pace to avoid that feeling of panic that sets in when you realize you can’t remember some basic grammar rules.
Slowly turn up the heat
Hypothetically, you return to the language after your language hiatus and continue your studies at a pace that was half the speed that you used to do. After that, you need to slowly increase your speed. Maybe you will add an extra page every day. Alternatively, you could reintroduce another tool like a spaced repetition system like Anki.
If it’s not speed, you will need to add difficulty. If you were looking at older content, skip forward in your textbook a little. It could be time to reintroduce more advanced concepts as your metaphorical muscles start to regain their strength.
The point is to get back into the language, not stay at a slow speed. Therefore, you must not forget that your goal is to return to the language, so adding speed or difficulty is necessary.
Keep track of your progress
One tool that you can use to know when to increase your difficulty is to carefully record when you are learning. This could be with a calendar, a spreadsheet logging hours spent, or just a routine with a pattern. This is good whether or not you are returning to a language, but those who have to carefully return to the difficulty and speed of their previous studies can accomplish their goals better by using this progress check. It is best to check your progress to know how long you have been dabbling in early lessons. You don’t want to study early materials for too long and get complacent. By keeping track of your return to the language, you can know exactly when it has become unreasonable to dally around for so long.
Review or skim old textbooks or notes
Although you might want to push forward with your studies, don’t forget to look back. There is a reason you made notes. Ideally, the fact that you handwrote or typed notes contributed to knowledge consolidating in your memory. However, you may need to go over those notes. If you have a quick way to check older lessons, that’s perfect for a quick walk through memories.
If your notes are not useful for you, books are still there for you, and they never disappear. Even once you turn the page, the page doesn’t disappear. Feel free to look at those old books to help you return to speed. It doesn’t have to be the book you are working on. Books that you graduated from long ago are fair game when slowly returning to the language you’ve put down.
Review basic grammar or vocab
Don’t feel like you cannot review the really easy stuff. When I was returning to Swedish after a language hiatus, I could not remember basic vocab at all. Because of that, I made an effort to write the most basic vocab like write, read, sun, moon, today, and yesterday onto Anki cards to review. Although I should have already consolidated that knowledge, it was not in my active memory anymore. Fortunately, I was able to quickly pass those cards out of Anki because my passive memory was helping me retain those words faster than I had done originally.
That is what you will find when you return to the language. Basic grammar and vocab will feel new for a short time, but eventually, the old memories will rise to the surface, and the language will feel familiar again.
Everything will be easier the second time around
For me, memory is like a chain. Although some of the links fall off, they can be restored. When you forget something from your target language due to not using it for a long time, that link fell off the chain. Fortunately, it is not destroyed. You can still reattach those links to the chain with a little effort. In fact, it’s a lot less effort than before because you don’t need to completely forge those links from raw metal and melt them down. They already exist but need a little attention to reattach.
Returning to your target language may seem like a daunting task because you might think you need to start from zero. Luckily, it will be easier for you. If you take things slow and don’t overdo it, you can get back on track to your goal of reaching new heights with your target language.
You can check out my YouTube channel where I discuss all sorts of language-related topics.
If you need more specific tips about how to study a language alone after your language hiatus, I wrote another blog post about that that could be helpful.
Keep on studying! Don’t give up!
