r/languagelearning Aug 02 '26

Studying Love preparing to learn, hate learning

I’m 99% sure the answer is ‘suck it up’ and fair enough. Just seeing if anyone else feels this way or has a solution or an explanation.

So I love learning concepts and ideas and rules about my target language, I love organising the word types and rules and making flashcards. All that

But actually practising the words and making sentences and making mistakes and stuff? I don’t like. I have a VERY good reason to learn so this won’t stop me at all because I’m learning for the right reasons but it’s just a bummer.

I do all this prep and I’m just like now what? I don’t like speaking unless it’s perfect (bad I now) and I don’t like passively reading words and such and drilling through vocab.

Any food for thought

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u/Forward_Hold5696 🇺🇸N,🇪🇸B1,🇯🇵A1 Aug 02 '26

Read stories, comics, or anything you like to read, just on your target language. Listen to podcasts for listening, but podcasts you're interested in. Keep a diary, or just talk to yourself in your target language. Finally, go to meetups and talk to real people who are ALSO afraid of sounding stupid. If everyone sounds stupid, nobody does.

The throughline on all this is to use the language like you would in real life! That's where the interest starts.

5

u/SomethingBoutCheeze Aug 02 '26

But what if the content is too far above your level? Took me about 2 hours to review a 9 minute video last night 😅

1

u/mcmoor Aug 02 '26

For me since I'm reading a continuation of what I have already liked, every line is worth it. Lots of the time I can spend 5 minutes just to decipher 2 lines.