Building a Method

Different people use the term “method” differently, but the definition I am using here is: the combination of resources and exercises you use to learn a language. In this section, we’ll look at how to best craft your method, in other words, choose the right set of resources. Think of this as the “putting it all together” part of the previous chapter.

There is no one specific method that works best for all learners. Instead, individual preference and interest seem to be better predictors of success.¹ This means I can’t simply outline a good method for you to follow. You have a lot of flexibility, and how you personally respond to different exercises and resources should dictate how you adjust your method. The following sections complement the Resources chapter by helping you understand the best practice for choosing which resources to use together.

How to build your method

The easiest approach is to simply choose from the Resources chapter—one course, a flashcard deck, and some input you like and doing each as much as you enjoy is a good basic method and will probably work just fine at the start to get you towards your goal. That is part of why I split the Resources chapter that way.

However; you probably found a lot more resources than just those three classes, or you might be feeling like you can do a bit more with your method. By thinking a bit more carefully about your method, you can optimise your learning.

The keys of an effective method

To help you structure your method, this section discusses some elements common to all good methods. These are:

Cover all the bases
Goal-focus
Build a base and work up
Push yourself
Drill
Practice

The next sections will elaborate on each of them. I advise you pay attention and follow them throughout your study.

Cover all the bases

As I mentioned before, you need to know enough grammar, vocabulary, and the four skills (reading, writing, listening, speaking). Focus on those most important to your goal. At the same time, don’t neglect the others altogether. A well-balanced method has at least a little bit of everything.

In addition, different courses often emphasise different skills, which will create relative weaknesses in other areas. For example, if your course ignores your language’s different writing system, you should be heavily focusing on it with supplementary resources.

Keep these in mind as you think about your resources. Are they building all the skills you need for your goal? Your method will be crafted towards getting there. To help you, the below table contains some example questions to ask to help you think about your resources.

Questions to assess your resources

Component	Questions
Grammar	Am I learning enough grammar to get towards my goal? Are the grammar exercises I’m doing helping me progress towards my goal?
Vocabulary	Am I learning enough vocabulary fast enough to be able to do my goal? Am I learning the right vocabulary for my goals?
Reading & writing	Do I need to be able to read/write in the writing system to achieve my goal? If yes, how well do my resources teach me?
Listening	Do I need to listen well to achieve my goal? If yes, do my resources let me practise listening?
Speaking	Do I need to speak well to achieve my goal? If yes, do my resources let me practise speaking? Do my resources help me work on my pronunciation?
Misc.	What skills does my course do well in? Is my course creating weaknesses in other areas I need to focus on separately?

Goal-focus

We will begin this section with the key principle, then I will explain how to execute it.

Principle: Work towards your goals
One of the best things you can do for your progress is to focus on your goals and the skills you need to get there. This will help you stay motivated and ensure that what you are doing is aligned to what you want out of your language. Spend time considering your goals, then work towards them relentlessly.

This first component of goal-focus is to have a goal or set of goals. These are key for retaining motivation. If you don’t have a goal, head back to the start of this guide and ensure you do.

The second component is to work towards your goals by actively studying the skills and vocabulary you need for your goal. Different goals naturally lend themselves to different skillsets and vocabulary. For example, If you need to communicate in the near-term, you should be drilling key skills (speaking and listening) much more and earlier. If you are learning for business, you could seek out and drill business vocabulary and find business-related content.

The final component is to seek out and directly practise situations involving your goals. The activities you choose to incorporate into your method should include direct practice.

Milestones

In addition to your goals, it helps to have a set of milestones you are looking to achieve. What you consider success is determined by your goals, so this is just an indication of the kind of ability a good intermediate learner has.

A typical intermediate learner:

knows over 2,000 Words, but aim to know about 3,000 and don’t stop there
is fairly good at the skills most important for achieving their goals
is able to make it through a conversation with a native speaker, as long as they are accommodating
can understand learner-centred content, though native-level content will still be confusing
has a good grasp of the language’s grammar, though is far from comfortable with all of it

Build a base and work up

Begin with the simplest and most beginner-friendly components of your language, then gradually build towards more advanced ones as you progress. Focus on the components that help you improve the most. Without a base level of understanding, it will be harder to understand and learn more advanced concepts or comprehend content that uses them.

Courses are highly recommended in-part because they provide all the structure you need to build a comprehensive foundation in the language.

Similarly, beginners usually start with a base of at least a bit of grammar and a lot of drilled vocabulary before moving to using content.²

Finally, unless something really interests you, avoid jumping too far ahead and learning nuanced grammar points or advanced vocabulary when there are plenty of more applicable aspects of your language to learn. You will get far more mileage from the basic stuff.

Push yourself

Pushing yourself is an important technique to avoid seeing your progress stagnate. This element is also our next principle:

Principle: Push yourself
During your study, you will inevitably find certain resources or content eventually become easy for you. Switch resources once you begin to feel too comfortable with the one you are using. There will always be something more challenging for you to try. By continually challenging yourself, you will be constantly pushed to improve.

This applies to everything you use, including course materials, content, and flashcards.

Drill

A good method contains at least some drilling where you have weaknesses. A drill is an exercise that isolates a single aspect of your language so that you can develop it separately from the others. There are many examples of this, including flashcards, practising pronunciation, and writing word forms. You can use the questions from earlier to think about what drills might be necessary

If you don’t feel like thinking too hard about it, the key drill I recommend using is flashcards. We will discuss flashcards later here. Later, as you improve, I recommend you move to drilling with content. This is covered in the guide here. We will look at a larger list of drills later here.

Practice

Practice is a crucial component of your language method as it integrates everything you are learning together. Some people use “language practice” to mean just input, while others mean just output. Here I am using it to mean either or both together. Examples include conversation, writing texts, or reading stories. It is usually less prevalent during the beginner stages, but will gradually take a larger role as you progress. Without practice, all of the knowledge and skills you build through your study will not translate into real-world language ability.

The best type of practice is direct practice³, which means your practice time should be spent directly doing whatever your goal is. If your goal is to speak your language, your practice should involve talking to native speakers as much as possible.

Ensure you spend plenty of time using content—it is crucial to progressing in your language. Many intermediate learners spend up to 75% of their time practising with input. Ideally, the course you use should rely heavily on content. Avoid spending less than one third of your time with content. Progress through input can be hard to notice in the short-term, but is invaluable long-term.

A helpful activity, extensive reading, will be covered later here with more advice here.

Turning everything into a method

If you’ve followed the basic resource examples or found something similar, the key elements and resources you found should hopefully map on to each other quite well.

If you’ve decided to use something a bit different, don’t worry! Simply check your method against the key elements to make sure you’re applying them all. This section is to help illustrate what your method might look like.

Here is an example of how you might spend your time:

Example method

Activity	Possible resources	Timing
Learn the Hanzi/Kanji/writing system if necessary	A beginner course, supplementary tools	A lot at the start, gradually reduced once goals are reached
Learn the basic grammar	A beginner course	A lot at the start, reduced by intermediate stage
Build vocabulary	Flashcards	Learner preference; a lot at the start, some learners largely replace with content by the intermediate stage
Conversation practice (if goal requires)	Conversation partner through Zoom, Tutor for error correction	Learner preference; usually started at the intermediate stage
Practising skills for goals	Practising sounds aloud, reading comprehension exercises, listening comprehension with podcasts	Learner preference; done throughout according to needs
Watching, reading, and listening to content	YouTube, books, podcasts, etc.	Learner preference; best started at beginner stage

Methods change once you reach the lower intermediate stage, as this is where you have enough basic vocabulary and grammar to accelerate your usage of content. There’s nothing stopping you using content early if is designed for learners and supports your comprehension.

There are many ways to structure your method while following the key elements. For example:

You could forego courses in favour of reading lots, looking up concepts as necessary
You could drill by using a vocabulary list or writing sentences instead of flashcards⁴
Your source of input could be mostly practising speaking with a friend or tutor rather than books or videos
You could focus heavily on learning mostly through traditional classes

These are all valid choices for the right learner.

Other learners’ methods

During your search for resources, you probably found at least one guide that outlined a method for you to follow.

Looking at other methods is useful for two reasons. First, they often contain resource recommendations and activities you can do using these resources. Second, you will often find good advice for your language such as common beginner pitfalls or useful areas to focus your attention. Reading about this in advance is a good idea, but don’t feel like you have to take all their ideas wholesale. Pick and chose what works for you.

If you’re wondering how some people become conversational in a large number of languages, read the discussion in Why do some people seem to know lots of languages? ↩
It is completely possible to use content extensively from the very beginning. The trouble is you’d simply have to spend most of your time with a dictionary and grammar resource, constantly looking things up, which is neither efficient nor fun. You could try starting with flashcards to build a large base, then using content. ↩
This concept comes from Scott Young in his book, Ultralearning ↩
While there are learners that do this, I don’t recommend you go without using flashcards, other drills, or courses until you are a more experienced learner and better understand what works for you. ↩