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Motivation

It's hard to stay motivated while learning a language. Especially when you're learning by yourself, because there aren't many people to tell you to keep on going, or who help you out. But there are ways to keep yourself motivated, and staying motivated is possible.

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I found an article that a therapist reflected on about motivation as well, please take a look at that to learn more (underlined word is the link)!

When you do something for a long time, your feelings can either change or stay the same, depending on if you still want to do it, your progress, etc. Your feelings are what causes you to either lose motivation or keep going.Usually presenting the main ideas or bringing a point across is best when using examples. So just imagine this happening to you...

Let's say you're learning Spanish (a common language to learn) and you struggle with learning how to properly pronounce words. But, you don't have anyone to help you or give you advice and are limited to and amount of resources (excluding YouTube). This could end in a couple of ways:

  • You don't know what else to do to improve your pronunciation, so you feel that you should give up and just stop. Since you don't have anyone to listen to your troubles, you start to worry if you're really able to do it, and won't want to do this anymore.

  • You show yourself your weakest points, and use whatever you can to help you fix the problem. If you really are determined to learn Spanish, you would continue to learn from your mistakes and become better. In the end, you'll be successful with learning the language and will feel much better about yourself.

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The second result is understandably difficult to make it happen. However, it's 100% possible... just difficult. If you're limited on resources, find ways to gain more and learn more! If you don't have access at all to anything, then go to the library! There should be something there to help you! Really, all you have to do to is think. Think about the possible ways to overcome these things to keep you motivated. Now, let's go take a look at another scenario...

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You've been learning Mandarin for years now, and you know quite a lot to the point where you're able to go to China and get your way around. However, you feel that it's start to get boring... Here are two possible ways things could go down:

  • ​You realize this is pointless and you don't know what to learn next so you think it's just time to stop.

  • You wonder what this could do for you in the future and think about the positives. You can live in China or travel there as a vacation trip, learn a lot about the people, culture, and see amazing places there and you feel that those years of learning are definitely worth it.

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The key element is to always look on the bright side,and remind yourself why you want to/learning a language. But if you really don't want to continue learning, then that is completely up to you. But all you need to do is keep going and keep telling yourself the reason why you're doing this!

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