You probably know that you should be directing your Chinese learning. But turning what you know into concrete steps to take can be really hard. After thinking about the problem for a while, I’ve come up with an easy way to figure out what you should be studying. I’m calling it the 5-4-3-2-1 plan.
Try the 5-4-3-2-1 Plan
The 5-4-3-2-1 plan is a simple way to get you to learn to direct your language studies. Learning Chinese should be a personal voyage. By following this simple plan, you are getting yourself to think more clearly about what you want to learn and how you want to improve. The plan gives you clear goals, some short-term, some long-term, and it helps you keep yourself motivated.
- Write down 5 things you want to say in Chinese. During the next week, learn how to say them (if you don’t know where to learn them, you can ask me in the comments). Remember, Chinese is different from English, so sometimes you can’t say exactly what you want to say. (Do this every week.)
- Write down 4 topics that interest you, and start a plan to learn how to discuss them in Chinese. Every month, pick one topic and spend some time learning vocabulary related to that topic and practicing talking about that topic.
- Write down 3 mistakes you’re making, and focus on fixing them every day for the next two weeks. Focus on the mistakes that you are making all the time. If you aren’t making any mistakes, then you aren’t using your Chinese enough! (Repeat this every 2 weeks.)
- Write down 2 things you will do to learn Chinese this week. Keep these tasks small and simple, e.g. I will read an article on 财新 (Cáixīn is my favorite Chinese news website), or I will spend 30 minutes studying my flashcards. Don’t just list things you have to do, e.g. I will do my Chinese homework for class. (Repeat every week.)
- Spend 1 minute to write about 1 situation where you were proud of your Chinese. Write about what happened and what you said or heard in a journal. Write about why this situation made you feel good. Every month, you should take a look at this, and if you want, you could also add another situation that made you proud.
Very Practical tips! I will try working on the 4 topics a month, That will get somewhere improvement-wise. Thanks for sharing this.
I think advice like this is good, perhaps even necessary. It’s incredibly hard to achieve something if we don’t know what it is we want to achieve. However, bridging the distance between a long-term goal and what I’m doing today or this week is harder. I’ve found that most people follow advice like this for a week or two and then stop. Any thoughts on how to keep this going?
I usually keep a text file on my computer with small, discrete tasks that can be accomplished or worked on almost at any time. This at least makes sure that I know what to do in case I find some extra time. Writing goals (of various levels) on surfaces I see often also helps (non-permanent markers work well on my door, so I sometimes add today’s goals on the door and then wipe them off as I progress).
I’ve written quite a lot about goal management in case anyone is interested (first introductory article here).
So, the problem here isn’t knowing about goals or setting them, it’s about continuing using them after the first couple of weeks. I can handle this on my own, but it seems more difficult to help others achieve that. Any thoughts?
@Olle: you asked the hardest question. Creating habits is hard. When trying to change your behavior, it’s useful to create triggers for an action. Getting on the bus might become a trigger for pulling out your flashcards, for example. It’s also crucial to make the activity as simple and frictionless as possible.
Another thing I like to do is set alarms far into the future to remind myself to keep up with an activity.
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