The One Strategy You Need to Succeed at Learning Portuguese

Learning a new language is beyond doubt an exciting and fulfilling experience. But it can become challenging and overwhelming for most of us, easily. 

There are many tips to help us learn new languages as efficiently as possible. If I had to pick only ONE piece of advice, that would be consistent practice, meaning daily exposure to your target language over time.

Consistent daily practice is key to language learning because it helps us stay motivated, build momentum, and achieve steady progress. When we consistently practice our target language – be it Portuguese, Mandarin, or Somali – we can better retain what we learn and build on it. It’s as simple as that.

Getting Started

Many language learners struggle with getting started and finding time to practice. Do they really want to learn Portuguese? Are they willing to commit and prioritize it? These are all important questions to ask and we should have clear answers to them.

In my opinion, though, being willing to commit, alone, is not enough to cut it. I know of many people who keep saying they want to learn Portuguese but keep putting it off. What is preventing them from getting started? 

Procrastination.

In the face of a new project – whether learning a new language or something else – we often see a Big Bear coming at us with a wide-open mouth, roaring, as if he’s going to eat us up. And so we keep putting it off.

And yet, all we need to do is start chipping away at it, little by little. See, daily practice doesn’t imply studying for several hours every day. If you devote fifteen or thirty minutes daily to it, you’ll be on track to create a solid foundation. Start small, but start.

But hey! After getting started, how do we stay consistent with practicing every day?

Sticky Habits

I hear people saying that having clear goals is what you need to stick to your plan. If you’d ask me, that’s rubbish. Setting goals is after all not that hard. If all we needed to succeed was to define and write down the desired outcomes, anyone could easily become successful at anything. There must be something else to it.

I say sticky habits. But how do we go about creating daily habits that stick with us? 

Several books have been written on this topic (so important it is) and I consider “Atomic Habits” by James Clear one of the best. According to the author, when trying to create a new habit you should:

• make it simple and easy,
• make it obvious and accessible,
• make it interesting and attractive.

Say that you are learning Portuguese and want to establish a daily morning routine that will expose you to your target language every day. Also, say that you already have the habit of checking the news on your phone as you eat your breakfast. 

If you, in addition to that, also commit 5 minutes to check the news on a Portuguese online news outlet, you’ll most likely succeed in establishing that new routine. All it took was a tiny tweak that agreed with the outlined principles:

• Simple to implement: you were already checking the news at breakfast anyway.
• Accessible: you don’t need anything else than your phone and internet connection (that you already have).
• Interesting and relevant: you were already fond of consuming news (and may as well be keen on learning about the country where your target language is spoken).

There are even ways to increase your daily exposure to your target language without involving the adoption of new habits at all. For instance, you could default your phone and apps to Portuguese. Boom! 100% built-in daily exposure.

This last example reminds me of another article I wrote listing several quick tips for language learners, some of which will help you increase exposure to your target language nearly effortlessly.

So, let me repeat this. If I only were to give one piece of advice to language learners, that would be a consistent, daily practice. To achieve that, we need to get good at creating daily habits and routines that’ll stay with us.

There is, of course, much more to say concerning strategies to increase the efficacy – and sustainability, too – with which we can learn languages. If you want to dive deeper into that topic, read this: Key Strategies to Achieve Fluency in Portuguese.