Make learning easier, more sustainable and more pleasurable

Most often unconscious, habits that we actively develop can make a world of difference. 

The reflective practice tool I’ve been using with students since 2018 is a habit scorecard based on ideas presented by James Clear in his book Atomic Habits and related talks.

(Recent podcast interview with James Clear on EntreLeadership: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/atomic-habits-with-james-clear/id435836905?i=1000428080039)

The basic idea is to reflect on our habits and make small changes, resulting in sustained improvement. In language learning, this could be the habit of using the target language to speak with classmates in casual conversation, perhaps a big challenge at first. After all, lots of students learning a foreign language only use their new language when they must. However, any classmate could be a practice partner, and the practice doesn’t have to stop when leaving the classroom. So, if you don’t do this already, making the change would certainly be an improvement that overtime will have a big impact!

Looking up new words in a dictionary could be a habit that needs increasing or decreasing depending on how frequently you do this. Overuse of an electronic dictionary or translator is a habit to decrease when it becomes a crutch and you can’t read without ever turning off your phone. On the other hand, using a dictionary and keeping a journal of new words in context can be a habit to develop if you’re trying to expand your high-level vocabulary. This is because the meanings of academic words can be very difficult to guess based on context.

A third and very simple reflection on the habit scorecard for language learning is having fun in study. Some will say learning can’t always be fun, but I strongly believe that it has to be a positive experience overall. Challenge certainly does push us to grow, but play is very important. So, the language learning habit scorecard also includes, “I had fun.” If students are active in class, they typically check this box at the end of the lesson when we do reflection using the habit scorecard. Believe it or not, this does target our goals. The reason we want to have fun learning is simple: If we have fun in class or with self-study, we are more likely to retain the lesson and feel motivated to continue with the subject. To that extent, we are more likely to pursue the subject in free time and thereby accelerate progress.

On the habit scorecard for discrete language, I include, “I pay attention to my pronunciation of final consonant clusters.” It can be very hard for Vietnamese students I’ve taught to pronounce final consonants. These sounds, however, are not just important to pronunciation as they also affect grammar. Take, for example, the third-person ‘s’ for verbs in the present tense and contractions for is. “She’s amiable. What’s amiable? It means friendly.” If the letter ‘s’ is not pronounced, or if it’s transposed, these sentences end up sounding like, “She amiable. What amiable? It mean friendly.” Or perhaps, “It’s mean friendly.” Or, “It mean friendlies.” In these sentences, the ‘s’ has been moved and the error seems even more awkward than omitting the ‘s’ in the first examples where the reduced verb ‘is’ and third-person ‘s’ on means are missing. Again, beyond pronunciation, these are grammatical errors, as well. Uncorrected, this type of error then fossilizes in learners’ speech. Thus, on the part of the learner, receptiveness to correction is of utmost importance. 

As a teacher, I use immediate correction techniques with the aim of raising student awareness to their errors. As often as I can, I take the time to get students to self-correct with the hope that they develop the skill of monitoring their own speech. Hard as it can be to change, the purpose of focusing on the small habits (good and bad) is that overtime making small changes emerges as making great strides in progress toward fluency. 

Now for an example of lifestyle habits that are relevant to all of us: diet and exercise. I have had to admit to myself that weight control as I age is a lifestyle based on habits in the way I have already discussed. I have seen a dramatic, visible change over years of good and bad habits. Most dramatically, the change has been with an aging body and changing musculature. I was fit as a teen and quite healthy-looking in my early twenties. However, bad habits led to weight gain in my late twenties, which over a period of years progressed very rapidly toward obesity. 

In the years I was studying for my master’s degree, I was simultaneously working and studying full-time. I spent the days teaching and evenings at my desk reading and writing. At least the work and study matched, since I was teaching English and studying second language acquisition. Nevertheless, I saw my weight grow by twenty pounds over the preceding three years, and then by thirty pounds over the two years I was a student teacher. The physical change shocked my friends and family upon my return from overseas. 

I took up fitness again at the age of 28 and went from obese to merely overweight. Then, I moved to Vietnam at 29. Because of the very hot climate and my participation in a staff weight-loss competition at the school where I taught, I lost more weight. At 30, my fiance and I took up yoga. I lost weight even faster. We attended hour-long yoga classes in the evenings. Then, we married, and the changes in habits became hard to sustain. 

From the age of 31 to 33, I changed my workouts to strength training. Unfortunately, my range of motion became very rigid. Whereas I had been playing sports like tennis, soccer and swimming in my youth, the weight-training lacked both cardio and flexion. My back turned into a knot every night. At 33 years old, I had to address my back pain at the doctor’s through chiropractic adjustments and physiotherapy.

These days, I stretch every morning and evening, and I try to stay active throughout the day, rather than single hour-long workouts. Besides these basic fitness changes, my wife and I have had an ongoing weight-loss challenge. Over the past six months we have steadily lost weight. The change has been about three percent weight loss every two months. In six months, I have lost ten pounds, or five kilograms. My goal remains to reduce my weight again by this amount in the next six months. 

The change to diet has been to reduce carbohydrates, and to restrict meals to an eight-hour window between 10 am and 6 pm. This technique of intermittent-fasting allows for 16 hours of fasting every day.

At the moment, I’m at the weight I was almost ten years years ago before I started my master’s degree. That’s twenty pounds, or nine kilos, below the highest, unhealthy weight I had reached. It is great considering I have built muscle in these years, as well. I have also overcome what, at one point, I thought would be chronic pain. And, I fit into clothes that had been too tight to wear, a result of slimming five inches, or about 12 centimeters, around my waist. Looking forward, my wife has challenged me to a waist measurement competition, as well. Theoretically, I could reduce my waistline by the same amount again, and if I did so, I would be at my teenage waist measurement… Update forthcoming!

So, if I had been a healthy young man, what got me to this point? Largely, anxiety from required participation in competitive sports in high school. This speaks to the point of having fun with our habits–to have fun with our goal in mind. And, it takes trying different strategies out. For instance, while it does work for rapid weight-loss, counting calories was not fun, and I could not sustain that as a habit. I subsequently realized intuitive food choices without constricting the amount would lead to sustainable weight loss without experiencing sleeplessness due to hunger. For better or worse, this has meant eating more meat and fresh fruit, and drinking still water or coffee with milk only.

To round off my point, I’ll reiterate that as hard as change can be, small changes are easier than big changes, they are longer-lasting and when fun, they are even easier.