More language practice is always a good thing. But there’s something even better – language practice you actually want to review. With that you double the value of your language practice. Here’s how to make your language practice worthwhile.

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Double the Value of Your Language Practice

Any language practice is more than zero, and that’s good enough in itself.

But sometimes, you want to take things further, and you’re aiming for more than ‘good enough’.

That’s when you want to consider adding in some Self-Review.

When you review your writing and speaking, you double the value of your language practice.

It’s not just something you’ve done, turned the page and forgotten forever.

It becomes a resource for you.

Something that you can use to help identify any gaps in your knowledge and spot your strengths, and therefore know what’s worth focusing your time and efforts on next.

Create Practice You Want To Review

Naturally then, if you’re going to be spending more time with what you create, it helps if you actually want to review it.

Creating practice you want to review is crucial

Set a Focus (Learning, Fluency, Meaning)

When you start any language learning activity, especially production (speaking or writing), if you want it to be as useful as possible, it’s really helpful to set a focus before you begin.

This doesn’t need to be a big decision every time, and gradually it’ll become second-nature and you’ll hardly notice you’re doing it.

There’s three main focuses you’ll want to include at various points in your language practice: Learning Focus, Fluency Focus, and Meaning Focus.

With a Meaning Focus, your core goal is to get your meaning understood and communicate. Sure, it’s nice if everything is correct and the words are in the right order without falling back to rely on your native language, but that’s secondary. The primary concern is that you’re understood.

Fluency Focus refers to when your main goal…fluency. No surprises.

This could be broken down even further. Perhaps it’s a level of accuracy that you’re aiming for when you say fluency. Or maybe it’s fluidity.

And finally, Learning Focus is practice that you do specifically to practice something new you’ve learnt. For example, if you’ve just done a lesson on the past tense and you’re now writing a text about your last holiday.

Of course, with each, it’s great if the other focuses happen too – we always want to be understood (Meaning Focus), feel fluent (Fluency Focus), and learn new language (Learning Focus).

But when we pick a focus, it helps us to not worry about getting everything 100% correct all of the time, and allows us to produce more.

In terms of creating practice you want to review, this is majorly beneficial because it means that you’re not worried about spending all your time finding and correcting every single tiny mistake, but rather primarily looking for errors to be corrected relating to your focus.

Topics that Interest You

Of course it helps when you write and speak in another language if what you’re writing and saying is actually interesting and relevant to you.

This doesn’t just mean always producing practice about stuff you love, it could just as easily be stuff you hate.

For example, I’m not a cat person. The claw your legs, they leave hair around, they look like they’re plotting to kill you. And, most importantly, I’m often allergic to them.

So although I’m not a cat person, I do have a lot to say about cats.

I have a lot I could say about dogs too, for the opposite reasons.

Whereas hamsters? Meh. They’re cute but I have no strong opinion on them, no hamster in my life, nothing upon first impressions to write or speak about hamsters of note.

So I’d probably avoid that.

Of course, a good language learners knows how to use prompt. Let’s say you’re in Promptly, and the prompt is ‘Hamster’. First up, I’d use the suggestions for different levels and video walkthrough provided to spark some inspiration. That might lead me to thinking about other animals that tend to be nocturnal, and maybe that’s something that’s more interesting to me or I have a story to tell about.

When we approach practice this way, not only is it more engaging and useful in the midst of it, but it makes review something we’re much more likely to do.

A Non-Intimidating Length

Something really important to note about Self-Review is that it doesn’t have to happen all the time. You get to chose when and what to Self-Review.

For example, it’s great to write long texts sometimes, but if you’ve committed to Self-Review everything to the same standard, then the length of that could end up so intimidating that you don’t even attempt writing stuff that length in the first place anymore.

Make sure that the time you have for a Self-Review session is reasonable for the length of what you’re reviewing. Be self-compassionate here, and don’t expect yourself to be able to fully correct that long and rambling voice note of yesterday’s speaking practice if you’ve got just a couple of minutes.

Something that can help when you do want to Self-Review longer texts is the first tip of the article – pick a focus.

Even if it’s different from the initial focus you set yourself when creating it, it will help you to avoid feeling overwhelmed and more able to confidently Self-Review.

Don’t Rely On Translation Too Much

During a practice session, speaking or writing, it can be tempting sometimes to rely a lot on translation tools. Whether it’s a dictionary, Google Translate or something else, if you’re finding yourself having to look up more than around 20-30% of words, then it’s not necessarily going to be a fun one to Self-Review.

Because guess what? You’re going to have to look up all of those words again. And that seriously eats into your Self-Review time.

It’s absolutely fine to lean on these tools when practising, but when you know you want to Self-Review your practice, it can be best to limit it.

Instead, when you know you’re producing something that you want to Self-Review after (especially if it’ll be a while after), make it easier for yourself and try to stick to what you know.

Your future self will thank you.

How to Self-Review in Promptly

I recently added a brand new workshop recording to Promptly called How to Self-Review! Yay!

You’ll learn how to know what to review, as well as how to self-review quickly and easily.

Because, sure you can check with a teacher, exchange partner, or fluent speaker you know, but that’s not always an option.

Developing the skill of how to self-review will mean you’re never afraid of being either too critical or not critical enough again.