This is the reason why it's hard to make French stick

THIS IS THE REASON WHY IT’S HARD TO MAKE FRENCH STICK

So, are you learning French and you feel that it doesn’t stick?

Some things feel easier, but others are really slippery, no?

You may wonder if there is any way that you can hold the words in your memory once and for all, after learning them once.

The only way to become bilingual and stay bilingual is to turn the French practice into a daily habit – even if just for 5 minutes a day.

But you need to know how to create a habit that’s fun and that lasts.

Check out the article below for some awesome habit-building tricks that’ll make your French stick, and watch the video for some French worth believing!

(This week: the verb CROIRE – to believe)

Lyrical Learning, & Why We Learn Habits Wrong
Post written by Leo Babauta.

When we learn song lyrics, we don’t just look at the written lyrics and know them, nor can we listen to a song just once and immediately sing it.

Learning the lyrics of a song is a process that often goes something like this:

1. Listen to the song, maybe look at the lyrics if you want.
2. Try singing the song a second time, but mess up a lot; when you mess up, you hear the correct version and so you know you messed up and know the correct way at the same time.
3. Repeat Step 2 a bunch of times, correcting as you go, learning more each time.
4. Try singing it without the song, and realize there are still holes in your knowledge.
5. Listen to the song again, filling in your knowledge holes.
6. Repeat Steps 4 & 5 until you can sing the song perfectly on your own.

For some people, this process comes faster than for others, and needs less repetition, but the process is usually something like this.

Other people don’t repeat some of the steps enough times to really get the song, but the process remains true — it’s just they only do part of it.

So this is how we learn lyrics.

How do we learn habits?
It usually goes something like this:

1. Create a habit plan.
2. Try it.
3. Fail at some point.
4. Feel bad about it, feel like we aren’t disciplined. Give up.

If we compare it to the lyric-learning process, we can see that with habits, we give up at Step 2!

Other people try a few more times, but they’re really only at Step 3 or 4. Barely anyone persists until they finish Step 6.

The key is to keep repeating until you finish Step 6, and you have it down. Use other people who do the habit right as your example as you’re learning. Compare what you’re doing wrong to what they’re doing right, and correct yourself.

And keep repeating, filling in your knowledge gaps, until you get it right and can do it on your own without help.

Then go sing your song.

This is Leo Babauta‘s guest blog post.

NOW IT IS YOUR TURN!
Tell us in the comments below, what is your best habit that helped you make French stick?

Let me guess.

Do you constantly have the feeling that you can’t hear what the French say and you don’t know how to read all the French words because they are written so much differently than they sound?

Learn 3 secrets that will help you be self sufficient in the way you pronounce French words – even if you don’t know what they mean – so that you can read that sophisticated menu in your favorite French restaurant.