Perhaps the most challenging issue when you’re learning a foreign language is how to keep up your motivation. If you’re learning mostly on your own, and sometimes even with a good teacher, your motivation will inevitably go up and down, often from one day to the next, and all too frequently you’ll be tempted to give up altogether.

I’ve studied foreign languages for nearly thirty years and have taught my native tongue, Spanish, for almost twenty. I have seen what could otherwise have been excellent students abandon their efforts within weeks of starting, and what seemed at first to be poor students reach a highly advanced level, all because of their motivation, or lack of it.

How do successful language learners keep up their motivation? These are the tips I’ve come up with after talking to my students and going through my own experiences as a learner.


  • Learning has to be fun. If you don’t like the language course you’re using, get one that suits your style and needs better. If you don’t like your teacher, find a new one. If may sound tough, but it’s your time and money you’re wasting. Remember: boredom is motivation’s greatest enemy.
  • Set yourself small, realistic goals. Finish the next lesson over the weekend, make no more than three mistakes in this lesson’s drills, learn that phrase that today feels impossible to say. Motivation feeds on small and frequent achievements.
  • Learn something new in every study session, even if it’s just a word or phrase. It’s essential that you make constant steady progress, and you need to feel you’re getting somewhere.
  • Reward yourself. Organizing a trip to a country where they speak the language is the best motivation boost, but if your circumstances don’t allow it, there are many other ways to ‘live the language’: watch your favorite TV shows in your chosen language, read comic books and manga, get the foreign version of the magazines you like, read foreign papers, listen to audiobooks. There are thousands of products you can get in the foreign language you’re learning.