I'm excited to announce the language learning flashcard app I've been working on since August last year is officially open for early sign-ups! What a joy to combine my passions of UX design and languages in a tangible way. Kaards makes use of example sentences and spaced repetition to teach specific skills in a language -- great for intermediate learners. 

It is a work in progress, but we're building publicly so you can follow our updates. Our first language is German, with more coming later. Opening up for beta testing later this month!

Yesterday I spoke at Preply's webinar about How to create your own language learning schedule and stick to it. Over 600 people attended live and it was a blast! If you were there, I hope you had fun too! I loved seeing these notes that Andrew took from the workshop.

Don't worry if you missed it - Preply will upload the recording to their YouTube channel soon and I'll be sure to share it on Twitter. You can also use our hashtag from the workshop to join the conversation on Twitter - just check out #preplyworkshopfam and come join our chats!

That being said, if I have a language exam to work towards, and I know I have a lot of vocabulary and grammar that I MUST know before a certain date, I plan my time very well. If I know which 20 grammar structures to learn, I’ll see how much time there is until the exam and plan out a schedule where I have time to learn, review, and take enough breaks. You can do the same with a textbook you’re working through – divide the amount of pages by the amount of days you have until you want to finish it – but always remember to leave room for breaks. Learning a language is also like going to the gym – you need rest days in order to function better!

And finally, if you’re more advanced in your target language – that is when you can start to “live like a native speaker”. Change your phone or laptop language to the language you’re learning. Read articles online, look up recipes, write your shopping list in the language, listen to podcasts, and write a diary in the language. This is called “maintenance mode”. The more you do in the new language you’re learning, the more it will become a part of your life. If you don't have native speakers to practice with, there are tons of things you can do to practice a language alone.