You’ve been studying really hard in your target language.
You made tremendous progress while also facing some roadblocks along the way.
After spending lots of time in the language, you thought of taking a wholesome break. However, you’re not sure whether it will do harm to your progress.
Should you do it?
Taking a break aids in one’s recovery and can even reinforce learning as the brain forms new connections when not at work. However, it can lead to gradually forgetting the language if done for a long time without any practice.
There are pros and cons to taking a language break. Some are backed by science, while some are mainly for practical reasons.
As a language learner myself, I’ve taken a lot of breaks. Yet despite the inactivity, I still get to keep my target language and iucontinue to improve it over time..
So if you’re worrying whether a timeout could hurt, this guide will help you out.
Why Taking a Language Learning Break Is Helpful
There are countless strategies and hacks on how to learn a foreign language, like learning while you sleep, using spaced repetition, and shadowing a native speaker.
But believe it or not, taking a break from study – meaning you spend ZERO effort in language-related activities for a given time – can be a powerful strategy when done right.
First of all, you rejuvenate and recharge your energy after studying intensively. This is an obvious one, yet it’s actually easy to miss because in today’s progressive world, we tend to get busy and want to keep the ball rolling.
Stopping could therefore be seen as an act of laziness. At work, yes, if you don’t do anything you’d risk losing your job. However, language learning can be more forgiving with timeouts and in fact, could benefit you in a good way.
It may even reinforce learning since the brain constantly makes new connections even when it’s not in use. The process is known as consolidation, which is a time-dependent process that helps form long-term memories.
In fact, consolidation works whenever you’re learning any skill – be it programming, drawing, playing the violin, or doing public speaking. You start off with being terrible at first, but you eventually become familiar and skillful as time goes by. Because other than your efforts, your brain works side by side with you to master the skill.
I benefit a lot from this process when memorizing song lyrics in my target language. I struggle often in the beginning of memorization, but as I let time pass by, I’m often amazed when the lyrics become easier to recall until I eventually mastered it.
Overall, it’s safe to say that most of the knowledge I’ve acquired in my target language – alphabet, grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, culture – solidified into my brain a long time ago, even if I took several months of break in between my study and immersion.
Outside of science, there are practical and obvious reasons for taking a break.
Speaking from personal experience, I take it as an opportunity to reflect and contemplate on my progress.
- How far have I progressed?
- Am I seeing significant improvements?
- Is it still worth resuming my study of the language?
- What’s the reason I started the language in the first place?
- Did my motivation change? What has changed since then?
- Are my efforts in line with what I’m trying to achieve?
When I’m feeling exhausted and feeling stuck, when I don’t have motivation and on the verge of burnout, I look after myself and evaluate my priorities.
Sure, if you need to learn the language because you need it for work or study abroad, then that’s a valid reason for continuing. Otherwise, when you’re not really pressed for a deadline, something else might be more important than aiming for fluency in your target language.
I don’t have a deadline for my target language, so I find that maintaining it for 15 minutes a day regularly proves more helpful than cramming it all day long. But even then I would still take a break when life gets in the way.
How a Language Learning Break Can Backfire
That said, taking a break doesn’t come without a cost.
For instance, the most obvious one, is you break your momentum when you return to zero.
This is particularly important especially when you’re in the middle of doing something important, such as mastering the first 500 words in a language or an entirely new alphabet. Because when you resume studying, you might forget where you left off and have to start over.
I feel particularly guilty about this. I could recall being in the middle of a grammar lesson for intermediate level when I lost the motivation to continue studying. When I resumed, I also ended up forgetting the lessons preceding it.
What’s worse is that because I lost context, I pursued vocabulary and language immersion instead of finishing the rest of the grammar lesson. If I had planned for my break from the lesson, things could have run more smoothly.
Then there’s the possibility of forgetting the language slowly but steadily. Relearning might be helpful for future use of the language, but overall it adds more effort and time to maintain the language, when you could have just stuck until the language becomes more automatic to you.
Unless you have some minimal practice or easy content to immerse on regularly, the default is that your memory will decline and it will gradually tear away the knowledge you have of the language.
Depending on how much time and effort you’ve already invested in learning (as well as the learning method you used), the rate of decline would vary from person to person. If you’ve already spent a year or two in your target language, then a few weeks break wouldn’t hurt much. But the same length of break would hurt if you only crammed that language for one full day!
Also, if you took a break because of some language difficulty you faced earlier (i.e. a difficult grammar rule or a hard-to-pronounce vowel), sorry to say but the problems don’t solve themselves. You need to come back in order to resolve those difficulties.
The good thing though, is because you’ve given it time to settle in your brain, consolidation might have already produced you some key insights and memories to help you push through the difficulty. In short, you get enlightened on the problem.
If I didn’t come back to the lyrics I was memorizing simply because it was difficult, I wouldn’t be able to finish the song and witness how my memory improves over time.
The key is to come back to the challenges you’ve faced BEFORE you forget what those struggles were. Or else, you might have to encounter them some other time and start over again.
Rest Now or Keep Going?
Taking a break, when done strategically, can help you improve in your language.
Whether you’re just tired, struggling with a difficult problem, or simply lack the time to commit to study, science will back you up, telling you it’s not that of a big deal to stop.
So go ahead, drop your study materials. Stretch your arms and take a breather.
Have you taken a break from language learning? Did it help you out or not?
