How to Stay Motivated While Learning Greek
Last updated on September 19th, 2024
Greek is a challenging language to master especially if you are trying to learn it outside of Greece. Unfortunately, it’s not a popular language, unlike Spanish or German. There are far fewer language schools worldwide to learn Greek and learning resources than for other languages. That often leads to people turning to the internet to find tutors, online courses, books, and other content and resources that could help them study Greek, and even there, the resources are still somewhat limited for Greek.
Adding to this the complexity of Greek grammar and vocabulary can make it difficult to keep a learner’s motivation high, especially when learning Greek by themselves online. I often see students starting very excitedly, only to quit soon after.
And don’t get me wrong, it’s OK to start with enthusiasm and then change your mind after your curiosity about Greek has been satisfied. I was in that situation myself when I moved to Japan and faced cultural challenges every day that made me lose my eagerness to learn Japanese, a language I so wanted to study before I moved to Japan, so I quit after 6 months of trying.
Table of Contents
The First Step to Success
After all these years of helping learners from all over the world with their Greek journey, it is clear to me what the secret to success is. And it’s simple: You need to truly love the language and the process of learning it. I know it sounds cliché, but a true passion for the language or language learning (in general) is the key.
If you love the language, love how it sounds, love to try to speak it and communicate with others using it, the easier it will be to see good results. In the end, language learning is just like food. If you are not a fan of lentils or φακές as we say in Greek, and you know that you need to eat lentils every other day if not every day, then you’ll get sick of them real soon! So Greek, as a language and a culture, needs to seem “yummy” to you to begin with. And it’s the same thing as with most disciplines, for example, it’s not going to be effective to teach a little boy piano when he would be happier learning the drums instead.
I see it often, people who decide to learn Greek just because they feel they have to. Maybe they have a Greek partner suddenly or Greek heritage themselves and feel the pressure to learn some Greek as a form of paying tribute or just to communicate with family members back in Greece whenever they visit, or maybe they happen to move to Greece for a reason, and suddenly they realize they need to learn some Greek to get by. This sense of pressure to learn the language often sabotages the student if the true yearning to learn Greek is not there.
Most successful Greek learning stories I have come surprisingly from people with no Greek background. It’s usually people who come to Greece for a vacation and fall in love with the place so much that they choose to retire in Greece or come every year for a vacation. Their genuine love for the country, the language, the food, and the people is so strong that it motivates them enough to keep studying the language for longer periods.
What to Do
Now, I don’t want to disappoint you if you feel that the yearning I’ve been talking about is not quite there yet or you’ve lost it along the way. It’s normal for our brains to get tired of learning and slow down. Other times people simply need to learn Greek whether they like it or not because of work, business, or emigration reasons. There is hope though because there are always certain things you can do to overcome the demotivation you might be experiencing.
1. Review Your Study Method
This is the most important step in my opinion. Not every learner is the same. Some learners are more visual, others are more auditory, and others learn by doing, not just seeing or listening (kinesthetic learners). And then, some people learn best in solitude, and others are more social and learn best in groups.
Try to discover what type of learner you are and adapt your study plan to this. Your study program should be personal so don’t hesitate to make changes.
2. Vary Your Study Routine
Try to exercise all your language skills. Don’t just take a grammar book you bought online and read through it. A varied routine will be more interesting and will create more space for learning. For example, one day you can do some reading comprehension, the next day you can write a short essay, the next day do some listening exercises, and so on.
3. Set Small, Easy-To-Achieve Goals
It is very easy to get overwhelmed when you realize the amount of things you need to learn when you start with fluency as your ultimate goal. Instead, try to set small goals that are easy to reach within a relatively short time. For example, a small goal can be learning 10 new verbs within a week or the use of possessive pronouns by the end of the month. You can then create a schedule and a plan to reach that goal. Reaching that goal will give you a feeling of satisfaction and will show you results more often which will, in turn, boost your morale to keep learning.
4. Don’t Compare Yourself to Others
Perhaps you’ve seen videos on YouTube of learners who brag about all the languages they speak and how fast and well they learned them. You need to realize that such people are usually the exception to the rule and you shouldn’t get disappointed if you are not reaching the same results as them by doing the routines they do or following their tips. As I said above, every learner is different.
5. Be Realistic
Since I mentioned YouTube in my previous tip, this came to mind. I refer to videos or methods that overpromise things. Like learning Greek in five minutes, or in one month. It’s easy to click on them and consume their content. Sometimes the content is good and is presented attractively, so at least you get something back. However, sooner or later you will realize that things are not as easy as presented, and that’s when disappointment and loss of motivation might happen. The truth is that acquiring a new language is not easy, it takes effort, time, patience, and commitment, so be ready to commit if you want to acquire linguistic competence that stays.
6. Learn Gradually
This is also called the “build-up method” where you need to follow a linear path where every topic works as a base for what you need to learn next. For example, you can’t study the perfect tense if you haven’t mastered the aorist (past simple) tense first. Make sure you are learning Greek with a method or a tutor that follows a linear path and helps give you the building blocks to develop your language skills step-by-step.
Don’t just take a grammar book and read page after page. Greek grammar books are structured in a way that they present all the grammar points in groups (eg. first nouns, then verbs, then adverbs, etc.) They are not meant to follow a logical order that a student of Greek needs to follow so their knowledge of Greek will build up.
7. Just Listen to Greek
If you are tired of studying, just try to listen to something in Greek without thinking too much about it, without goals or objectives. Use the audio as background when you do things to get your ear used to the language. Occasionally, you might catch something or get curious about a word you heard and actively seek to learn more about it. This is a great way to trigger your curiosity and interest to learn Greek again.
8. Add a Physical Activity to Your Routine
Language learning requires a lot of resources mentally so it’s easy for our brains to get tired after a while. Sometimes, all it takes to ease our mind is doing physical activity in parallel to balance the load. It could be something like pilates, yoga, a sport, crafts, a DIY project, knitting… anything, really!
9. If Nothing Works, Take a Step Back
If you feel you’ve tried everything and nothing worked, maybe you should take a break from learning Greek. Sometimes you need to do a pause either because life gets in the way or because your brain is simply so tired or overwhelmed that it’s completely blocked. Define whether the pause will be for a couple of days, a week, a month, or a year, and then try to get back to it when you feel ready. It won’t mean you have failed. It will only mean that you need a reboot, a chance to come back at it later with a more refreshed mind.
During that time try to think whether you missed Greek and whether learning Greek made you happy or unhappy. If you feel relief at the end of that period that you are not studying Greek anymore, maybe Greek was never your thing and it’s good that you decided to move on. If you feel that you missed it, though, then that period will be the proof that you needed to know all along that you should stick to Greek!
So these are some of my tips you can follow to prevent or fight demotivation when studying Greek. Most importantly, keep in mind that learning should be fun eventually, not an obligation and you shouldn’t rush. As we say in Greek, αγάλι αγάλι γίνεται η αγουρίδα μέλι, meaning “Slowly slowly, the unripe grape becomes as sweet as honey.”
Let me know if you’ve ever been in a situation where you were demotivated and what helped you overcome it if you did.
Γεια χαρά!
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