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this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2026
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Language Learning
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It’s stagnating lol. I do a mini lesson almost every day but don’t have any opportunities to practice conversation or get feedback, so I end up forgetting quickly. I can read and understand books fairly well but speech and sentence formation are weak. I chose a language which I don’t have much use for, and it has grown on me, but at this point I do it out of routine and because I’d feel bad losing progress if I stopped.
This might not be possible for every language, but if you can, try to find something that you can only access in that language. Like some book that you're interested in that hasn't been translated or some topic where much more material exists in that language than in English. It makes it feel more worthwhile than just learning to learn.
That’s good advice. I do make myself read books and watch media in my target language (or subtitled in it) for practice. I just have nowhere to apply it in written or spoken form. Most likely I will start a new language while continuing mini lessons online until I finish the entire course.
Just for writing you could find a game with servers in that language. This may be a bit tough for Dutch though.
Have you tried shadowing?
Its not perfect speaking practice, but you can do it by yourself. You need a script + a recording. You listen to the recording, you read the script, then you play the recording AND talk at the same time (possibly reading from the script). Songs are a good start, but you also want to practice "normal speaking melodies / normal speaking rhythms" if at all possible.
I've been using songs + a German A2-graded news script here: https://learngerman.dw.com/de/kurz-und-leicht/s-69137519 . Its free for me, but you'll have to search in your target language for a similar resource...
The idea is you want to match EVERYTHING with the native speaker. Accents, melody, rhythm. Exactly everything. Shadowing at EXACTLY the same time is your best shot at matching perfectly.
I haven’t heard of that before but I will try it! Since it’s a casual hobby for me, I’m not too worried about learning it perfectly. At one point I considered learning German instead (it comes up much more often in work opportunities) and Deutsche Welle is what I was going to start with as a resource. How do you find it so far?
At the very least, shadowing is invaluable for muscle memory, just getting the pronunciation and prosody somewhere close to right. Can always record yourself if you're not able to get native feedback.
Nicos Weg (from Deutsche Welle) is probably the best free source of German study in the whole internet.
So yeah, definitely use dw.
Agreed on the shadowing rec. Journaling in your target language might be helpful too. Even w/o feedback, thinking about how to phrase things can be productive.
But if you already do well with reading and listening, maybe it's worth reflecting on your goals. Do you feel it's important for you to be able to speak well and produce sentences?
@lasta what language?
Dutch