Last post I clarifies difficulties when carrying out my English learning plan. This article will focus on some potential solutions.

Solution One - Adhere to the principle

Having been struggling with sleepiness and forcing myself to stay conscious for a whole month, I realize one truth that I am only a normal guy and should obey the principle of body. I cannot stay up until 2 a.m. while easily getting up at 6.30 in the morning. I am no longer capable of maintaining a high energy mind for a long time. I am unable to put my all attention on study while my back and eyes are hurting.

All in all, after so many years squandering my property associated with youth, my body has been weakening and I am not as young as before. I understand humankind, as a animal in nature, also need to take rest regularly for the recovery of energy and the regain of concentration. Having accepted it, I have to learn subtraction by reducing some activities as to achieve the balance between study and rest. To be specific, my start of the day, which is twenty past six, remains unchanged, while the bedtime is moved forward to twelve o’clock at night. As a result, my total sleeping time can go up to approximately six and a half hours, which I ensure it is sufficient.

There is another principle I need to adhere to. That is the process of mastering a foreign language. In the past, I was anxious to quickly improve my English to the level of native speakers. I ever reckoned only if staying in daily exposion to English, I can fulfill my ambition.

Nevertheless, I ignore another important influence factor for language learning, which is time. In fact, taking grasp of one language not only requires you to use it extensively, but also takes you a lot of time to stay in touch with it constantly. For example, I believe everybody has similar experience in reciting vocabularies. We have to recite a word over and over again until finally managing to store it in our minds. Even if having already read numerous English articles, I am still using expressions like “a hardworking perosn” instrad of “a work ethic”.

Time and quantity play an essential role in language acquiring since without a perfectly good combination of them, professional output seems to be a daydream. This principle indicates I would better give up the unreal thought that catching up with foreigner people in one year. Instead, I should calm down, do my best during this time period and wait for the moment when my English level leap from quantitative change to qualitative change.

Solution Two - Keep a diary

My previous posts are all about the things happening around me, so it is extremely easy to get dried up when I stay home and do not get communication with other people.

It seems ideas are too limited. Actually, ideas can come from everywhere, including the mistake I made, the dialogue I had and the book I read etc., and thus it should not be merely resulted from something serious such as breaking up with the girlfriend, getting criticized about being drunk and so on.

We all know the life is almost the same. Each day in the life, everybody does the same routine — jump out of bed, clean up, eat breakfast, go to school/work, commute back home, have dinner and finally climb into the blanket. In order to extract any inspiring idea from this kind of life, I should keep a diary for recording those little different things, like what I learn from the books, how I can avoid repeating the mistakes, and what temperament I should foster. Taking notes of these little things enriches my potential knowleadge and eventually helps me output it in a more logical way.

Solution Three - Set the goal

Goal has great influence on our lives by guiding the path when we are confused or get distracted. Initially, I was driven by my in-depth long-term schedule and feel full of enegry everyday and I used to urge me to execute it with self-constrain, but finally it turned out to be a uncompleted task. I agree with an opinion that relying on self-control is undependable, on contrary, only plans according to scientific methodology works, recording that the plan is different from the will, which is easily affected by other elements.

There, however, is one another thing I should not have ignored. Without combining the plan with goal, we are more like a machine repeating doing same things, and as machines, deviation is only a matter of time. Incorporating goal into the plan gives it a target for diligence and after that every time being derailed, I can get back soon.

Speaking of my goal, this is out of the scope of this post, so let us leave it behind someday and end today now. Have a good dream.