How to Guarantee Language Learning Success (30 Day Trial)

Do you struggle to keep a consistent practice of English? Do you feel your ability to speak English would be drastically improved if you could just use a little more self-discipline and study more?

Do you REALLY want to learn English? Is it important to you? If so, you need to be studying every single day.

What if there was a simple and easy way to make English a daily habit? Imagine what the effects would be. There is no faster road to fluency.

One of the best technique for getting yourself to study every day is to do a 30 day trial.

What is a 30 Day Trial?

A 30 day trial is when you commit to do something every day for 30 days.

The reason for 30 days is because it takes about three weeks to install a new habit. If you do something every day for three weeks, you get used to doing it, it’s easy and comfortable for you to do. Then the next nine days are used to make sure that the habit sticks.

The reason why this is so effective is because you trick your brain. Promising to study English for 30 minutes every day for the rest of your life sounds really difficult and intimidating. But 30 days? That’s doable (able to be done).

So by convincing yourself to just study English every day for 30 days, you’re actually making it much more likely you will study English every day for the rest of your life.

The idea is to just make it a part of your every day life.

Why do you brush your teeth every day? Because it’s a habit you’ve installed. You don’t have to use a lot of discipline to brush your teeth because it’s part of your every day routine. When you first started (as a kid) this was painful but now it’s part of your life and you miss it when you don’t do it.

If you go on a 30 day trial, you can incorporate learning English into your every day life, so it becomes a habit and not something you have to use a lot of willpower to do. It will become something you actually look forward to doing.

How to Ensure Success on a 30 Day Trial

One of the most important things about successfully implementing a new habit with the 30 day trial is to make sure you do it EVERY day. If you miss a day, it will greatly lower the chances that the habit stays with you.

But oftentimes even when we commit to doing something, we don’t always follow through. So how can we make sure we do?

Put your money where your mouth is.

This is a common expression that means if you believe something, like you’re better at me at ping pong, then let’s bet some money on it.

So if you want to ensure success with a 30 day trial, put your money where you mouth is. Don’t just SAY you’re going to do it, BET that you can do it.

If you really want to get better at English, COMMIT to a 30 day trial. Here’s how you do it:

1. Go on Facebook and post that you are committing to studying English every day for 30 days for 30 minutes (or however long you want).
2. Promise that for every day you don’t study for 30 minutes, you will give $25 (or however much money you would worry about losing) to your friend or some charity like Kiva.
3. Watch your English improve or pay the consequences.

This takes a lot of integrity, but I have had a ton of success with 30 day trials by using this method. There’s nothing more motivating than the thought of losing money.

When I first moved to Brazil, my Portuguese was very bad and I wasn’t comfortable talking to other people. So I did a 30 day trial where every day I would talk to five people I didn’t know.

From this 30 day trial, I became much more comfortable talking in Portuguese, improved my speaking and comprehension skills, got out of my comfort zone, met some cool people, and made some new friends. All of this thanks to the 30 day challenge.

30 Day Challenge Examples

• Watch at least one TV show (one episode) every day.
• (If your living abroad) talk to x new people every day.
• Study any type of English for 30 minutes a day.
• Listen to podcasts for 30 minutes a day.
• Spend 30 minutes reading a book that’s written in English.
• Spend 30 minutes a day on Verbling (the Chatroulette of learning languages)
• Read comics for 30 minutes a day.

Overcoming Difficulties

Obviously, this technique doesn’t work well if you’re not an honest person. If you skip a day, would you stay true to your word (i.e. keep your promise) and still give your friend the money, even without him or her asking? If not, then don’t even bother with the trial—you need to develop integrity first.

Does studying English every day take discipline? Yes. Are there going to be some days where you don’t want to study and you just wish you never made the bet? Probably.

But deep down, you know that studying English every day is one of the best things you can do for yourself, so you commit to doing it, and you DO IT. Every. Single. Day.

So start a trial now. Decide how you want to improve your English and commit to spending 30 minutes (or however much time you want) every day.

Studying English doesn’t have to be a chore, and it shouldn’t be something that you despise. Learning English should be FUN.

Here at RealLife English, we focus on making language learning fun. Instead of just reading a grammar book, you can learn English from music, from comic strips like Garfield the Cat or Calvin and Hobbes.

Short TED Video About 30 Day Trials

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