In my experience textbooks aren’t really the best way to learn after you’ve passed a certain level. They’re incredibly useful for beginners to learn grammar and vocab but after that they don’t offer a lot of activities that help you implement your learning in a way that reflects how you will actually use it.
It’s also near impossible to learn a language without help. Don’t isolate yourself just because you are self-learning rather than taking lessons. You NEED to talk to native speakers, both through text messages and actual verbal conversations. Colloquial conversations will differ greatly to formal an ‘correct’ ones spoken in a classroom.
1. The first step I suggest when creating a curriculum is to know what your goal is. Are you planning to move to the country the language is spoken in? Do you want to study as a way to better understand and appreciate the culture?
2. The next would be to gauge what level you are at through taking a language competency test. This is mostly so you have an idea of what you do know and what is considered the universal “next step” to give yourself a general direction to head towards.
3. Write down topics that interest you. For me these would be my career (marketing and digital media), my interests (video games, ttrpgs, fashion, history, horror novels), and important parts of my identity (my religion, my sexuality, my partner, my disability) etc. I didn’t bother writing down anything I already know such as how to talk about my family, how to talk about my country of birth, or hobbies commonly written in textbooks such as reading, swimming, camping.
4. Now come up with a list of general activities to cover your listening, writing, reading and speaking skills. Some examples are listed below:
Listening:
Watch 5 minutes of the news - recaps or weekly rundowns are great for this
Listen to an audio book for half an hour whilst cooking, cleaning, commuting etc.
Create playlists of music you actually like in your target language - you can further this by watching interviews about the artists or watching any live performances/streams they have done.
Writing:
Write 1-2 paragraphs about a chosen topic without any dictionary or vocab list aid, any words you cannot remember or do not know just write in your native language. Return with a dictionary to fill in these missing words after and ask a native speaker to make any corrections they can spot and finally rewrite everything with all the corrections (taken from Lindie Botes).
Write practice professional emails, blog-posts, product reviews, leave comments under Instagram posts etc. Make sure to learn how to write in different situations: how does writing an email to your boss differ from writing to your colleague? How are businesses addressed on review sites? What changes when writing a blog for fashion from one about politics? Learn these nuances.
Text your native speaker friends - simple but necessary
Reading:
Read and summarise a key news article from this week
Read a page from a book in your target language, highlight any unknown words to return to. Write out the sentences these words occurred in then the words on their own with their definition and create a new sentence using them. My key tip for this is not to be too ambitious with what you are reading. Don’t try to read an epic fantasy, instead focus on short stories and books for children aged around 5-10. As you improve you can read more complicated plots but just because you are familiar with the book in your native language does not mean you will understand what is going on.
Speaking
Record yourself leaving fake voice mails. This can be for a doctor’s appointment, inquiring about a job, asking to hangout with a friend etc. Keep it short and tone appropriate. This also gives you the opportunity to research phone etiquette in that culture.
Talk. To. Native. Speakers.
5. Combine your topics of interest with activities to give you something that should resemble almost a lesson plan.
