Elements of Effective Independent Language Learning

7. Discipline & Diligence

I'm taking myself to task for this very principle of independent learning, so I thought I ought to blog about it, though it's been long since I last blogged. My blog represents a lot of metacognating on language but so many of these principles apply to all kinds of things. I think this is partly due to what I believe about the purpose of being on this planet: we came to learn and language allows to learn about our learning to engage in metalingual thinking and understand the "other," or that which is outside ourselves.

Discipline is linked to motivation and desire, the first element discussed on this blog. Discipline is an optimistic pursuit of a goal that we feel is well worth the effort. But discipline goes farther than that. It is the deterermination to do what you set out to do because you said you would. Sometimes we may desire something but it is in our actions that we show whether we were sincere and intrinsicly motivated in that desire. When evaluating yourself, your success and your language pursuits, it may be wise to look at your diligence in all aspects of your life. What do you do every day that needs done and what are your patterns of procrastination? How did you make certain good habits that you have and how have you broken the ones that aren't good for you? It might be helpful to refresh the motivations you had.

Recently, as I've mentioned, I re-evaluated my language progress and realized I needed some more structure and help to accomplish my goals. I thought again of all the reasons why I want to have better Japanese, why this would be a worthwhile thing for me to invest in and the result helped me in making the decision to make that a promary goal for this summer.