I didn't really know what title to give this video, but it's the new year and I want to talk about language learning.

So, language learning in 2025.

I want to talk a little bit about my past year, 2024, in terms of language learning and things that happened in that process and things I learned along the way.

And I want to talk about what my plan is, let's say, for 2025.

I don't have extremely specific goals, but there's something really interesting that I want to do this year for my language learning process.

So, I'm going to talk about all that.

I'm sure that this will be helpful for you and that you'll be able to kind of take some lessons from what I'm saying, or maybe you just want to hear about my language learning successes and failures, because I'll talk about those.

And before we continue, please click on the little bell to activate the notifications so that every time I upload a new video, you'll get notified so you don't miss these videos.

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I don't know why, but I'm glad you like these videos.

Okay, let me talk about 2024 and how that year was for me as a language learner.

Well, the beginning of the year, the first five months or so, were crazy for me just in terms of my life.

It was a very turbulent time.

It was like this.

The circumstances were very unique.

I'm probably not going to have another time period like that in my life again, or maybe I will.

I don't know.

But the circumstances were pretty unique, and so it wasn't like I had all the time in the world for language learning.

However, I did do my Italian challenge at the beginning of that year.

I actually started it in December of 2023, but I did most of the challenge at the beginning of that year.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, I did a challenge where I started learning Italian, and I learned it for 100 days.

And the reason why I did this was to help other English speakers who want to learn other languages, specifically Spanish.

I have friends and people I know that want to learn other languages.

So I kind of did this challenge to show what I would do to start learning a language during the first 100 days or 90 days or 120 days or whatever, right?

So the problem with this challenge was that I didn't really want to learn Italian.

I don't mean to offend you if you're Italian.

Your language is beautiful.

Your country is amazing.

It's the most terms of languages that we want to learn.

I'm sure most of you want to learn English.

That's why you're watching this video right here.

I have certain languages that I'm really interested in learning and others that I'm not as interested in.

I'm somewhat interested in Italian because it's really beautiful.

It's got a lot of history.

It's a language that is very interesting, just in general.

But for me personally, Italian just isn't the language that I really want to learn.

I just chose it because it's the closest I could get to another English speaker learning Spanish, for example, because I wanted to replicate that process.

And I already speak Spanish.

I'm learning French.

I've learned a lot of Portuguese.

So I was trying to find a language that was similar to Spanish, but that I didn't know yet.

So that's why I chose Italian.

And the challenge went pretty well in the sense that I had pretty good results after 100 days.

I was happy with my results, despite the fact that halfway through the challenge, I completely lost my motivation.

And I did like the final 50 days, just because I had to, not because I wanted to.

And despite that, I had decent results.

But I learned through that process how important motivation is.

People often downplay motivation in favor of discipline.

You know, that's what all the personal development self-help people will tell you.

Discipline, discipline, discipline.

You're not always motivated, but you have to be disciplined.

And obviously, there's a lot of truth to that.

But in general, if you're learning a language, you better be motivated to learn it.

If not, I'm sorry, but it's not going to be a fun process.

You're not going to progress quickly.

It's going to be a chore.

So motivation is extremely important.

In some cases, in my opinion, it's even more important.

Because I've seen this for myself in that Italian challenge, I was really, really disciplined with that for 100 days or whatever it was.

But the lack of motivation in the second part of that challenge just really hindered me from progressing more.

I progressed a lot the first 50 days and a lot less the second 50 days.

Because the first 50 days were cool.

I was inspired and motivated.

And the second 50 days, I wasn't.

If you look at that whole period, the one difference between the first 50 days and the second 50 days was my motivation level.

So I learned that from that challenge.

But I was happy that my methods worked.

And I could say that, yeah, I can help people that want to learn Spanish from scratch.

I have kind of a process that they could copy.

And it will help them progress a lot in 100 days or whatever.

So I'm happy about that.

But from here on out, I'm only going to do challenges with languages that I actually want to learn.

I'm not going to do something like that again, unless it's a language I want to learn.

So that was kind of a lesson for me from that.

But currently, this is what I wanted to talk about, you know, mostly in this video, is that currently, I'm more interested in developing my language learning methods and my philosophy when it comes to the intermediate level, not the beginner level, the intermediate level of language learning, and specifically, the act of speaking.

Okay?

I'm the listening guy.

I'm sure that there are few people online that have made more content for listening than I have.

If you know someone who does what I do and has done it for longer, who has released more videos or episodes or whatever, I'm interested to know.

Please leave that down in a comment below.

But I think that there are few people online that have produced more listening content in terms of podcast episodes and videos than I have.

So I'm the listening guy.

My podcast, my YouTube channel, they're called Listening Time.

And I hope, and I don't just hope, I know that my content is really useful for people that are training their listening.

This is kind of like my mission with my career, to help people with their listening and be able to understand native speakers better.

Right?

And that's great.

And I'm sticking with that.

I'm not going to suddenly change my content, of course.

But for myself, I really feel the need to further develop my own philosophy, my own theories, my own beliefs about the intermediate level of language learning and specifically speaking.

Okay.

Why?

Why do I want that?

Well, because in 2024, I stagnated with my French.

I did not achieve the goal that I had set for myself.

I lost motivation for several months, probably like, I don't know, maybe three months or something like that.

It wasn't that I had no motivation, but my motivation definitely wasn't where I thought it would be.

And I think it is mostly because I wasn't seeing the progress that I wanted to see with my speaking.

I progressed for sure.

Don't get me wrong.

My speaking definitely improved.

I'm still taking classes multiple times a week.

I'm seeing improvement.

That's great.

But I want it to be faster.

I want the improvement to be more noticeable in a shorter period of time.

And I think that the improvement that I have had has been slow and steady, right?

Which is good.

But my career is languages.

It's helping people with their English.

And not only that, I feel like I talk a lot about language learning in my videos, in my podcast episodes.

And so I'm not only giving people content for their listening.

I'm also giving them advice about language learning.

I'm talking about my own language learning progress.

And this is my career.

And so for me, it's not acceptable to just say, OK, well, I think my process is OK.

I'm improving a little bit.

Great.

No, I want to get better.

I want to develop a process, a method, a philosophy that will actually help people become even better in their language learning, improve faster, reach a higher level of speaking in a shorter amount of time.

Right.

I am searching for that.

That's part of what I want to do with my career.

I want to just better develop my ideas about language learning.

And specifically right now, speaking at that intermediate level is what I'm focused on, because that is what has caused me to lose motivation in my own language learning.

And I think that's one of the number one things that causes you, all you listeners, well, you're on YouTube.

So what is that?

You're a watcher, whatever.

I can't think of the word right now.

But all of you who are watching right now, I'm sure that you can identify with that, that feeling of just wanting to be able to speak That's what my focus is right now.

And, again, I'm super happy with all the content that I've created.

I know that it's helped hundreds of thousands of people with their listening and their speaking as well.

But I want to address this frustration, this frustration with not being able to speak, even though you have a decent level of listening.

Right.

I get that comment, that message all the time.

I feel like I can understand pretty well, but I just can't speak the way I want to speak.

My speaking is just so much worse than my listening.

That is the frustration that I'm obsessed with right now.

And just recently, a light bulb went off in my head.

We use that phrase like a light bulb went off.

It just means like you had this idea all of a sudden.

So a light bulb went off for me.

And I have been able to reflect a lot over the past couple of days in terms of my language learning process, my past language learning experiences.

And I think I'm on to something, meaning I think I have found what has been missing for me, that missing link.

I'm really excited about this.

It's nothing revolutionary.

It's not some really interesting new method or technique.

No, it's just something that I've been missing, something that I have been overlooking up until this point.

And now I feel like my eyes are opened to it.

And I'm excited about that.

So this idea that I just had, that I've been I've already started actually, I think two or three days ago.

I'm starting to do it little by little.

And I'm not going to share what it is with you right now.

I know that's going to frustrate a lot of you.

The reason why I'm not going to do it yet, why I'm not going to share my idea with you is because I need to put it into action first.

And I need to test it first.

I'm not going to share something with you.

And then I realize it doesn't work.

And then I have to come back and say, Oh, sorry, everybody, don't do that.

Right?

I want to test this out.

I want to give it some months.

And specifically, I plan on doing it for the next four to six months.

I think that's enough time to really kind of see the effect that it has had.

And then I'm going to share the results after that, if they're worth sharing, but I think they will be.

I'm excited about this.

Again, I'm sorry for the mystery that I'm not going to say it yet.

But just know that Connor here, he's thinking about you and your language learning process and your frustration with speaking.