Little and often fills the purse

There is a Chinese proverb that goes something like this: Little and often fills the purse.

The idea behind this idiom is that regular, small doses can build up to something quite significant over time. In this article I explore how this concept can be applied to learning English as a second language. We will hear the story of Katie, who followed a steady, regular and convenient study routine that worked wonders for her. If you want to make good progress in your own English learning journey, read on.

Before we continue, ask yourself the following three following three questions based on your own language learning experiences.

When you studied another language:

1. How often were your lessons?
2. How long were your lessons?
3. How convenient were your lessons? (consider things like the time of the lesson, travelling to and from classes)

By exploring these three questions we are considering three factors:

1. Frequency
2. Length
3. Convenience

These three factors can have a significant impact on your language learning. Let's look at these factors in more detail, using typical responses I've heard for these questions.

Frequency

For many people it is difficult to have lessons more than once or twice a week. The cost of lessons is one reason for this and finding the time in the week is another.

Length

Most lessons - whether at a school, college or in private sessions - tend to be between an hour to two hours in length. Sometimes they are even longer, but rarely are they shorter.

Convenience

If you are studying at a school or college, you need to travel there and this takes time and costs money. Lessons will be scheduled for particular times of day - e.g. in the evenings after work - which will be more or less convenient for different people.

Katie: a case study

A friend of mine called Katie is a great example of someone who found that traditional long language lessons once or twice a week was not necessarily the optimum way of learning.

Katie lives in London and is learning Japanese. She has a full-time job for a tech company and decided to start Japanese classes. She was being sent to Japan twice a year for work and wanted to communicate with her colleagues. She was also falling in love with the country, so she was really motivated to learn to speak Japanese.

Katie started having Japanese classes just over a year ago at a local college. Every week she would have a two-hour lesson on Mondays and Wednesdays. She had an excellent teacher, she rarely missed lessons, and always did her homework. In short, she was a model student with a perfect teacher. However, the other students in the class could not make the same commitment as Katie and she felt that she was being held back. She spoke to her teacher and arranged to have private lessons instead.

She was happy with the number of hours she was doing and the number of lessons per week and so she arranged to have two-hour evening lessons on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Of course, it was more expensive now she was having private lessons but she could justify this by the amount of progress she was making. The personalised lessons allowed her to work at a pace that suited her and she loved having more interaction with her teacher.

Katie enjoyed the private lessons and was making good, steady progress with her Japanese. However, one day Katie's teacher had to rearrange Katie's lessons due to other commitments. Katie and her teacher agreed to change the lessons from twice per week to every day (Monday to Saturday). Katie was now having lessons for 30 minutes per day and at lunch time instead of evenings. By making this change, Katie saw an even greater improvement in her acquisition of Japanese.

Let's go back to those three factors of language acquisition that we started with:.

1. Frequency
2. Length
3. Convenience

Frequency

The key to success here is retention rates.

Katie reported that she seemed to remember a lot more and with less effort with her new lesson structure. She said that when she had lessons only twice a week she would have to look back at her notes a lot in order to remember what she'd covered. With the lessons every day she hardly referred to her notes between lessons and she still remembered a lot.

There is evidence to support this. Psychology experiments have shown that learners rapidly lose their memory of learned knowledge unless the information is consciously reviewed. The sooner knowledge is reviewed the better. So reviewing it after one day means considerably more will be remembered than if it is reviewed after one week.

When we regularly revisit information that we have learnt, we start remembering more and more. What's important is that the repetition is regular and that there is not a big gap between the initial lesson and the first repetition.

Length

The key to success here is making the most of our naturally short attention spans.

One of the first things Katie said she liked about her shorter Japanese lessons was the fact that she felt she was able to focus better. She felt that she learnt much more in four sets of 30-minute lessons than she did in one two-hour lesson. She said she understood things better and remembered almost everything she covered in the 30-minute lessons.

This was not always true of the longer lessons. Quite often she couldn't remember bits from the middle parts of longer lessons.

There is much research on human attention spans, and it is commonly accepted that we are more attentive in the first 10-15 minutes of a lesson. Our attention is high at the beginning of a lesson, then our attention tends to wane until the last 10-15 minutes when it picks up again as we know the lesson is coming to an end. So, for Katie, having shorter lessons were much more productive, as a much greater percentage of what she covered was remembered.

Convenience

The key to success here is finding a time that works best for you.

Katie told me that she was more of an 'early bird' than a 'night owl'.

Bringing forward the lessons to earlier in the day made a huge difference to her as she was less tired. She also felt it was a much better use of her time and the daily lessons gave her a greater sense of achievement.

It is important to choose a time of day and a set of circumstances that are suited to you for learning. It could be the time of day, or it could be other convenience factors, such as being able to learn online rather than travel to learn in person. In Katie's case the fact that she was less tired certainly contributed to her improved performance in learning Japanese.

Katie's language learning was therefore a great example of the phrase “little and often fills the purse” – having shorter lesson more often really worked! Her Japanese came along in leaps and bounds – her purse was certainly full! But only because the new lesson structure was convenient for her.

Do you think it could work for you and your learning of English?