How can busy people make use of mentoring?

Finding time to pursue learning a language is almost impossible for some people.

Dieter is a German doctor who has a holiday house in Spain where he plans to retire in a few years.

Of course he wants to keep up his Spanish during the year.

But how?

GPs (general practitioners) work long days. Dieter starts early in the morning with home visits, spends the rest of the day in his surgery and often visits more patients in the evening, before returning home late and exhausted. And he might be on call.

He can’t set aside an hour a day to work on his Spanish.

He can’t commit to weekly Spanish classes.

He can’t spend ages searching the internet for resources to learn Spanish.

So what can he do?

Dieter can usually find 5 minutes a day to express write or active copy or learn some vocabulary or go over his notebook.

A couple of times a week he manages to watch an episode of Intimacy or The Minions of Midas.

And every Sunday he sends me an email telling me what he’s done and how it went.

To which I reply with comments, encouragement and suggestions for the week ahead.

I send topics for express writing, information about a podcast with 10-minute episodes for listening practice, or the link to an article for active copying.

Dieter says our emails help him keep on track.

He has a bit of pressure to do some Spanish most days so he has something to report. But it’s not too much pressure so doesn’t add to his stress.

Also we adapt the menu of activities to fit around Dieter’s hectic schedule in the upcoming week.

This is how learning Spanish becomes not only doable but fun and relaxing.

Which shows that busy people can benefit from mentoring too.

Need support to set up and stick to your DIY language project? I can help.

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