Take a break from studying this summer. Yes, really.
I should probably tell you to keep studying. Summer is the low season for teachers — the school year empties out, the adults travel, the lesson schedule thins. I'd be doing my income a favour by telling you to squeeze in an hour by the pool, laptop balanced on a towel.
But that's not what I'm going to do.
Most of my students are adults, and the ones who plan to keep studying through their holidays do it from a beautiful place — they like the language, they don't want to lose their rhythm, they think a few sessions won't hurt. I understand. I also know what an hour of study on holiday actually costs: a quiet corner, decent internet, mental energy you came on holiday to stop spending. That hour isn't free. It's just hidden.
So here's what I tell people, against my own interest:
If you're already tired — the deep kind, the one that hides behind autopilot — keep studying and you won't absorb anything. Learning is resource-intensive: it needs attention, working memory, the capacity to take in new material. When that capacity is depleted, the input doesn't stick.
If you're going on holiday — go. Pauses don't damage memory; they help it. Consolidation — the process that moves information from short-term to long-term storage — happens during rest, not during input. Stop feeding the brain new vocabulary and it will finally do something with what you already gave it. That's not me being kind. That's neuroscience being uninterested in your guilt.
And one more thing: after a real break, motivation often comes back on its own. Emotional motivation can't carry a long project — anyone who's studied a language for years knows this. But when it returns, it makes the work lighter. A proper rest is one of the few reliable ways to get it back. The language stops feeling like an obligation and becomes the thing you missed.
Rest is part of the work. So take the break. Yes, really.
