Many beginner and intermediate language learners confuse the difference between studying and learning and this sets back their progress by months, and sometimes even years. So what is the difference?
In short, studying is the preparation you undertake to attempt the real thing. In contrast, learning is the result that follows when you attempt the real thing.
If that’s hard to understand, just think about baking a cake.
If you want to bake a cake for the first time, you’re not going to just start mixing ingredients and hope for the best when you pop your mystery mix in the oven. Instead, you’ll take the time to find and read a recipe. The recipe will tell you what ingredients you will need, how to mix them, the temperature to set the oven, and how long to bake. Finding the recipe and reading through it is “studying”—it’s the preparation that you undertake so you can attempt the real thing: baking a cake.
The interesting part—learning—occurs when you actually try following the recipe to bake the cake. You’ll find that certain nuances and real-world problems are left out of the recipe. Should you increase the number of eggs if you only have medium-sized eggs and the recipe requires large eggs? How long should you mix the batter? If you don’t have sugar, how much brown sugar or honey should you substitute instead? If you have to split the cake batter into two pans, should they cook for the same time? And how much oil did you need to put on the bottom of the pan to make sure the cake wouldn’t stick?
Until you attempt to bake the cake, many of these questions will not enter your mind. But understanding how to deal with these real-world issues is the key to learning to bake a cake. If you stick to reading recipes, all you’ve got is theory and a conceptual understanding of what is required. But a model can’t account for all the variations in your cooking environment or your lack of experience with baking in general. It also means that no matter how many times you study the recipe, you’ll never really learn to bake a cake unless you actually try to bake one.
The language learning equivalent of reading recipes is spending all your time learning vocabulary and grammar, reviewing flashcards, or engaging in a language class or app. If you are starting out, these foundational steps are important. But remember: just as studying recipes won’t teach you to bake a cake, you are not actually learning your target language until you engage with it in ways that native speakers do.
You need to get out of the classroom and off the app, and actually start listening to native conversations and reading books written in the native language for native speakers. Anything less than the real thing is still a simulation of the real world.
So don’t confuse your time on Duolingo with learning a language. Sure, you are getting the skills you need to get out there and actually engage with the language. But once you have read the recipe, you need to bake the cake.