Temptation bundling: building a new language learning routine
Once you achieve a certain level, maintaining and further increasing proficiency in your target language becomes a matter of finding room for this language in your life.
If you fail to integrate your newly acquired L2 into your life in some organic way, the only logical outcome is attrition. Once the deliberate study is over, you’ll find yourself spending less and less time reading, listening and speaking in this language—and your confidence in your ability to use it will start to erode …which, in turn, will make you less likely to use it.
This is exactly what I felt was happening to my German as the number of hours I’ve been devoting to it started to drop from about 60 a month to 32, to 19, before finally plateauing at 4. The trajectory looked unsettling, even though I understood that spending 2-3h/day on German while trying to finish my Master’s thesis was an unrealistic target. 1h/day sounded completely reasonable, and yet, week after week, German was falling through the cracks.
Arrrrrrrrgggghhh.
So, I analyzed the situation and implemented a single change that increased my monthly engagement with German content from 4 to 30+h/month. Effortlessly.
Here’s what I did.
One of the concepts in behavioural science—concepts behind engineering a behavioural change—is temptation bundling. Temptation bundling is coupling something you want to do more of (such as exercising or, in my case, German) with something you easily indulge in (such as watching Netflix, reading for pleasure, or video gaming). If you manage to restrict an indulgence to the times when you're doing something that requires an extra boost of motivation, you kill two birds with one stone. The “should-do” activity becomes easier to engage in and more enjoyable to do—the “wanna-do” activity receives a much needed restraint.
So, say, if you restrict the times when you can listen to a page-turner audiobook to the times when you’re exercising at the gym, you end up actually looking forward to going to the gym—because your iPod, preloaded with Hunger Games, is held hostage in the locker. This simple behavioural intervention, orchestrated by a team of scientists from Wharton and Harvard, led to a 51% increase in gym visits. Pretty impressive.
My equivalent of Netflix and Hunger Games is reading. I read voraciously. There’s always a running list of books I want to read—and at least 4 books on the go. Most of it is non-fiction outlining the science, best-practices, and strategy for everything from productivity, to finance, to behavioural design. I can easily spend several hours a day reading this stuff—if anything, I have to stop myself to get other things done. So, as I was pondering on how to balance my reading appetite with other life goals, including spending more time on German, it occurred to me that I could perhaps use temptation bundling and give myself a card blanche on reading, as long as it’s done in German (*).
(*) Normally, I restrict reading in a relatively new language (B1/2) to familiar and/or relatively “simple” topics or genres. The reason is that reading, even at the B2 level, is still quite effortful and prone to comprehension failures. Therefore, I consider reading for understanding/learning about the topic and reading for pleasure/learning a language as two separate activities (which is still the case below B1/2 level). It’s not a problem if you’re reading Hunger Games and misunderstand something—it’s more of a problem when you want to read something like Antifragily by Nassim Nicolas Taleb and really cannot follow it. It defeats the purpose. But the truth is, once you get into it, usually you end up understanding more than you thought you would—provided you’re a B2.
Over the next three weeks, I’ve read Hooked by Nir Eyal, Nudge by Carl Sustein, and The Price of Tomorrow by Jeff Booth—in German—totalling 36 hours of reading. It wasn’t exactly effortless initially, but I really wanted to read each of these books, and so curiosity took over.
There was just one problem—I was dying to read another book. The temptation was sitting right on my desk, staring me in the face, brazenly flashing its English title—Misbehaving by Richard Thaler. Given choice, I’d prioritize this book over everything else, and my German reading would have to take a back seat. So I implemented a minor tweak to my temptation bundling tactic. I gave myself permission to go ahead and read this book (or anything else, for that matter)—in English—but only after I had already read in German for one hour. Devious? Oh yeah. Did it work? Hell yeah.
Behavioural science tools like temptation bundling are indispensable during the transitional phase of language learning where you’re trying to build new routines around your newly acquired language. Of course, your version of temptation bundling doesn’t have to involve reading. Instead, you can let yourself binge on Netflix as long as it’s in your target language or play undemanding video games while listening to a foreign language podcast.
The only caveat is to never pair one cognitively demanding activity with another. You can’t be completing a mission in Far Cry 4 while listening to an episode of Hypercroissance (you can, however, simply drive around in Far Cry 4, exploring the open world, while listening to the same podcast).
The point being, if your attention slips away, you’re doing it wrong. Temptation bundling is not an exercise in multitasking—it’s simply a human-friendly way to ease yourself into difficult behaviours—like using another language for everyday things—before they become second nature.
Written by Alina Kuimova | 25/10/2024