Why Your English Needs a Time Out

How To Tell If Your English Needs a Time Out

Your English learning needs a break – a time out if it feels:

👉 dutiful (need to do it)

👉 stressful (hate/fear doing it)

👉 like it is being avoided (it’s always on your to-do list – never on your done list). 

You might have been throwing English at your brain for YEARS.

“Feeling guilty about not doing your English is taking up a lot of your energy.

Imagine it’s like having a tiny little light on in your car, slowly draining your battery.“

Ruth, 2025

Traditional Language Learning

Most language learning looks like sitting in a classroom (or on a computer) and getting more and more information to retain.

We sacrifice comfort and freedom to be good and willing students and ‘take our medicine’ to learn.

Dutifuly, we spoon in language.

It’s a method that serves children (famous for being ‘sponges’) and young adults in full-time education.

It’s less effective for adults.

Adult brains are preoccupied and wary. 

Not All Options Are Equal

Some traditional language learning options are better than others.

If you’ve only learned from platforms and preset courses, you’ve not had the advantage that a good teacher/coach relationship can build.

Honestly, if you hear something like ‘language delivery system’ – run a mile. 

A good teacher will know different ways to practice sentence structures (keeping you interested), and a small class size should mean you get lots of time to experiment (which personalises the language and deepens the connection).

All Progress – No Review

Most platform-based language learning ‘systems’ are a march forward into more and more information.

A good teacher will keep track of what language was introduced three weeks ago and revise it regularly, going back over parts that were problematic again and again.

However, when you are in a ‘system’:

‘Look,’ they say, ‘You now know how to say this, this, and this,’ (because we showed you once).

If you don’t then retain it, it’s not our fault.

We delivered it.

When your learning is memorable,
Your English is memorable

Ramping Up the Stress

Even when you remember the new vocabulary or structure, it’s not the same thing as knowing how to use it in real life.

And the less you understood the grammar or felt a connection with the vocabulary, the faster it melts away.

If you just throw more and more words and structures into the box in your brain marked ‘English,’ there’s a point that it gets too full, and stuff starts spilling out – then you can’t find the thing when you need it and grab at something else in a blind panic.

That feels stressful.

Because we’re human and have evolved brains determined to keep us safe from danger, our brains then compute that this language experience is alarming and stressful, and we grow more risk-averse.

Your Brain Needs a Break

The problem with most language learning options is they don’t connect your heart.

We can (temporarily) put more and more knowledge in our brains, to pass exams, or respond to a teacher, but it doesn’t guarantee we retain it.

Remember cramming so hard for exams at school? It felt like if you sneezed or stumbled, you’d shed those facts stacked up inside your brain like a Jenga tower.

And those school summers that followed the exams?

Long enough for those quickly stashed facts to melt away.

Language learning is like that – particularly if we are learning for a work target, not for our own satisfaction.  

Unless you genuinely connect with the target language it won’t stick.

If you have been trying to learn English for years, you’ll be tired, frustrated and feeling hopeless.

And probably blaming yourself.  

No one decides to give up on language; we all fall into the procrastination traps our brain sends us to avoid what it perceives as danger: risk, embarrassment, stress.

The result is an abandoned box with English ‘junk’ sitting further and further back in the attic that is your brain.

But it’s not absent, it’s lurking in the shadows making you feel guilty and stressed – a failure.

Don’t Open That Box

Don’t go near that box until you feel rested and healthy: it’s not going to get you long-term and sustainable language results.

If you need to drag it out for a meeting or a presentation, know that’s costing you the opportunity to have a positive, joyous relationship with your second language.

YOU WILL BE FURTHER AWAY FROM GREAT LANGUAGE SKILLS THAN IF YOU HAD JUST LEFT IT ALONE AND DONE NOTHING.

Find out what a little black car can teach us about resting