ADHD and language learning. Advice on how to proceed

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I have been seriously learning Italian on and off for the better part of 5 years and i have never been satisfied with level i have reached in the language. It’s a heritage language for me so in fact i have been learning bits and pieces of it for the last 10 years.

A huge problem i feel i have is my spoken fluency and command of the grammar. I can’t tell if i am being just overly critical or not its Hard to say.

One of my 2026 resolutions is to simplify how i learn language, i definitely have had the bad habit of jumping between apps, listening to advice online on how to optimally learn, starting Anki decks only to abandon them etc and it has left my quite burnt out. (I have ADHD if you could not tell lol)

Going forward indefinitely I really want to just focus the majority of my time with LingQ as i feel it gives the most bang for its buck. Along with speaking with natives semi regularly. I really want to find a way of learning that is sustainable in the long run and i wont burn out with.

But i have this nagging feeling that my speaking is somehow going to regress (I know it’s really irrational but alas) unless I actively drill the grammar with active recall flash cards, sentence mining etc etc.

I guess I am just looking for some advice on how I should focus my time and energy with language learning. My known word count with Italian is still relatively low (just over 6000) But thats primarily due to being inconsistent with LingQ my actual known word amount is probably decently higher.

I have read that things really start to click when you reach around 30,000 or so known words (using LingQ’s definition of known)

Has anyone been in a similar situation to me? Is it really just enough to build up your passive comprehension in a language with some targeted conversion practice and thats it? Would love some examples from your own experience.

I 100 percent know that I have probably been over complicating my language learning. Please some one talk some sense into me.

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Here is one methodology.

Find a collection of videos or audio with Italian at about your level, preferably somewhat above, and import them into LingQ.

Study each video.

Read through the transcript. Go through each sentence in sentence mode. Look up unknown words. Figure out the grammar of the sentence. When you get to the end of the video, listen to the entire audio, stopping to look up a word when you don’t recall it. When you study a sentence, sometimes try playing with it, change the subject or the object(s) of the verb, change the tense, change the verb. Make it into a game. Speak out loud each sentence. Try and get the sounds roughly right. What you are doing is practicing output, which reinforces words and structures. Use online translators to check the sentences that you create.

Go to the next new video and repeat.

Go to a previously studied video, listen to it, stopping to look up words you don’t recall.

Go to the next video that you have not yet studied, and study it.

And so on.

If you want, you can put sentences into Anki, and study them each day. Not everyone likes Anki.

You might not like the above methodology and it might not be ideal for you. You can only find out what works for you by trial and error. However consistency and hard work are key, whatever methodology you choose.

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Ok @joshmassarotti , this is not gonna be easy :smiley:

If I give you too many info, you are gonna get an overload of info.

You should consider about shifting from acquiring information to performance. ADHD has problems with executive function, working memory, boredom, and the like… you know the drill.

You seem serious about your language learning, so you need reading, listening, speaking and writing. They are all useful.

Choose ONE method for each. Decide your priorities. You can dedicate time to find information, which could be exhausting, but then you need to switch to training your performance.
Example:
READING: LingQ. You intentionally read for 10 minutes. You decide if reading for 5 minutes and check some yellow words for 5 minutes and so on. It’s LingQ for 10 minutes ALL activities included.
LISTENING: YouTube. You watch 10 minutes of a video specifically focused on listening the pronunciation.
SPEAKING: YouTube. You rewatch the same video by shadowing.
WRITING: LingQ. You decide to dedicate 10 minutes to write something and post it in the community or other communities to wait for corrections.

The activities related to read what other people say about your correction, to search for the Youtube video, to search for what to read on LingQ and so on, they are ALL part of the time you have decided to dedicate time for the language. Which means that sometimes you cannot read, watch, etc, if you don’t have enough time. Don’t overload.

SLOW DOWN: read slower, watch with attention and so on. Learn to slow down a 10% or 20%. You are going too fast but you don’t realize it.

PRIORITY: You don’t need to work on all the areas right now. I don’t know your level and your time. Choose ONE area and start your pomodoros training, routine, repetition of the same thing every day until you are confident.

PLAN: Decide that on February you will decide your best method for reading and will build your daily routine. March for listening. April for speaking. May for writing. In the meantime, you will learn to tweak and improve and optimize each of your routines.
Think you will reach your goal in 3-5 years. Your goal is not the end result, your goal in the daily training. The decision to dedicate a time slot of your life for this training.

Time management. You need to define the time you dedicate to language learning, and this time slot include also the time that you search for information. Use a chronometer, all the time, to understand your time “thinking”. How long does it take to take a shower? How long for lunch? How long for this and for that? Build time awareness.

Pomodoro technique. It doesn’t matter if you read it’s not scientific, blah, blah, blah. Use it! You need to train your mind to work and rest, work and rest. When you pause after 1 pomodoro, you need to PAUSE, not watching other stuff or being engaged with intellectual stimulation whatsoever. During the break you can do some cleaning, meditation, short workout snacks and so on.

HABIT. You performe better if you always know what to do and you repeat it, so you don’t have to “think” about what you need to do tomorrow, and just execute. This will offload your decision thinking that drain you energy. Then you tackle the boredom of repeating by thinking that you will improve overtime in a long-term commitment.

I wrote enough for now. I hope some of this will help.

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Thank you I appreciate the detailed insight :slight_smile:

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I have been seriously learning Italian on and off for the better part of 5 years and i have never been satisfied with level i have reached in the language. It’s a heritage language for me so in fact i have been learning bits and pieces of it for the last 10 years.

We have very similar experiences, even though it’s not a heritage language for me. I started learning it ages ago. Today I guess it’s more than 15 years ago. Which is not to say it takes that long to learn a language. In the beginning I had no idea on how to learn. I thought it should be boring, like it were in school, so I bought a book that was a snoozefest and of course stopped learning anything after just a couple of months because of sheer boredom. That lasted a good 8-10 years, until, and now I’m gonna sound like a full on fanboy (which I’m not, not in any matter) I started using Lingq. Let me explain…

The key points in my view, no erase that… the key point (singular) is ridiculously simple. The method doesn’t matter, the time you spend with the language does. Find a method, any method, that you can stick to and which you enjoy, and you’ll learn. I, as an example, enjoy basically two things that when it comes to this area: reading literature, so this platform have obviously been a blessing, and understanding the foreign structures in different languages*. So with the help of hundreds of hours reading on this platform I can now finally say that I know Italian (and on my way to be able to say the same thing about french). My level can certainly be better, and it will be, but thats is not going to be a chore but a pure pleasure.

When it comes to more practical advice, I think that you don’t have to worry about regression if you let go of grammar drills, flashcards, etc. When you, after having read, and understood a ton of the language (I myself have around 55k known words (and it will be more!)), come back to the active parts of the language, you’ll be able to formulate sentences at a much higher level, just by sheer intuition. It might be that you have to look a lot of things up, but those look ups will be at a much higher level, semantically and grammatically.

*I’ll never forget when I first saw, and could decipher, the sentence “vendendolo glielo dirò”. How could a sentence so clumsy in english (and Swedish) like: “I’ll tell it to him when I see him” be so elegantly and efficiently put? Oh the marvel!

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Thank you for the encouragement!

Did you do any vocabulary review with LingQs SRS in this period?

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None. Reading in itself is a form of spaced repetion.

But that’s not to say that there isn’t any merit in doing it. As long as you don’t find is excruciatingly boring, why not. I have often entertained the idea of starting doing it myself with a certain set of vocabulary that has a tendency to never stick (for me that would be many of the s+consonant-verbs that abound in Italian. They all blend together and often are unguessable). But I haven’t come around to it yet and probably never will.

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LingQ will definitely help you improve your reading. When I did trial with various tutor most of them said my reading comprehension is good (so reading on lingQ/kindle works), Which is expected since that is what I have been doing mostly. I was able to read A2/B1 graded books and some native books but all them put me at A1-A2 since there were a few concept at A1 level that they noticed I was not good in yet.

Have you tried engaging a tutor for short while to help you ? At least to solidify all the basics, find gaps in knowledge and learn anything that is important but you might have been avoiding.

For speaking I think if you can find a conversation based tutor like this in your Target language, they can help you progress in your speaking. Conversation tutor tend to be affordable too.

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I wouldn’t use LingQ’s SRS system. If you want to use flashcards, I suggest you to read the book Fluent Forever. It’s a long read but the concept on how to create flashcards using ANKI is solid. You don’t need his app, you don’t need to watch all his extra content. But if you want to read and watch everything, it’ll take you a couple of weeks. After that, you’ll know the foundations of ANKI flashcards.

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I agree. Use Anki. In my opinion it is usually better to put sentences into Anki, not words, as meaning is often context dependent, and it teaches you how to use the word e.g. which prepositions are needed. The exception is nouns with a concrete meaning, where the meaning is straightforward e.g. blackbird, stained glass window, aircraft.

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I use the Lingq SRS once in a while for videos that I watch repeatedly, where I want to understand every word-- mostly meditation, affirmations, etc.

For Anki, the maximum number of cards I can keep up with in a deck is about 3K. I agree with Fluent Forever, that it’s OK to delete cards you don’t need anymore.

Switching Anki decks, or leaving one go dormant is something that just happens. When you get the Anki deck that’s just right for you, you know, because you really enjoy doing it.

A teacher who is watching your progress will often know exactly what’s at your level, but when you’re picking out content for yourself, you can find a lot of material that is okay, but isn’t really outstanding for what you need. There’s enough content out there now that it make sense to keep browsing until you find a piece that feels just right, and that you want to repeat multiple times.

You could think of this as a way to use ADHD to work for you-- keep looking until you find the things you want to hyperfocus on!

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