42 Things You Can Do In 5 Minutes To Improve Your Language Skills
Much like a baguette, language learning is easier to handle if you break it into pieces.

Imagine how much more time you’d have in your day if everything you needed to do took just five minutes. Unfortunately, this isn’t true for a lot of things in life, but it can be true for learning a language! Breaking your study sessions into smaller chunks has been proven more effective than overwhelming yourself with information. And there are countless five-minute activities that can build your language skills in a variety of ways and an array of settings. Here are 42 of the many, many language-related things you can do in just five minutes (42 is the answer to life, the universe and everything, after all).
Things You Can Do In Five Minutes (Or Less!) To Improve Your Language Skills
- Read a short story in another language
- Sing/say an alphabet in a different language
- Find a recipe from another culture
- Compose a tweet in another language
- Order food at a restaurant in a different language
- Learn how to greet someone
- Listen to a song in another language
- Translate the most recent note in your phone’s notes app
- Watch a music video
- Read a poem in a new language
- Write a poem in that same language
- Take a quiz to decide which language you should learn
- Or to find your motivation for learning
- Learn a handful of cognates
- Listen to a short podcast
- (And be sure to subscribe to our podcast Multilinguish)
- Master food vocab in the language of your choice
- Sign up for a cultural event
- Follow some language accounts on Instagram
- And Twitter
- And also YouTube
- While you’re at it, subscribe to Babbel USA on YouTube
- Learn to count in a new language
- Send an email in another language
- Learn foreign language animal names
- Also, learn the colors in another language
- And, why not, learn the parts of the body in a new language
- Pick a foreign language TV show to watch
- Or pick a movie, if that’s more your style
- If you’re a reader, choose a book
- Switch your dating app location to another city
- Make a foreign language meme
- Master a foreign language tongue twister
- Discover the cultural history of your favorite food
- Meditate
- Sign up for a language exchange meetup
- Go for a walk
- Lovingly curse out a friend in another language
- Write in your journal
- Train your dog to understand the language you’re learning
- Change your phone settings to another language
- Register for Babbel
Start with a quick language lesson.