We recently went through 2,000 check-in records of adult students at Kuku English over the past year, and found a pretty counterintuitive fact: Users who signed up for 6-month long courses at the start and swore to study 1 hour a day had a completion rate of only 12%. On the contrary, users who chose 25-minute high-frequency short lessons and booked 3-4 sessions per week regularly had a 78% completion rate after 3 months.

01Quitting is Not a Problem of Willpower

"I signed up for 2 one-hour classes a week before," said Lin, a cross-border operations worker. "I was already exhausted when I got home from work. The thought of sitting through a full hour made me anxious, so I ended up skipping 3 classes and wasting all the money I paid."

See, many people blame themselves for being lazy when they can't stick to learning, but the real problem is that they set the threshold for learning too high. You can watch short videos for an hour straight without feeling tired, but if you have to sit up straight and study English for an hour, you'll spend half an hour building up the courage just to start. A 25-minute short lesson fits perfectly into the peak attention span, you don't need strong willpower to get started, and there's no heavy consumption after class.

02Choosing the Right Learning Path Cuts the Cost of "Sticking to It" to the Minimum

If your demand is workplace English improvement, you don't need to start with European or American native speakers to drill business speeches. Filipino foreign teachers are more cost-effective with flexible booking times. You can book a session to practice daily communication even during your work break, no need to prepare hours of speech notes in advance. Our Callan English course uses a high-frequency interactive mode, you don't have to rack your brain to think of topics during the whole class. The foreign teacher will guide you to speak the whole time, and there is no heavy after-class burden, no need to force yourself to memorize 100 words to count as completing the task.

Frankly speaking, I personally don't agree with making English learning a painful ordeal. You learn spoken English to use it, not to get full marks and make yourself suffer.

033 Action Tips for Learning Spoken English That Don't Require Forcing Yourself

  • Fix the booking frequency to 3 times a week first, even if you only talk about what you ate today, just build the habit first
  • Don't set vague goals like "speak fluently in 3 months", replace them with small goals like "learn 3 English expressions for asking for leave at work this week"
  • Cancel the booking directly when you really don't feel like learning, don't feel guilty, guilt is the biggest cause of giving up

A final reminder for everyone: Learning spoken English is essentially skill training, no different from learning to drive or type. There's no need to start with hell mode. If you want to try the 25-minute short lesson, you can book a free trial class first to experience the learning rhythm that doesn't force you.