One of the questions I often get asked after ‘how long have you lived in Finland?’ is the hard-to-answer-question: how did you learn Finnish?

It’s ironic because every time this question is asked, I know the person asking it is expecting some kind of magical answer:
“I had this amazing book – you have to read it!”

Awhile back, I was talking with one of my students from the Finnish Language Group Program about how English in Finland gets to be so comfortable, that it’s easy to get stuck just speaking English.

When asking people what their language-related goals are, you might get replies such as the following:
“I want to understand what’s going on around me. I want to be fluent. I want to use the language at work.
I want to be able to speak the language with my children and in-laws.”

My perspective on the exercise is the following: if you spend time thinking about what you want, great. But understanding what it takes to get there is a little different. This makes up the difference between “it would be nice to…” and “I’m willing to do [blank] to get [blank]” …