Another year of learning Georgian, Armenian, and Azerbaijani is behind us. It’s behind us because I’m also learning all three of these languages. And today, as you asked us to do at the beginning of the year, I’ll share with you my TOP 5 – what helps you learn Georgian, Armenian, and Azerbaijani and worked best for me in 2025.
As a reminder – I’m currently learning each of these languages with a teacher – our wonderful teachers in Języki Kaukazu. Each at a different level, but the methods for fluent learning described today work for me in all three, regardless of my level.
Let’s start my list of what helps you learn Georgian, Armenian, and Azerbaijani.
The Caucasus podcast with the list of what helps you learn the Caucasian language you can listen to also in main podcasting platforms, including YouTube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
Prioritizing Your Own Learning
I study with teachers, but that doesn’t change the fact that most of my learning happens outside the class or between lessons. Revisions, repetition, exercises, listening – that’s what helps you learn the languages. These are all things that, if you have time, are worth doing in-between. Even if you have lessons several times a week.
What helps you learn and significantly speeds up the learning is prioritizing what you do between classes. I’ve been testing different approaches this year, and the one that works best for me is: do my homework first.
If I don’t have at least some of my homework done, I don’t engage in other forms of revision. I’ve tested this both as a student and as a teacher, and the conclusion is clear: Well-designed homework is what helps you learn faster what you’re currently studying in class. It strengthens your knowledge and helps you revise vocabulary.
If all your study time between classes is spent on a random TV show or YouTube video (even with new, interesting words), your progress won’t come as quickly.
Of course, sometimes homework can be just listening to a podcast, watching a clip from a TV show, or listening to a song. You sometimes get such homework in our courses in Języki Kaukazu, both in group and individual courses – but they are not random but chosen the ones that actually may help you learn what we’re revising in the class. What helps you learn Georgian, Armenian, and Azerbaijani – definitely helps you – is prioritizing homework. Boring? Maybe. But very true.
Speaking of live courses with a teacher, if you want to learn Georgian, Armenian, or Azerbaijani in a small group with a teacher, in 2026 we’re organizing these in English on-demand for groups of min. 3 people of friends and family that want to study together.
Reason for this is quite simple – at present we have students from all over the globe – from 6 continents (Antarctica – we’re waiting for you with open arms). Therefore, the timezones management for open group courses proved to be impossible. So if you and min. 2 of your friends or relatives want to study together we’ll create a tailor-made online live course for you.
Quick revision as an alternative to language immersion
Language immersion is a learning method in which you surround yourself with the language everywhere, in all life situations. For example, you switch the language on your phone to Armenian, or in a bilingual family, you use the language you’re learning all weekend and take all your notes in that language. For the past few years, it’s been a hit on blogs by language coaches.
Now, I might offend some people, but I’ll take the risk. I’m not a fan of this method for languages quite distant from our own. And for most of us, languages from the Caucasus are just that. Immersion can work with Caucasian languages, but only in very specific situations (I’ve tested it myself). If you let us know in the comments, we’ll record a separate episode on this topic.
What helps you learn our languages – instead of immersion – is regular, quick revision. I talked about this concept in the previous podcast episodes. In short, these are short exercises, often without taking out your books, and largely based on what you already know. Our listeners do quick revisions on their way to work, standing in queues, while walking, or doing the dishes.
I spent most of the year doing these mini exercises, and I know some of you did too, and I feel that it really helped me gain fluency in what I already know in Armenian, Azerbaijani, and Georgian.
We have also been sending you these quick revisions in the newsletter for six months, and now it’s time for a small announcement. We’ve decided to move the weekly quick revision to the podcast. Once a week, instead of a newsletter, there will be a short episode with a revision and information about what I’m doing with it in Azerbaijani, Armenian, and Georgian. And yes, I’m coming to my second announcement – we’ve decided to suspend the newsletter. Our Wednesday episodes will be a mini-newsletter within the podcast. We’re experimenting, and I’m curious to hear your thoughts after a few weeks.
The thing that really helped me learn Georgian, Armenian, and Azerbaijani in 2025 is quick revision.
I stopped following accounts with interesting facts about languages
Exactly, I unsubscribed and stopped scrolling through Armenian, Georgian, and Azerbaijani accounts. These accounts usually have lists of words, a few or a dozen phrases, and sometimes mini-dialogues.
I noticed that this kind of content is very distracting and deepens my feeling that I’m learning a lot—or more precisely, I’m spending time looking at such content—with little visible results. Do you know why?
Just by watching a video with six phrases, you won’t learn them and start using them in your own speech. That requires actual learning. By the way, there are also effective methods for learning with free content online, and if you’d like a podcast episode about what actually helps you learn from posts and vlogs, let me know too. We’ll record it, as I have a fully proven, working method. Let me just say that this isn’t random scrolling. That’s why I no longer follow such content online.
I’ve gone back to handwriting my notes
We’ve already talked about the importance of handwriting many times on this podcast. In each of our languages: Armenian, Georgian, and Azerbaijani, it definitely helps with learning vocabulary, but also with speaking and listening comprehension.
To some extent, I still wrote down words by hand, but… I’ve gone back to my three-step system. If you’re thinking, Asia, who has time for this? Well, I’ll answer that. Each of these steps is part of my weekly review (or once every two weeks if I don’t have time).
The first step is taking handwritten notes during lessons or study sessions (if you’re studying independently). These are let’s call it my rough notes, draft version.
The second step is copying (re-writing) these notes into a notebook – new words, verb conjugations. I try doing this between lessons or between each two lessons. Thanks to this I also check if I have any questions from the last lesson.
Step three is something I added this year. Reviewing notes from a few months ago and checking what I already know. I know there are flashcard apps, but you just click on them. And that yields less results than if you actually handwrite something. My epiphany moment came while cleaning out my shelves, when I realized I had five Georgian vocabulary notebooks and I wasn’t sure if I could throw them away or if there is something I haven’t learned yet.
So, during one of my revision sessions, I go back to these old notebooks and, for example, browse a page in one sitting. Not only can I see my progress, but I can also fill in any gaps. This really helps me with regular learning and revising, because it’s impossible to learn everything forever. Unused words and phrases simply get lost in our head somewhere. And repeating them regularly helps keep them relatively close in the depths of our memory.
We also often incorporate handwriting into our courses, when you’re asked to write down specific sentences (and sometimes translate them) as part of your review, or write down answers during listening exercises.
Creating Your Own Mini Exercises
You don’t have to be a methodologist, language trainer, have a business and many years of experience like me, to use this method. The key word here is „mini”—tiny. No matter how hard we try, we—teachers and textbook authors—can’t come up with exercises for every possible linguistic need of our students.
In our courses, we regularly ask directly what the biggest challenge is or which words are the hardest to remember. And we design additional exercises accordingly. And since I’ve been teaching adults for almost two decades, every semester at least one person surprises me with a slightly different need. That always pleases me because it gives me the motivation to present a given topic from yet another perspective.
This is one of the reasons why our Georgian textbook has so many exercises in every chapter, and there will be even more, as we’re halfway through writing the workbook. And in the self-paced Georgian course available on our website, there are even more, and new ones are being added all the time, including ones for speaking practice you can do on your own.
Returning to what helped me in 2025, it was both doing mini exercises (quick, often interactive) and creating them myself. You can do these too.
- For example: today, write down 5 words in the language you’re learning.
- And tomorrow, add their English equivalents.
- A version for those at a slightly more advanced level – add definitions in the language you’re learning.
Such simple exercises, up to 5 minutes long, will appear in our quick revision methods. So, if you’re struggling to come up with your own ideas, listen to our new podcast series and receive ready-made exercises from us.
For me, the realization that my own exercises can be helpful came at work. Besides teaching you Georgian and all the other responsibilities that come with being the owner of Jezyki Kaukazu, I’m also responsible for creating interactive exercises and visual aids at our center.
I’ve already created hundreds of such exercises for Georgian and I know the tools we use. That’s why, for Armenian and Azerbaijani, we often work with our teachers to determine which interactive and visual exercises to create for you and prepare them. Of course, before they reach you, they undergo proofreading and verification.
Do you know what I noticed after creating a dozen or so such exercises for you in Armenian and Azerbaijani? I discovered that I had repeated certain words or topics even better than if I would have done a ready-made exercise.
These are my TOP 5 methods, things that really helped me learn morze effectively in 2025. Their arrangement is also not accidental. I’ve arranged our list of what helps you learn according to the things that are worth implementing first into your Georgian, Armenian, or Azerbaijani learning routine. You can’t do them all at once so the best would be to start from just one.
I’m curious if any of my methods of what helps you learn the Caucasian languages are your favorite? Or maybe you disagree with some? Let me know in the comments below the podcast in your podcast app or on YouTube. And finally, of course, I invite you to learn with us in live courses or using our self-study materials.
Listen to other episodes of the Caucasus podcast