What should I do next to prepare for grad school?

[lilabanach]

I am in dire need of advice!

I'm planning to get a masters degree in linguistics. The schools I'm looking at are pretty competitive, so I'm trying to be pretty careful with what I'm doing/ not doing in preparation for the applications. I'm currently about to finish my second year with the Fulbright program, so I've already been out of school for some time now, especially because of covid. Now, I want to do another year or two of intensive language study in my two focus languages (Chinese and Korean) and get really high scores on the language proficiency exams before I apply for grad school, but I'm worried about the possibility that so much time between undergrad and grad school is going to hurt my chances of getting into a really competitive masters program. I've already determined that I'm not going to enter grad school by the spring of next year, but I'm basically trying to decide between doing that extensive language study for 1-2 years or just trying to find a temporary research assistantship in the meantime while I apply to enter grad school as soon as possible and minimize the amount of down time. Does anyone have advice on a situation like this?

Possible relevant background info: My degree is a double in in English writing and lit, not linguistics, another detail that I'm a little worried about.

[riley10]

Hi! I am currently in a MA program for Applied Linguistics so can answer some of your questions. I think the first thing you should decide is what concentration or specialization you want to get your degree in. I am assuming your Fulbright is with teaching, so I would say take a year to bolster your research experience. MA programs tend to value research and teaching experience, and don't require language knowledge (although it helps). PhD programs, however, do require language knowledge.