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Hitting a Wall: When You Can’t Study | ||
Tags: Burn-out | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4840 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 17 of 23 30 July 2013 at 4:15am | IP Logged | ||||||||
OK, I think I'm starting to understand here. 1. Read whatever I can get my hands on, or watch whatever I can, and do it a lot. The key is critical mass - read thousands of pages and watch hours of TV, or listen for hours. 2. Don't worry too much about what I don't understand, as words will teach themselves to me over time. Just keep going. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6590 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 18 of 23 30 July 2013 at 7:19pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Try reineke's challenge. The Super Challenge has helped me as well. This way you have a list of things that "count".
In fact, you already have a list. Just look at the first post of the thread and ask yourself if you really don't want to do ANYTHING from your list. it's normal not to want to do many things, but there's always something nice left. Also, try out GLOSS. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5159 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 19 of 23 30 July 2013 at 9:02pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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The advice I could give after having already read through the log is: don't see your schedule/routine as a problem, as the "wall" itself. Routine is good when you have something you have to do and had better not postpone but still could do without. This seems to be the case with your Japanese. So, don't be worried that the schedule will spoil the fun, it's always about finding a compromise, even tho sometimes it slips through your fingers.
I hit such a big wall myself, 7 years ago. I dropped languages altogether and it wasn't 5 years later that I resumed them. This happened because I had too loose of a schedule - or no schedule at all - too much wanderlusting and an obsession with gathering materials combined with the feeling that I could run out of resources anytime and that would hinder my progress or even destroy what I had achieved. So, I spent more time looking for resources, trying to get in touch with natives before I got down to learning the language and next to zero time actually learning the language. I also didn't know these important factors that worked for me since my restart in 2011: 1. A little each day works better for me than big chunks on the weekends 2. That said, try to be flexible. Combine short-term activities with longer ones. That means having a textbook like the famous French publisher one + one with longer, more comprehensive lessons 3. Try to follow your schedule, but keep some activities in mind for filling in your time slots during the day. SRS sometimes do the trick, but just looking at the lyrics alongside their translations would also teach you a lot, for example in the case of Portuguese. The most well-known world hits have side-by-side Portuguese translations at the site letras.mus.br , and in the case of the Portuguese songs you like, you cna just throw them at GT. Take both with a grain of salt, but learn from them. Sometimes you'll have trouble accomplishing your tasks, but sometimes you'll finished early and there will be nothing to do, so that's when small chunks such as lyrics, news headlines such as those from Globo.com come in handy. 4. After you are done with your schedule intensive listening - for example, the lessons at your textbook - keep in stock some hours of extensive listening/watching. I say this because I'm learning Chinese and I face similar difficulties. I'm watching a Chinese series that focuses on teaching Chinese. It is entirely in Chinese but subtitles are in both characters and English (no pinyin tho). So, I can follow the plot and sometimes I learn more by comparing characters and translations, and sometimes I focus on sound and translation. Either way, I do hope it gets better with time, as I'm still a bit skeptical about that unprepaired listening myself. That said, each episode has only 15 minutes, and I've been warned that 15 min is too little for Chinese and I should get more. So, ideally I should 15 min with this series which is actually a true learning resource and the other free slots with loose extensive listening and see where it gets. I'm a schedule paranoid myself, too obsessed, I have the feeling that my Slavic/Germanic reading skills are taking too long to come true and I sometimes get the idea that every missing hour during the weekdays is a wasted hour I could be using for doing more study, but I know sometimes that I can't take more. Alternating through languages AND through types of resources does help keep the burnout away, but I've been warned several times by some friends that I should slow down, so maybe I'm not the best person to give you any advice lol. Still, I know how you feel but I can't help the feeling that it's still a matter of trying to find the right dosis of every ingredient that makes up for the language-mastering soup. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4840 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 20 of 23 31 July 2013 at 2:17am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Reineke's challenge sounds good. I just worry about doing things that "count". If I set a goal to do 100 of something, and I do seven, I think, "My god, I still have 93 to go!" I know that this kind of thing is supposed to be encouraging, but it's discouraging to me. That's why I don't keep details on how many hours I study every week, etc. Of course, the solution to that is to think, "Wow, look at me! I've done seven! Let's see if I can do seven more!" Sounds good in theory, but...
That's a good idea. I should probably look closer at what I've been doing. The thing is that all of those activities have been helpful to me in the past. I've improved my Japanese a lot through the textbook, the reading, etc., so I hate to just give them up, because they have been working. I stuck with them for 12 months, so I just can't understand why all of a sudden I can't do those activities.
GLOSS is great (aside from some mistakes I found in one of the Japanese lessons). The problem is that I hardly have time at a computer where I can play audio. Only at home, but I have to be prepared to give the computer to my wife at a moment's notice when she needs it. GLOSS lessons take a long time, so I doubt I could finish a lesson in a night with that situation. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4840 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 21 of 23 31 July 2013 at 2:30am | IP Logged | ||||||||
This is pretty good advice. Maybe I beat myself up too much when I don't follow the schedule/routine. The schedule should be a guideline, not a rule.
Aha! This is how I feel. I know there is no magic secret technique for everybody to learn a language. But I feel that there is a formula out there for me specifically to speed up my learning process. "If I do a little of this... plus some of this... oh, and maybe add this... then I'll be fluent in Japanese in no time." All the stuff I was doing before all of a sudden doesn't work anymore, and I'm thinking, "What in the world happened to my formula?" But maybe there is no formula. Maybe certain things work at certain points of the language-learning process, and it's normal to have to give up what worked before and try something new, to keep the process going. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4840 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 22 of 23 31 July 2013 at 2:34am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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By the way, I noticed somebody tagged this thread with "Burn-out". And that word has come up a few times here. It's funny; I didn't feel that I was going through burn-out. I thought burn-out was what I did before, when I said, "Ah, I don't feel like studying Japanese anymore," then went for months without studying before picking it up again. I feel that it's different this time. I want to study, but I don't feel like doing the things I used to do to study.
3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Avid Learner Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4655 days ago 100 posts - 156 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: German | Message 23 of 23 06 August 2013 at 7:02am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Each time I'm on vacation and find myself with a lot of time, I expect to spend a lot of time studying. And every time, it's like my brain just feels like taking a rest. As a result, I no longer try too hard when I'm on vacation. Perhaps things will also sort themselves out for you too.
I also consider watching TV normally as something that counts. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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