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Is it okay to take a break? | ||
Tags: Activating a Language | Study Plan | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6588 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 9 of 17 28 December 2013 at 9:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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Unfortunately, lyricstraining is not available for Russian. GLOSS has a lot of lessons though, see if there's something suitable for your level.
If you're finding it hard to concentrate properly, try different types of activities, those that are more tolerant of a half-assed job. Edited by Serpent on 28 December 2013 at 9:47pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| ericblair Senior Member United States Joined 4702 days ago 480 posts - 700 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 10 of 17 28 December 2013 at 11:56pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think over-burdening yourself can also lead to less concentration. If you were to cut
your study time in half, it may be easier to concentrate on what is going on rather than find yourself concerned about clock watching. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7196 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 11 of 17 28 December 2013 at 11:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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With Assimil, I found that if I kept marching forward, even if my understanding was limited, there was always the comfort that a subsequent wave would fill in the gaps. Even if you go from 2 hours per day to 5-15 minutes until you feel your motivation coming back, you're more likely to stay on track.
4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| ericblair Senior Member United States Joined 4702 days ago 480 posts - 700 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 12 of 17 29 December 2013 at 12:09am | IP Logged | ||
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Luke,
What was your sort of method for Assimil? And did you end up completing the entirety of the course? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| dbag Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5013 days ago 605 posts - 1046 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 13 of 17 29 December 2013 at 12:53am | IP Logged | ||
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I suppose there is no hard and fast answer to this, but it is an important question and one I have been thinking about a lot recently. After 3 years of daily Spanish study, I have recently had my first "break" from Spanish. Due to a mixture of travel and unforeseen family tragedies, my study / exposure to Spanish had been very infrequent- sure I managed to get in a little bit of listening or reading in, but there where actually whole days where I did nothing at all.
At first, I feared there had been a decline in my listening comprehension, indeed I think that this was actually, temporarily the case. And a shame it was too, as in Poland, I happened to meet someone from Spain, and ended up doing a tour of Auschwitz in Spanish. I understood most of it, but am ashamed to say that I missed several really important details, and I am sure that had I taken the tour 2 weeks or so previously,when I was listening to around 2 hours of Spanish a day, this wouldn't have been the case at all. However, having now got well and truly back into the swing of things, I would say that my comprehension of both written and auditory material is actually much stronger. I have began to wonder if scheduling the odd small break here and there could actually be beneficial, as- perhaps- having to recall information after a short break would facilitate its maneuver into long-term memory rather than just keeping it constantly in working memory. Caintear wrote a good article on this here. In your case though I would definitely advise you to do something everyday, because as was noted by previous posters, if you are still quite new to the learning process, you run the very real risk of never starting again. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7196 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 14 of 17 29 December 2013 at 2:57am | IP Logged | ||
For French, I started by listen/reading to New French With Ease and Using French. I started studying NFEW in earnest and writing out the lessons for about the first 30 days or so, but doing more than one per day some days. After a bit, I quit writing the lessons. I added Using French by putting a CD player and the book in the bathroom and focusing on one new lesson per day. In both cases, I did regular review of the previous lesson(s). A bit later, I added French Without Toil, while continuing with the first two courses. I've taken a multiple waves approach to each. I also added Assimil Business French, but found 4 courses at the same time just too much for my schedule. I listened/shadowed the lessons in the car. I used the 2 wave approach with NFWE and 3 waves for FWT. I didn't do the translating per se. I try to understand the lessons, understand the grammar, shadow the audio. So, have I finished? I think of the Assimil courses as a foundation in the language. I'm not as systematic as Professor Arguelles, but I do believe there is value in extracting as much as possible from a concise course like Assimil. The entire course can be reviewed in a few hours. I'm still in the process of assimilating and digesting the courses. I plan to go through all of them again this year, and I can imagine reviewing them again in 2015. So I look at Assimil as the core. If I were to put French down for a year, I could come back to them and regain a good in a few hours of study. If I continue studying French for the next couple years (in a relatively systematic way), then I can see it staying with me for years, even if I was distracted and put it down for 5 years or more. So my advice is when the going gets tough, just keep going. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| pesahson Diglot Senior Member Poland Joined 5719 days ago 448 posts - 840 votes Speaks: Polish*, English Studies: French, Portuguese, Norwegian | Message 15 of 17 29 December 2013 at 2:33pm | IP Logged | ||
I remember Luca Lampariello saying in one of his videos that that's what he does. He works on a lesson until he gets bored with it and then moves to another one. Sometimes it might be after one day, sometimes two, three days for a lesson. As for stopping completely I wouldn't recommend it. If you feel like you're doing too much, slow down. Do the bare minimum. If you can't concentrate, you won't remember much anyway and making yourself do it, might weaken your motivation. Khatzumoto wrote a great blog entry about learning little but often. It's a great read. Critical frequency 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5000 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 16 of 17 29 December 2013 at 4:20pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have both positive and negative experience with breaks. It is the best if you can keep some contact with the language (something purely fun) of course, but the world won't fall apart if you don't for a few weeks.
"pros": -you will avoid burnout and, frankly speaking, the life is sometimes very busy even without the languages -you may found out new perpectives and somehow "digest" things during the break so they don't appear so difficult later (yes, it happened to me repeatedly) -you will find out which parts you have trully mastered and which need more attention before you move on "cons" or rather "bewares": -any break does have a tendency to get longer and longer. there is a huge difference between two weeks, two months and two years -your active skills are very likely to get rusty much faster than your passive skills -you may lose a lot of things you have half mastered last time -it is sometimes difficult to overview and relearn things without getting bored by the material you have already went through So, if you need a break, don't beat yourself up over it. If it is just a week or two, it doesn't matter at all, from my experience. But be careful about longer breaks. If you need a longer break, don't panic if you forget things during the time away from your language. Sure, we all know consistency is very important and helps tremendously. However, I think the fear of taking a break is sometimes overrated. 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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