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How often raise and maintain languages? | ||
Tags: Maintaining Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5157 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes  Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 1 of 6 02 December 2013 at 8:20pm | IP Logged |
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This question is about those languages at which you have already reached a high B1 or a
B2 and on level. Even if you don't need to study from textbooks anymore, how often do you think is appropriate to work on them to keep them improving somehow, so you can reach C1? I ask this because next year I'm going to have 3 languages at this condition: French, Papiamento and Norwegian. I don't want to drop any of them or to drop a resource at them, that is, I don't want to stop reading in French and watch only TV instead. Yet I need to find room in my schedule for more, as I need to start German which might soon get at this same stage and I'm going to need time for watching TV and reading in German, too. I also need to find time for active input which I can't work on properly yet because often I reach burn out after a busy study day. So, I was thinking about doing this "maintenance" on alternate days, that is: Monday French reading 20 pg Norwegian watching TV 20' Papiamento reading 2 pg Tuesday French watching films 10' Norwegian reading 10 pg Papiamento listening to TV in the background Wednesday French reading 20 pg Norwegian watching TV 20' Papiamento reading 2 pg and so on...Would it mean my French vocabulary would be improving twice as slow as before? Currently I perform all those activities each day. I did them today. The difference would be that when I wouldn't have to read in French, I'd read in German or write something in any of my languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| 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 2 of 6 02 December 2013 at 9:44pm | IP Logged |
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These sound like pretty small units tbh. I'd say you need flow much more than you need those daily minutes. Especially in Papiamento you'll be more staying in touch with it than improving.
If you add stuff from your media to SRS, I think it's much better to have a proper weekly session of at least 30 min (and up to 90-120 min with small breaks), and then do your repetitions every day to stay in touch with the language. If you don't do SRS, you can listen to music, play lyricstraining where available, read short updates on twitter or facebook. (of course these are excellent even if you do SRS, and a great source of more stuff to add). Basically, for short sessions, focus on what is intended to be short and quick. It's much better to read one tweet here and there, for a total of 1-2 pages, than to read a whole book 1-2 pages at a time. (poetry is an exception, though) Edited by Serpent on 03 December 2013 at 2:23pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | |
| geoffw Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4679 days ago 1134 posts - 1865 votes Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian | Message 3 of 6 02 December 2013 at 10:20pm | IP Logged |
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I don't have an answer, but I'm again blown away by what I assume is the power of the
internet, in that you can plan to watch movies and tv in french, norwegian and papiamento whenever you decide to and not even think it necessary to explain how on earth that is possible. We live in amazing times... 6 persons have voted this message useful | |
| daegga Tetraglot Senior Member Austria lang-8.com/553301 Joined 4512 days ago 1076 posts - 1792 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Swedish, Norwegian Studies: Danish, French, Finnish, Icelandic | Message 4 of 6 02 December 2013 at 10:22pm | IP Logged |
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I agree with Serpent.
Especially with listening, longer sessions seem better to me, even if that means you can't work on a specific language every day. It feels more like the language gets implanted into your brain, it gets you unconciously thinking in your target language. Short sessions don't seem to have that effect on me. You seem to be a very organized person, so maybe you can handle your schedule for a longer period of time. I couldn't, it's just too boring to do these small pre-planned tasks. I do whatever I feel like doing, in whatever language I feel like doing it, as long as every language gets its piece of the cake in the long run. 1 task and language per day, rotating the task/language combinations every 3 days, would be something inbetween these two extremes. 7 persons have voted this message useful | |
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5198 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 5 of 6 03 December 2013 at 10:52am | IP Logged |
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I'm wondering about this as well since I'm planning to try and cram a third language into my already busy schedule, while still working on the others. I don't have much to contribute, but despite being a relatively organised person I've found that "20 minutes of X then 20 minutes of Y" type schedules never work for me and it's better just going with the flow and doing what I feel like at the time. Sometimes I'm simply more in the mood for Italian than for French or vice versa, so I don't fight it. It probably all balances out in the longer term.
During periods when I'm off work and I have more time to play with, I do find this sort of thing a bit easier, although with bigger chunks like one film or an hour of study - like Serpent said, it's more time to focus on something get into "flow". But still, it never exactly goes as planned. 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 6 of 6 04 December 2013 at 3:51am | IP Logged |
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Find something you are interested in and that will carry you through.
I agree with Serpent's comment that listening for a longer period - I find this with reading as well - gets you in the groove. The time periods are relative. I have sessions as short as a minute or two, and some that may be 40 minutes or more. Depends on what fits in your life. I find that short sessions do lay the foundation for steady progress. The question really is though, If one can study for an hour a day and has 3 languages, is it best to do some of each every day. I've used an hour or 90 minutes to rotate through several languages sometimes more than once. Actually, that's what Professor Arguelles does as well. I occasionally feel tempted to devote most of my time to a single object, and then rotate languages over a slightly longer period - this also aligns with what Serpent was saying. Here, I'm thinking more about reading or listening to a book in one language before moving on to another book or movie or program in the next. Depending on the length of the book or movie, one may spend a few days or a few weeks on a single language. Maybe that will be a 2014 experiment. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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