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Do you keep track of hours? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| numerodix Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6775 days ago 856 posts - 1226 votes  Speaks: EnglishC2*, Norwegian*, Polish*, Italian, Dutch, French Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin | Message 1 of 16 21 August 2009 at 3:04pm | IP Logged | ||
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I imagine people who are juggling several languages do that, cause they have to stay organized. But what about those learning just one? Do you write up the hours you spend on it?
I'm very opposed to this kind of excessive bureaucracy, so it wouldn't occur to me to do that. Normally. But I had to do it for work a while back and I saw people talking about doing it for language learning. So I just started, and I think it might be a good thing. I'm very impatient with languages, so maybe this way I can see how many hours I've spent and if I feel like quitting I'll know how substantial (or more likely insubstantial) my effort has been so far. And that's really my biggest complaint about language learning, namely that I have no idea "where" I am in the process. How long it's gonna take, how I'm progressing and so on. I have no feel for that. Edited by numerodix on 21 August 2009 at 3:05pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| habadzi Super Polyglot Senior Member Greece Joined 5566 days ago 70 posts - 106 votes Speaks: Greek*, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, Hindi, French, German, Italian, Ancient Greek, Modern Hebrew, Arabic (classical), Indonesian, Bengali, Albanian, Nepali | Message 2 of 16 21 August 2009 at 3:23pm | IP Logged | ||
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The question is what you are going to do with the language you are learning. Do you need to travel on a certain date for tourism, understand movies or TV, work, need to read certain documents within reasonable time for work or study? need to enchant a significant other with your prowess? Each of these goals has a slightly different performance goal.
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| numerodix Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6775 days ago 856 posts - 1226 votes Speaks: EnglishC2*, Norwegian*, Polish*, Italian, Dutch, French Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin | Message 3 of 16 21 August 2009 at 3:40pm | IP Logged | ||
That's not an issue, I know what my goals are. Basically I never begin to come near them, that's how early I've quit in the past. Mostly because of how unsatisfying the process was. I would spend some time on it and feel like it hadn't really given me anything concrete. Sure I knew more words, and I had seen more grammar, but it wasn't measurable anyway and I couldn't say when or how I would reach a point where I could actually begin to speak the language rather than just repeat words or sentences. French grammar has frustrated me to no end, and I basically can't put together a correct sentence after years of some schooling and some individual effort. But then in the past I never kept track of time so I wonder if that could be a small step towards greater transparency in the process. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5758 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 4 of 16 21 August 2009 at 4:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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Too lazy. Though it would help with the guilty conscience in the evening.
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| Lizzern Diglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5901 days ago 791 posts - 1053 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 5 of 16 21 August 2009 at 4:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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Set smaller goals, don't measure yourself again "I want to be fluent in..." straight away, that's going to take time but you can have little milestones along the way that show you you've made progress. Find materials that are noticeably (but not too far) above your current level and bookmark them. Have as a goal that you want to understand them. Then leave them aside for a while and just do what you usually do in terms of study and learning, you don't need to keep your goal at the front of your mind all the time but finding a sensible balance in reminding yourself would be good. Then, a couple of weeks later have a look at those materials again, you will most likely find that you understand a bit more, or possibly all of it. If you see no change at all in your level of understanding or naturalness then you picked one that was too hard. Keep finding little goals like this, gradually moving from relatively simple stuff to the more advanced things as well as moving in the direction of output, and you'll be able to see progress that is at least tangible, even if not expressed in number of hours.
I don't personally count hours, because I know from rather extensive experience with slacking off and rather extensive experience with working hard that how much time I've spent supposedly working has nothing and I mean NOTHING to do with how much work I actually got done. Also, if you feel like you're just repeating words and sentences without developing a natural 'feel' for the language, then might I suggest that maybe the methods you're using aren't the optimal ones for you. I know it's taken me a while to find study techniques that work best for me, both for languages and for other things, and I'm still constantly reconsidering what I'm doing - and just recently made a change to my methods that's been surprisingly helpful. So it's worth considering if there's something more effective we could be doing, and trying out new things. It doesn't have to be frustrating - it should be fun :-) Liz 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| numerodix Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6775 days ago 856 posts - 1226 votes Speaks: EnglishC2*, Norwegian*, Polish*, Italian, Dutch, French Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin | Message 6 of 16 21 August 2009 at 4:34pm | IP Logged | ||
Well as you can probably surmise, I've had a lot of trouble getting over that first hump of a beginner in order to actually have a basic command of the language. I don't know what kind of benchmarks would be useful at that stage. It's also been a long long time since I've been at this stage with any language, so it frustrates me. I see you're learning Italian, so maybe you could divulge what you used as a milestones? Effective is the word indeed. If there's one thing language learning is not in my experience, it's effective. I've just started with Michel Thomas now and it seems promising, but it's too soon to say. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6003 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 7 of 16 21 August 2009 at 5:02pm | IP Logged | ||
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"What gets measured gets managed," as they say.
If you measure the time you spend learning, that elevates its importance. If you genuinely believe you're not putting enough time in, a log might well help. However, there is the risk that by making time your priority you end up spending a lot of time doing unproductive study just to put a tick in the boxes. Once you start doing that, burn the log! Edit: I just noticed this:
One of the good points about MT is that you start and stop at will rather than slavishly following a routine. Courses with set lesson times usually take into account that student attention wanes as the end of the lesson approaches (usually 5-10 minutes before the end of a half-hour lesson. If you set yourself a time-goal with Thomas, then as you become aware of the end of the lesson approaching you might not pay enough attention. Edited by Cainntear on 21 August 2009 at 5:06pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Lizzern Diglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5901 days ago 791 posts - 1053 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 8 of 16 21 August 2009 at 5:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm not known for my tendency to start talking straight away, so maybe someone else can give you some input on that, I like to focus on input and study for a while until I can at least feel like I don't sound like a toddler. Anyway, I like to use music and related interviews to test myself, with any language one of the first things I do is find music I like, that I want to understand but stuff I'd listen to even if I couldn't. Helps keep the motivation going. Then I'll find interviews with my favourite singers and see if I can understand any of it. At first I obviously can't understand much, but I like to start studying with a good course like Assimil straight away and then just keep on listening to things I like while I study. If you do this eventually you'll catch yourself understanding a whole sentence, or whatever, and it'll feel like a small victory, a silly one but nevertheless. If you keep studying you'll experience this more and more until you surprise yourself by being able to follow a long discussion practically without realizing that it's in a language you wouldn't expect yourself to understand.
I found some interviews within the first couple of weeks of learning Italian that I really wanted to understand, but couldn't, so I bookmarked them and didn't think about them again for a while, then a month or two later I watched one of them again and found I could understand many things without too much difficulty, and now I can understand anywhere above 95% of them without thinking about it at all. (I've been studying for less than 4 months.) The same goes for some song lyrics that had me stumped for a while (and weren't available online), with one song I didn't listen to that often I literally suddenly understood the whole first verse when the previous time I had understood only bits and pieces of it. I have another video lined up, one that at this point is just too difficult for me, partly because of audio quality, but essentially because of vocabulary. I tried watching it a while back when I was still just a newbie at Italian (actually I'm still just a newbie at Italian, but more so then) and could understand practically nothing. After a month or two away from it I can now understand maybe 50% naturally, but the rest of it is just lost on me. It's still something I can use as a sort of measure of my own learning, because I'll know I've made some real progress when I'm able to understand all of it. I'm hoping it will be soon. I would say find possible benchmarks that are just fun and that interest you, so you want to understand them. Can be music or related things, it can be comedy, it can be computer manuals if you're into that sort of thing, it doesn't matter. If it's music you can just enjoy it even if you don't know all the words, and if you find a good course (Assimil's courses are a great way to start, imo) and just study, trying to enjoy it and not letting yourself be frustrated, then you'll begin to see progress very soon. Personally I am dependent on enjoyable input to learn anything, I'd have immense difficulty just burying my head in a book - I likely wouldn't learn anything, so I'd say get lots and lots (and LOTS) of input that you like and find some enjoyable way of studying alongside. If you're eager for a counting system there's various ways people here measure their vocabulary, you can find some threads on it if you search a bit. I use a system based on the texts I study, it's in my learning log (on page 6 I believe) but if you're frustrated you probably wouldn't want to go the text route like that, but there's ways you can do it, if you feel like you need to. Also, have a look around the site to see what techniques other people use that work for them. Since I joined these forums I've started using techniques that I basically swore I'd never use again, because certain people here (notably Iversen) have described adapted version of those methods that are much more effective and enjoyable. Have fun :-) Liz Edited by Lizzern on 21 August 2009 at 9:23pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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