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Hours to become "expert" | ||
Tags: Genius | Time to learn | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| muse Newbie United States Joined 7147 days ago 17 posts - 17 votes | Message 1 of 15 03 May 2005 at 12:32am | IP Logged |
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A few years back, I read a very interesting book about prodigies that
made the claim that it takes about 10,000 hours of study to become expert in any area. Child prodigies manage to get this time in at a very young age due to extraordinary motivation--but they still have to put in the 10,000 hours. That is they tend to think about their "area" all the time. A music prodigy is running music practice in their head even when not at the keyboard and the chess prodigy is thinking about chess. I am wondering if the same might hold true for learning languages to an "expert" level. 10,000 hours is a lot of time. There are roughly 2000 working hours in your basic working year of 8 hours a day, 5 days a weeks so you can see the amount of time necessary. I think those people who successfully learn languages, must put this time in at least for their first non-native language. This certainly puts the technique of using time while waiting in line to study vocabulary in perspective for me. I am also aware that the brain actually has to grow new dendrites to learn new material and that it takes abut 6 hours minimum for this to occur. Spacing practice closer together than 6 hours could be wasted effort in this regard. Sometimes practice even degrades performance. I know that this happens in playing musical instruments. As you can see, I am very interested in the biological limits of learning efficiently and would welcome any perspectives the forum members might have about these ideas. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| lola Groupie Joined 7153 days ago 63 posts - 65 votes  | Message 2 of 15 03 May 2005 at 6:42am | IP Logged |
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Very interesting post, and I'm not an expert, so what I say I don't know the research that supports it.
Basically, those 6 hours you mention may be the reason why they say that is better a lot frequently than cramming many hours in one go, also why it's good to 'sleep' what you learn and so on. In my case, this would have to be counter balanced with my motivation, I can decide to devote quite a few hours a day for a short period, a month or so, but if my committment is about finding a daily outine that would extend over a couple of years, it just doesn't happen, unless I'm enrolled in a formal course, that, I can do. However, lets suppose that we use different parts of the brain to learn in different ways, then different approaches would need their own 6 hours 'break', but all together you could be devoting many hours a day, with minimal time distance, to those different approaches. Example: studying lists of vocabulary by repeating out lod (rote memory, active learning, isolated), being exposed to vocabulary in context by reading (passive learning, contextual), getting familiar with the language by listening to radio (passive, aural input), watching movies (passive, aural, visual) or following grammar lessons in computer (grammar, active, visual, aural) or practicing pronunciation (active, aural, verbal). And so on. I think this could easily form a 4 hours program that could be repeated morning and afternoon, with 2-3 hours break in the middle, giving each slot 6 hours before accessing the same part of the brain... Now, I don't know if this is how it works, with current technology it could be easily observed and then, optimised for those aspects that really tap into different sections. I read yesterday, (lost the reference) that bilingual people who learned both languages as children access the same part of their brain when speaking either language, whereas those who learned their second language as adults access a different part of the brain. In summary, I can't back this up, but I have the feeling that you cannot spend 8 hours a day studying vocabulary, but if you have a multimedia approach bombarding you with the target language in several different ways you can make the most of your time, as well as not getting tired. What do you think? Edited by lola on 05 May 2005 at 10:27am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| muse Newbie United States Joined 7147 days ago 17 posts - 17 votes | Message 3 of 15 03 May 2005 at 11:47am | IP Logged |
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Iola,
Thanks for your reply. I personally find the information about 10,000 hours encouraging because it tells me that people that accomplish great things (especially at an early age) don't necessarily have a better brain than I do. They just have more motivation and motivation is something I can do something about! I also like your idea about the different approaches perhaps using different parts of the brain and so perhaps not being susceptible so much to the 6 hour time frame. I think that the different methods tend to create collateral dendrite pathways to the same associational learning. Sort of like taking different routes to the grocery store. If you have more than one route, then if for some reason traffic blocks one, you can get there a different way. In some ways one can also think of the different practice methods as widening the street to the store and straightening it so that one gets there faster. The more you use the route, the deeper it is etched. At any rate the 6 hours does indicate that there is a physical biological process that accompanies learning and that if we take it into account we could perhaps be more efficient. Edited by muse on 03 May 2005 at 11:49am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| czech Senior Member United States Joined 7195 days ago 395 posts - 378 votes Studies: English* | Message 4 of 15 03 May 2005 at 3:15pm | IP Logged |
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If you are going to learn a language fluently, your brain has to work, and constantly at that, otherwise your target language will never come freely how your mother tongue does. It will always stay a long thinking process, like complex math problems, which is definitely not good.
I always force the same words down to the deepest parts of the brain, until they are nearly reflexive. I do this by making flashcards of words, about 36 words per day (from newspapers), and memorizing them all, one card at a time, in their respective orders. I recite them as much as I can throughout the day, thinking of the words meanings, and picturing them, but not as a translation of another word. I carry in my head the cards that I memorized for 6 days, and after 6 days of review, all in my head without looking at the word on paper, they are stuck in the mind deeply. But it does not take me 6 days to learn a mere 36 words, I learn a new 36 every day, so at any time, while standing in line or waiting somewhere, I review 216 words, in order, in my head. So every day I quit reviewing one set of cards (except with the flashcards), and memorize another. You can look at the first word of a set of flashcards days after you quit exercising it, and still give the 35 following words quickly in their order, knowing what they mean, and without effort. This really works, and after succesfully memorization, read the text that you obtained your new vocabulary from, and they will seem so familiar that you'll never have to even wonder about them. This method for learning vocabulary is similiar to real life, just think about it, your not going to be able to look at your flashcards in conversations, the words must already be there for you to access, in you brain, and available without thinking, if you want to be fluent. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| lola Groupie Joined 7153 days ago 63 posts - 65 votes | Message 5 of 15 03 May 2005 at 4:13pm | IP Logged |
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I'm impressed...
At that ryhthm you will master an active vocabulary of 3000 words in 3 months. If you are also practicing with whole sentences that's probably enough to have a decent conversation. Thanks for sharing it, I can now organise my learning better. Edited by lola on 05 May 2005 at 10:28am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| czech Senior Member United States Joined 7195 days ago 395 posts - 378 votes Studies: English* | Message 6 of 15 03 May 2005 at 8:01pm | IP Logged |
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It's not hard, if you start in the morning with about 6 words. You can make that a goal before you go to work or wherever. Than try to catch some moments to look at the cards, if you have already reviewed the cards, you will know what the words are, so sometimes, if you look at a card for 4 seconds, you can find a story for it, you'll never have to look at it again, you can memorize it that easily.
As far as a story goes, they help you remember word order. Here is an example of a recent card: el extremista- extremist, el senado- senate, presupuestario- budget (adj.), la asignacion- pay, suplementario- extra, de lado- sideways I imagined an “extremist” on top of the “senate” building, about to jump off because of “budget” problems with his “pay.” But then they tell him he will earn “extra.” So he comes down the “side” of the building (sideways). These may sound like big stories, but they happen so quickly in the mind. Remember that you need to know word order so that you can remember and review all the words. Also, try to memorize all words early in the day so you can improve the spots you don’t remember so well during the rest of the day. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| muse Newbie United States Joined 7147 days ago 17 posts - 17 votes | Message 7 of 15 03 May 2005 at 9:20pm | IP Logged |
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Love it! Love it!
The classical memory techniques of visualizing words in a sequenced space as reformulated by Harry Lorraign (sp?) and others. The more ridiculous the mental image the better! Czech you've clearly got it! My trouble is I know the techniques but get very lazy about using what I know. Now, you've inspired me. As a young child, I was aware of having a nearly eidetic visual memory. It faded as I got older, but I was so used to everything coming wihout effort that I was resistant to consciously using the techniques that my brain did without effort previously. This is exactly what I came to this forum for. Here are real people actually doing these things so that they now become real to me again-- instead of just some stuff I read about in a book. Thanks!!! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| pentatonic Senior Member United States Joined 7248 days ago 221 posts - 245 votes | Message 8 of 15 03 May 2005 at 9:58pm | IP Logged |
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Czech, I find your method very interesting because I am also experimenting with memorizing vocabulary and have had a long-time fascination with memory and mnemonics.
Instead of flashcards I'm using audio files. I've taken the Vocabulearn series converted to MP3 and cut out the individual words into files. I wrote a program to go through a word list and create MP3 files of word pairs in groups. It sorts the list randomly and then creates groups of 4 word pairs. Every third group it creates a review group of 12 words from the previous 3 groups again sorted randomly. I listen to a group until I can answer all correctly a few cycles and then move to the next group. This works well for me but I may be an auditory learner. The great thing is that I can memorize vocabulary when I normally couldn't, like when driving on my daily commute, going for my daily walk, and even sitting at my desk at work. People just think you're listening to music. :) Also, I hear the proper pronunciation so I learn that as well. I don't try to learn a set amount of words everyday, I just take advantage of time when I can't do anything else. Study time at my computer is spent with text-based methods. Today during my walk and my commute home I learned 72 phrases, yesterday 48, and some days none at all. This week is the first week since I got the software working so I'm still experimenting. The downside is all the work splitting out the individual words. It takes me about an hour per 100 word pairs. I intend to do a periodic review and note the words I miss and put them back into the cycle but I can see how a daily review of the last week's words (similar to how you're doing things) would really set them in my brain. I've thought a lot lately about assimilation through memorization as a possible technique for learning language. You are linking your words to each other which is the easiest way to use mnemonics to remember the sequence. But there are people who have memorized peg lists and journeys with thousands of pegs/loci. I've wondered how they could use this to their advantage in learning vocabulary. It seemed to me that it would be too slow to be any good, but your post has perhaps changed my mind. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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