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Studying early morning or at night? | ||
Tags: Study Plan | Time to learn | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Sterogyl Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4367 days ago 152 posts - 263 votes  Studies: German*, French, EnglishC2 Studies: Japanese, Norwegian | Message 25 of 33 03 June 2014 at 7:18am | IP Logged | ||
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I basically study all day. First thing in the morning I review 100-200 Anki cards. That's a must. I usually listen to podcasts while commuting. In the evening I enjoy watching films or reading books, noting down unknown and striking words and phrases which I put into Anki. When I work out I listen to podcasts as well. I also try to do some shadowing every now and then, but honestly I don't like it. Too much for my little brain, my concentration span is next to zero. Doing some other exercises as well: scriptorium à la Arguelles (very boring), memorization exercises (a bit less boring but much more difficult than scriptorium), talking to myself (just when in the mood, not as a regular imposed exercise). Anyway, the only thing I really impose on myself is Anki in the mornings. The rest doesn't follow a structured routine, which I would dislike anyway. I'm already busy enough and there's more to life than working off a self-imposed "language agenda".
By the way, my ability to concentrate is at its lowest between 2 and 5 pm. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5924 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 26 of 33 05 June 2014 at 3:08am | IP Logged | ||
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My ideal study schedule would be to study languages all day long, but that can't realistically happen. What does happen is I sometimes study a little bit in the morning when I first wake up around 8 am but most of my studying gets done between 10 pm and 1 am just before I go to sleep. I've never been an early morning person and during the day I usually have too much going on. I've learned that I do my best studying at night because it's quiet, there are no distractions and everyone else is asleep.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Gemuse Senior Member Germany Joined 4082 days ago 818 posts - 1189 votes Speaks: English Studies: German | Message 27 of 33 06 June 2014 at 10:55pm | IP Logged | ||
That is SO relateable :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| yogert909 Newbie United States jonkenpo.net Joined 3792 days ago 5 posts - 7 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese | Message 28 of 33 11 July 2014 at 1:14am | IP Logged | ||
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I have read research that suggests melatonin interferes with the formation of memories. If this is true, studying too
late at night or too early in the morning would be suboptimal. I find this to be the case for me at least. If it's within an hour of my normal waking or sleeping time, I'm not as good as I would be further from my normal sleeping hours. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4444 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 29 of 33 11 July 2014 at 3:13am | IP Logged | ||
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People have busy schedules. Basically if you can squeeze in even an hour before you go to work would
be very nice. There are other activities you can do throughout the day and evenings that are still considered learning a language but without being glued to a textbook such as watching TV and listening to the radio in a foreign language. You can also spend time going to online blogs and exchange messages with people of various languages like Moses McCormick the polyglot. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4847 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 30 of 33 11 July 2014 at 7:18am | IP Logged | ||
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I squeeze in language time whenever I can (and when I have enough willpower). It's an all-day thing.
What I would love to do is wake up an hour earlier and, for one hour, attack my languages with a passion. But that would wake up my wife, too; she doesn't like the sound of gunfire. OK, bad joke. What I mean is... if I get up, she would easily be awaken as well, so I don't. The next best thing is my commute to work. I find that I can concentrate more on the way to work than I can going home. Teaching at high school can be, uh, stressful sometimes, and I'm not always in the mood to do serious study right after work. As for home at night, I'm easily distracted. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Retinend Triglot Senior Member SpainRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4308 days ago 283 posts - 557 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish Studies: Arabic (Written), French | Message 31 of 33 13 July 2014 at 1:25am | IP Logged | ||
Perhaps you can improve your sleep patterns so that you wake up more "fresh"? If people in general, by the fault of the melatonin in their daily hormonal cycle, were finding that they couldn't recall what they learned or did in the early hours of their day, I feel as if this thread would be less various in its responses. I do sometimes feel drowsy in the morning (and this affects how well I can attend to the task at hand for 30 mins - 1 hour after waking) but now this "boot-up" time is much rarer and shorter since I've improved my sleeping patterns, after the advice of Alexander Arguelles. I'd say that this melatonin can't be interfering too much in my memory formation - even if I say myself that I study well in spite of its interference - because I remember what I did in the first hour of waking one week ago today (what I ate, what the weather was like, how I felt, what I studied...), which is more than I can say for what happened between 4 and 5pm that day. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4828 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 32 of 33 13 July 2014 at 10:48pm | IP Logged | ||
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It's obviously a very subjective and variable thing, and I think the only general "rule"
one can come up with, whatever hours you study, you have to get sufficient (but not too much) good quality sleep. We've had discussions about sleeping patterns in the past, I seem to remember, and not everyone fits the standard pattern, e.g some people might do better on two chunks of about 3.5-4 hours, than one of 7-8 hours; some people do well on "power naps", while others don't; etc. But if you aren't sufficiently rested, it won't be good for your studies, and in the long run, it won't be good for your health. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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