Time management - perfectioning vs new (General discussion) Language Learning Forum

Time management - perfectioning vs new
Tags: Maintaining Languages \| Romance Languages \| Simultaneous study \| Study Plan
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Language Learning Forum : General discussion

10 messages over 2 pages: 1 2 Next >>

crazyleseratte
Pentaglot
Newbie
Germany
crazyleseratte.wordpRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 3967 days ago
26 posts - 33 votes
Speaks: English, German*, Spanish, French, Italian
Studies: Dutch, Danish, Mandarin, Japanese, Russian

Message 1 of 10

15 June 2015 at 12:06pm | IP Logged

I would like to ask about time management.

At the moment I concentrate on 1 language for about one or 2 months, and do a couple of
languages on the side.

However, there are 3 languages, where I already have a decent level, and where I can read
and write. So I am torn between focusing on those languages, and perfectioning them, and
learning the new ones, I am interested in.

How would you do it? Usually, I do my main language each day, and the side languages I
just do about once or twice a week.
1 person has voted this message useful

chaotic_thought
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 3547 days ago
129 posts - 274 votes

Speaks: English*, German
Studies: Dutch, French

Message 2 of 10

15 June 2015 at 2:02pm | IP Logged

crazyleseratte wrote:

I find it helpful to designate a "primary" language that I must improve, and a "secondary" language that I would like to improve. For me, 2 months is not a large enough time window to notice significant improvement, so I would feel better with 4,5,6 months as a "milestone".

Each day I will schedule as many practicing activities I can for the primary language (listening, reading, listening to news, etc.). Generally I must do these activities in free time windows, rather than reserving an entire day for language study. To motivate myself I assign myself a daily goal of total workout activity for that language (say, 2 hours). If I reach this daily goal for the primary language, then I allow myself to switch workout activities to the secondary language. I find this approach ensures that I maximize workout time on the primary language without "starving" the secondary language.

6 persons have voted this message useful

Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6602 days ago
9753 posts - 15779 votes

4 sounds
Speaks: Russian*, English, Finnish^C1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish

Message 3 of 10

15 June 2015 at 4:44pm | IP Logged

This wikia article may help. (Be sure to check the links to solving specific problems and the 20 hour technique especially)
I know the frustration. No matter how much time you have, it's never enough, so use what you have :) The main resource you have is probably reducing the time spent in English and German.

Ultimately only you can decide what to prioritize. Personally, I think that rather than doing say 1 hour per week in Italian, French, Spanish, it might be better to give one of them 3 hours of quality time. You won't forget them easily. But make sure to have micro-immersion via things like twitter/facebook/music. (You may also find the woman who read(s) a book per day inspiring :)))

PS you list Spanish as native fluency. How did you get there? :-)

Edited by Serpent on 15 June 2015 at 4:53pm
3 persons have voted this message useful

Message 4 of 10

15 June 2015 at 8:49pm | IP Logged

Great tips, thank you.

To answer your question about Spanish: I attended one intensive University course for
three years. (I had Spanish day in and day out during this period) After that I read
and watched movies, and attended Moocs in the language.So now I feel pretty
comfortable using the language in every situation.

So here are my plans for this year (maybe I should actually start a log for that):

I decided to concentrate on 2 languages 5 days each week. Those two will be Japanese,
which I just started, and French, where I want to reach level C2 at some point this
year.

I decided to work on the languages that I already started learning, and where I have
reached a certain level already (like Dutch) on my days off. And I will dedicate one
day a week to vocabulary work, to get rid of the thousands of flashcards piling up in
my room.

If I have a few hours extra, I will either immerse in the languages I am currently
studying, or I will do some listening or a lesson from any textbook in a language,
that I am interested in on this particulary day.

Any thoughts?

1 person has voted this message useful

Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6602 days ago
9753 posts - 15779 votes

Message 5 of 10

15 June 2015 at 9:14pm | IP Logged

For fun activities, try GLOSS and lyricstraining. The latter is available for Spanish, French, Italian, but you'll probably find it the most useful for Dutch.
GLOSS is available for French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin and Russian.

Twitter and SRS are excellent for maintaining what you already know and making at least minimal progress.

Try not to fall victim of the sunk cost fallacy. If you hate those flash cards, just throw them away (if you bought premade flash cards, you might even be able to resell them).

Reaching C2 is a long-term process. Decide what specific improvements in French you expect - grammatical accuracy? listening comprehension? vocabulary?

Mandarin also looks out of place to me, and to some extent even Russian does. These will take a lot of effort to "maintain". If you drop them, restarting later will be easier. TBH you remind me on tristano who tried to learn both Mandarin and Persian at one point.
1 person has voted this message useful

garyb
Triglot
Senior Member
ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5212 days ago
1468 posts - 2413 votes

Speaks: English*, Italian, French
Studies: Spanish

Message 6 of 10

16 June 2015 at 10:53am | IP Logged

My philosophy on this is always changing, but at the moment I'm doing something similar to chaotic_thought, a "primary" language that I'm keen to improve and a "secondary" one that I want to maintain although improvement would be a bonus. I do maybe 15-30 minutes per day with the secondary one, mostly passive activities like watching or reading, and as much as I can really with the primary one, with more focus on active skills like speaking and writing.

So I kinda approach it the opposite way from chaotic_thought: I make sure I set aside time for a minimum of work in the secondary one, then the remaining time goes to the primary one. Works for me because the primary one is the one I'm more motivated for, so there's less need to "force" myself and more chance I'll get carried away with it and ignore the secondary one. Usually I do the secondary work first just to get it out of the way so I can get stuck into the primary one.

I've tried 50-50 before and I did make progress but I always felt I was never giving quite enough attention to either; I find it more satisfying to do one "properly". Sooner or later I want to add in a third, which I suppose will mean having one primary and two secondary languages.
2 persons have voted this message useful

Message 7 of 10

16 June 2015 at 1:41pm | IP Logged

Serpent wrote:

For fun activities, try GLOSS and lyricstraining. The latter is
available for Spanish, French, Italian, but you'll probably find it the most useful
for Dutch.
GLOSS is available for French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin and Russian.

Twitter and SRS are excellent for maintaining what you already know and making at
least minimal progress.

Try not to fall victim of the sunk cost fallacy. If you hate those flash cards, just
throw them away (if you bought premade flash cards, you might even be able to resell
them).

Reaching C2 is a long-term process. Decide what specific improvements in French you
expect - grammatical accuracy? listening comprehension? vocabulary?

Mandarin also looks out of place to me, and to some extent even Russian does. These
will take a lot of effort to "maintain". If you drop them, restarting later will be
easier. TBH you remind me on tristano who tried to learn both Mandarin and Persian at
one point.

so what would you suggest for vocabulary instead? How should I learn it, if I don't
write flash cards or keep them in a notebook? I feel that just looking them up would
be a waste of time, without learning them. Especially with intensive reading.

You are probably right about "not wasting my time" with Russian, for now. I haven't
learned much anyways.

I will definitely squeeze in Chinese once a week. I feel I made great progress with my
course, and even if I cannot do much of that, I feel that I might get somewhere and
learn some more with this approach. Of course I won't become fluent using this method
for the next few months, but I might be able to finish my course and then I can take
it up more thoroughly in 2016.

I hardly ever use social media. I found a couple of interesting tweets in other
languages, but to tell you the truth I cannot find good stuff to follow and read on
facebook. I prefer dedicating some real quality time to my studies, studying grammar
or a book instead of wasting my time on facebook.
If anyone has tips about how to use facebook as a more valuable tool, I might
reconsider this activity.

For French I wish to improve my grammar and vocabulary and speaking and writing. Just
like I would do, if I would take the C2 exam. I don't think that I can limit the
activities to just one, if I want to pass the exam. I hope to have this level by the
beginning of next year, if nothing gets in the way. So I believe that concentrating on
the 2 languages with other activities once a week might be a good plan.

Edited by crazyleseratte on 16 June 2015 at 1:51pm
1 person has voted this message useful

Arthaey
Groupie
United States
arthaey.com
Joined 5051 days ago
97 posts - 155 votes

Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish

Message 8 of 10

16 June 2015 at 6:16pm | IP Logged

crazyleseratte wrote:

I hardly ever use social media. I found a couple of interesting tweets in other languages, but to tell you the truth I cannot find good stuff to follow and read on facebook. I prefer dedicating some real quality time to my studies, studying grammar or a book instead of wasting my time on facebook. If anyone has tips about how to use facebook as a more valuable tool, I might reconsider this activity.

I also have trouble "finding good stuff to follow and read" on Facebook — that's what I use Twitter for, instead. :)

Facebook works well for language practice with my friends who speak my target languages. Twitter works well for language practice based around shared interests and current events. Use the right tool for the job. ;)

3 persons have voted this message useful

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