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Leave radio on overnight: waste of time? | ||
Tags: Radio | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Music, Movies, TV & Radio |  | |
| badger2 Senior Member Finland Joined 6610 days ago 156 posts - 156 votes  2 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: Swedish, Finnish | Message 9 of 23 16 March 2007 at 4:00am | IP Logged | ||
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Update 1) First few days.
I figured I'd better expound on this experiment before I go any further. My target learning time is the REM cycle, which occurs in increasingly longer periods as the night progresses. Ideally, I want to hit the last two REM cycles, which normally last about 35 and 50 minutes (give or take). For those of you who are unfamiliar REM sleep (rapid eye movement) is the stage of sleep in which we dream. Contrary to popular belief, we dream constantly throughout this stage of sleep. However, our brain pushes out the vast majority of this part of our lives (probably to help us demarcate reality from a dream) but you can "tap in" to your forgotten dreams by keeping a dream journal. The purpose of a dream journal is to put the memories of your dreams into a concrete form before your brain washes them away. This is how I intend to determine whether or not my experiment is doing anything. The main drawback is needing the will power to spend 10 minutes first thing in the morning writing down everything you can remember. It's actually tougher than it sounds, and I am no exception. After 2 days I have yet to crack open my dream journal. Now, I'm sure to many this may sound very stupid. "Learn a language while you sleep". I, too, think the concept of learning while you sleep is completely absurd. Think of all the dreams you have ever remembered. Did any of them ever fit the structure and rigidity that is necessary for bulk learning? My goal is to trigger language PRACTICE during sleep state. Consider when you hear your alarm clock in the morning. If you're in a dream, your dream usually finds a way to adapt the dream to accommodate this new external influence into the "dream world" (Perhaps you suddenly see a truck backing up, making the familiar "beep beep" sound). Therefore, if I am hearing Finnish talk radio, my dream will find a way to accommodate this extraneous information into the dream world. The question, then, is "to what degree will this benefit me?". More to come. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7204 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 10 of 23 16 March 2007 at 4:44am | IP Logged | ||
At one time I used a voice recorder, which was much faster than writing. Reviewing your dreams in the future takes longer though, but if the first goal is simply to remember your dreams, it's a technique worth considering. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| LilleOSC Senior Member United States lille.theoffside.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6690 days ago 545 posts - 546 votes 4 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: French, Arabic (Written) | Message 11 of 23 16 March 2007 at 12:55pm | IP Logged | ||
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EDIT: wrong thread. Edited by LilleOSC on 16 March 2007 at 12:55pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| badger2 Senior Member Finland Joined 6610 days ago 156 posts - 156 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: Swedish, Finnish | Message 12 of 23 20 March 2007 at 3:46am | IP Logged | ||
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Update 2)
I haven't been dream journaling OR leaving the radio on. It's a tough nut to crack, this will power thing... The most difficult part of the radio being on, is waking up in the middle of the night to pee or something, and then trying to fall back asleep. I'm considering putting the radio on at a quieter volume. This might sacrifice some "intelligibility", but I'm sure there's a middle ground somewhere. (A semi useless post, but hey, the more details I provide, the better) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sir Nigel Senior Member United States Joined 7103 days ago 1126 posts - 1102 votes 2 sounds | Message 13 of 23 20 March 2007 at 2:02pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'd like to mention that my hearing is much more sensitive in the morning. For instance if I set my alarm clock radio to what seems like a low level it seems piercingly loud when I wake up.
I don't think you'd have to leave your radio on but just the lowest volume settings. Personally I find leaving something on as I try to fall asleep extremely annoying and it ends up keeping me up. I value my sleeping hours as quiet rest time. Edited by Sir Nigel on 20 March 2007 at 2:03pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| PETE Triglot Groupie United States Joined 6482 days ago 73 posts - 85 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Spanish | Message 14 of 23 20 March 2007 at 2:03pm | IP Logged | ||
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This idea is a good one, but needs to be refined.
When I was studying Russian at DLI we were issued scores of cassettes, each containing dozens of news broadcasts on a specific topic: World Events International Relations Negotiations and Treaties Diplomacy Military Operations/Maneuvers World Conflicts Weather/Natural Disasters Business/Finance Politics Science and Technology Sporting Events Each cassette would contain dozens of 20-30 second news blurbs on the specific topic. The broadcasters were native speakers who spoke at a normal to faster pace, just like in regular news broadcasts. I began listening to them right away even though I did not know the vocabulary in hopes they would help me become familiar with inflection and recognize word breaks. Soon the process lost its appeal and I stopped doing it. But then I tried a process that a classmate swore by. I would pick a topic and instead of leaving the whole tape to run while I went to sleep, I would select 20 or so news snippets from a specific topic and loop them to play over and over on another cassette. This enabled me to hear the same news broadcast a number of times each night, spread out throughout the night. 20 news broadcasts at 30 seconds each is only 10 minutes total. I would loop that 10 minutes over and over on the cassette. The cassette player had auto-reverse and continuous play settings. Hearing the same vocabulary used throughout several different stories was extremely helpful. The individual key words almost immediately began becoming familiar and easy to recognize. I would either look up the words the next morning or wait until I heard them while listening to actual news broadcasts in class. From the moment I saw the definition that word then entered my vocabulary. I would select a different topic every night. Monday: World Conflicts. Tuesday: Politics. Wednesday: Negotiations and Treaties, and so on. It never got boring and I feel it was instrumental in helping me to be able to master the language. I could only see where having a foreign language radio station playing in the background all night would be beneficial when you already have a firm grasp of the language and are working towards fine-tuning. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mjcdchess Diglot Groupie United States Joined 6946 days ago 46 posts - 48 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish | Message 15 of 23 23 March 2007 at 4:47pm | IP Logged | ||
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I really think rather than have the radio on when you are sleeping to have it on when you are awake.
It has been very helpful to me. I seem to now understand Spanish radio and it seemed to happen all of the sudden 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| strossel Triglot Groupie Joined 6482 days ago 47 posts - 48 votes Speaks: English*, Swedish, French Studies: Icelandic, Hungarian | Message 16 of 23 24 March 2007 at 8:25am | IP Logged | ||
Nope... correction.. ;) ... finno-ugric language learners (or learners of finno-ugric languages,if you prefer)... I listen to Hungarian while sleeping or while doing totally unrelated tasks, and I find I recall the most vocabulary and structure forms during these periods! Edited by strossel on 24 March 2007 at 8:26am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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