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Study frequency with multiple languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4668 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 1 of 10 29 December 2014 at 11:03pm | IP Logged |
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Say you had two hours total per day to devote to learning or maintaining four languages, all of them at least intermediate, and none of these languages took priority over any of the others. Which one of these schemes would be most effective for keeping them in good condition?
15 minutes of each language every half-day 30 minutes of each language every day 60 minutes of two one day, then 60 minutes of the other two the next day 2 hours of each every fourth day (i.e. one language per day, rotating) Of course we could stretch this out to the absurd (e.g. a four year "cycle" with one language per year). :-) One of the advantages of the "more frequent" schemes are that the language would be kept fresh in your mind every day. On the other hand, just 30 minutes per day doesn't lend itself very well to engaging fully with stuff like movies, full-length radio shows, or even perhaps more extended conversations. But what do you think the optimal "rotation period" is, given the constraints above (studying multiple languages, all above beginner level, and none of them is a special focus)? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7208 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 2 of 10 29 December 2014 at 11:16pm | IP Logged |
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It depends on what you can do in your time slots.
If you want to keep up with the news and have a show that takes up 10 minutes a day like RFI, or enjoy watching 30 minute TV shows, I might lean towards every language every day. If you're a movie buff, and your "study" is watching movies, you might find one language per day is good. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4710 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 3 of 10 30 December 2014 at 12:21am | IP Logged |
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I may have two hours per day to do actual study and so on, but that implies I'm doing
a whole host of other things in Dutch (or English), and my usual technique is to avoid that by doing them in another language (usually one I don't suck at). I literally spend half my time inside other languages using them for things everyone else thinks I'm foolish for doing it that way. I'm one person that studies multiple languages but rarely juggles them in such a schematic fashion by the way. I prefer to simply look at problems and solve them - I don't work on such a schedule so it would also be useless for me to suggest exact timeslots. However my favourite technique is spending a few weeks or months intensively on one language, fixing a lot of issues and moving it up a notch. If you look at it this way, then I actually spend a lot of time a week just fixing one language and not doing anything with the others - so they do suffer. The trick is that on your first run through, you must run them towards intermediate in one go. If it's intermediate and you know your basic grammar then you cannot fall back too far and when you pick it up again you will only need to spend a week initially messing about with stuff you maybe forgot a bit of but in the latter part of the time you've allotted to language X you'll more than make good on it. You can also do that for a longer time, but I find that 3 months is round-about the cutoff where I get severely bored and have to switch to another language. The way I juggle multiple languages when I also have my B2+ subset is that I use these languages either in maintenance slots (French), active high level improvement slots (Russian) or simply forget most of what's going on with it (German). They can take the hits because they're good languages of mine - I am hardly going to forget languages I know that well. Just give me time to warm up when I get back to them." In this way I usually have 2 languages I am studying intensively at a particular point in time - one of them is a very good language I would be studying anyways because I'm always using it (Russian in my case is a good example) and then the other one a weaker one I need to improve for some reason (Chinese is a good example here). Currently I'm not short on time so I'm also managing to throw in some Greek and some other stuff while I'm at it. My big problem is how I juggle anywhere between 7 and 15 languages at this point in time - I've done basic studies of about that amount of languages. In your case, I think that might amount to a 1h/1h split and simply ditching two for the time being (and then shifting after a few months based on my motivation and also my location/job situation/personal feeling etc). But that's a gross oversimplification because I a) do not use exact time boundaries and b) I tend to do most of my maintenance in better languages extensively, and then it's not worth counting hours when you're reading a good book - I just finish the book. And if I finish a day early or late doesn't matter - I finish when I do and I move on to the next one. I rarely read more than one book at the same time, by the way. 10 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6600 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 4 of 10 30 December 2014 at 1:50am | IP Logged |
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I agree that it depends on the activities. Mix and match! Don't interrupt a good session just because of your schedule (there are legit reasons, like timeboxing or making sure your motivation is still there tomorrow).
Also, with your particular list, one great advantage you have is that related languages keep one another alive. You might forget the details but not the big picture. Basically, do it in a way that doesn't limit you! At least with such big languages, if you keep on wanting to study one but not the other, the solution is not to create an artificial schedule but to make them equally attractive. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5169 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 5 of 10 30 December 2014 at 2:59pm | IP Logged |
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For languages you can already read comfortably, 20 min of reading + 10 min of audio are ok. For weaker
languages, over 10 minutes of reading might be overkill, so you may use the remaining 20 min for either textbook study or subtitled video or producing output. I study 8 languages and I think 30 min of focused learning for each would be enough. I tend to take 6 hours because I have to make interruptions, and I also think I spend too much time on blind, extensive reading for the weaker languages. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6600 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 6 of 10 30 December 2014 at 4:11pm | IP Logged |
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10-20 min are not enough to develop a flow though. There's no reason to go through all your languages every single day, especially if you can maintain contact via twitter/facebook/srs.
2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5169 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 7 of 10 30 December 2014 at 7:44pm | IP Logged |
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Not everyone learns through flow. The amount of reading I do for my weaker languages is enough for
burnout. Besides, we have odd days in the week and some are more subject to external factors than others, so I prefer not to split languages by days, for I'd risk doing a couple of them much less frequently than I am doing now. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6600 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 8 of 10 30 December 2014 at 11:06pm | IP Logged |
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Well, I wasn't talking about you... But anyway, why not just support the languages that would slip otherwise? It also seems like what I said about some languages being more attractive and enjoyable than others applies to your situation too. Edited by Serpent on 30 December 2014 at 11:19pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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