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Is it okay to take a break? | ||
Tags: Activating a Language | Study Plan | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Zerzura Groupie Australia Joined 4368 days ago 45 posts - 53 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Russian | Message 1 of 17 28 December 2013 at 3:22pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Hi there, so during this festive season I have fallen out of my routine. It's forecast to be 38 degrees celcius tomorrow, the heat has really messed up my sleeping routine and I have not been able to focus on any task.
I started off in November with 2 hours per week-day, and have almost completed Colloquial Russian book, Michel Thomas courses and the later series Assimil book. I started off well and have made great progress, but my concentration has suffered. Noticed that the Michel Thomas and second half of Assimil courses haven't really entered my brain as much as I'd like. Is it recommended to absolutely concentrate on one lesson until it is understood completely? The past few days have been difficult as I've been waking up in the afternoon heat, I'd like to break it by staying up until the next night. I guess I will take a break from Russian until the new year except for movies and such. I'm afraid that I'll lose momentum but maybe it is necessary in this case to reset my living habits. What are your experiences with taking breaks? I'd really like to hear some wisdom for those of you have their routine to a fine art. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Via Diva Diglot Senior Member Russian Federation last.fm/user/viadivaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4087 days ago 1109 posts - 1427 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German, Italian, French, Swedish, Esperanto, Czech, Greek | Message 2 of 17 28 December 2013 at 3:29pm | IP Logged | |||||
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My experience is awful, my another German break happens right now and I don't think it does some good to me. But people are different and it works relatively different as well.
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| demie Triglot Newbie United Kingdom Joined 3893 days ago 12 posts - 16 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Japanese, Slovenian | Message 3 of 17 28 December 2013 at 3:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
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38 degrees, you poor baby :( (the hottest I've ever experienced is like 26? I died. I
nigh on died.) Anyway, I think all you'll do is upset yourself by trying to work and concentrate when you physically can't. Anything above 25 degrees is inhumane, I'd concentrate on maintaining and revising until it cools down before trying to improve and learn new things. That's just me though 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Hungringo Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 3841 days ago 168 posts - 329 votes Speaks: Hungarian*, English, Spanish Studies: French | Message 4 of 17 28 December 2013 at 3:51pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I am a big fan of routine and stick to it as much as I can, but sometimes, it's just impossible. I like to finish what I have started (e.g. a lesson, translation whatever) so if I can't do it properly due to the circumstances, then I rather take a day off and relax. Of course, even on your day off you can watch a movie in the target language or listen to music or just read an article.
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 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5385 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 17 28 December 2013 at 4:01pm | IP Logged | |||||
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The main danger for first-time language learners is stopping and never starting again. Focus your efforts on avoiding that and the odds are in your favor.
Here are three breaks I've taken: 1. French, around A2: Over a year of nothing but (a) listening to my wife talk to the kids, and (b) reading a paragraph or two from Le Monde every day. When I restarted my studies in earnest, I had lost definitely lost something, including quite a bit of grammar I'd never really mastered. But since I had kept in contact with the language, everything I had once knew well came back quickly. 2. Egyptian, Assimil lesson 30. I stopped studying middle Egyptian at Assimil lesson 30 for almost a year. During that year, all I did was Anki reviews. These reviews covered almost everything I knew—I had typed the entire course into Anki as an experiment. Two months after stopping, I actually knew the material better then when I stopped the course. Six months later, I was definitely seeing some decay, despite the Anki reviews. A year later, I still knew most of the material, but I was getting noticeably rusty. I restarted, and my skills have come back pretty quickly. Conclusion: Intensive use of Anki can keep a language alive for at least a year, but it still decays. 3. French, B2+: This summer, I was busy with work and exercise, and I did very little reading for a month or two. But I used French in lots other ways. When I started reading again, I was clearly rusty. But within a month of serious reading, I was reading better than ever. So if I were to generalize from my personal experience: - Anything which you never really mastered will disappear very quickly. Even after a few weeks, poorly-mastered material will be well on its way to being completely forgotten. - Once you reach a level where you can actually use the language for something, it's possible to put your formal studies on hold for extended periods of time, and just read or watch TV. You'll still probably lose something, but you'll get most of it back within a month. Speaking skills, unfortunately, decay faster than anything else. - Anki and other SRS software can keep passive reading knowledge alive for a very long time if your decks contain sentences with context. Even poorly-mastered, beginner-level material will be quite recoverable after a 2-to-6 month break, and partially recoverable after a year. My recommendation: Use your break time to find fun, pleasant activities you can do in Russian. Nobody can sustain two hours of real study per day forever. But there are lots of agreeable, low-stress ways to stay in touch with a language every day or two. (Let me steal an idea from Serpent here: lyricstraining on easy mode might be quite fun.)
Basically, it's OK if you don't completely master an Assimil lesson. Anything which you actually need to know will reappear soon enough! (And if doesn't reappear soon, you didn't need to know it.) Personally, my usual rule of thumb for Assimil was to move on when I could understand 80–90% of the audio with my eyes closed, and 95–100% of the target language text with the translation covered. But let me quote rapp's excellent log:
The sooner you get good at finding easy, fun things to do in Russian, the more likely you are to survive all the curve balls life throws at you. 7 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4518 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 6 of 17 28 December 2013 at 4:49pm | IP Logged | |||||
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About the "one lesson until you understand it completely" part, if I'm really not getting something in a lesson, I tend to drop it for at least a week or two and then come back to it. Usually by then the cobwebs have cleared out.
What I did with Assimil French: go over a lesson several times one day, forget about it for a week, then come back to it, then forget about it for another week, then come back to it, etc. So my schedule ended up looking like this eventually: Monday: 1, 8, 15, 22,... Tuesday: 2, 9, 16, 23,... Wednesday: 3, 10, 17, 24,... Personally I find lots of repetitions in a short time period highly annoying, so I space things out over a week. Edited by tastyonions on 28 December 2013 at 9:07pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4762 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 7 of 17 28 December 2013 at 8:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
That's an interesting pattern. About how much time did you spend a day on Assimil? Note to self: this pattern is one that emerged naturally, not a pattern to try to shoehorn myself into. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4518 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 8 of 17 28 December 2013 at 9:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Thirty minutes to an hour. I pretty much always worked on it in the morning, and sometimes I would review it again in the afternoon or at night.
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