Randwulf Newbie United States Joined 4815 days ago 32 posts - 93 votes ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) Speaks: English*
| Message 1 of 13 25 April 2012 at 5:13am | IP Logged |
This helped me a lot with motivation so I wanted to share and see if anyone else did
anything similar. Motivation's probably not much of a problem for people who have
learned other languages before, but when I was in the lower intermediate stages of my
first foreign language I sometimes got very discouraged, because progress seemed
nonexistent, and I could still hardly understand any native material.
The perceived lack of progress was what was killing me though. Progress was so gradual
that it seemed not to exist. I studied roughly an hour a day. It was all the time I
could spare usually.
But one day I kept free of obligations for weeks in advance and on it I sat down and
studied for 12 hours in a single day.
These 12 hours were on top of the 400 I had already spent over the past year. So
essentially I expanded my language skills by 3% in one day. This is huge. The progress
was palpable. By night I was significantly and noticeably better at the language than I
could remember being in the morning.
This was a huge confidence booster, which I sorely needed around that time.
Edited by Randwulf on 25 April 2012 at 5:16am
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William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6195 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French
| Message 2 of 13 05 May 2012 at 5:10pm | IP Logged |
It may be a good way to overcome the "plateau effect" or move beyond the intermediate level. Many students of subjects (not just languages) probably do this kind of intensive study a few weeks before exams. I would have thought this kind of intense study is difficult to sustain for long, or most of the time.
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hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5053 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe
| Message 3 of 13 05 May 2012 at 6:25pm | IP Logged |
Randwulf wrote:
By night I was significantly and noticeably better at the language than I could remember being in the morning.
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How were you the next day... the next week?
Sounds absolutely exhausting and counter-productive to me, but different strokes, I guess.
R.
==
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Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6520 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) 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 13 05 May 2012 at 7:17pm | IP Logged |
Immersion days are wonderful :)
I agree that's not for everyone though. If the idea is too intimidating, wait before it becomes exciting :))
I've been thinking of starting a thread/challenge for this very purpose :) Study as much as possible in one day and describe your day, sharing with us how exactly you made the time for it:)
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aokoye Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5464 days ago 235 posts - 453 votes ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) Speaks: English*, German Studies: Dutch, Norwegian, Japanese
| Message 5 of 13 05 May 2012 at 7:32pm | IP Logged |
How did you breakup your study session? How many hours on vocab, listening, grammar,
speaking, etc?
It's an interesting idea and, while I have the time to do so (taking time off from school
due to medical issues) I don't know that I'd have the mental stamina to do so.
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smallwhite Pentaglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5231 days ago 537 posts - 1045 votes ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin, French, Spanish
| Message 7 of 13 06 May 2012 at 6:33am | IP Logged |
Maybe it was because you remembered better what you have accomplished that day (the oldest accomplishment being only 12 hours ago), and thus feel better about yourself, when normally that workload would be spread over 12 days and you don't remember that well what you have accomplished over those 12 days (the oldest accomplishment being 12 days ago), and you feel less good about yourself.
From my experience, some things are better learned by spreading out (eg. vocabulary using spaced repetition) so that 12 hours over 12 days is better, while other things are better learned by cramming in a single day (eg. when you have to remember everything in the first 11 hours in order to understand the 12th hour, or when writing a long poem).
Edited by smallwhite on 06 May 2012 at 6:34am
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Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4932 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian
| Message 8 of 13 06 May 2012 at 8:57am | IP Logged |
I think it could work under the condition you don't take a large break after it (like a
break instead of the several normal sessions you took at once).
As William said, students do it for other subjects as well. It is impossible to keep for
longer but sometimes you cannot choose.
The One Day Challenge may be an interesting idea (it seems impossible to run out of all
the possible Challenges :-D ) durin the summer.
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