juman Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 5141 days ago 101 posts - 129 votes ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: French
| Message 1 of 5 04 May 2012 at 7:34pm | IP Logged |
You are a beginner in a language (a real beginner) you have about 30 minutes in front of
you and you want to spend the time well. So what would you do?
If you say go through flashcards? How do you do it... by just running through them, do
you write the answers down for each card, do you speak out load to answer each card?
If you say go through a textbook what do you do? Just sit down and read, read some and
follow up with exercises?
Or what would you do with the next 30 minutes of you study time?
I'm stuck at the moment and need inspiration on how to study :)
1 person has voted this message useful
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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 2 of 5 04 May 2012 at 8:18pm | IP Logged |
You can get some random ideas in this thread :)
I'd do one of the activities listed here :)
2 persons have voted this message useful
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JiriT Triglot Groupie Czech Republic Joined 4720 days ago 60 posts - 95 votes ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) Speaks: Czech*, English, German
| Message 3 of 5 04 May 2012 at 10:38pm | IP Logged |
juman wrote:
You are a beginner in a language (a real beginner) you have about 30
minutes in front of
you and you want to spend the time well. So what would you do?
If you say go through flashcards? How do you do it... by just running through them, do
you write the answers down for each card, do you speak out load to answer each card?
If you say go through a textbook what do you do? Just sit down and read, read some and
follow up with exercises?
Or what would you do with the next 30 minutes of you study time?
I'm stuck at the moment and need inspiration on how to study :) |
|
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If you are a beginner, you probably have a textbook or some material for your study. I
suppose you at least know which language you will study and from which textbook. I
think that for real beginners are best good textbooks. With good texts (conversational
phrases that you can hardly learn from reading newspaper articles or books etc) and
with conversational articles. It also has some phonetics explanations and it should
contain basic grammar. And here the advice is quit simple, learn well from the
textbook. Phonetics, vocabulary, grammar, articles etc. If you have just 30 minutes,
you can not learn so much during this time. I would try to get acquainted with the
language in order to get some idea about it with the respect to the learning method.
Then, during the first days, I would learn from the textbook at a medium pace. There is
no need to haste, it is better to learn the basics pretty well. And still to modify my
learning strategy. And to get used to the sounds and melody of the language. Only after
some time (two weeks or more) I would increase my learning speed. More vocabulary, more
reading articles, more grammar drills etc. After lesson ten (or say learning some 500
word and some grammar I would add reading real texts, if possible with audio).
If one wants to gain at least a partial knowledge of a language, it is matter of
investing much more time than a few hours. If one does not have the time, it is a waste
of time to start learning a new language. Maybe it would be better to improve the
knowledge of a foreign language I know. There is always a lot one can learn. When the
knowledge is very deep and extensive, it needs to be maintained, otherwise one loses
the knowledge. Not necessarily by forgetting vocabulary, but maybe you can recall the
words more slowly, you know the meaning but not quit accurately etc.
1 person has voted this message useful
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amethyst32 Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5572 days ago 118 posts - 198 votes ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, French
| Message 4 of 5 06 May 2012 at 4:00pm | IP Logged |
I'd probably use my 30 minutes to do a lesson of Assimil, followed by listening to something authentic in my target language. Keeping it simple works for me. :-)
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zerrubabbel Senior Member United States Joined 4523 days ago 232 posts - 287 votes ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) ![](/images/pokal.2.jpg) Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Mandarin
| Message 5 of 5 09 May 2012 at 7:13pm | IP Logged |
too bad, only 30 minutes :(
well, depending on availability, I would probably start with a Pimsleur lesson for my
first 30 minutes... that way, its fairly easy to pick up pronunciation and simple
grammar...
as I get farther along in the language I would begin to focus on reading and writing...
for instance, my dry erase board has nothing but Japanese all over it... practice
sentences, Kanji and stroke orders... I forbid any English on that board (and I think
its time to go find a bigger one) ^.^
1 person has voted this message useful
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