How many materials and how to manage? (Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies) Language Learning Forum

How many materials and how to manage?
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Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies

9 messages over 2 pages: 1 2

Chung
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Message 9 of 9

09 May 2012 at 11:43pm | IP Logged

Pogopuschel wrote:

I wonder how many actual study materials/resources all of you are using when studying a language. I use
traditional textbooks (sometimes several at once), audio books, subtitled shows and movies, random sentences
and vocabulary from online reading, Lang-8 for practice, and possibly and exchange partner. I haven't used
language learning software but I might try it someday.

Sometimes I have the feeling that using so many different materials is a bit overwhelming and hard to keep track
of. I use Anki to do my reviews, but it's very tedious to put everything into it, especially things like sentences or
grammar. I feel it's mainly useful for vocabulary.

How do you guys manage your study materials and progress? Any best practices?

It depends on the language and what I want out of it.

In general as a beginner, I like to stick to one beginners' general purpose course with textbook and audio and at bare minimum a two-way bilingual dictionary containing at least 10,000 entries in each direction (for some languages such as Estonian, I found that also having a monolingual dictionary showing core inflectional forms to be very helpful when doing exercises that allow for a bit of improvisation).

Once I go past the beginners' stage, I've used courses for advanced students, graded readers, instructional videos, specialized reference materials (e.g. dictionaries of idioms), and larger dictionaries, in addition to authentic material not designed for pedagogical purposes (e.g. newspaper articles). It just depends on what I can find and afford.

All of the above hasn't prevented me from snapping up anything that looks interesting for learning my target language. For example, I've picked up a compilation of sample tests meant to prepare Slovakian teenagers for their graduation exams in Slovak literature and language but have still never got around to using it.

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