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Minutes a day / hours a week to maintain | ||
Tags: Maintaining Languages | Time to learn | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| mike245 Triglot Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 6970 days ago 303 posts - 408 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Cantonese Studies: French, German, Mandarin, Khmer | Message 17 of 28 07 August 2013 at 7:40pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think effective maintenance also depends on what kinds of activities you are doing. For instance, if you are only reading sports articles on the Internet everyday in the foreign language, you might end up losing some ability to engage in a variety of topics, including vocabulary.
For approximately ten years, I only minimally used my Spanish for work, where I mostly discussed immigration, housing, debt collection, and other legal issues. I retained my abilities within that range of topics, but I found it increasingly difficult to talk about other subjects with fluency. For maintaining vocabulary, especially words that you might not encounter often, I think SRS helps a lot. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5428 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 18 of 28 07 August 2013 at 8:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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It seems to me that the old saying "If you don't use it, you lose it" is basically true. What I'm reading here is that if
you are quite advanced, especially in speaking skills, the amount of time or effort to maintain your skill level is minimal. That seems to make sense. What I want to add is that there are two issues. One is maintaining a certain level. The other is the fact that you stop progressing or learning if you no longer are using the language or go only into maintenance mode. If you are lucky enough to have an opportunity to actually use a language regularly, you are often -- I would like to say always -- learning something new, especially vocabulary if you pay at all attention. The language is current. On the other hand, if you barely use the language, you tend to become fossilized or stuck at a certain level that goes back years ago. Sure, you might be able to speak relatively fluently but your vocabulary and even some grammar will be dated. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| lichtrausch Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5958 days ago 525 posts - 1072 votes Speaks: English*, German, Japanese Studies: Korean, Mandarin | Message 19 of 28 08 August 2013 at 2:29am | IP Logged | ||
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I suspect that one reason why it is easier to maintain a language known at a higher level
is because if you have really high proficiency in a language, you can listen and understand the radio or T.V. coming at you at full native speed and within minutes you've received a refresher on a thousand aspects of the language. Something similar applies to reading. However if you try the same thing with a language in which you have only intermediate proficiency, many things will fly over your head, including words or sentence structures you technically already know, because they were used in a slightly different context or manner that you weren't entirely familiar with. 9 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| cpnlsn Triglot Newbie United Kingdom Joined 6171 days ago 22 posts - 29 votes Speaks: English*, French, German | Message 20 of 28 27 August 2013 at 8:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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My view is a highly developed language skill requires little to maintain. Yet a small
amount of maintenance is probably a good idea. I think this could be in a number of areas - a small amount of pleasurable reading, watching interesting films, the occasional radio programme, reading some internet sites your interested in and so on. In this time it might be a good idea to extend vocab into some new areas. Anyhow, my view is once you've reached a high degree of fluency a diverse but less demanding plan of maintenance will see you good. Again, if you've left it a while then I think picking things up in the same way is a good idea. I left out grammar, exercises and such like - I think it depends on your interest and motivation in such things but that too can play a role. For me I'd gain from doing German grammar exercises but not much from French grammar - I can't explain why this is but I sense it's different for each language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4907 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 21 of 28 27 August 2013 at 11:01pm | IP Logged | ||
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One factor that doesn't seem to have been mentioned yet is the total time you have spent with the language. What I mean is that if you have gotten to your level quickly (for example, if you go on an intense course and go from A0 to B1 in 3-4 months) you'll also be more likely to forget it quickly, and it will probably take more time per day to maintain. Benny mentioned something like this on his website: he realized that as he is learning his languages quickly, he's forgetting them just as quickly without maintenance.
If, on the other hand, you've been working slowly but steadily for 6 years to gain that B1, it will take less time to maintain. I'll get all pop-sciency here and say that if you took longer to get to that level, the memories will be more deeply embedded in long-term memory. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Lorren Senior Member United States brookelorren.com/blo Joined 4249 days ago 286 posts - 324 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Danish, Irish Studies: Russian | Message 22 of 28 28 August 2013 at 10:39am | IP Logged | ||
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I took German for 6 years in middle and high school. When I decided to go on a trip to Germany, I was able to regain much of my lost skill with a little bit of review time.
I never was exactly "fluent" in German, but I suppose that when I get around to studying it again with the goal of fluency, the first part of studying will go fairly quickly. If languages are a skill close to learning how to play a musical instrument, then I would think that the skill can come back just as good as before, but it will take a little bit of time to bring oneself up to speed. I played the clarinet for six years in middle and high school. I stopped playing for about 16 years. When I started playing again for the church, I was quite rusty at first (I didn't know how to make some of the notes, and even needed to buy a fingering chart). After about a month or two playing two or three times a week for about 20 minutes at a time, I had pretty much regained my skill. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Duke100782 Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Philippines https://talktagalog.Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4486 days ago 172 posts - 240 votes Speaks: English*, Tagalog* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 23 of 28 12 October 2013 at 4:07am | IP Logged | ||
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I play a lot grappling, mixed martial arts and fencing. Even if I don't use the skills for a long time, the skills
are already deeply ingrained instinct, even higher levels of the sport, like strategy and reading your opponent, most of it is readily available to me. Maybe I'll need a couple of games to throw the rust off, but it's easy to bring me back up to my game, at least skills-wise that is. But, I think the older you get the harder it is to wrestle like a lean, mean bulldog and the more you have to be like a crafty fox. I don't have extensive years learning foreign languages as I do playing these sports, but I think analogies can be drawn for my experiences. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Duke100782 Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Philippines https://talktagalog.Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4486 days ago 172 posts - 240 votes Speaks: English*, Tagalog* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 24 of 28 12 October 2013 at 4:09am | IP Logged | ||
Excellent insight by the way! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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