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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 |  | |
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4442 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes  Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 25 of 28 13 October 2013 at 9:30am | IP Logged | |||||
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I don't think it is fair to assign specific time for learning. A few years ago started learning to play piano
keyboard. In the beginning it was a struggle. You get a few songbooks with technical pieces. You push yourself to do it for 2-3h a day, 7 days a week. Now I'm at the point I don't have to practice every day and there are pieces I can play from memory. Using music playing as an analogy, In the beginning you would be spending a lot more time learning the basics of a language going through phrase books, vocabulary and grammar. Once you get to a certain fluency, you can listen to a radio or TV program for instance and understand what is being said or read a newspaper and understand most of the words & phrases. You are not relying on a textbook alone. The time you listen to a news broadcast or watch a TV program counts as your learning time. You are learning French for instance and you watch the movie: "La Cage aux Folles" or the French equivalent of the American: "The Bird Cage". It is something outside a textbook or class but still considered part of learning. Suppose you are learning Japanese and you happen to be on exchange in Tokyo during the summer. You'd be counting every minute you interact with a local including the time spend in the classroom, going shopping, sightseeing, etc. A lot of it is outside the classroom. Of course you need to push yourself a bit by going to Internet chatrooms for instance and start discussions with language natives and see how far a conversation can go... Edited by shk00design on 13 October 2013 at 9:35am 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| geoffw Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4686 days ago 1134 posts - 1865 votes Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian | Message 26 of 28 13 October 2013 at 6:11pm | IP Logged | |||||
So how, if at all, do you think that passive reading and listening practice help with maintaining active skills? Are there other things that help with maintenance of speaking skills besides live spoken conversation? This is of course the dilemma for those learning languages that we don't always have easy opportunities to practice speaking live--even if you can gain substantial speaking skills, are you just going to lose them again unless you can find a regular speaking partner you keep forever? I too find that certain parts of German never really go away for me, but most German (that I didn't learn as a child) is more elusive and comes and goes. (At the best of times I have a conversation in German once a week, and usually less, and other languages even less so, more like once a month if I work to seek it out.) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| aspiringplyglot Triglot Groupie United Kingdom aspiringpolyglot.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4575 days ago 40 posts - 62 votes Speaks: English*, GermanB2, Spanish Studies: Dutch, Esperanto, Polish, Scottish Gaelic, French | Message 27 of 28 14 October 2013 at 3:24am | IP Logged | |||||
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I believe that when you have a higher level in a language (C1-C2) you need less time to maintain these languages.
Perhaps you need 5 or 10 minutes to become accustomed to the language after a long period of inactivity, but the key skills are there, I mean, that's what you have spent all that time for. For example, I've spent the past two years learning German and Spanish and I don't think I will ever forget how to express myself in those languages. Yes, perhaps a couple of words here and there but with a little bit of time back with the language I wouldn't lose too much. However, with Gàidhlig I've only spent a matter of hours with it and I would quickly forget it if I didn't continue to review the basic words and phrases. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Donaldshimoda Diglot Groupie Italy Joined 4088 days ago 47 posts - 72 votes Speaks: Italian*, English Studies: German, Russian | Message 28 of 28 14 October 2013 at 3:29pm | IP Logged | |||||
I probably struggle much more with the guitar than anything else...you can't by any means stop playing for months without affecting your technique :D Edited by Donaldshimoda on 14 October 2013 at 3:31pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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