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Studying languages during school term | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| cmmah Diglot Groupie Ireland Joined 4531 days ago 52 posts - 110 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Irish | Message 1 of 27 29 August 2012 at 8:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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Over the holidays, I really got into studying my languages, improving my Spanish and French, and starting
Norwegian and Japanese. I'd say that I've studied for about five hours a day over the summer. Now, not to spout clichéd Mark Twain quotes, but in a week or so, school really could be interfering with my language learning. This summer, I've taken myself from an A1 to a high B1/low B2 in Spanish, maybe from A1 to a high A2/low B1 in French, and have made a good start in both Norwegian and Japanese. My question: how am I supposed to maintain my progress in these languages during the school year? With school six hours a day, homework/other studying for a further hour, and other commitments taking up various amounts of time, it leaves me between an hour/two hours free time during the day (only 1/2 hour for each language a day seems like I'm spreading myself a bit too thinly). How am I supposed to keep up a good work rate? Should I drop Norwegian or Japanese, maybe even both, until I get to a comfortable level in Spanish? Studying in school is out of the question, as my schoolbag's hard enough to close without a Spanish novel and dictionary. I do take Spanish and French lessons in school, but they are taught at a torturously slow rate (three years of study and we've been taught 6 verb tenses. Not 6 tenses in each language, but 6 altogether. Only five if you don't count "ir + infinitive" as the "future tense". We still haven't touched on the imperative or subjective mood in either). By December, I'd like to be at least B2 in both Spanish and French, and A2 in my other two languages. Is this an unrealistic expectation, with school interfering? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Majka Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic kofoholici.wordpress Joined 4657 days ago 307 posts - 755 votes Speaks: Czech*, German, English Studies: French Studies: Russian | Message 2 of 27 29 August 2012 at 9:20pm | IP Logged | ||
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I would try to think once more about studying in school. Use this time for revision, listen to podcasts or do audio drills. Take flashcards with you. Copy 2 pages from a textbook and take this with you.
What you can do on spot without any preparation are few exercises: - vocabulary revision: look around you and name all things you can see (me at the moment: laptop, keyboard, closed window, blinds, lamp, mug, teaspoon, pencil, ballpoint pen...) Go shopping and name the goods and the shops. - comment on what you see and what is just happening (can be done silently, but form complete sentences /me: It is dark outside. I should stop wasting my time online and do a few chores. I need to prepare for tomorrow.../) - self-talk (similar to previous, but pick a subject and go with it) - repeat your numbers :) count in Spanish or French, read the numbers you see around you. - make shopping lists in your target languages or when browsing shops, think about how you would manage your shopping in the target language Another possibility would be an ebook reader with pop-up dictionary or ebook reader and dictionary for your phone. But you can live and learn without it, generations of students did manage. Use your time in evenings for learning new material. You will have less of it and need to reorganize your learning a bit. Dropping a language you are interested in should be a last resort. Edited by Majka on 29 August 2012 at 9:41pm 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| prz_ Tetraglot Senior Member Poland last.fm/user/prz_rul Joined 4859 days ago 890 posts - 1190 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, Bulgarian, Croatian Studies: Slovenian, Macedonian, Persian, Russian, Turkish, Ukrainian, Dutch, Swedish, German, Italian, Armenian, Kurdish | Message 3 of 27 29 August 2012 at 9:30pm | IP Logged | ||
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Good question! Any advice?
If it comes to me, I can recommend: a) flashcards in your pocket ;) I make flashcards with 10-15 words on each card - maybe too much, but it's an economical version ;) b) install in your mobile phone some m-books and, if you're phone is good enough, Anki mobile (unfortunately, as for, now, I've been able only to do the first one) Edited by prz_ on 29 August 2012 at 9:31pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| ReQuest Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5032 days ago 200 posts - 228 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, German, French Studies: Spanish | Message 4 of 27 29 August 2012 at 9:54pm | IP Logged | ||
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The mobile anki app is great!
Also I read on my mobile anyways so... I'm always carying at least 3 foreign novels on this thing :). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Zimena Tetraglot Groupie Norway Joined 4592 days ago 75 posts - 146 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, German, Spanish Studies: Czech, Mandarin | Message 5 of 27 29 August 2012 at 10:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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Even if you have less time to actually study, you could still do the kind of things that don't require you to sit down with a book. Majka had a lot of useful ideas above.
Perhaps you could also "integrate" the languages with your schoolwork? - Do you keep a diary of sorts to keep track of your school assignments and stuff? Keep it in a foreign language! - Maybe you could also take some of your class notes in a foreign language - especially the type of notes that don't require you to write basically everything the teacher is saying - that way you'd get the language practice as well as the necessary notes from your studies) Also, a crazy idea - a little related to the self-talk suggestion above: Are you a fan of someone who speaks one of your target languages? Such as a musician or writer or sports personality or whatever? Have a talk with that person in your mind - if you don't think it's fun to talk to yourself about what you're doing, talk about what THEY might be doing instead - I've always found that this helps me get a different perspective and makes me talk about a wider range of topics than if I were just talking to myself - my life doesn't change that much day by day, so the regular self-talk might get a little repetitive :D 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| cmmah Diglot Groupie Ireland Joined 4531 days ago 52 posts - 110 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Irish | Message 6 of 27 29 August 2012 at 10:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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Some good ideas. Unfortunately, my phone's an outdated Nokia, so no Anki apps. Maybe I'll try paper flashcards. I
have an iPod though - does Anki need wifi to work properly? @Zimena I like your idea about taking notes in a TL. I've actually had a very confused Geography teacher ask me why I'd written part of a class test in Spanish (I hadn't even noticed - luckily I got to retake it, and remembered to write in English!). That would also mean that words that I don't know would stick in my head when I look them up later, because I'll have used it in context. @Majka I do something similar to the naming objects you mentioned. I said in the YKYALNW thread that I often stand with my arm outstretched, looking stupid, while I try to remember the TL word for whatever I was going to grab, and refuse to pick it up until I remember. What about stopping Norwegian/Japanese/both until I get comfortable with Spanish? Would that help? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Tsopivo Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4471 days ago 258 posts - 411 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Esperanto | Message 7 of 27 29 August 2012 at 10:59pm | IP Logged | ||
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My 2 cents on the subject.
I think that 4 new languages are a lot to learn at the same time, especially in your situation (being a beginner or lower intermediary in all of them, not having learnt a language before, 3 languages being from a different family than your own, only one or two hours of free time per day...). You might end up knowing the languages faster by doing one or two at a time and waiting until you reach a certain level of comfort with that or those languages before adding new ones to your study. That is just my opinion however and lots of people here seem to be learning several languages at a time and have no problem with it. I guess it would also depend on how passionate you are about learning languages as I could not see myself spending all of my free time language learning and you certainly seem more passionate that me. As for school and homework time, I agree that you can't really use it to learn your languages because when you are studying, you should focuse a 100% on what you are doing and breaks are for relaxing and socializing. Something I would probably do in your case but would certainly not recommend as it is quite rude would be to discretly work on my own French and Spanish study during my useless French and Spanish classes. However, I disagree with your implying that if studying in school is out of question, that only leaves you with your free time. On the contrary, I would probably try to squeeze some studying in the rest of the time. I don't know what you do during that time or what you like to do for learning so I can't advise anything specific but here are a few examples of what I mean : - commute : might be used to read a book or listen to some audio content; - breakfast : you can watch a TV show while eating breakfast (actually, I think I'll start doing that myself and that would be a good incentive to stop skipping breakfast); - shower : can be taken while listening to the radio or to music or singing; - housechores : you can iron in front of your favorite French TV show or movie; - sports : with some audio content in your hears etc. 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6597 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 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 8 of 27 29 August 2012 at 11:19pm | IP Logged | ||
I learned quite a bit of colloquial Finnish by making written dialogues involving me, my friend and a few musicians :D I was obviously using a book about the colloquial language all the time. OP, school is supposed to be the time of your life when you have the most free time... Some great suggestions above, you can also watch sports online in various languages (right now I'm watching El Clásico in Romanian). Listen to music, use the breaks (especially your lunch break). Don't give up on other languages, you'll likely only have less and less time for them (unless you have the luxury of taking a year off before uni). Learning more than 2-3 languages is a lifestyle change. Have all your fun in foreign languages (comic books/manga, computer games, music...). Are French and Spanish required? Both??? If you find them inefficient why don't you drop the classes? Edited by Serpent on 29 August 2012 at 11:39pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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