|
 |
Sleeping Patterns Effect on Learning | ||
Tags: Sleep | Foreign Languages | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| NickJS Senior Member United Kingdom flickr.com/photos/sg Joined 4959 days ago 264 posts - 334 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Russian, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese | Message 9 of 20 14 July 2012 at 5:57am | IP Logged | |||||
Beat you at 4:52! I know that feeling about neighbors, mine get up at 5:50am everyday and bang and let their dog bark...So I just sleep with earphones in. Any little noise and I wont sleep though, its annoying. The worst part of a bad sleeping pattern to is that I wont do speaking late at night which kind of ruins it for me the next day as I'm usually to busy to do it then, so I end up mostly listening. Investing in a good mattress might be a good idea actually - memory foam all the way though if I do! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Wulfgar Senior Member United States Joined 4671 days ago 404 posts - 791 votes Speaks: English* | Message 10 of 20 14 July 2012 at 8:28am | IP Logged | |||||
source? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Kronos Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5261 days ago 186 posts - 452 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 11 of 20 14 July 2012 at 9:03am | IP Logged | |||||
I know this kind of zombie existence only too well, having been unable to fall asleep sufficiently early for all my life. This can be very problematic if you have a regular job and can't survive on just 2-4 hours' sleep before being 10-12 hours off for work. Daily language learning in such a condition? - Forget it. Recently, while on an effort to lose weight, I have found a way to approach this problem from a different angle, and not without success. I generally don't feel attracted to sports, but nevertheless I forced myself to do 30-45 minutes of strenuous physical exercise (a series of progressive freehand muscle exercises) twice or thrice a week, preferably shortly after getting up, or taking a brisk walk of about an hour on the days in between, regardless of weather. The result was that the general feeling of weariness that has become my second nature got considerably reduced almost instantly, I also got to sleep somewhat earlier and definitely spent less time in bed. On some days I even would be fully awake and attentive from morning till night, with only short breaks of rest in between. If I got tired though, I simply didn't care and suffer as much as usual, maybe because of the increased blood flow or metabolism. Unfortunately I stopped for no good reason after several weeks, but I want to continue on those lines, i.e. attempt to increase my general fitness rather than conforming to a strict sleeping pattern. However I found if I overdo it I get exhausted or inwardly restless after a while, maybe because I am not used to being physically active. But 30-60 minutes a day seems to be a good rate so far. There are some other factors which I found aggravated my sleeping problems: - Too much and wrong food (especially too much caffeine and junk food as they tend to make me inert and stay awake until late at night) - Strict diets (affect both sound sleep and my nervous condition) - Emotional stress - Noise (Not any sounds, but NOISE. I was exposed to blaring TV sounds until 2 a.m. each and every day for several years -> before moving anywhere by all means check out if there are old partly deaf couples living in the neighbouring flats who spend all their time in front of a TV set until they drop dead) Regarding food I now usually start the day off with a healthy and substantial breakfast and a large amount of water, even if I do not feel like it; I found that this one habit alone reduces my desire for junk food for the rest of the day and helps me keep moderate eating habits. Don't take my word on this, I am still experimenting and people are constituted differently anyway. But I can attest that small but intense doses of regular physical exercise plus starting the day on a wholesome breakfast (wholemeal bread, fruits and the like) did make a difference for me. What is more, this is the only real discipline for the day, afterwards I can be more lax. A strict sleeping pattern doesn't work for all people and purposes - for instance I would like to start the day with some (short) meditation, exercise and a quiet breakfast; add taking a shower etc. Sounds nothing much but actually means getting up at 5 a.m. if I have to go to work later on. If I calculated up to nine hours for staying in bed, I'd have to conform to a pattern where I go to bed at about 8 p.m. preceded by a period of calming down which is a schedule hardly feasible nor particularly desirable. I do have tried to enforce this several times, but it didn't work - I simply don't fall asleep that early, or wake up again before midnight. Therefore I am now working on improving my overall poor physical shape so that I am less affected by the inevitable periods of sleep deprivation that a busy day can bring. I used to need eight hours of sleep for many years, and this without break and outer disturbance. Six hours would almost kill me. At about age thirty it changed to seven and a half hours, and meanwhile I may get along well with seven hours. The challenge for me is not anymore the exact amount but the ability to naturally fall asleep, and be sufficiently fit on days where I didn't get the usual amount of sleep beforehand. I think with my current fitness endeavours I am on the right path, but it has to become a habit and eventually pass the reality test. When I watched this video I realised what a weak-minded slacker I really am. This has to change, or my language learning plans will go to the dogs. 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| schoenewaelder Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5560 days ago 759 posts - 1197 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 12 of 20 14 July 2012 at 12:17pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
My sleep pattern has been catastrophic for the last 5 years. The most handicapping aspect is, I find that even getting up just a couple of hours late always seems to comletely undermine my whole day. Even though I'm still awake for the same 16 hours, I just don't seem able to get all the usual things done, that i can if I get up earlier despite the fact that I'm definitely not a morning person. Edited by schoenewaelder on 14 July 2012 at 6:10pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Kyle Corrie Senior Member United States Joined 4829 days ago 175 posts - 464 votes | Message 13 of 20 14 July 2012 at 2:38pm | IP Logged | |||||
I'm not so sure you understand what 'hunch' means. Obviously he's drawing off his own experience. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5766 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 14 of 20 14 July 2012 at 3:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
Delayed sleep phase disorder - I can't find the source, may be that is was my psych teacher who said it - seems to be ok for a couple of days in the new time zone and then it returns, because it doesn't mean your circadian rhythm is adjusted to a different time zone, it is adjusted to the time zone where you live, but following a different schedule. As for Wulfgar's question, something like this or this maybe? There have been more than a couple of studies on the subject. I can't really help with the initial question as I just managed to reduce my competely chaotic sleep pattern to something close to delayed sleep phase disorder with the help of melatonin. But I'd say, study when you feel alert, review when you feel drowsy, and try to do something language-related before you go to sleep or start a non-language related task, so that your brain can use the following off-time to consolidate the new material. Edited by Bao on 15 July 2012 at 3:00pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6703 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 15 of 20 15 July 2012 at 5:40am | IP Logged | |||||
No source. That's why I call it a hunch. Btw. the time here is 4.37 in the middle of the night. I fell asleep this evening (while trying to read an irish grammar in Irish with just occasional use of a dictionary) so now I can permit myself the leisure of having a HTLAL session at this otherwise unwieldy time, then sleep a short while and still be functional later today. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Wulfgar Senior Member United States Joined 4671 days ago 404 posts - 791 votes Speaks: English* | Message 16 of 20 15 July 2012 at 5:55am | IP Logged | |||||
Thanks! I took a nap yesterday after one hour of my Russian studies, because I was nodding off. I thought I was about half of the way done with the lesson. My nap lasted 30 minutes, instead of my usual 15. After napping, I was able to finish my lesson properly, without nodding off. Good thing, since it took me another 4 hours, but that's another story. Has anybody read anything on the optimum length nap? I've read anywhere from 15 minutes to 90 minutes. I suppose it depends on various factors, but it would be nice to figure out how to optimize it. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
