michaelmichael Senior Member Canada Joined 5262 days ago 167 posts - 202 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French
| Message 1 of 27 23 August 2010 at 5:55am | IP Logged |
I originally was going to ask this in the advice section, as i was specifically interested in success stories of people who only studied approximatley 30 minutes a day. This interest is do to the fact that I have been spoiled by summer and, with it coming to an end, I will have to change my habits.
half way while writing my post, I felt that it would just be more instructive to get a census of how much time people on this forum spend studying, and what their expectations are within a year, assuming their routine stays relatively constant.
Edited by michaelmichael on 23 August 2010 at 5:56am
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feanarosurion Senior Member Canada Joined 5286 days ago 217 posts - 316 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish, Norwegian
| Message 2 of 27 23 August 2010 at 7:12am | IP Logged |
I'm in pretty much the same boat as you at the moment. I've been able to study 6 to 8 hours a day for the majority of the summer, sometimes even more if I really hit a good groove. With school starting again, I'm going to have to shift my habits towards a long-term routine which will be at most a couple of hours a day. I'm lucky in that I will have a full spare throughout the whole year, so I'll probably be able to study for most of that time on most days. My difficulty will be shifting my studies from being primarily on my laptop (which I'm not prepared to take to school every day) onto a more of a paper based approach. I might be able to put Anki onto my school network, and if that's the case, I'll end up doing most of my reviews at school. I'm also already filling up a notebook with sentences, so I'll just keep doing that as well. I can probably do some stuff before or after school, when I'm not working anyway. Weekends will be pretty helpful, where I can do some more "clerical" work, such as sentence mining and adding words into Anki. Sorry if I'm rambling a little, but those are my strategies for adjusting to the school year again. Either way, I think I'm going to be fine on an hour or so per day. I'm actually just making one final push to get all my resources in order, then I may only study an hour or less everyday, except maybe on weekends. I hope this helps a bit.
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zekecoma Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5349 days ago 561 posts - 655 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish
| Message 3 of 27 23 August 2010 at 4:37pm | IP Logged |
Since I have free time I do about 3-4 hours a day. I listen to a lot of German music
daily, and I also watch the news 3 times a day.
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Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5386 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian
| Message 4 of 27 23 August 2010 at 4:49pm | IP Logged |
I'm always amazed by the determination of people who spend entire days studying a
language. Then again, I have a job and a family, and I simply don't have that liberty, so
I had to adopt a different system. (I'm not saying others don't have a job, just to be
clear.)
After 2 years of Japanese, I've become comfortable enough in a social setting to enjoy
conversations with natives about various subjects without needing to revert to English,
except for vocabulary which they almost always end up knowing. And 30 minutes a day is
probably a good average for me. Sometimes I put in a hour or more, but rarely much more
than that. I just try to do a bit here and there, preferably everyday.
[edit: spelling]
Edited by Arekkusu on 28 August 2010 at 5:35am
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nuriayasmin Senior Member Germany Joined 5248 days ago 155 posts - 210 votes
| Message 5 of 27 23 August 2010 at 5:01pm | IP Logged |
As I also have a job and children and other hobbies, I'm neither willing nor able to spend several hours a day studying. I try to dedicate at least one hour a day to my language learning. On my days off it's not uncommon that I study for 3 - 4 hours. However, there are also days when I just have time to keep up with ANKI or listen to a podcast or watch some TV in a foreign language. That's just fine for me as I don't mind progressing slowly. Languages are an important hobby but they don't rule my life :-).
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patuco Diglot Moderator Gibraltar Joined 7020 days ago 3795 posts - 4268 votes Speaks: Spanish, English* Personal Language Map
| Message 6 of 27 23 August 2010 at 5:50pm | IP Logged |
nuriayasmin wrote:
As I also have a job and children and other hobbies, I'm neither willing nor able to spend several hours a day studying. I try to dedicate at least one hour a day to my language learning. On my days off it's not uncommon that I study for 3 - 4 hours. However, there are also days when I just have time to keep up with ANKI or listen to a podcast or watch some TV in a foreign language. That's just fine for me as I don't mind progressing slowly. Languages are an important hobby but they don't rule my life :-). |
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This sums up my situation quite nicely. Thanks!
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galindo Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5212 days ago 142 posts - 248 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish*, Japanese Studies: Korean, Portuguese
| Message 7 of 27 23 August 2010 at 6:24pm | IP Logged |
I use pretty much all my free time to study. Well, a lot of it isn't really "studying." Basically, 100% of my entertainment is in my target language. (Except a few English websites/forums...)
Most of my hobbies are things I can do while listening to radio programs and other things, and I do the same thing while doing chores. I've always loved reading, but now I do that in Japanese instead of English. When I have time to actually study, I try to use it efficiently.
I'm not really sure exactly how much time I spend on it; I think it varies. Sometimes I'm very enthusiastic and read a lot and learn a lot of new words, and other times I go several days where most of my exposure is just music.
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Desacrator48 Groupie United States Joined 5313 days ago 93 posts - 127 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, French
| Message 8 of 27 23 August 2010 at 6:30pm | IP Logged |
Weekends vary for me because of time going out or maybe spending in with some time on French/Spanish. Weekdays are easier to quantify:
French - 2 hours total (30 minutes of Pimsleur at lunch, and review when I get home, including one right before I go to bed)
Spanish - 1.5 hours-2 (grammar/verb review during breaks and watching a Spanish drama for listening comprehension when I get home as well).
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