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The most effective way to spend an hour | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6707 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 17 of 22 02 May 2011 at 10:34am | IP Logged | ||
I follow the same rule. I also find that doing something less than an hour doesn't function for me, so if I'm left with for instance a quarter of an hour I just read something extensively - a book, magazine or bilingual print-out, whatever. Intensive activities need a full hour. Among the things I might do for an hour is: If I'm tired: 1) Read a book or magazine extensively or.. 2) Watch TV If I'm doing something else already: 1) Watch TV If I can spare the time: 1) listen to internet TV or radio in less common languages 2) Make bilingual texts on my computer (extensive activity - it is coloring one language that takes time if you use the GoogleTranslate -> Word-as-text method, making side-by-side is faster) If I want to do some real work and I'm sitting comfortably: 1) Copy the foreign part of those bilingual texts by hand, and maybe making hyperliteral translations if I can't figure out the construction patterns without them 2) Do wordlists 3) Write something, with or without a dictionary NB: I should have added 'listen to internet TV or radio' under the 'real work' section. The problem is that it is so b-o-r-i-n-g to listen to a more or less unintelligeable babble emanating from a computer, so listening to such stuff mostly drifts towards the extensive activities ... or into the blue. But with speech generators getting better and better by the day (and teachers/mentors/nearby native speakers being theoretical possibilities in another galaxy) I will already now add.. 3) Listen to ultrashort snippets of text with audio for an hour, trying to emulate the sounds I hear - something that in the olde days could have been done in a language laboratory, but as far as I remember without exception based on boring texts from textbooks. Otherwise the idea was excellent. And what about making a video? ... Oh no, scrap it. Making a video takes several days for planning, several days for looking things up and memorizing relevant words - particularly if I don't speak the language properly yet - and in the worst case scenario: waiting for a moment where my neighbours don't make noise (I don't want that on my videos). Video-making is a hyper-intensive activity that takes several days, not hours. The only thing that takes longer is travelling. Edited by Iversen on 02 May 2011 at 10:53am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5673 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin | Message 18 of 22 02 May 2011 at 3:06pm | IP Logged | ||
It doesn't have to be. I seems that many youtubers put in no preparation at all. In my own case, I probably spend 15 minutes preparing before making a 10 minute video. Adding time messing around with uploading, each video still takes less than an hour. The difference, of course, is that your own videos are of very high quality, with excellent content. However, I don't think many other people would be willing to put in the several-days of effort per video that you do. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6707 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 19 of 22 02 May 2011 at 4:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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The biggest difference is that I make videos in languages I don't speak yet
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| Matheus Senior Member Brazil Joined 5085 days ago 208 posts - 312 votes Speaks: Portuguese* Studies: English, French | Message 20 of 22 03 May 2011 at 8:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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It depends on the level of the learner. If he is just a beginner, speaking with native speakers may not be a good thing. If the learner is intermediate, I think he should spend the hour speaking with the native speaker, but, of course, using simple phrases and etc, to get used to the rhythm of the language and the sound of it.
I, for instance, try hard to study more than just one hour a day. Now, I have free afternoons, and I use all the time to study my target language. I get bored of listening to random things, that's why I turn on the TV or take some lent movie, and watch it. Reading is something that I enjoy very much, as long as I'm reading in another language. It's a nice activity to grasp the language grammar, learn new words by context (which I think is the only way to learn instead of memorize), and also improve your spelling. I don't like to transcribe or translate texts into my own language, because I tend to get confused. Another crazy thing that I like to do is reading a dictionary to check how many words I know. Most of them I cannot remember when writing or speaking, but I can recognize and understand them when I'm reading and not always, but listening. The more you practice, the more you cement the words you already know in your head. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Jinx Triglot Senior Member Germany reverbnation.co Joined 5697 days ago 1085 posts - 1879 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Catalan, Dutch, Esperanto, Croatian, Serbian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish, Yiddish | Message 21 of 22 06 May 2011 at 12:29am | IP Logged | ||
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The most results-for-effort type of study I know is, unfortunately, something which you can't plan on, but I'll describe it here anyway, because in certain situations it can fit within an hour.
It starts when I'm listening to music in my target language, and then I suddenly stumble upon a song that I LOVE. I immediately have to listen to it several times, and soon I find myself singing along with the words that I can pick out. Usually at this point I get impatient and go look up the lyrics on the internet so I can sing it to myself. I read them with intense interest (after all, this is an AWESOME song), plus if someone asks me what I'm singing I'll have to be able to translate on the fly for them. I look up all the words and expressions I don't know in the dictionary, and by this point the song is pretty solidly stuck in my head. Every time I come to a word or section that I've forgotten, I freak out and run to the computer to look up the lyrics again. Then when I get a chance I listen to the song again, and probably notice several pronunciation things that I've been starting to do wrong. So I listen more intensely and try to imitate exactly what the singer's doing, to correct my mistakes. This "method," which I've been doing automatically (due to my love for music) since long before I ever had a particular interest in learning languages, is still the single most effective way to learn that I have ever used. 9 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Samantha.Majka Newbie Czech Republic diaryofmysoul.blog.cRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4954 days ago 5 posts - 6 votes Speaks: English | Message 22 of 22 07 May 2011 at 2:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hello, new member here. I would like to participate here.
The best way (for me) to spend an hour is reading short English fanfictions about TV shows I am interested in and trying to translate them into my native language. It's the best way to learn new words, to repeat grammar. By the way, thanks for your comments, they all are inspirational. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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