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Messy Learning | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| Ashiro Groupie United Kingdom learnxlanguage.com/ Joined 5619 days ago 89 posts - 101 votes  Studies: Spanish | Message 1 of 30 31 May 2009 at 4:37am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm a very 'eclectic' person so I find disciplining myself to strict regimens of learning very hard. As such I've really latched onto the 'multi-track' approach but wanted to get some advice as to whether the way I'm doing it is doing me any favours.
As an example of a weeks learning (Spanish): Every Day: 10mins vocab flashcards on Anki - started to incorporate sentences. Monday: 15mins Spanish rock. 10mins AmigosSpanish word games. Tuesday: 30 mins Pimsleur. Wednesday: 15 mins Michel Thomas in the car. Thursday: 2hrs grammar exercises + 30 mins AmigosSpanish puzzle program. Friday: Livemocha for 30mins. Saturday: 4hrs playing Spanish word games, bits of grammar, browsing (not fully understanding) Spanish websites. Most of my Saturdays are spent feeding on Spanish like my life depnded on it. Sunday: Listen to Spanish rock for 2hrs. Watch a Spanish film (sin subtitles). 30mins LiveMocha. It sounds like a lot but what worries me is: Am I damagig the effectiveness of all these methods by not sticking to each one religiously? Is Pimsleur once a week good enough even though I do all the other stuff? Does reading Spanish websites and listening to Spanish rock count or am I kidding myself? Do I NEED more structure or am I okay like this? P.S. the above is a rough example and can be very different to that shown. I do take breaks but never longer than 3 days and after a break I normally spend a good few hours digesting and revising. Edited by Ashiro on 31 May 2009 at 4:38am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| icing_death Senior Member United States Joined 5678 days ago 296 posts - 302 votes Speaks: English* | Message 2 of 30 31 May 2009 at 4:58am | IP Logged | ||
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Considering how much total time you're studying, I think you have too many different things going on, and it looks
like you aren't interested in conversation. But if that's the only way you can get yourself to study, you're stuck with it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ashiro Groupie United Kingdom learnxlanguage.com/ Joined 5619 days ago 89 posts - 101 votes Studies: Spanish | Message 3 of 30 31 May 2009 at 6:35am | IP Logged | ||
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"icing_death" - the name suits you.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Lizzern Diglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5726 days ago 791 posts - 1053 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 5 of 30 31 May 2009 at 12:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm curious why you would structure things out so carefully? 15 mins Spanish rock? Why not go with some 'serious study' each day, say half an hour or X lessons of whatever, then as much of the fun stuff as you feel like or have time for?
Seems to me that you're just putting learning materials together into a somewhat random structure, which may or may not work. It would be too rigid for me, I'll tell you that much. What I tend to do is make sure I do my Assimil lessons and review each day - how much I do beyond the minimum varies from day to day - then listen to music, read, watch YouTube videos in Italian, etc, as much as I want, which may be next to nothing one day and a ton the next (this depends on how much time I have available, obviously, but tends to be a lot). But that's just what works for me. It has to be fun though, that's the minimum requirement, and if I schedule things too much then that zaps the fun right out of it. Liz 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ashiro Groupie United Kingdom learnxlanguage.com/ Joined 5619 days ago 89 posts - 101 votes Studies: Spanish | Message 6 of 30 31 May 2009 at 2:33pm | IP Logged | ||
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Its completely unstructured. The times are based on whatever my constraints are at the time. For example the 15mins of Michel Thomas in the car is listened to on my way to Kenjutsu.
Sometimes it'll be 15mins of Coffee Break Spanish. Other times 15mins of Spanish rock. As this isn't getting many answers I'll answer with my own opinion. I think this method is very effective. I am learning a single language after all so there's bound to be overlap between each method and this semi immersion is great for helping vocabulary stick as well as giving me the sounds and feel for th elanguage on an almost constant basis. The daily flashcards using Anki are my way of ensuring I forget as little as possible and ensure nothing I learn falls through the cracks. AmigosSpanish puzzles are mainly for learning verbs which I find will get used, heard, seen in the other materials therefore bolstering the process. Overall - I think the method is working well. I'd say my weakness at the moment is conversational Spanish but this is understandable considering I dont' speak it much outside of the learning audio lessons of the various sources. I probably do forget more than I would if I was using an extremely systematic process and therefore not learning as fast as possible. However, I do believe I'm learning a LOT faster than the average class-taker or average language procrastinator. Using this method I've advanced more in 4-5 months than I did doing it for 5years at school in the 90's. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| phouk Diglot Newbie Germany Joined 5855 days ago 28 posts - 48 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: Russian | Message 7 of 30 31 May 2009 at 2:56pm | IP Logged | ||
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Just by the availability of a lot of great and interesting learning material, I find
myself drawn to jump around between all those different sources. On the other hand, I feel that a fully unstructured approach would be hurting my progress, and make that progress harder to see or "measure". So I adopted a semi-structured approach: I pick one program to be the backbone of my learning, and follow that program systematically, devoting some small amount of time to it every day until it's finished (at the beginning, this was Pimsleur and MT; now it's the combination of Assimil 1951+1971). For the rest of my time, I jump around between different materials to my hearts content, in the safe knowledge that I'm making systematic progress with at least one program. At least for me, this is working well - your mileage may vary. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| TheBiscuit Tetraglot Senior Member Mexico Joined 5740 days ago 532 posts - 619 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Italian Studies: German, Croatian | Message 8 of 30 31 May 2009 at 3:21pm | IP Logged | ||
It's sounds like you enjoy it and also that you need the variety or you'll get bored. It's a lot of input so it might be a good idea every once in a while to stop and take stock of what you've learnt, see if you can measure it in some way. If you're very eclectic, there's no point going against it as you'll just frustrate yourself - better to go with it! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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