Ryan’s Language Learning Log (Language Learning Log) Language Learning Forum

Ryan’s Language Learning Log
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PointsDotsLines
Diglot
Groupie
United States
Joined 3793 days ago
76 posts - 110 votes

Speaks: Mandarin*, English
Studies: Spanish

Message 49 of 118

24 January 2014 at 4:50pm | IP Logged

ryanl321 wrote:

Guess it's going to be a long weekend, I still need to get in 3x swims, 1 long bike, 2 weights, and 2 runs. Going
to do lot's of dual purpose activities in the next three days.

Hi, just wanted to say that no one can image how demanding this schedule is unless he/she does (or has done before;-) triathlons too. Interestingly enough, you’re learning three "tri-" languages! I suppose that you listen to your audio files while doing long rides.

Anyway, have a great weekend -- both athletically and linguistically!
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ryanl321
Groupie
United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4151 days ago
94 posts - 101 votes

Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Spanish

Message 50 of 118

25 January 2014 at 6:42am | IP Logged

Stelle wrote:

re: anki. I put a word, with one - or perhaps two - definitions on each card. I go from L1->L2,
and I make the cards
myself, so I rarely have dozens and dozens of news cards in a day. (That also has to do with my own
particular
learning style, though. I'm more slacker than OCD, so I'm very unlikely to create more than 5 or 10 new cards
at a
time, and even that doesn't happen every single day.) I've discovered that my "sweet spot" for anki is about
15
minutes per day. Any more than that, and I find myself dreading doing it. So if my cards are bunched up and I
find
myself with too many reviews one week, I'll just add fewer new cards until things settle down again.

At the beginning, I was getting anki words from everywhere, since everything was so new. Now, I mostly take
them
from tutoring or conversation sessions. I figure that those are the words that are most useful to me while
speaking,
which is really what I'm aiming to improve by studying anki.

Hey Stelle, yeah the Anki got out of control this week. 15 min/day is good and that will be my goal for next
week when I practice with smaller podcast. I had a goal this week to master two of my podcasts but I had
300+ cards to learn! It was crazy and I'm almost done. It wasn't too bad because I was motivated and had fun
learning these new words..
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ryanl321
Groupie
United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4151 days ago
94 posts - 101 votes

Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Spanish

Message 51 of 118

25 January 2014 at 6:50am | IP Logged

PointsDotsLines wrote:

ryanl321 wrote:

Guess it's going to be a long weekend, I still need to get in 3x swims, 1 long bike, 2 weights, and 2 runs.
Going
to do lot's of dual purpose activities in the next three days.

Hi, just wanted to say that no one can image how demanding this schedule is unless he/she does (or has
done before;-) triathlons too. Interestingly enough, you’re learning three "tri-" languages! I suppose that you
listen to your audio files while doing long rides.

Anyway, have a great weekend -- both athletically and linguistically!

Hey! Yeah have an olympic tri in April and I'm shooting for a half in June. Unfortunately my early morning
Saturday rides I'm not able to get in good study time because we're in a group. When I run or ride by myself
on Sunday I'll only listen to my podcasts. Interesting to connect the tri and tri-languages! Tomorrow I'll have
my training done pretty much before the day gets started and I'll study during relax times so it doesn't
interfere with the family too much. I can crank away on Anki while the kids take a break and watch TV. My
goal is to get them more into the language learning part with me. We did good on this last year but I had little
patience for it towards the end.. Thanks for the support for this weekend!

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ryanl321
Groupie
United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4151 days ago
94 posts - 101 votes

Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Spanish

Message 52 of 118

25 January 2014 at 7:04am | IP Logged

Funny, I don't drink coffee. I don't like the taste anymore. But I need caffeine so I have an eco-size pack of
pure caffeine and I mix it with my hot chocolate in the AM. This AM I got up at 430, got a big rush with my
cocoa, and all I wanted to do was study so I did Duo and Anki until 630. Got everything done and more in that
2 hours. I constantly have that struggle between workouts or study in the AM's, today was good because I
had a little over 1 1/2 hour this afternoon to get in a swim and weights. What a perfect day! Now I get to
watch Amelie with my wife, more study and spending quality time..

German - Anki check. In summary this week, I've been focusing on mastering a 15 minute podcast. There
were 300 words I didn't know from this podcast so through LingQ I was easily able to download in Anki.
Normally with LingQ, I just listen to random contributions and try to learn the words and hope I see them
more than once. I don't think this is working the best for me. Today, I listened and read this podcast after I've
solidified about 200 of the cards this week and I was amazed how much I learned during that process. I even
listened to it while driving and could recognize 90% and understand thoroughly what was going on. Even
though I always change up my program, this is something that I found very effective for me and I want to
have this a goal each week now. However, I will use shorter podcasts so I don't have to use Anki so much.

Spanish - Did something similar as above with the same podcast but this podcast is in Spanish. I'm not as far
in Spanish with this and I kind of mess up the words since I didn't setup my "LingQ's" appropriately before I
exported them to Anki. I just realized this today. This will take a bit of time to readjustment so I'll postpone my
goal for mastering this podcast for next week. Duo check.

French - got in my 45 minutes of Pims and duo goals completed. Amelie counts as study time for me so it
was a good day for French.
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ryanl321
Groupie
United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4151 days ago
94 posts - 101 votes

Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Spanish

Message 53 of 118

26 January 2014 at 7:21am | IP Logged

German - Met Duo goals, went through my LingQ podcasts, spent another hour on Anki, and had my 1 hr long
skype conversation just now. Really upset with my speaking abilities. I am so far behind with this. Either I do the
skype call too late at night and I'm already exhausted or I need to find other themes to talk about. We hit on
"special idioms" tonight and I couldn't really make a very description sentence or make sense in most cases when
I was talking. Kind of frustrating even though I'm been doing German for well over two years. Watched a little of
Barbara and Over the Top in German before my call.

Spanish - Met Duo goals and did some LingQ and Anki. Didn't spend too much time on Spanish since I had my
German skype call today and I wanted to focus on that instead. No problem, will hit up my Spanish more
tomorrow.

French - Got through about 15 min of Pims but spent more time than I have before on LingQ for French.
Surprising how L and R stick in the memory. I felt was a good day for meeting Duo goals and finding some new
contributions in LIngQ for French.
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Stelle
Bilingual Triglot
Senior Member
Canada
tobefluent.com
Joined 3931 days ago
949 posts - 1686 votes

Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish
Studies: Tagalog

Message 54 of 118

26 January 2014 at 2:22pm | IP Logged

Congratulations on keeping up with most of your goals!

Do you find it dull to work on multiple Duolingo courses at the same time? Or do you find that it's an interesting
way to compare languages? How much time do you spend on Duo every day?

I like Duolingo quite a lot (well, at least the beginning part of the course), but I'm not sure I'd be able to commit to
using it for multiple languages!
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Stelle
Bilingual Triglot
Senior Member
Canada
tobefluent.com
Joined 3931 days ago
949 posts - 1686 votes

Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish
Studies: Tagalog

Message 55 of 118

26 January 2014 at 2:23pm | IP Logged

Oh, and also…

Your determination is inspiring! The amount of commitment required to learn languages *and* train for a triathlon
is amazing.
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BAnna
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4409 days ago
409 posts - 616 votes

Speaks: English*, German, Spanish
Studies: Russian, Turkish

Message 56 of 118

26 January 2014 at 8:31pm | IP Logged

I agree, your dedication and ability to squeeze in study and exercise sessions are quite admirable.

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