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Minimum Speaking Requirement | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| MixedUpCody Senior Member United States Joined 5042 days ago 144 posts - 280 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 1 of 11 27 January 2014 at 11:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hello all,
I am preparing to restructure my life. In a few short months I'm going to graduate college, and I want to make some lifestyle changes. Specifically, I want to spend way less time sitting around studying, and way more time out and about, which leads me to my question. Currently, I have 4 or 5 Skype calls per week, and it's been great for my overall progress, but I am curious what minimum level I can cut it down to and maintain (and hopefully increase) my level of speech ability. My plan for when I graduate is to spend 1 hour a day on input (30 minutes reading/30 minutes listening) and do 1, 1 hour Skype call per week. Do you think 1 conversation per week will be enough to continue to increase my productive abilities? Thank you in advance for any ideas or advice. Take care, all. Cody P.S. This plan is for Spanish only, and is separate from my Mandarin studies. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4230 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 2 of 11 28 January 2014 at 6:34am | IP Logged | ||
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Edited by shk00design on 28 January 2014 at 11:01pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| MixedUpCody Senior Member United States Joined 5042 days ago 144 posts - 280 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 3 of 11 28 January 2014 at 6:57am | IP Logged | ||
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Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't really see how that answers my question, and I don't really understand what you're getting at.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6489 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 4 of 11 28 January 2014 at 9:40am | IP Logged | ||
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I can't see why you want to cut down on your skype activity, which apparently is both entertaining, manageable AND beneficial for you. Personally I don't use skype (maybe I should), but based on my experiences with other extensive activities I would say that you can survive on very little activity if you had a high and stable level beforehand, but if you aren't absolutely comfortable with a language then 4 or 5 sessions of a given type isn't too much at all. Edited by Iversen on 28 January 2014 at 9:41am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 3930 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 5 of 11 28 January 2014 at 11:25am | IP Logged | ||
Obviously everyone's different, but I noticed a dramatic difference in my progress and overall comfort level when I had to switch from 5+ Skype calls a week down to one. For me, after a bit of experimentation, twice a week is the absolute minimum if I want to keep progressing and speak confidently. It doesn't have to take any longer in terms of overall time - 2 half-hour sessions are better than one full-hour session. The ideal number for me - in terms of both progress and time management - is three times a week, although it can be hard to make that work every single week. When time is limited, I think that paid tutors work better than language partners. It's much more time efficient, since you only speak your target language (no switching back and forth). It's also easier to fit into your schedule, since you can pick a tutor whose schedule matches yours as opposed to emailing back and forth with language partners. I don't take any formal lessons - just pay for 30-60 minutes of informal conversation. Informal tutoring through italki can be surprisingly inexpensive. I pay as little as 5 dollars per hour. (Please note: I still think that language partners are an amazing resource. It's just that in a time crunch, tutors might be easier to fit into your schedule.) 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| MixedUpCody Senior Member United States Joined 5042 days ago 144 posts - 280 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 6 of 11 28 January 2014 at 4:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thank you very much for the responses, I really appreciate your time. Well then, I guess I'll rephrase my question: for those of you have studied language in a minimal way, what techniques did you use to keep making progress without having it become an all consuming hobby? I love my language studies, but like I said, I would like to to other things when I graduate, and the ten+ hours per week I put into each language right now is a bit much.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| renaissancemedi Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Greece Joined 4144 days ago 941 posts - 1309 votes Speaks: Greek*, Ancient Greek*, EnglishC2 Studies: French, Russian, Turkish, Modern Hebrew | Message 7 of 11 28 January 2014 at 4:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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I don't know about skype, but assimil is about 30 min a day or so. And as many native material you can use (movies, tv, books, magazines etc) on your spare time. Using your ipod while being on the train, jogging and all that. Maybe a cd course for listening to while driving.
You get the point. It depends on how many languages you want to learn. If it's one at a time, you can definitely do it in a minimal way, as long as you do it every day (or so). Edited by renaissancemedi on 28 January 2014 at 4:32pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Fuenf_Katzen Diglot Senior Member United States notjustajd.wordpress Joined 4155 days ago 337 posts - 476 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Polish, Ukrainian, Afrikaans | Message 8 of 11 28 January 2014 at 6:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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My German has never been extremely "active." It wasn't until recently that there were people with whom I only spoke German, and even then, it's not that typical of an occurrence. For me I found that a lot of listening and reading helps keep my speaking abilities where they are, even if it's only once per month that I end up speaking. I suppose it depends on how comfortable you are with Spanish right now: if you're fairly confident in being able to understand what you hear and read, you should be able to maintain your current level with once per week. If you're still unsure though, maybe it's not time to reduce that just yet.
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