Any relation in time of day and priority of study?

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Any relation in time of day and priority of study?

Postby outcast » Sat Mar 11, 2017 7:10 pm

This question applies only for people that study multiple languages simultaneously. Let me explain a bit further. My question is: let's say one studies one language as a major priority, and one or two languages as secondary, is there a time of day where it is better to focus on the main language and another on the secondary ones?

I ask because I will resume my Korean studies shortly, which have been on hold for about three weeks now between my traveling, the last two plus weeks of focus on intensive reactivation of German, and to a slight lesser degree French (I have not talked about my French yet because I wasn't planning to reactivate it right away, but sometimes events lead to plan adjustments!). PLUS I did Chinese for two or three days a week for maintenance. So I am wondering if I want to study Korean 60-90 minutes a day every day, as my secondary language to whatever the primary of that day is (usually Chinese, but also will be German at times), when should I study it? Should I do it very early in the day, when I get up and use the morning hours when the mind is fresh to make the 60-90 minutes as intensive as possible? Should I study in-between as a "break" from the primary language? Or should I leave it to the end of the day, and go to sleep "with the language" inside the mind?

I am not sure if anyone else here has pondered this question of when to study what language based on priority placed.

As I have mentioned before, Chinese and German (with Chinese a shave higher in the hierarchy), are my main languages until September, with Korean my main secondary "learn seriously but for fun" language. French seems destined to sneak in there at times during this period (thankfully it seems the language is holding up quite well), so I'm wondering how should I schedule Korean around the primary language.

Thanks for any tips :)
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Re: Any relation in time of day and priority of study?

Postby Ani » Sat Mar 11, 2017 9:57 pm

I am doing that right now. French as priority and Russian and Finnish as low priority, beginner languages. I usually try to hit the Russian and Finnish while my mind is the most fresh. This is usually evening for me, but sometimes it has to be mid-morning. Since it is entirely intensive work at this stage, I want to make sure it will be worth it. Staring at the paper in a sleepy fog isn't useful.

By contrast, all the other time possible in my day goes to french. I can be sleepy or distracted while I watch tv or listen to an audio book. I can lay in bed and read. I'm just going for quantity at this point.
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Re: Any relation in time of day and priority of study?

Postby AndyMeg » Sat Mar 11, 2017 11:10 pm

I don't know if it'll help, but this is how it is going for me:

For now my main target language is korean. I try to study korean everyday.
I have some knowledge of japanese (somewhere between A2-B1) and I practice it with a friend once a week: we use j-drama scripts and role-play. I tried to study japanese on more days but it kept interfering with my study of korean, so I settled with once a week. (From time to time I watch some j-dramas or movies with and without subs, but I don't have a specific schedule for that)

I'm studying korean vocabulary on Memrise, and I also wanted to improve my knowledge of "japanese" kanjis with an app called "Kanji Study". The thing is that I found that one app was interfering with the other: If I studied with Memrise, I didn't want to study with the kanji app; and, if I studied with the kanji app, then I didn't want to study with Memrise. As korean is my main target language now, I decided to focus only on the Memrise app and leave the Kanji Study app for later.
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Re: Any relation in time of day and priority of study?

Postby blaurebell » Sat Mar 11, 2017 11:30 pm

Right now I put most of my effort into Russian, so it's what I do when my mind is freshest - about 1h after waking up. When I get overwhelmed or develop a headache, I relax with French, watch TV, listen to radio documentaries, that sort of thing. Every now and then I pick up a book or a comic to read when my brain isn't too worn out from the Russian. So far it's working pretty well for me!
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Re: Any relation in time of day and priority of study?

Postby Expugnator » Tue Mar 14, 2017 11:48 pm

I don't have a priority language, but I have two quality time periods: the first hour in 8 and the first but last hour (so, the 6th).

In the first hour, my mind is probably at the sharpest, so I do Intensive input or textbook study in my weaker languages. In theory I should keep replacing these, but since Russian, Mandarin and Estonian never got to a stage where I could get rid of Intensive work I decided to add new languages to my other quality hour, the 6th.

This is when I'm done with my main schedule, the languages I already study. So I can add a new language here, usually at small chunks, not worrying about it simply eclipsing my current ones. So there's no way I might do Greek and then skip Russian or German altogether, because I only work on Greek after I've worked on the previous ones. This is also an incentive to work efficiently on my set schedule for older languages in order to be able to enjoy the newer ones with fun textbooks that have audio and translations and insightful cultural notes.

The languages in the middle of the day tend to get the unsharpest hours. Getting down to reading in parallel in Georgian, German and Russian is a real challenge after lunch.
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