Werk, Obair, Rad, Kazi - the four steps to success

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Vedun
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Re: Werk, Obair, Rad, Kazi - the four steps to success

Postby Vedun » Mon Dec 26, 2016 8:46 am

Began working with anki, still studying it; began work on a Basque deck; the whole process of setting up all flashcards for all languages may take up a month or even some more; and I even haven't done anything other than srs.

Realised that I need to know some basic 'glue' words if I want my writing exercises to be of any use. These will probably my priority in SRS.

Only 4/11 sessions done - during the latter half of the week I felt dizzy and I rather didn't do any mental efforts. Strengthened Basque and a bit of Portuguese.

A little more structure: realised that I have 30 days on average to strengthen 10 languages, or 3 days per one language, or 3 or 2 per week. Suddenly everything seems much more down-to-Earth and even this week I didn't do that bad (33%), considering the setbacks.

Tentatively, I'll be strengthening during the workweek, as it presumably takes less effort and time, and progress during the weekend.
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Vedun
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Re: Werk, Obair, Rad, Kazi - the four steps to success

Postby Vedun » Sun Jan 01, 2017 12:38 pm

Review of the month:

A slow start, review 3 or 4 langs for two weeks. Second week (this one) slacked off a few days, and the first week also missed some, but for the actual time I've been running with this program, it's been pretty good. Now it's the first month that'll see the entirety of the plan, so it's a proof-of-concept run. Intending to structure things a bit more later today or tomorrow.

Some thoughts from the week:
An idea: do writing exercises first, see which words I'm lacking or can't remember, and add those with priority to Anki.
I realised I can maintain a language in two sessions or one day, meaning I can do must stuff in the first half of the month and mostly slack off afterwards. I don't want to break up sessions further as it's counterproductive, but so is overburdening... will see how to go about it.
I seriously need topics to write about, I've basically already ran out of ideas. Or maybe something to translate.
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Re: Werk, Obair, Rad, Kazi - the four steps to success

Postby arthaey » Sun Jan 01, 2017 5:08 pm

Vedun wrote:An idea: do writing exercises first, see which words I'm lacking or can't remember, and add those with priority to Anki.

Oo, I like this idea! I've always done my passive activities first, thinking of it lie a "warm up" for active activities. But I'd like to try the reverse as a means of seeing what I should focus on, like you say. Thanks for sharing the idea!
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Vedun
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Re: Werk, Obair, Rad, Kazi - the four steps to success

Postby Vedun » Mon Jan 02, 2017 12:14 pm

The organisation post

Language learning program








Type / Level EDO RMHW RHW
Maintenance • 2 or 3 revisement sessions - 40 min
• SRS - 30 min
• optional listening - 15 min
• 3 to 5 sentences output, w/ unknown words to SRS < 20 min
• one revisement session - 15 min
• SRS/CM - 30 min
• listening - 15 min
• 5 to 6 sentences output, w/ unknown words to SRS < 30 min
• reading - 30 min
• 6 to 10 sentences output, w/ unknown words to SRS < 45min
• listening - 15 min
• vocab drills - 20 min
• reading - 30 min
Progress • progress on dedicated course - 45 min
• extensive grammar sumups when necessary
• SRS - 30 min
• grammar drills, existing or made up, on focus areas > 10 min
• SRS by topic - 45 min
• optional advancement on the dedicated course - 15 min
• list of skills and areas lacking for free expression - work on that one at a time - 40 min
• speak when possible


On the times - a dash means the activity should be about that long, otherwise a comparison sign means the activity should be longer or shorter than that. No time means the activity should be done until complete or otherwise for however long deemed necessary; not overly long though.
On flexibility - the whole program's purpose is to aid me in learning, not to constrain me. Therefore, while I'll look to follow it overall, if I see doing or not doing something in another manner will serve to benefit, I'll deviate from it. In the long term that may as well lead to the program's modification.

Useful links and resources

Seneca's collection of language courses - viewtopic.php?f=14&t=4915
Anki manual - http://ankisrs.net/docs/manual.html
myths about memory - https://www.supermemo.com/articles/myths.htm
20 rules of learning - https://www.supermemo.com/en/articles/20rules
other articles about language learning - https://www.supermemo.com/english/contents.htm#Articles
transtheoretical model - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transtheoretical_model
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Vedun
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Re: Werk, Obair, Rad, Kazi - the four steps to success

Postby Vedun » Sun Jan 08, 2017 9:01 am

Three things this week:
-Firstly, I've already decided earlier, but don't know if I've posted it here - decided to study on evenings only, as this is still enough time to fulfill everything and I have the gut feelings it'll make things more concentrated. Exceptions are when previous evenings are missed and when I've to fulfill my goal on a tight schedule.
-Made a monthly table (on paper) of all activites for all languages - now I'll keep track via it instead.
-Only two activites done so far - I had a busy week. Next one is going to be busy at least as much, so I'll have to do most of my studying in the latter half of the month. A challenge right from the start, but I'm determined to make it.
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Vedun
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Re: Werk, Obair, Rad, Kazi - the four steps to success

Postby Vedun » Mon Jan 16, 2017 9:13 pm

Did a grand total of three more activities last week, making 5 in total - but at least now I'm not as busy. If I want to stay in track for the end of the month, I'll have to do 46 more, progress included - and I have every intention to fulfill it.
My battle plan is the following:
-Do three activites for ten days, not necessarily consecutive - one in the morning and two in the evening. That makes 30 in total and given there are 15 more days til month's end, I have some leeway if I need to.
-On two other days, preferably this Wednesday and Saturday, do the remaining 16, essentially devoting each day to language learning until the task is done.

Overall it's pretty doable and I'm cautiously optimistic that I'll get back in track in this week alone. Now I only have to follow through with my plan.


Some time ago I realised with the current plan I do no more than 4(!) hours of progress per month. A snail would be a faster learner. Maybe do progress each available morning? I'll see what I'll do about it, but first have to prove to myself I can have consistency and dedication.
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Vedun
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Re: Werk, Obair, Rad, Kazi - the four steps to success

Postby Vedun » Sun Jan 22, 2017 2:42 pm

Began a belated continuation of activities with Portuguese. As the bigger picture always seemed to slip out, I started making a chart of all the important grammar bits, still work in progress. My idea is that when I have a single look over everything summarised manually by me, it'll stick more easily.
I haven't done almost any Norwagian in years - I was maybe between A1 and A2 last time - and am almost all the way back to square one. Recalled that there are shared anki decks online, so I don't have to import everything manually, which will save me quite a bit of time. But I also want to have every language in a single deck and give priority to later imported words - still figuring this out. At least now the digraphs and trigraphs make more sense to me (if it has <s>, it's /ʂ/, otherwise it's /ç/).
I'm about at the same level with Hungarian, with the difference that I was never any more advanced and never put any significant amount of time to it. Returned to revise a bit on duo only to find out that I'm transferred to an experimental V2 tree and I'm 'revising' new stuff. As I figured out I know too little for listening and output to be of any use, I'll be doing only SRS this time. I also intend to complete the Polish activities for today, which will leave me with 24 activities, or six langs to revise next week, of which I have one, maybe two days free - or at least it so appears to be now. Somehow I'll make it.

Now that a full month of the schedule is almost over and I've used it somewhat, I have some ideas as to how to change it next month:
1. Only do one language activity set (maintenance or progress) per day, not more even if time is available - I don't want to burn out and spend overly much time and energy to LL, but to keep my attitude to it fresh instead. By limiting the amount of effort and time to something less than my maximum (optimum?) I hope I'll always look forward to the next time I'm 'allowed' to learn, instead of putting it off.
2. Do one activity set every day, in the morning. Exceptions are when I'm busy for the whole day. If only busy in the morning, it'll be postponed for the afternoon or early evening instead. Only these two time periods are available and I want to build up a strong habit of learning during a particular time of the day.
3. Every month, first do all revisions, and then do only progress activities. This increases the amount of progress fivefold to up to 20 days (activity sets) per month, up from 4. The reason it was so low before is that I thought I'll have time only for so much and I overlooked the amount of progress a bit, but now I know that it'd work. Doing revisions first ensures that I'll always revise all my languages each month, for as long as I can devote at least 10 days to LL.

I still don't have an objective way to measure my level either, but I have an idea - put tatoeba to use:
1. Look up 10 random sentences with English → L2, hiding the translation initially. If a sentence is already seen, skip it.
2. For each sentence, try to translate it to L2, and write down the translation.
3. See the actual translation(s) (there may be multiple) and also write it down, along with the original sentence.
4. Now check my answers for mistakes and against the correct translations - assign a score of 1 for correct answer, a variation thereof, or an answer containing only .minor. mistakes. Assign a score of 0.5 for an answer containing up to three mistakes. Other answers do not merit points.
5. Keep track of my scores and do a test between 30. and 2. at the begining of each month and see how they change as time goes on.
6. I don't want to limit myself to just one test system and instead intend to use multiple, as I come up with them eventually. I'll perhaps use both weighed average score and individual scores to measure progress. (maybe percentage of known words for all sentences? + percentage of known morphemes/grammar structures?)
7. Eventually I might try different schedules for different languages and see which schedules gives faster progress.
8. I don't intend to measure perception however, as it's my understanding that it's always greater than the output abilities.

pros:
-as sentences are random and from the whole spectrum of language, they'll give me an unbiased way to track progress from the very low levels to the very high levels of proficiency.

cons:
-some months I'll inevitably get easier sentences and some more difficult, which is bound to skew the results. The solution is to use more sentences to test (20, 30, etc), but this will take more time and will diminish the pool of available sentences faster. I don't want to spend a whole day or even days testing.
-some languages have only hundreds of sentences on tatoeba, meaning this test is only viable up to a point.
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Vedun
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Re: Werk, Obair, Rad, Kazi - the four steps to success

Postby Vedun » Tue Jan 24, 2017 7:40 pm

Lately I've begun gathering a metacollection of resources, but hadn't really put anything of it to use. So as a note to myself, I'll post here to use one new resource per week (or even per day, if I'm feeling time-unrestricted) and see what sticks until I've tried them all.

I've just tried wordbrewery.com and it's excellent! Recommending it to everyone. It seems to be like bliubliu and lingualy, but free and lighter interface, and also one sentence at a time. It counts the number of words you've encountered so far, which is surprisingly motivating and addictive. It has direct link to wiktionary (although L2 → L2 instead of the better option En → L2) and two automatic translations. Also has a study list of sorts, but haven't looked that yet. Differentiates between just peeking the meaning of a word and adding it to your study list.
Overall I don't remember the last time I've encountered so many positive things about a language resource in under 5 mintes. And no cons! (at least spotted yet)
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crush
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Re: Werk, Obair, Rad, Kazi - the four steps to success

Postby crush » Wed Feb 01, 2017 8:18 am

I hadn't seen/heard of Word Brewery before, it looks nice and i tested it out for Spanish. A lot of the sentences are a bit odd without context (and about 2/3rds of the Spanish sentences were about soccer ;) ). For anything other than beginner you need to upgrade to a pro account. Unfortunately, they don't offer any of my target languages.
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Vedun
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Re: Werk, Obair, Rad, Kazi - the four steps to success

Postby Vedun » Wed Feb 01, 2017 8:45 pm

Pro accounts, that's the catch. It seems we just can't have nice free immersion tool. Technically there is lwt and readlang, but finding suitable texts for your level is a (minor) PITA.

While technically I had the time to finish my targets, I was going to revisit the same things anyway in a week, so I thought I'd rather not spend half a day occupied with languages. No burnouts and all. Today I proceeded to make a test of one language, as described in a couple posts earlier, and immediately stumbled upon some problems. What do I do with synonyms? Alternative word orders? Just alternative ways of saying things? If I was fluent those wouldn't be an issue, but I don't want to spend half an hour checking and verifying my answers - that'd make half a day for all languages. I still want to take tests for all of them, but am unsure how to proceed. I'll decide tomorrow, the morning is wiser than the evening.

I'll be sure to do one and exactly one maintenance session on Friday. Beside that I'm wondering if I should allow myself one practice alongside one maintenance. Maybe I will.
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