Time from B2 to C1/C2? (frustrated somewhat- seeking some feedback pls)

[LadyGrey1986]

PM, I am ashamed to admit it, but I really improved my English by reading things like Hello Magazine and the "Femail section" of the Daily Mail Not exactly Shakespeare, I know.....
At the same time, I joined a forum about royalty watching where I wrote in English. Royalty doesn't interest me in the slighest these days, but there you go... Apart from two weeks in London and Dublin, I have never been to an English-speaking country.

Native media are crucial.

[Theodisce]

PM, I am ashamed to admit it, but I really improved my English by reading things like Hello Magazine and the "Femail section" of the Daily Mail Not exactly Shakespeare, I know.....
At the same time, I joined a forum about royalty watching where I wrote in English. Royalty doesn't interest me in the slighest these days, but there you go... Apart from two weeks in London and Dublin, I have never been to an English-speaking country.

Native media are crucial.

Nothing to be ashamed of, as long as you enjoy it while progressing with your immersion. We tend to impose things on ourselves even in the matters of entertainment. I fell into this trap many times. Unless there is some external need to stick to specific kind of content I believe it is the best solution to do whatever pleases you.

[Cavesa]

PM, I am ashamed to admit it, but I really improved my English by reading things like Hello Magazine and the "Femail section" of the Daily Mail Not exactly Shakespeare, I know.....
At the same time, I joined a forum about royalty watching where I wrote in English. Royalty doesn't interest me in the slighest these days, but there you go... Apart from two weeks in London and Dublin, I have never been to an English-speaking country.

Native media are crucial.

Nothing to be ashamed of, as long as you enjoy it while progressing with your immersion. We tend to impose things on ourselves even in the matters of entertainment. I fell into this trap many times. Unless there is some external need to stick to specific kind of content I believe it is the best solution to do whatever pleases you.

Yes. Language learning is our ideal excuse, we no longer need to be ashamed about lots of stuff we read or watch

[PeterMollenburg]

I can't offer any advice about C levels, sorry.

But regarding:

4. Should I leave Dutch alone for now?
(I know the intermediate and beyond stages = law of diminishing returns, thus would 1 hour out of my French routine a day matter much at all? Or should I totally focus on French at least for now).

When I feel like I'm struggling with Russian, I'll go and do some German for little while, or maybe take a look Assimil Hungarian. It gives my brain a break and puts me in a more positive frame of mind. When I return to Russian, everything seems easy again and I'm more productive - and that's the main goal, so it doesn't matter if I don't remember the German/Hungarian I've just done (bonus if I do!). In the long run, I don't feel like I've 'lost' any Russian time by doing that.

People use running, meditation, knitting etc. to help them refresh and refocus on a long-term goal. I don't see why you can't do the same by dabbling in another language.

I agree about using another language to relax. see kujichagulia's logs

This is a good strategy for some, and that bouncing my French off Dutch would help freshen up my perspective on/approach to French... and I have other things to do also like cycling, kayaking, and spending more time with my family, but within the language sphere....

Should I leave Dutch alone for now?

That's up to you. Can you be disciplined enough to stick to a limited time period in a day? That would be fine and could actually be beneficial to you, ala Kuji. (Though Kuji is living in Japan while learning both Japanese and Portuguese.) If you start going great guns into Dutch, then, you'll have a problem... in my opinion. You're at a crossroads, PM. You can indeed take your French to the next level but I believe it's going to require major change in the balance of what you're doing to get there, and... that's something you have been unwilling to do. I believe you need to do that in order to get to where you say you want to be. Ultimately, do what you want to do... whatever makes you happy.

Should I leave Dutch alone for now?

That's up to you. Can you be disciplined enough to stick to a limited time period in a day? That would be fine and could actually be beneficial to you, ala Kuji. (Though Kuji is living in Japan while learning both Japanese and Portuguese.) If you start going great guns into Dutch, then, you'll have a problem... in my opinion.

Good point. In Dutch you'll be tempted to go through numerous courses again. Will you manage to limit yourself to 1-2 courses for the first year or so?

Should you start Dutch now? If you really think it won't eat into your ability to improve with French then go for it.

If I were starting (or really, restarting) Dutch then my goals with German would be laughable because I really enjoy Dutch and would have trouble not spending massive amounts of time on it (that would then eat into the energy I have for German).

I"m best off focusing on the mission at hand - French, as you are correct I believe iguanamon, I will have a problem if I go great guns with Dutch (like aokoye hypothesizes in picking up Dutch also), and no, I don't think I would be disciplined enough to stick to a set time period each day. Best to break up my routine with exercise. Serpent- I already have a box full of Dutch coures as you probably suspected so bad idea, I think to introduce Dutch.

That's harsh, but are you sure you're B2?

Possibly not, who knows, but I think I am.

No courses are enough for this level. Knowing a lot of vocab is great but not enough.

I agree, courses are not enough. Even extremely advanced courses possibly aimed at C1/C2 exams for example -and this took me a long time to finally understand- are not enough. They are appropriate as part of the overall mixture of materials perhaps, depending on one's needs, but you are right, not enough. And vocab alone, I also agree. One must be able to hear, use, speak the language of this level. You are right Serpent, as are many others, and I was wrong when I used to think that courses alone could get me there. In fact they might get me close, but i'd be doing courses for the next 5 to 10 years to cover enough content I think. I've gradually changed my tune and still might change it further, in that I'm totaly in agreement, courses do not suffice. For this reason I have been using native content for some time, but not realised (or wasn't ready) how much more I needed to be using such content.

Have you done an online test like Dialang or DLI? Have you gone through the checklist and tried some sample materials for the exam you're planning to take?

Planning to Thank you for the suggestions (I didn't know these existed). I have some... should i say it courses, aimed at exam prep B2, C1, C2. These will become more of a feature of my routine in the near future.

(On a side note, did emk take the same exam? or Cavesa?)

emk always offers great advice, it's like he holds out for a post until he can say something very very useful, and he certainly does. I didn't understand where he was coming from when at the very beginning (possibly 3 years ago now) I stated I would use courses courses and more courses to reach some kind of advanced level and he tried (I think along with yourself too Serpent and numerous others) to encourage me to use native content as well- which I didn't hardly at all at that stage. Still, as I said it was a necessary process for me it seems. I"m certainly learning how to learn with French. I was truly unaware how much work was ahead of me, and how I needed to keep raising the bar by introducing more and more native content. Form me, this I"ve been very slow to realise and bring into action, but I am slowly but surely realising I maybe should've done it sooner. Nevermind that now

I am not sure about the exams emk has done, but I was certainly hoping Cavesa would respond, as I knew she'd taken the C2 exam.

1. Could I reach C2 by March 2017 if I'm already currently a B2?

Having followed your progress for several years, and knowing your style of learning leans heavily toward formatted instruction- I would have to say that I doubt it very much if you continue with your same style.

PM, I don't believe it's your study time that's holding you back, I believe the issue lies within your unbalanced interaction with French. Each skill informs the other. Conversation, listening, reading, writing and explicit study in combination all have synergistic effects that help to grow the language inside your brain. Nobody can tell you what that mix should be for you individually, but by your own admission, you have been out of balance. Until you decide to give activities outside of what you consider to be formal study the same importance as a course, I don't believe you will progress that rapidly.

I have never taken a formal test. I can't justify the expense involved for myself, living so far away from anywhere I could take such a test and I don't need it for what I do. If I were to take such a test I would want a guide, practice exams, work with a tutor who has taught people taking such tests etc. I do believe that it is necessary to train all the skills in order to have that base that can be built on with specific help. I believe that this is what you have probably been neglecting because you haven't given skills outside of formal study the same respect or attention that you place on formal study. Don't get me wrong, formal study with textbooks has its place, but you have shown yourself to be out of balance with this. Can you do all of this at the same time. Yes, you can, but it's going to take dedication and hard work- which I know you are capable of doing.

Given how long it has taken you to go from B1 to what you perceive to be B2 I really doubt that you'll be able to go up two full levels by November. C1 - yes, C2 - not so much. Hell C1 by March would be pushing it (I am likely a B2 in German and I'm not planning on taking the C1 test until November, unless I'm able to take a German class in Germany this Summer).
If I were you I would try to find my strengths and weaknesses and work on improving my weaknesses while also bringing my strengths up to whatever level I feel appropriate (what test you're planning on taking or whatever your end goal is). Then I'd reassess and change your emphasis if needed. Either way if it took you two years to get to B2 and you feel like you're stagnant you need to change something in terms of how you're studying.

My current plan is like this:

With a target of 3 hours total desk study time:

First hour each and every day
One hour extensive reading

Then, follow with this rotating schedule :
(ie 2 of these hours to round out the 3 hours total for the day, continuing where left off the day before)

one hour
speaking/writing (as mentioned previously)

one hour
15 min SRS + 45min of:
Intensive reading

one hour
15min SRS + 45 min of:
Listening
or 60min: Listening

one hour
15min SRS + 45min of:
Advanced course

Do you believe my latest study schedule is better suited to advancing faster by focusing on my weaknesses and also leaving a little to allow for formatted instruction? As a side note, I know I'm going to have to put more effort in to actually cover all these things in my routine regularly.

(Sorry, PM, but you and I have talked about this before) However, if you were to make radical change happen in your learning- reading every day, listening for an hour every day (something, really working with a series would be helpful) speaking with a conversation partner or paid tutor a couple of times a week, I think you could be knocking at the door by then.

I believe you would also benefit from conversation practice, either with a good tutor or even just a native-speaker. Even once a week would help you in ways that you wouldn't believe. I know it does wonders for me in Haitian Creole speaking with a native-speaker.

I know people have had bad experiences with tutors and hiring one isn't absolutely necessary.

I'm definitely going to introduce a tutor. Likely a couple of days a week as suggested, as well as hopefully some language exchanges for more casual conversation. I appreciate the tough love btw. I need it.

I'm going to digress here to tell you so0me of my experience with Portuguese. I just want to give you an idea of how I went about breaking out of the intermediate stage.

When I was learning Portuguese, I was using a private tutor in addition to individual work. She decided it was time for me to start watching a novela. I didn't just sit there like a couch potato just mindlessly watching TV. I had to work at it. There were no subtitles. It was a native show that had been on prime-time in Brazil. It was bloody hard at first. So hard that I felt like a failure. I'd watch once. Then I'd watch again and take notes. Then two more times before I had to talk about the episode with my tutor.

She expected me to write down every unknown word I heard and we'd talk about them over an hour. As I said, I took notes (in my own shorthand) with time stamps of the video. We both used the same streaming site. We had twice weekly one hour sessions on skype. The first session at first was all unknown words and missed speech. The next session was to be me giving my review of what happened in the episode. For the first 15% of the episodes my unknown words and missed speech bled into the second session too. I could only do one episode a week for a while.

Then, about six weeks in, something started to click. I got used to the actors voices and accents. I started really hearing what they were saying. I had been used to São Paulo speech and the novela was set in the Northeast of Brazil with a bit of a different accent and some different vocabulary taking place almost a hundred years ago. Then when I got used to it, I was able to go through the episodes with less difficulty. Being forced to discuss the episode made me really pay attention. I had to not only get my review right but I also had to get my grammar right when speaking. My writing also improved. Every facet of my language use improved because I was working on every facet. I was also studying grammar at the same time formally as I saw what I needed to work on. In addition I was reading novels and listening to an hour a day (news magazine) while I was on my morning walk. Towards the last third of this novela process, I got to where I was reviewing three episodes a week in two one hour sessions. My unknown words and speech dropped practically to zero. I continued to move on from there. and have never looked back. It worked. The whole novela process went on for about five months.

I consider myself to be at C1 and perhaps C2 on a good day. I don't believe I could have advanced as far and as fast without this work. It was what I needed to do. It was definitely not what I wanted to do and it was not fun at first. Once I started to see real improvement it became very enjoyable work because I knew it was working for me... helping to get me to where I wanted to be.

Today, I am doing a similar approach without a tutor for Haitian Creole and without a novela. I'm using a Bible study with a transcript- one guy speaking for half an hour about a chapter. I'm doing this because there simply isn't the choice available in Haitian Creole that there is in other languages and this is the closest I can come to replicating what has worked for me in the past. I've been at this for a couple of months now and I am seeing good results.

What I did with a series, to a large extent, can be replicated without a tutor by using a dubbed series and a transcript (made from a subtitles srt file) as a check. Then, just notice what you are hearing and reading and try to replicate that in speech or writing. I'm not saying that you should slavishly copy what I have done but this is what I mean by "working with a series"- emphasis on work

Thank you for sharing. I will have to look for a good series to focus on. Do you think if I continue with Sex and the City, or Game of Thrones or the Wire, perhaps, which I also own, or another series (doesn't have to be native necessarily, right? - these are dubbed). Or should I absolutely find a native series (I have engrenages and the village which i've already watched) and absolutely find accurate transcripts?

Also I was thinking every second time round that I do my focused listening with a series I could do something else like GLOSS, which serpent has suggested many times (or Yabla still?). Any thoughts? This way I use a series a bit as well as a program with native clips.

I wanted to say too that recently it feels like the breakthrough has really happened watching the news and listening to news podcasts. I'm usually at about 95% comprehension to the TV news I feel, and 85% to the podcast on first listen, above 95% of subsequent repeats. Could my listening be better than I think? Still, I really struggle with movies and series (at a guess an average of 65% comprehension).

Cavesa will be able to give you more specific advice about French and the C2 test in particular. I am in awe of what she has accomplished in language-learning and life... and how hard she works at it. She makes us all look like slackers. . Good luck, PM. Sorry to come off as sounding harsh. I genuinely want you to succeed, but how long have you been doing what you're doing with French? The first rule of holes is- when you're in one, stop digging.

I too am in awe of Cavesa- you are absolutely right. And she has definitely provided some very useful feedback after you posted this. And again, thanks for the tough love, I need it.

I can't judge whether your current level is B2 by the full criteria, but I'm sure you could pass the exam. I've seen people with much lower levels than yours pass it with some specific study.

Yeah, I will have to get onto the tests/assessments to gauge this better.

Thanks to PM for bringing this up

At first, I thought this thread my disappear into oblivion, as yet another "how long to.... ? " thread. Glad to see some awesome advice has been posted here, which in turn is helping others self reflect on their language learning goals and techniques.

...would the Super Challenge of reading so many pages of native material, and watching so many hours of native TV, be a secure method of reaching the C levels (providing you work to understand the material)?

If you mean by "reaching C levels" being able to do everything within a second language- including speaking and writing , I don't believe so. To be able to express one's self in a second language a learner must actually practice that and get some feedback. Reading and listening are easier because we tend to skip over things when we can understand what's going on well enough. That doesn't mean that the mix has to be equal between all the skills but if a learner wants to speak/write and speak/write well then that has to be practiced as well to some extent. Some formal study (especially grammar) helps to tie everything together- this often gets skipped. The individual skills tend to reinforce each other, in my experience. The Super Challenge would be a big help but in itself, it won't be enough, in my opinion.

Thanks to PM for bringing this up, and I have a question: would the Super Challenge of reading so many pages of native material, and watching so many hours of native TV, be a secure method of reaching the C levels (providing you work to understand the material)?

I agree with Iguanamon on this one. I don't think it would bring up up to C1 or C2 in speaking or writing period. I could see it bringing one's reading and listening up C1 (or maybe a low C2) from a B2 or maybe a high B1. I would also make sure to do listening that isn't just watching TV. TV gives you the added crutch of being able to see what's going on and/or what's being referenced. You lose that context in listening unless say, they're talking about birds and there's audio of birds singing.

Yet again, more useful advice to reinforce my need for conversational practise and (a) tutor(s).

For me I know my main weaknesses in German are reading and writing. I also need to increase my vocabulary knowledge. For whatever reason it is far easier for me to understand the context in spoken speech (with or without video) than it is in written text. Because my goal is to pass either the Goethe C1 or the TestDaF I am currently slowly working through a C1 textbook (after having done a B2 book) making sure that I put all of the words I don't know into Anki. I made sure to buy a textbook that was heavy on reading content because it's my biggest weakness. All of the reading from the textbook that I'm doing is intensive. It's tedious in terms of vocab but I've found that I'm able to recognize the "new" words when I hear them and often when I read them in other contexts now which is validating. I also have been attempting to force myself to reread the sections I'm getting words from which I won't claim that I do as consistently as I think I should. After I eventually finish the textbook I'll work out of a book that is specific to the test I decide to take and likely do a number of practice tests (note that I'm taking this because I want to do a masters in Germany or perhaps Austria).

Outside of that I am also reading a book in German. The reading that I'm doing out of that book and everything else I read is totally extensive reading. I'll look up a word if it comes up a lot and I can't get it through context (despite it coming up a lot) but otherwise I just don't look things up when I'm reading it. I'm planning on doing more writing once this school term is done (one more final today!) but I'm going to have to really hold myself accountable for that.

Yeah, I too need to work on my weaknesses as you do- Relevant text books, extensive reading, intensive reading etc..

On top of all of that I watch, and to a lesser extent listen to, a lot of native German language content. I started procrastinating by watching German documentaries years ago and I will also watch the news and other shows in German. I credit most of my listening skills to that.

I do something similar and I also believe my listening comprehension has jumped because of it.

I like the metaphor Luca Lampariello uses to conceptualise the amount of time it takes (4:30):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NySKjOTbHsU

"The stretch between B2 and C1 is huge compared with the one from beginner to intermediate. ... It's a really long stretch, but the difference is that when you reach B2 and you're on top of the mountain, everything is like a looong slope, but it's easier than climbing up to the top. ... It's not as difficult as before because you start enjoying and using the language."

Thanks Saim for sharing this. I actually came across this exact video a couple of weeks ago and found it quite interesting and motivating, and indeed relevant. It certainly belongs in this thread

B2 to C1 takes years, perhaps unless you're studying full-time and/or living in the country. Longer than zero to B2. I'm saying because I've also been there and done that, being at B2 and thinking I'd reach C1 in less than a year. I was in for a harsh surprise.

This is part of the reason why I was wondering whether I should introduce Dutch. I mean if it's going to take years as you say, then time to introduce another language, was what I was thinking. However, I've come realise I still need to focus on French only for the moment.

[Tomás]

I find TV news much easier to follow than movies and tv series. The newsreaders speak more clearly and formally and use less slang. It's usually always very obvious who did what to whom, and there are fewer conditional statements. They don't talk much about their emotions or subjective perceptions. It's all more straightforward than a tv show.

[aokoye]

I find TV news much easier to follow than movies and tv series. The newsreaders speak more clearly and formally and use less slang. It's usually always very obvious who did what to whom, and there are fewer conditional statements. They don't talk much about their emotions or subjective perceptions. It's all more straightforward than a tv show.

I agree with the ease of TV news as opposed to movies or other TV shows. That said I think when we're looking at the C levels (and perhaps B2 as well) it's important, if not imperative, to be able to be able to have good listening comprehension in a wide variety of situations. It's important for daily life skills but also for passing at least some of the language exams.

I posted on my log (or perhaps another thread) a few days ago about how I was frustrated that my German TV watching time was cutting into my knitting time. I was also thinking about how I feel neither here nor there about counting the German podcasts I listen to while cooking towards the Super Challenge (I think Christina doesn't like the idea of podcasts as background noise being counted). Then last night, as I was listening to probably an hour and a half or two of podcasts while making dinner and cleaning up I realized that I was actually really paying quite a lot of attention to what was being said. Just as much if not more than when I listen to English language podcasts in the exact same situation. Now my general thought is, "Can I summarize what I was listening to in English or German? Yes? Then count it towards the challenge."
More on topic to the challenges of TV news vs movies or other shows, there are also definitely going to be times when the audio quality of at least radio or podcast) is going to be lacking. There were a few people who called in to the episode of Deutschlandfunk's Campus & Karriere radio show and one of the callers had your typical not exactly good but understandable telephone to radio audio quality. In my head I was lie, "well - this is really useful listening practice because this is real life." I will admit though that you get that less with TV stuff.

[iguanamon]

Thank you for sharing. I will have to look for a good series to focus on. Do you think if I continue with Sex and the City, or Game of Thrones or the Wire, perhaps, which I also own, or another series (doesn't have to be native necessarily, right? - these are dubbed). Or should I absolutely find a native series (I have engrenages and the village which i've already watched) and absolutely find accurate transcripts?

A dubbed series is fine, if you've already seen it... even better. You can go to opensubtitles.org and download the subs for reading practice, make your own parallel text easily with the English subs. Of course, accurate subs are best to use to check your listening comprehension. A lot of times dubs and subs don't match. Even, if they don't, they can still be useful. Mostly, I watch native series with no subs but I've watched all the seasons of "The Walking Dead" and "Two Broke Girls" in Portuguese dub plus "Borgen" (a Danish series) in Spanish dub. Emk popularized the use of the dub of "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" on HTLAL.

Once I could more-or-less read French, and once I could have one-on-one conversations with very patient and sympathetic French speakers, I decided to do something about listening comprehension. After many false starts, I discovered some online Buffy transcripts and I bought a DVD box set. When I started watching, I could follow maybe 40% of the dialog. By the end of the first season, I could understand 70%. By the end of the third season, I understood well over 90%. I repeated this with several other TV series, and I could eventually understand the vast majority of French television.

Also I was thinking every second time round that I do my focused listening with a series I could do something else like GLOSS, which serpent has suggested many times (or Yabla still?). Any thoughts? This way I use a series a bit as well as a program with native clips.

DLI GLOSS (Defense Language Institute Global Language Online Support System) is highly useful and level specific. The lessons are based on real world reading and listening extracts. Of the two I would say DLI is much more thorough than Yabla.

I wanted to say too that recently it feels like the breakthrough has really happened watching the news and listening to news podcasts. I'm usually at about 95% comprehension to the TV news I feel, and 85% to the podcast on first listen, above 95% of subsequent repeats. Could my listening be better than I think? Still, I really struggle with movies and series (at a guess an average of 65% comprehension).

I was at roughly the same level listening to the news before I had my breakthrough with that series in Portuguese. To this day, like James29 in Spanish, I listen to the news in Portuguese from two sources on my morning walk for about 50 minutes. I like RFI Brasil (from France actually, but with a Brazilian team) which is more like a news magazine type show. It's a habit. Making listening a habit is very important. I feel bad if I don't do my daily listening, plus, I like being informed with an international perspective. It helps to broaden vocabulary too, naturally.

That being said, there's no substitute for working with a series, in my experience living outside of a TL country. You get a chance to take advantage of visual clues; common, day to day, colloquial speech; you can get used to a small subset of voices and accents; situations often repeat or are similar; you can use what you learn in your conversations. The length of most shows is short enough not to be tedious- yet long enough to be useful. If you worked through a series with between 75 and 100 episodes, it would really help.

There are many ways to use a series. You don't have to copy what I did, but I believe that being actively involved with it was what helped me gain the most from it. What worked for me was to take notes as I watched with time stamps and characters in my own shorthand. When I didn't understand a word or passage, I'd make a note of who said it and when. Then, I'd listen to those passages again at those time stamps. I worked with a tutor, but you could use a transcript as your check. You could also upload a paragraph about the episode to lang8 for correction or talk about it with an exchange partner using your notes. You'll find your own way.

[jeff_lindqvist]

3 I need to work on my weaknesses as a priority.
I believe in order of most deficient to least deficient (or less of a priority)

Speaking.
Listening.
Reading.
Writing

[...]

Hour one
60 minutes of speaking or writing
With an aim to consistently speak (ie not to avoid it, but actually commit to a number of sessions a week). When not speaking (tutor, conversational exchange) then I must write (with a real person feeding directly back in real time or with delays correcting down the track).

Hour two
15min SRS + 45min listening practise (likely to be a series with transcripts or accurate subs)

Hour three
60 min Extensive reading

Hour four
15min SRS + 45min of one of these (each time I do this hour I change activity):
* advanced course study or course for exam prep.
* Intensive reading
* Intensive listening

First of all - this an interesting topic, although I've never thought about sitting a CEFR exam. I remember Luca speaking of the four knights, each one reinforcing the other. Everybody is different (and studying with a CEFR in mind is definitely a unique situation), but maybe there's an optimum way to reach your goal. I'm thinking of diminishing returns and all that. Maybe there's a cleverer way to get better at your weakest skill. Some improve nearly all skills just from reading a lot.

In an old HTLAL post, there was a story about someone who wanted to increase her understanding of everyday American English, and focused on learning words in isolation - without much success. She learned several thousands of words but still had problems understanding "Friends" (or whatever show it was). And she kept sticking to dictionaries (which apparently wasn't enough).

In a clip from the conference in Serbia, Arguelles told that he generally spent more time on a strong language than weak ones from the same family (OK, language, not a skill), but that he got better in all of them.

At what stage should a learner spend most time on the weakest skill? Does it depend on which skill it is? Do bad listening skills depend on the learner's actual listening hours? The vocabulary size? The general ability to process audio? Beginners will often find natural speech difficult to understand and process. Same thing in music. Does speaking reinforce listening? Is it the other way around? Personally, a lot (music or speech) is foggy until I can produce it myself.

Peter - I'm sorry to digress so much, but I find this topic very interesting. Both your dedication (the opposite of Rdearman's Way of the Lazy Fist ) and other (hopefully possible) ways to reach the goal.

[klvik]

I’ve been reading this thread with great interest over the past few days and would like to add my observations. The clear consensus is that you should try to incorporate more native content into your routine; what is less clear is the best manner to do so. The challenge that I see for you in the immediate future is devising a way to incorporate more native material while respecting your style of studying. From what I have read, it seems that you prefer very structured study. Maybe you should brainstorm ways to impose more structure onto your use of native materials. In this forum I have read a number of ways to improve listening comprehension using native materials. Iguanamon described one way to do so in this thread (intensive analysis of a television series with the help of a tutor) and I have read a post (don’t remember where) in which Cavesa described her method to intensively watch the first few episodes of a television series so that the subsequent episodes become more transparent. Emk’s subRSRS technique for improving listening comprehension with native materials also comes to mind. I can’t recall any posts describing a very structured approach for using native materials to improve speaking, reading and writing but I am sure that something could be devised. I guess the point that I most want to get across is that your very structured approach to learning does not have to be a deficit. Use it as a tool to direct your use of native material. With a little creativity (supplied by you or crowd sourced to the forum), ways to incorporate more and more native material into your study can be formulated that will work for you.

[PeterMollenburg]

I’ve been reading this thread with great interest over the past few days and would like to add my observations. The clear consensus is that you should try to incorporate more native content into your routine; what is less clear is the best manner to do so. The challenge that I see for you in the immediate future is devising a way to incorporate more native material while respecting your style of studying. From what I have read, it seems that you prefer very structured study. Maybe you should brainstorm ways to impose more structure onto your use of native materials. In this forum I have read a number of ways to improve listening comprehension using native materials. Iguanamon described one way to do so in this thread (intensive analysis of a television series with the help of a tutor) and I have read a post (don’t remember where) in which Cavesa described her method to intensively watch the first few episodes of a television series so that the subsequent episodes become more transparent. Emk’s subRSRS technique for improving listening comprehension with native materials also comes to mind. I can’t recall any posts describing a very structured approach for using native materials to improve speaking, reading and writing but I am sure that something could be devised. I guess the point that I most want to get across is that your very structured approach to learning does not have to be a deficit. Use it as a tool to direct your use of native material. With a little creativity (supplied by you or crowd sourced to the forum), ways to incorporate more and more native material into your study can be formulated that will work for you.

I'm glad this thread is generating some enthusiam/interest.

I wanted to reply to you sooner rather than later klvik, as I just want to make something clear briefly. My first most important aim of the thread was to get some feedback (it's been great). Then I wanted to identify my weakness (also for the most part done, but still working on assessing my level - seem to get continous interrputions to the ODA iguanamon provided a link to, but im now progressing through it, and will go on to get futher assessment). The next was to devise a routine in which I can still tick my boxes (a course- but one that's relevant, my learning mags) and introduce native content. I seem to have come up with a routine that seems to tick all these boxes provided I put in the work. I was looking for feeback on my actual routine (like a master plan I guess) then I was aiming to proceed on to the details, which is why I was putting it to iguanamon what he thought of my listening to a series in combination with someting like GLOSS for example. Soon I will divulge more information on what I aim to fill each of my focused hours with, I didn't want to present it earlier as I first wanted to discuss the master plan before getting into possible disscussions over which series is better, or what kinds of books to read on what topics for example. I must now run as I'm off to work soon. I haven't neglected to take on board btw your input in that I can create a routine potentially entirely with native content that suits my strengths, I think my routine developped thus far covers everything and allows a little of the old course loving me to exist. I think if I went absolute 100% native, I'd pull my hair out, tell you all to go jump and leave the forum with my tail between my legs. And emk's subs to srs is a great method, question is, can I be bothered setting such a thing up... all such details to work out soonish.