Do you enjoy everything in your routine?

General discussion about learning languages
User avatar
iguanamon
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2353
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 11:14 am
Location: Virgin Islands
Languages: Speaks: English (Native); Spanish (C2); Portuguese (C2); Haitian Creole (C1); Ladino/Djudeo-espanyol (C1); Lesser Antilles French Creole (B2)
Studies: Catalan
Language Log: viewtopic.php?t=797
x 14188

Re: Do you enjoy everything in your routine?

Postby iguanamon » Sun Apr 02, 2017 1:03 pm

Yogi Berra was a famous American baseball player and manager, well known for his seemingly nonsensical/contradictory/illogical yet surprisingly profound statements about baseball and life. The Hannah Barbera cartoon character "Yogi Bear" took his name from him.
Yogi Berra wrote:Baseball is ninety percent mental and the other half is physical

Learning a language isn't as easy as the hype on course book covers would have us believe. There's a lot of routine involved, memorization and repetition. I think we must be predisposed as humans to dislike such tasks and find them boring. Perhaps because it's ingrained within us to want to have the maximum benefit for the least amount of effort. I think for learners who have yet to learn their first second language to a high level this is one of the highest hurdles and biggest barriers to learning a second language. It takes time, repetition, routine and discipline to go through them.

I'll give an example. For the last coupe of weeks, I've been training myself to learn to read in a new script for me, "Solitreo"- the cursive version of Djudeo-espanyol/Ladino's Hebrew "Rashi" alphabet. It's read from right to left. At first glance, it looks like incomprehensible squiggles, almost like Arabic writing. The books I'm using are not exciting. One is a 128 page (letter sized) pdf with alternating lines of Solitreo and Latin script and another book which has short passages written in all four of the Ladino scripts. It's slow, tedious, boring and yet, at the same time,, thrilling to me to be doing this.

This may seem contradictory but it's all true for me because, having learned some languages to a high level and how to read in another script (Rashi) already, I know where it will lead me. I know it will open up a new world for me. That's why I can tolerate doing what I know I have to do to get myself to where I want to be. Monolingual beginners lack this innate knowledge because they haven't yet acquired it through first hand experience. They have to have faith that all the repetition, memorization and routine are integral to learning a language. Having that faith can be a hard thing to do when slogging through the swamp of conjugation, grammar, declination, pronunciation and dictionary look-ups. So, I believe Mr. Berra.
5 x

AndyMeg
Blue Belt
Posts: 633
Joined: Sat Jan 28, 2017 2:44 pm
Languages: Spanish (N), English (B2-C1), Japanese (A2-B1), Korean (Lower Intermediate?)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 02#p201902
x 1302

Re: Do you enjoy everything in your routine?

Postby AndyMeg » Sun Apr 16, 2017 12:16 am

I try to find a routine that keeps me engaged because that's the only way I stick with my study plans. I enjoy some activities more than others. My favorite ones are watching k-dramas (in a special way I designed after some experimentation) and reviewing the most frequent words on Memrise. Glossika is the one I've struggled the most with: I enjoy it if I work with it once a week, but if I try to do more I usually burn out, so I only work with Glossika on Fridays.

I hate using Anki, so I don't.

The only thing that I do even if I don't like the process is to make personalized courses on Memrise. It takes A LOT of time, so I try to work on it a little every day. But I love the results: the courses I get to study with Memrise. :mrgreen:
2 x
Beyond The Story 10 Year Record of BTS Korean version: 36 / 522

rissiandroses
Posts: 3
Joined: Mon Apr 17, 2017 10:52 pm
Languages: English (N), Spanish, Italian, Chinese, Japanese
x 2

Re: Do you enjoy everything in your routine?

Postby rissiandroses » Tue Apr 18, 2017 12:01 am

I think Anki is a good program but I've gotten sick of using it. I dreaded having to do my reviews and would feel bad when they started piling up. Then I lost my decks and decided to try making word lists instead.

So far I like the word list method more. Writing the vocab down helps me to become more familiar with it. This is especially true with Mandarin and Japanese which use hanzi/kanji.

I also don't like listening to pure audio. This is a little bit true with my native language too. I have to be in the mood for a podcast for example. I prefer to watch a show in my L2 with L2 subtitles when possible. I do want to try some variation of the L-R method though since I enjoy reading.
0 x

User avatar
smallwhite
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2386
Joined: Mon Jul 06, 2015 6:55 am
Location: Hong Kong
Languages: Native: Cantonese;
Good: English, French, Spanish, Italian;
Mediocre: Mandarin, German, Swedish, Dutch.
.
x 4876

Re: Do you enjoy everything in your routine?

Postby smallwhite » Fri Jun 22, 2018 6:07 am

smallwhite wrote:My answer to another question answers this question as well:

What's your biggest language learning problem?
smallwhite wrote:My biggest problem is I don't like the learning activities involved. I like reading grammars, I don't mind drilling grammar, I don't mind doing SRS reps, but that's about it. I don't like reading, can't bear TV drama, can never pick a movie because none interest me. I don't like intensive reading or listening because they're boring and clicking so much at the mouse makes my arm sore. At home I like it dead quiet and can't really stand radio or TY dialogues in the background. On the street I want it quiet and I want to hear the traffic. And if I'm further out, that's because I want to hear the birds and the waves.

I have enough time, but also a hard time dragging myself to study. Luckily, once I start, I can go on for quite a while.


Except for SRS which I do on the phone, I don't have a routine - I just do whatever needs doing - so I don't really drop unpleasant activities - I just do them less often. And everything Ani said in her post applies to me as well (about evaluating an activity both by its process and by its results).
0 x
Dialang or it didn't happen.


Return to “General Language Discussion”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: jackb, Raconteur and 2 guests