Language Learning plan over the next few years

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Walinator
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Language Learning plan over the next few years

Postby Walinator » Fri Jun 18, 2021 2:03 pm

Hello everyone! I have been lurking on this forum and the old HTLAL forum for the past couple of weeks now and it is a little bit overwhelming how little I know about language learning. For this reason, I am approaching the honorable ladies and gentlemen of this forum for some advice regarding my future plans. The goal is to eventually learn Persian, Arabic, and Turkish by 2023.

BACKGROUND:

I am a 20 years old student pursuing a Masters in Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies in the US. I was born in the US, but lived in Poland from the age of 2 to 6, then returned to the US, where I remain till this day. As I grew up in Poland, I went to the Canadian School of Warsaw (where I learned English) and spoke Persian at home with my parents (both immigrants from Afghanistan). By the time I left Poland, I was fluent in English, Persian, and Polish, but unfortunately after a couple of years I completely lost my knowledge of Polish due to lack of practice. This left me with two languages, which I have maintained up until today (One caveat here is that while I have native level fluency in Persian with regards to speaking and listening, I am probably only at an intermediate level with regards to reading and writing). While I have traveled in the past, I never felt any real desire to learn and explore new languages or cultures, however, recently this has changed. This is primarily due to the fact that I have warmed up to the possibility that I could pursue a PhD in Middle Eastern or Islamic Studies, something that would require extensive knowledge of at least Arabic, Persian, and Turkish. I have spent the last few months putting some time towards working on Persian and Arabic with great results, but I feel that I am unprepared to start more dedicated studies without some guidance.

GOAL/METHOD:

Daily free time: With the way my job is structured, I have almost ~8 hours of free time a day that I can dedicate to study. This will change once the school semester starts, but even then I believe I can eke out ~4 hours a day for study (outside of school work) if I stay disciplined.

Persian: Reach native level reading by the end of 2021, writing is not so much of a concern right now.

I'm not sure if this is possible, but I do know that I have made rapid progress in the last 6 months from an almost complete beginner to an intermediate level by reading to my parents or on my own for 5-10 minutes a day. This leads me to think that if I dedicated considerably more time (around 4-5 hours) a day, I can speed up this process. I plan on doing this by using Anki for words I dont know, intensively reading through the school books my parents kept from their days in Afghanistan, and eventually reading through full-sized books using Professor Arguelles' method. With the current plan I have, I would be dedicating the majority of my study time towards this goal for the next ~6 months. After that, I would probably spend ~30 min a day reading Persian while shifting my focus to the other two languages.

Arabic: Reach B2/C1 by the fall of 2023.

I am also not sure if this is possible, but they do say to aim for the moon :D . I have done about three semesters worth of Arabic courses in the past, but can definitively say that I learned absolutely nothing. With that being the case, I decided to start from the very beginning a couple of months ago and went through all of the Alif Baa book by Georgetown Press. While already familiar with the script, I needed to go through the book in order to learn some vocabulary. Since I have finished Alif Baa, I have been working on the Linguaphone Arabic course for about 15 minutes a day for the last month. The current plan is to work on Arabic daily for 15-30 minutes a day until the start of 2022, at which point I will start to dedicate the majority of my time on Arabic. The only problem is that I am unsure what to do once I finish Linguaphone.

Turkish: Reach B1/B2 by the end of 2023.

I have zero prior experience with Turkish and have no plans to working on it until I start focusing on Arabic. At that point, I would probably only dedicate ~30 min a day on it until I believed I reached a sufficiently advanced level of Arabic where I can start to spend major time on Turkish.

Eventually I would like to start learning other languages like French, Urdu, Kurdish, Pashto, and Indonesian, but as of right now, I want to focus on the three mentioned above.

Are there any problems with the above mentioned plan? Are the goals unrealistic? What resources should I use and in which order?

If any other information is required from me, please let me know and thank you in advance for the help.
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Re: Language Learning plan over the next few years

Postby einzelne » Fri Jun 18, 2021 7:08 pm

You have just one year and a half. Stick to one language and see if you can reach B2 level by 2023.

PS. Sorry, I didn't notice that you meant by the end of 2023. Still, I would suggest the same: reach the desired level in one language and then add another.
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Re: Language Learning plan over the next few years

Postby Deinonysus » Fri Jun 18, 2021 7:51 pm

Your goals seem completely unrealistic to me. But keep on doing what you're doing! Personally, I never set goals of "I'd like to be at X level by Y date". Instead, I identify what I think are good materials that will get me to a certain level, and then I estimate how long it will take me to finish those materials, but an estimate is not the same as a goal.

IMO going from a beginner to intermediate reading level puts you at maybe 5% of the way to native reading level. As a point of comparison, I speak French conversationally (not quite fluently), but I can read it fluently (but not perfectly), and I will often forget that I read something in French and not in English. Now, how long do I think it would take me from an advanced to native reading level? I'd say probably 2-3 years, and that's assuming that I don't get distracted (which I will, because I've dabbled in like ten languages since the last time I went steady with French).

I have put together a study plan to get from beginner to advanced in Arabic (no particular CEFR level projection, I prefer to just see where I am after I finish a certain course rather than set my heart on being at a certain level). The materials I'm planning on using are:
  • Assimil (their "B2" book and their "C1" book, but take those levels with a huge grain of salt). Time to complete: Around 6 months.
  • Pimsleur Modern Standard Arabic (3 levels). Time to complete: around 4 months
  • DLI Modern Standard Arabic. Time to complete: I don't know, I've never completed FSI or DLI Basic course. Maybe 1-2 years?
  • Ahlan wa Sahlan textbook series (primer, beginner and advanced. Time to complete, unknown, maybe 1-2 years?
Even doing several of these courses concurrently, that's probably around 4 months to an advanced beginner level, 6+ months to an intermediate level, and hopefully an advanced level in not much more than two years. And again, that is assuming that I don't get distracted, which of course I will. That also isn't accounting for learning Levantine dialect, although I'm sure I could start to learn it concurrently with MSA.

Now, going from false beginner to B2/C1 in Arabic in essentially 9 months? That seems almost impossible to me, although you do probably have a head start in vocabulary due to your high level of spoken Persian.

Don't expect Turkish to be a total cake walk either. It doesn't have as much Arabic vocabulary as you might think, and the grammar is completely different from Persian or Arabic. But from dabbling in it a very wee bit, I can tell you that it's very fun and interesting!

Now, here are two pieces of advice that I have for you:
  1. As I said before, I don't think it's helpful to set goals of "I'd like to be at X level by Y time". What is helpful is to have a daily routine that will point you towards finishing whatever learning materials you have selected.
  2. 4-8 hours a day is massive!. Right now you're making quick progress balancing out your skills in a language you already speak well, but that means that it won't be long before you hit the point of diminishing returns. Try not to get disappointed if you have to drop back to 1-2 hours a day when you get out of the honeymoon period. At some times when your motivation is low, you may not even have that in you. Remember, language learning is a marathon, not a sprint. You'll get further going slow and steady than if you burn out after a year.
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Re: Language Learning plan over the next few years

Postby Walinator » Fri Jun 18, 2021 8:12 pm

Deinonysus wrote:Now, going from false beginner to B2/C1 in Arabic in essentially 9 months? That seems almost impossible to me, although you do probably have a head start in vocabulary due to your high level of spoken Persian.


It would not be 9 months, but around 1 year and 9 months. From the beginning of 2022 to the fall of 2023. If that was not clear from my post, my apologies.

Thank you for the direction and advice, I appreciate it alot. How do you think the Arabic Linguaphone course would fit into the resources you listed? Would that replace the Assimil?

I dont think I'll have a problem of getting distracted by other languages (hopefully) as I have a pretty clear goal (PhD in Middle Eastern or Islamic studies) and the three languages I am looking at are vital.

Lastly, how would you develop a daily routine? I've developed one with my Persian, but I am not sure if it is good or not. Currently it is as follows: 1) Add ~30 words to anki and review the cards already entered, 2) Read for 2 hours, and 3) Write about a paragraph and get it checked. Also, while this routine may work for my current level of Persian, I'm not quite sure how to develop a daily routine for a language in which I am a beginner.
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Re: Language Learning plan over the next few years

Postby lysi » Fri Jun 18, 2021 9:19 pm

Deinonysus wrote:[*]4-8 hours a day is massive!. Right now you're making quick progress balancing out your skills in a language you already speak well, but that means that it won't be long before you hit the point of diminishing returns. Try not to get disappointed if you have to drop back to 1-2 hours a day when you get out of the honeymoon period. At some times when your motivation is low, you may not even have that in you. Remember, language learning is a marathon, not a sprint. You'll get further going slow and steady than if you burn out after a year.[/list]


8 hours per day is absolutely reasonable to do for languages. The question is: 8 hours per day of language study plus what? If it's 8 hours plus 8 hours of work/school then it's not going to be maintainable. But if you drop that down to like 4-5 hours of language study then it is. It really depends on how much you can work in a day. If you don't know then figure out how much you sleep on average per night, subtract that from 24 and that's your ideal work hours per day, then subtract like two hours from that for a more realistic amount (because you're going to need to cook, for example, and things come up, plus you might sleep earlier because you're particularly tired or you sleep more than usual). It's important to track the time that you put into languages as well as the specific activities so you can extrapolate data from it in the future as well. The most important part about all of this is that it becomes a habit, because at that point it becomes very easy to maintain. I know this all sounds difficult but language study is actually very cyclical. It's possible at an intermediate level to take breaks while studying (because listening to content you understand in your TL is actually not demanding at all) so you can easily do many hours without stopping. Basically just cycle from one activity to another. I think this is something Arguelles talked about. This also means that it's actually pretty hard to put in a lot of time at the start of learning a language because you're going from one intensive activity to another. (at least in my experience so far with Chinese, I thought I'd be able to put 12 hours into it per day but here I am with only 7.5 hours per day average right now)

As a side note, one tip I can give for someone doing something like this is that it's best to do the more difficult activities in the morning. Particularly anki, because anki is infuriating to do while tired.

I will say that I don't think it's a good idea to make goals like "reach a specific level in X time". You'll be at the level you'll be at. Just do your best every day.
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Re: Language Learning plan over the next few years

Postby Deinonysus » Fri Jun 18, 2021 9:28 pm

Walinator wrote:
Deinonysus wrote:Now, going from false beginner to B2/C1 in Arabic in essentially 9 months? That seems almost impossible to me, although you do probably have a head start in vocabulary due to your high level of spoken Persian.


It would not be 9 months, but around 1 year and 9 months. From the beginning of 2022 to the fall of 2023. If that was not clear from my post, my apologies.

Thank you for the direction and advice, I appreciate it alot. How do you think the Arabic Linguaphone course would fit into the resources you listed? Would that replace the Assimil?

I dont think I'll have a problem of getting distracted by other languages (hopefully) as I have a pretty clear goal (PhD in Middle Eastern or Islamic studies) and the three languages I am looking at are vital.

Lastly, how would you develop a daily routine? I've developed one with my Persian, but I am not sure if it is good or not. Currently it is as follows: 1) Add ~30 words to anki and review the cards already entered, 2) Read for 2 hours, and 3) Write about a paragraph and get it checked. Also, while this routine may work for my current level of Persian, I'm not quite sure how to develop a daily routine for a language in which I am a beginner.

I wasn't counting the year of 15-30 minutes, that honestly isn't enough time to make any progress. In my experience, 1-2 hours is the sweet spot where you can make good progress in a language but not get overwhelmed.

I personally try to put together three different resources and spend around half an hour on each:
  • One resource to practice writing (I usually use Duolingo)
  • One resource to practice speaking (I usually use Pimsleur)
  • One resource to practice reading and listening (I usually use Assimil)
For Persian, you are probably past the point where any of those resources would be that helpful and you probably don't need speaking or listening practice in Persian, so I think the routine you listed sounds pretty good. Having access to someone who can check your writing is awesome!
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Re: Language Learning plan over the next few years

Postby Lycopersicon » Sat Jun 19, 2021 11:23 am

Deinonysus wrote:Don't expect Turkish to be a total cake walk either. It doesn't have as much Arabic vocabulary as you might think, and the grammar is completely different from Persian or Arabic. But from dabbling in it a very wee bit, I can tell you that it's very fun and interesting!


Turkish and Persian have been influencing each other for more than a thousand years. The way both languages actually work is much, much closer than one could think judging from a grammar book.

Turks are definitely the best non-native speakers of Persian out there, the language just comes very naturally to them. My experience with Azerbaijani a few years ago also makes me think that going from Persian to a Turkic language isn’t particularly challenging either.

Deinonysus wrote:Now, going from false beginner to B2/C1 in Arabic in essentially 9 months? That seems almost impossible to me, although you do probably have a head start in vocabulary due to your high level of spoken Persian.


Walinator has native fluency in a Persian dialect and has already studied Arabic, so (s)he already knows the ultimate gateway language of the region and most important of all, (s)he is also intimately familiar with the broader cultural context. That point in particular makes a huge difference, this cannot be understated.

As far as Arabic is concerned, I’ve moved from zero knowledge to reading regular news articles online with 95% comprehension in about 8 months of not so intensive study and I’m not even a native Persian speaker. Arabic simply isn’t that behemoth of a language coming from Persian :twisted: and yes, the vocabulary discount is of epic proportion. I'd even argue that from a learner’s perspective, Persian and Arabic actually reinforce each other. The time you spend on Arabic helps strengthen your Persian and vice versa.

So by all means, give it a try Walinator! This is going to be extremely challenging, of course and in the end language learning just takes time. But keep in mind that you are years ahead of people who only know European languages ;) so the difficulty rankings one can find on the internet don't apply to your situation.

For Turkish I suggest you have a look at the Türkçe öğreniyoruz series. There are 6 volumes in total, they contain a lot of graded content and are marvelous learning tools for reading comprehension in particular (perhaps you could go through them with the help of a tutor). I think they are out of print sadly but there are PDF copies floating around the internet.

A New Arabic Grammar (Haywood & Nahmad) is a fantastic learning grammar of Arabic. I especially love the copious translation exercises. Given the lexical proximity between Persian and Arabic, you’ll probably find contemporary non-fiction relatively straightforward once you have internalized the morphology. I also recommend you go through a few readers like Tales from Kalila wa Dimna and Arabic Stories for Leaners.
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Re: Language Learning plan over the next few years

Postby Walinator » Sat Jun 19, 2021 3:32 pm

Lycopersicon wrote:As far as Arabic is concerned, I’ve moved from zero knowledge to reading regular news articles online with 95% comprehension in about 8 months of not so intensive study and I’m not even a native Persian speaker. Arabic simply isn’t that behemoth of a language coming from Persian :twisted: and yes, the vocabulary discount is of epic proportion. I'd even argue that from a learner’s perspective, Persian and Arabic actually reinforce each other. The time you spend on Arabic helps strengthen your Persian and vice versa.


Could you possibly describe the steps and journey you took to reach that level of comprehensions, if you dont mind? What was your daily routine, the material you used, and the amount of time you spent a day?

Btw, thank you for the response.
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Re: Language Learning plan over the next few years

Postby Walinator » Sat Jun 19, 2021 3:37 pm

lysi wrote:
Deinonysus wrote:[*]4-8 hours a day is massive!. Right now you're making quick progress balancing out your skills in a language you already speak well, but that means that it won't be long before you hit the point of diminishing returns. Try not to get disappointed if you have to drop back to 1-2 hours a day when you get out of the honeymoon period. At some times when your motivation is low, you may not even have that in you. Remember, language learning is a marathon, not a sprint. You'll get further going slow and steady than if you burn out after a year.[/list]


8 hours per day is absolutely reasonable to do for languages. The question is: 8 hours per day of language study plus what? If it's 8 hours plus 8 hours of work/school then it's not going to be maintainable. But if you drop that down to like 4-5 hours of language study then it is. It really depends on how much you can work in a day. If you don't know then figure out how much you sleep on average per night, subtract that from 24 and that's your ideal work hours per day, then subtract like two hours from that for a more realistic amount (because you're going to need to cook, for example, and things come up, plus you might sleep earlier because you're particularly tired or you sleep more than usual). It's important to track the time that you put into languages as well as the specific activities so you can extrapolate data from it in the future as well. The most important part about all of this is that it becomes a habit, because at that point it becomes very easy to maintain. I know this all sounds difficult but language study is actually very cyclical. It's possible at an intermediate level to take breaks while studying (because listening to content you understand in your TL is actually not demanding at all) so you can easily do many hours without stopping. Basically just cycle from one activity to another. I think this is something Arguelles talked about. This also means that it's actually pretty hard to put in a lot of time at the start of learning a language because you're going from one intensive activity to another. (at least in my experience so far with Chinese, I thought I'd be able to put 12 hours into it per day but here I am with only 7.5 hours per day average right now)

As a side note, one tip I can give for someone doing something like this is that it's best to do the more difficult activities in the morning. Particularly anki, because anki is infuriating to do while tired.

I will say that I don't think it's a good idea to make goals like "reach a specific level in X time". You'll be at the level you'll be at. Just do your best every day.


Thank you very much for the response! :D

I have found that Anki is infuriating even when not tired. :lol: I have around 500 words for my Arabic anki deck and for about 99% I have no problem, but there is a handful of words that always seem to make a reappearance as if my mind is unable to absorb them. I'm not sure if there is an efficient way of getting at them, so I have mainly been brute forcing through them in order with the hope that they eventually stick.
Last edited by Walinator on Sun Jun 20, 2021 12:12 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Language Learning plan over the next few years

Postby Beli Tsar » Sat Jun 19, 2021 6:49 pm

Walinator wrote:I have found that Anki is infuriating even when tired. :lol: I have around 500 words for my Arabic anki deck and for about 99% I have no problem, but there is a handful of words that always seem to make a reappearance as if my mind is unable to absorb them. I'm not sure if there is an efficient way of getting at them, so I have mainly been brute forcing through them in order with the hope that they eventually stick.

There is a secret, efficient way of getting at them - just ignore them. I'm not joking. At this point it's more important to pick up a good volume of words than to pick up particular words. By dropping difficult words, you get a much higher return overall. Not only that, but if you return to these words in a couple of months, with more reading and more language under your belt, you will likely find them much easier to retain. You likely need these words, but you don't necessarily need them right now.

In order to do this, set your leech threshold in Anki really, really low (2-3); auto-suspend leeches. Then come back to them every so often and pick a few to learn that are beginning to look more friendly and learnable.

There are certainly other things you can do, if you have to learn a word right now, e.g. because it's key to a course you are using, or you need to it speak or write. For instance, create extra cards - ideally by collecting examples of the word in use, which you can use for creating sentence cards or cloze cards. You may find adding images or audio helps retention. And finally, you can learn to create 'mems', memorable word associations that help you retain it. That's worth googling.

But, in the end, simply dropping them and coming back later is far easier in terms of effort, and you'll make more progress overall. And since most of the misery Anki causes people is caused by seeing these leeches over and over again, you'll also have a less stressful, less frustrating, and more satisfying time.
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