Favorite Learning Activities.

General discussion about learning languages
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sfuqua
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Favorite Learning Activities.

Postby sfuqua » Wed Sep 22, 2021 1:08 am

There was a recent thread on efficiency in language learning and many people made points.
Some approaches are better than others to reach a given language goal.

But there is another aspect to language learning. Many of us (most?) do it for fun.
Ignoring efficiency, what are some of the activities you do to learn languages, that you also enjoy for themselves?

I, for instance, enjoy getting lost in a book, so that I forget that it is in a foreign language.

What about you?
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Re: Favorite Learning Activities.

Postby sporedandroid » Wed Sep 22, 2021 2:44 am

As a beginner I enjoy subs2srs. I get native content cut up into manageable chunks. I can get used to the way people actually talk, learn core vocabulary and get used to common sentence structures. When I’m intermediate I enjoy watching YouTube videos.
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Re: Favorite Learning Activities.

Postby lingua » Wed Sep 22, 2021 3:22 am

Reading is number one for me. If I wasn't learning languages I'd be reading in English. Instead I read in Italian and Portuguese.
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Re: Favorite Learning Activities.

Postby IronMike » Thu Sep 23, 2021 11:24 pm

sfuqua wrote:Ignoring efficiency, what are some of the activities you do to learn languages, that you also enjoy for themselves?
...
What about you?

Reading definitely. But also surprising native speakers that I can say some things in their language.
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Re: Favorite Learning Activities.

Postby einzelne » Fri Sep 24, 2021 2:30 am

Well, if we're are allowed to ignore efficiency, then definitely spending hours and hours on reddit on useless topics (like which pronunciation to use for Ancient Greek).
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Re: Favorite Learning Activities.

Postby Cavesa » Fri Sep 24, 2021 1:49 pm

I love extensive reading and listening. Ok, who am I kidding, it's mostly binge watching tv series. But in my target languages!!! But I plan to get back to books soon.

Surprisingly, I am enjoying teaching. And while it is rather bizzare, it is a learning activity too. Having had to teach German intensively for a month now may have been the only thing in the world to get me back to this language, to enjoying the challenge (but no, I still don't like German, the German culture, or Germany), and to considering continuing with it. It's been a very intensive month (there are still a few days of the challenge left), hard, exhausting, but it's something I'm proud of. And I've learnt a lot of German and finally learnt the basics well.
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Re: Favorite Learning Activities.

Postby lusan » Fri Sep 24, 2021 4:15 pm

Love
Reading novels with many many pages. The more, the better.
watching tv series - regular films are too short
High brown podcast/youtubes

Hate

Podcast/youtubes about language learning, making money, and leadership!
-I mean, lately Tedtalks are not so hot around here.
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Re: Favorite Learning Activities.

Postby gsbod » Fri Sep 24, 2021 4:29 pm

For me top of the list is a really decent conversation. That's guaranteed to tickle the brain cells in all the right ways. You know, the kind where each side is actually listening, understanding, fully engaged and giving considered responses, rather than the more usual one-sided, pre-prepared or heavily scripted conversations (which I think are almost as much of a feature of life in my native language as in language learning, to be fair...)

Reading and listening can also be really good fun, but is really dependant on the nature of the text/audio. A good book is a real pleasure, but nothing saps the motivation like a book you're not enjoying, especially if you've already convinced yourself it's somehow going to be good for you.

And actually, I do quite enjoy reading or talking about languages, maybe as a precursor to doing the work and learning them properly, especially when it comes to features that differ significantly from languages I already know well. The sheer diversity in how languages are structured and so on is interesting in and of itself, I think.
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Re: Favorite Learning Activities.

Postby Magnoliophyta » Sun Sep 26, 2021 10:42 pm

Reading novels in my target languages is one of my favorite learning activities, too. It's enjoyable for me, and I think novels are especially helpful in that I get to take in different kinds of language usage, including both spoken dialogue and more descriptive scene-setting prose. Going through the events of a story as I read is also helpful for me as a way to have experiences and make memories in the language, in a sense, even if only through the eyes of a fictional character or narrator; it can help me hang onto new vocabulary when I mentally associate it with the memory of a particular character or scene.
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Re: Favorite Learning Activities.

Postby dml130 » Mon Sep 27, 2021 3:34 pm

gsbod wrote:For me top of the list is a really decent conversation. That's guaranteed to tickle the brain cells in all the right ways. You know, the kind where each side is actually listening, understanding, fully engaged and giving considered responses, rather than the more usual one-sided, pre-prepared or heavily scripted conversations (which I think are almost as much of a feature of life in my native language as in language learning, to be fair...)


It's somewhat along those lines for me as well. I'd say ability to hold a conversation is my main goal in language learning, and once I've reached it, continuing to engage with others in the language is what keeps me going.
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