Reactivating Productive Skills - Experiences?

[Axon]

This isn't a situation I find myself in now, but I'm interested to hear from people who have successfully reactivated productive skills after leaving them dormant for several months or even several years.

I've found that my recall of passive skills, particularly in related languages, is better than I imagined. So I'm toying with the idea of dropping study of some languages I don't use at all and then in the future trying to pick up active ability again. What's that like?

[Xmmm]

I did 50 hours of Russian Italki sessions in 2016. I was an A2, or maybe the world's worst B1 speaker.

I started up again a month ago, got it all back in 3 hours except I'm better now because I have more vocabulary and better grammar. I would classify myself as a below average B1 speaker at this point.

That doesn't speak to what happens when you let B2 or C1 skills lapse. I'm curious to know as well, because if you lose it all and you have to maintain forever to avoid that, it's a lot of overhead.

[jeff_lindqvist]

That doesn't speak to what happens when you let B2 or C1 skills lapse. I'm curious to know as well, because if you lose it all and you have to maintain forever to avoid that, it's a lot of overhead.

What exactly do people at C1 level think they will lose after leaving the language for a while (A year? A decade? Longer?)? Of course, if you don't learn new words... you'll never learn new words. How much of the grammar will disappear? What about the accent?

The stronger skills you have, the longer they're likely to stick. That's my experience.

[reineke]

"I would note that we found lower levels of proficiency eroded permanently and to revive language that had not been assessed at least at Level 3 usually meant that study had to begin anew."

Dialog on Language Instruction
Volume 24 (1) 2014
Reaching High Levels: ILR 3 and Above

"Lesson 4. Time on task and the intensity of the learning experience appear crucial.

Learning a language also cannot be done in a short time...FSI has tried to shorten programs, and it has not worked...

Having made this investment, it is crucial to determine what can be done to maintain the language skills that the graduates have achieved or, preferably, to improve them. Language maintenance at post may not simply be a matter of giving the speakers a set of strategies to use there, but more one of attaining a “critical mass” of language proficiency. Informally, we have observed in the languages that we have worked with that an individual departing for post following training with a borderline professional proficiency (or lower) is very likely to experience attrition. An individual with a strong professional proficiency (S-3 or S-3) will maintain or improve proficiency, and with advanced professional proficiency (S3 or S-4) will almost certainly continue to improve. "

Lessons learned from fifty years of theory and practice in government language teaching

"This work analyzed 13 years of Defense Language Institute (DLI data) from over 16,000 military linguists to determine if cognitive-based skill retention theory can adequately explain foreign language change. Relationships between independent variables suggested by skill retention theory and second language change were investigated. Language proficiency and the length of time since DLI graduation demonstrated strong correlations with foreign language change...

...there is a 25 percent probability that level 2 linguists will fall to 1+ during the first year. This probability decreases to roughly 10 percent for level 2+ linguists and 5 percent for level 3 linguists...

Near the end of the survival analysis timeline, roughly a 10-year period, the probability of an event has risen to 90 percent for level 2 linguists, 70 percent for level 2+ linguists, and 50 percent for level 3 linguists."

Modeling second language change using skill retention theory
Shearer, Samuel

ILR 3 = B2+/C1
ILR 2/2+ = B2/B2+

[leosmith]

I agree with Jeff. The higher the level, the better this will work.