My Meandering Language Journey

[JayFromNJ]

When I think of my history learning languages, the word "meander" sounds about right.

Bonjour tout le monde, sabotai from the old forum here. The last several months have not featured much language learning in my life. I gave it a rest for awhile as I just felt burned out. The language learning itch flared up for a brief moment before I quit again for a bit. I never really quit totally, though. I kept reading logs, threads on the old forum and the new, and experimenting here and there with techniques.

Been back at it since near the beginning of June. Spent June working on German before letting it sit until now. And since the end of June, I've been studying French and Korean.

Several things I've learned about learning languages (as far as what works for me).

1) Reviewing is mostly wasted effort. I noticed this throughout my entire history of learning languages. Vocab I've repeatedly listened to in one dialog doesn't always stick, vocab I've repeated read on Anki cards doesn't always stick. What I mean is that there have been times where I've gone over a sentence in several ways 100 times, listened to a dialog 100 times, only to be clueless the next time I saw or heard the word. I've learned that it's not how many times I see or hear the word, it's how many contexts I encounter. So for now on, I don't do recognition cards in Anki anymore and I don't relisten to old dialogs anymore. It's all about getting to the next time I see that word or phrase or grammar point as soon as possible.

2) Recall aids recognition. I don't know if doing cloze deletion cards in Anki or doing translation exercises from Practice Makes Perfect workbooks is going to help all that much long term when it comes to speaking or writing. I do know that, for me, they work exceptionally well for strengthening my passive skills.

3) Encountering words while doing different activities is better than encountering the word several times in one activity. For example, a word will stick much better if I see it in a children's book once, in Assimil once, in Duolingo once, in a PMP book once and in a French news article once, than if I saw it 5 times in Assimil. This is why I do lots of different activities from lots of sources rather than sticking to just one "method" while using just a few resources.

Constant review is, IMO, the reason I burned out so badly earlier in the year.

[JayFromNJ]

Current Language Resources and Progress

German

LR - Wilbur und Charlotte - About 2/3rds of the way through so far. Books in my list for LR are Alice im Wunderland, Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, Harry Potter 1-3. When doing this, I just listen along with the text. I don't worry about understanding each and every word. If a word jumps out to me, I'll write it down to look up later.

DL Reading (reading using the English as an aid) - The Shining by Stephen King. Just started reading this tonight. A little more concerned with understanding the words and grammar while doing this. Words I can't really figure out even with the English I'll write down to look up later.

DW - Top Thema - News articles for B1 level learners with audio.

Scriptorium - Mastering German Vocabulary (~4000 sentences) and the Big Yellow Book of German Verbs (~6000 sentences). I do scriptorium on ~25 sentences from these two books at a time, and then move on. I don't review them, I just do this to give a few extra contexts to words and phrases.

Anki - I find a few sentences for each word I wrote down while doing LR and DL reading, add them to Anki and cloze out the word I looked up.

Duolingo - Just to give me a bit more practice. Currently just at level 4 (just started).

Practice Makes Perfect - I have several of the workbooks and am slowly working through them.

French

Assimil - Lesson 45.
Teach Yourself - Chapter 5.
FrenchPod.com - Elementary Lesson 153

Practice Makes Perfect - Basic French - Chapter 11.

Anki - I use the sentences from FrenchPod. Generally there are 5 words they focus on, and give 3 sentences for each word. I add them to Anki clozing out the word that's specified, but also any other words I feel I need to work on a bit.

Scriptorium - Sentences from 1001 Most Useful French Words. After that, I have the same two books as for German (Mastering French Vocabulary and The Big Blue Book of French Verbs).

Duolingo - Just to give me a bit more practice. Currently level 6.

Intensive Reading - ma grande encyclopedie - A children's encyclopedia that covers several broad topics (Universe, Planet, Human Body, Animals, etc.). After reading this, I have a few other children's books I can read through (Dis-moi Comment?, Dis-moi C'est Quoi?, and Dis-moi C'est Où?).

Korean

Yonsei Korean - Chapter 10
Yonsei Reading 1 - #18
Korean Grammar In Use: Beginner - Chapter 5
Sogang Korean 1B - haven't started yet
Hippocrene Korean - Chapter 2
Active Korean 1 - Chapter 5

Tuttle Elementary Korean (w/ workbook) - Chapter 2
- Most of the content in this book I know, but I've done very little recall with Korean. Almost entirely passive. That's why I got this and why I think even some of the most basic Korean still feels a bit fuzzy to me. This series (along with Continuing Korean and Advanced Korean) have a lot of exercises in them.

TalkToMeInKorean - Starting Level 6 at some point

Anki - Currently taking sentences from TTMIK and clozing out whatever the topic was for the lesson. I also have several other TTMIK products that have a lot of sample sentences based on vocabulary, and will start adding them soon as well.

Scriptorium - Mainly using with the textbooks for now.

DL Reading - I have a dual-language book of Andersen's Fairy Tales that I'll start reading soon.

[extralean]

It's always a pleasure for me to see other French learners logs, keeps me motivated!

Scriptorium - Sentences from 1001 Most Useful French Words.

Can you refresh my memory on what scriptorium is? Is it an Arguelles thing? I remember reading about it but can't recall the process. It may be of benefit to me atm.

T

[Brun Ugle]

I've also found reviewing to be of little use. I do do it some, but only mostly I find I learn best by just pushing through my textbooks/courses and doing loads of extensive reading at a level that's fairly easy for me. If I get confused by a lesson in my text, I usually push through as best I can and then after I've done several more lessons, I might review the one that was difficult. By then I probably understand it much better.

ExtraLean, a good description of scriptorium can be found on Dr Arguelles' website. The clue is to do it slowly and out loud. Read one sentence in your source out loud. Then copy it out by hand, saying each word as you write it. Then read out the sentence you wrote. Then repeat. Most people try to go too fast and forget to say everything out loud.

[JayFromNJ]

The reading out loud is really the key component for scriptorium, IMO. I used to just read the sample sentences, try to take it slow, usually ended up being lazy. Not only does reading out loud while reading and writing the sentence force you to slow down and really think about the sentence, the words, the grammar, etc., but it's also good for finding problems with pronunciation. There are still a lot of French words that I have trouble with. When I stumble on a word, I make a note of it and try to keep an eye out for it in my courses, or I look it up on Forvo (forvo.com/).

[extralean]

I've also found reviewing to be of little use. I do do it some, but only mostly I find I learn best by just pushing through my textbooks/courses and doing loads of extensive reading at a level that's fairly easy for me. If I get confused by a lesson in my text, I usually push through as best I can and then after I've done several more lessons, I might review the one that was difficult. By then I probably understand it much better.

ExtraLean, a good description of scriptorium can be found on Dr Arguelles' website. The clue is to do it slowly and out loud. Read one sentence in your source out loud. Then copy it out by hand, saying each word as you write it. Then read out the sentence you wrote. Then repeat. Most people try to go too fast and forget to say everything out loud.

Thanks! A link for the lazy.

[Brun Ugle]

I was the lazy one in this case. Making links from my iPad is a lot more trouble than doing it from my computer and since I was on my iPad, I didn't feel like putting a link. So thanks for doing it for me.

[JayFromNJ]

Looks like I was way premature in starting my log. I haven't really done much of anything due to not having the time. The only thing I've done is progress through Duolingo sporadically, so I'm still at about where I was ~2 months ago. It's about time I got back on the horse.