Werk, Obair, Rad, Kazi - the four steps to success

Continue or start your personal language log here, including logs for challenge participants
User avatar
Xenops
Brown Belt
Posts: 1444
Joined: Mon Nov 30, 2015 10:33 pm
Location: Boston
Languages: English (N), Danish (A2), Japanese (rusty), Nansha (constructing)
On break: Japanese (approx. N4), Norwegian (A2)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=16797
x 3559
Contact:

Re: Werk, Obair, Rad, Kazi - the four steps to success

Postby Xenops » Thu Mar 23, 2017 12:48 am

Hello there! I can relate to your frustration: you pick certain courses and decide you can't stand them, life fills your days with multiple priorities, you're not sure of goals, etc. Maybe something you can do is to step back from your languages and think, Why do I want to learn this? I am not sure if this is a concern of yours, but sometimes people want to be fluent in multiple languages more than they want to learn the individual languages. The appeal of polyglottery is stronger than the love of the languages themselves. Or maybe you need to put languages aside for a while, and figure out what you truly want? I realize I might not learn twenty languages to C-level, but if I can learn four or five to that level, that is still an accomplishment I can be happy with (my current top-ten list is: French, Italian, German, Turkish, Persian, Japanese, Korean, Irish, Hebrew, ancient Greek, mostly, but not really in order of importance).

What I've been doing in my life is making lists of the bare minimum things I want to accomplish (school, French, comics). Make a list of what is the most important, and pare out the rest of the items. Once you are free of multiple projects, then you can slowly add more projects, depending on their importance.

Another thing to consider is: what do you enjoy doing in language learning? You made lists of what you don't like. Are there learning methods that you do like?
1 x
Check out my comic at: https://atannan.com/

Vedun
Orange Belt
Posts: 215
Joined: Tue Jun 21, 2016 1:36 pm
Languages: Bulgarian, English
German, Italian
Russian, Finnish
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3009
x 149

Re: Werk, Obair, Rad, Kazi - the four steps to success

Postby Vedun » Sun Mar 26, 2017 5:58 pm

Xenops wrote:Hello there! I can relate to your frustration: you pick certain courses and decide you can't stand them, life fills your days with multiple priorities, you're not sure of goals, etc. Maybe something you can do is to step back from your languages and think, Why do I want to learn this? I am not sure if this is a concern of yours, but sometimes people want to be fluent in multiple languages more than they want to learn the individual languages. The appeal of polyglottery is stronger than the love of the languages themselves. Or maybe you need to put languages aside for a while, and figure out what you truly want? I realize I might not learn twenty languages to C-level, but if I can learn four or five to that level, that is still an accomplishment I can be happy with (my current top-ten list is: French, Italian, German, Turkish, Persian, Japanese, Korean, Irish, Hebrew, ancient Greek, mostly, but not really in order of importance).

What I've been doing in my life is making lists of the bare minimum things I want to accomplish (school, French, comics). Make a list of what is the most important, and pare out the rest of the items. Once you are free of multiple projects, then you can slowly add more projects, depending on their importance.

Another thing to consider is: what do you enjoy doing in language learning? You made lists of what you don't like. Are there learning methods that you do like?


Em, I'm not learning that many because of the number. Basically when I began learning, I would pick a single language and stick to it for weeks or months. Eventually, though, I would become bored with it and move to another one, without having mastered it. In this way I jumped from language to language for quite a while, some 5-6 years (when did time pass??). That was until 1-2 years ago, when I told myself: okay no more new languages, drop some and stick with the rest until you master them. The reason why I'm now tackling all simultaneously is that language skill gets worse without practice (and on practice vs. learning I've put my stance a couple of posts prior). In retrospect that was a very bad approach, but I didn't plan. :) Well, it's not too late to fix it.

I'm also not learning because I want to speak a specific set (well, that's a factor too, but a lesser one) - I just enjoy language learning - when it's enjoyable, that is. :lol: Should I have no more languages left to study, I'll just pick up new ones. I don't think I'll ever stop learning.

Your second paragraph makes a good point I haven't considered. That is also seen below. Maybe I should do the activities I gain the most from first, even if that means adding words to study after I've done my SRS sessions.

I enjoy learning itself, not any specific methods or courses (mostly). As in, you look at some text in a foreign language, can't understand a thing to save your life, then you do some magic for a month or so, and woah! - you now pick up the basic meaning of the text. I liked Duolingo in its begining, but they never balanced it properly, and since a year or two ago the tendency has been to only get less useful. I also liked bliubliu quite a lot, but then it got paid. Clozemaster is not bad either, but the sentences are not tuned to your level.


Summary of the half week - did only one more language, today. This time I measured the times of all activities I did to see how it fares against the 90 minutes mark I want to achieve:
00:00 till 00:07 - tatoeba test - so far so good...
00:07 till 00:18 - test checking and grading - could be done a little faster
00:18 till 00:45 - break (not counted towards the final time)
00:45 till 00:52 - importing the unknown words from the test to Anki
00:52 till 01:24 - trying to make sense of Anki's system of note types, as I want different note types for vocab and drills. Took me quite a while, but won't be an issue next time.
01:24 till 02:04 - entering drills into Anki. After 40 mins I still hadn't finished, but I had other things to do, so I stopped. Apparently this is the single most lengthy activity, but once I'm done entering, that won't be needed next time.

So out of 90 mins dedicated to learning, 7 went to testing and practising, 11 to checking and a bit of learning, 40 to entering drills and arguably gaining a bit of more understanding in the process and 40 to misc non learning activities, overtiming to 110 minutes in total.

IMO doing any kind of activities immediately before the test would bias it, so I'll still do it first, but only that, without checking and transferring words, these are for the end. Based on Xenops' advice, I think I'll organise my session in this way for now:
-Test
-Output activities
-Learning activities w/ vocab last, but still importing newly encountered words prior to it.
-Input activities
-Other imports and auxiliary activities
-Test grading, after the 90 minutes are over

Again, vocab review & thinking in TL is for busy days.
1 x

Vedun
Orange Belt
Posts: 215
Joined: Tue Jun 21, 2016 1:36 pm
Languages: Bulgarian, English
German, Italian
Russian, Finnish
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3009
x 149

Re: Werk, Obair, Rad, Kazi - the four steps to success

Postby Vedun » Sun Apr 02, 2017 6:51 pm

This week I did nothing. I'm yet to commit to the language learning first in the morning and me chasing a deadline certainly doesn't help. I always neglect other things when I have deadlines ahead.

Or maybe morning first is the wrong approach. Sometimes I wake up early, but am not much of a morning person. A few weeks ago I set apart 20:00 to 21:00 for learning, don't remember what happened to that.

But the week wasn't entirely uneventful. Bought a mini calender to track days of activity. I vaguely recall doing this early when I began language learning, and vaguely recall it being somewhat working. Well, seeing all those gaps is motivating. Yet to fill the progress of this year though.

More and more I gain the feeling that the real key to success is figuring out how to maintain steady activity, nevermind the actual techniques employed.
1 x

Vedun
Orange Belt
Posts: 215
Joined: Tue Jun 21, 2016 1:36 pm
Languages: Bulgarian, English
German, Italian
Russian, Finnish
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3009
x 149

Re: Werk, Obair, Rad, Kazi - the four steps to success

Postby Vedun » Mon Apr 10, 2017 7:57 pm

I transferred my logged days of any activity to the lang calendar and the results are in:
-January: 5 days (though these were somewhat more intensive than the rest)
-February: 12 days
-March: 9 days
-April: a grand total of 1 day last week

Drawing the line it's almost as if my only language learning related activity lately was updating this blog. I realise I can't excuse myself with the 'but I'm busy!' card forever, even be it so. Therefore, I set up alarms for each day of the week at the time I anticipate I'll be most likely to have LL time. I'll see how this goes this week sans the Monday and I'll report back next week.

And I realise I said no more languages just two weeks ago, but the gathering has issued an official language learning competition, so how can one resist? Curious to see how much I can learn in 50 days. Don't think I'll be updating my sidebar though.
1 x

Vedun
Orange Belt
Posts: 215
Joined: Tue Jun 21, 2016 1:36 pm
Languages: Bulgarian, English
German, Italian
Russian, Finnish
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3009
x 149

Re: Werk, Obair, Rad, Kazi - the four steps to success

Postby Vedun » Mon Apr 17, 2017 12:05 pm

I have mixed results to report.
The bad news is that I had only 3 days of activity last week.
The good(?) news is that that week was more active than any one of the three preceding it, and almost as much as all of them combined (4 days).
I don't anticipate anything revolutionary this week, just increasing the total days of activity to 5-6, one less than my goal of 6-7. And after I establish and maintain a steady schedule of learning almost all week, then I can finally seek to implement my language learning program in full.

I've again made some changes to my sessions. Realised that 90 minutes is way too long for me in one sitting, or even two. Rather, now the active study consists of 3 30 minute sessions with at least 10 minutes of rest in between them, and the passive or maintenance study is one 30 minute session. The former approaches 2 hours per day, which is a bit much, but I gotta learn.

Also realised the current methods are a tad slow. You see, flash cards are effective, but I learn much faster by reading immersion, so I now seek to focus on that. Also recalled cleverbot.
1 x

Vedun
Orange Belt
Posts: 215
Joined: Tue Jun 21, 2016 1:36 pm
Languages: Bulgarian, English
German, Italian
Russian, Finnish
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3009
x 149

Re: Werk, Obair, Rad, Kazi - the four steps to success

Postby Vedun » Wed May 10, 2017 9:10 pm

Ups and downs

Bad news: I missed to update during the last two weeks and half.

Good news: For the last 8 or 7 I have had an ubroken streaking of learning.

Bad news: It has been only of Slovak, other languages neglected for nearly a month already.

Good news: One of my last deadlines is coming to an end soon, giving me more time for other languages.

Bad news: I only have three weeks to brush up all my other languages for the gathering.

Good news: I don't have that much to review actually. I don't plan to learn anything new other than in Slovak. Only practice my output and input skills.

Bad news: I only have about month and a half to show improvement all across the board.

Good news: I suspect I have already shown it. This year is arguably already better than the last anyway. Plus I show no signs of slowing down, and momentum is easy to carry over.

Bad news: I will need to pause for a week or two though. Don't know how much realistically I will use the languages at the gathering, and after that I'll be without an internet for a while.

Good news: I still have enough time to plan for that and I will more likely get my hands on some language books at the gathering to keep me busy during the dry period.

Bad news: I keep doing stable progress only when I have fire set on my carpet.

Good news: This is the second best learning period since first half of February.

This turned out to be longer than I expected and could say a few more things, but you get the idea for my general whereabouts. Yet again I convince myself that language learning takes constant everyday dedication and your achievements from just a month ago don't matter much for current progress if you take it easy.
0 x

Vedun
Orange Belt
Posts: 215
Joined: Tue Jun 21, 2016 1:36 pm
Languages: Bulgarian, English
German, Italian
Russian, Finnish
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3009
x 149

Re: Werk, Obair, Rad, Kazi - the four steps to success

Postby Vedun » Tue May 23, 2017 10:26 pm

Did six days of learning each of last two weeks, but that streak is about to end. Suddenly there is a lot of stuff to do before month's end and June appears that it'll be one of the busier months this year. So I don't know for certain when will be the next time I do an update or do seriousish learning, but will look to update before July.

As for the goal, meh, technically I've done greater or smaller progress on most languages, maybe only Portuguese declining, and three of the others I know so little anyway that I can't be bothered too much to take them in consideration. I also can't be bothered to do tests, they were never as objective as I'd like.

And for the second half of this year, I'll set up a new goal. I (re)gained a clear vision of what drives good progress in learning.
0 x

Vedun
Orange Belt
Posts: 215
Joined: Tue Jun 21, 2016 1:36 pm
Languages: Bulgarian, English
German, Italian
Russian, Finnish
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3009
x 149

Re: Werk, Obair, Rad, Kazi - the four steps to success

Postby Vedun » Mon Jun 12, 2017 2:54 pm

Up until end of this month:

-Clear up the Anki wordlists I meant to study.
-Do some reading in target languages.
-Won't have time for much else, but things like CM, CB and speaking practice are also on the list.

After that, the new goals.
0 x

Vedun
Orange Belt
Posts: 215
Joined: Tue Jun 21, 2016 1:36 pm
Languages: Bulgarian, English
German, Italian
Russian, Finnish
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3009
x 149

Re: Werk, Obair, Rad, Kazi - the four steps to success

Postby Vedun » Thu Jul 13, 2017 8:30 am

It's been more than a month already without any updates, but I managed some high priority deadline and now I can maybe dedicate time to other things again, like language learning.

The goal I've been talking about is to finally bring some languages to fluency this year - for real this time. I've been thinking of the three I consider myself best in - German, Russian and Italian. That'd make two months per language and only one and half left for German.

My plan of attack right now is full immersion, or at least some immersion. Read German websites and tackle everything I don't understand. Try and improve my listening comprehension. Use chatbots to improve my output. Meanwhile the other languages I'll maintain mainly on anki and maybe the occasional reading.
0 x

User avatar
Tristano
Blue Belt
Posts: 640
Joined: Mon Jul 20, 2015 7:11 am
Location: The Netherlands
Languages: Native: Italian
Speaks: English, Dutch, French, Spanish
Understands but not yet speaks: Romanian
Studies: German
Can't wait to put his hands on: Scandinavian languages, Slavic languages, Turkish, Arabic and other stuff
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=5141
x 1015

Re: Werk, Obair, Rad, Kazi - the four steps to success

Postby Tristano » Thu Jul 13, 2017 8:39 am

Mi sembra un buon piano :)
1 x


Return to “Language logs”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: Kraut and 2 guests