A language learners’ forum

Some logging

I wanted to do 9 hours today, because I'll be busy tomorrow and the day after that. Not the whole day, but a lot.

Nothing much happening.
I do my daily chores as planned.
'm getting better at reading, (I read quicker and understand more) though I noticed that reading and listening is a bit bothersome. I rather read out loud (or mouth the words) at my own pace, which is - of course - quite a lot slower than that of French people

Ketutar wrote:But, the question is, would I? Does one need the 96% (or some 3000 words) to understand the context well enough to understand the foreign words through the text? How much of the words one "learns" are cognates or "similar enough" to a word one already knows?

Would you read 3h? Well, I would. It's pretty much what I do most days. I spend between 2-5h with reading these days, in different languages - mostly related to my PhD. As for reading to learn languages. To be honest, I think extensive reading can only go so far. Even with 96% context there are still words that do not become clear out of the context. I've been a slacker with my Spanish, never reading with a dictionary and although I've read plenty of stuff, I still feel that I'm sort of swimming. When reading I feel that nothing is quite as "precise" as with my English or German. Especially with my English I spent a lot of time with intensive reading at the beginning and I think this is why I feel less "lost" now.

Ketutar wrote:Anyway, I am OK with wasting my time doing something I like doing.

Hey, if you like it and it's fun, then it's the right thing for you! I like the concept of flashcards and what one can do with them when having to memorise lots of stuff, but ultimately it's just a tool that gets dull pretty quickly. Too monotonous for my taste. I do believe in doing 10min a day of them though. The problem with SRS is that you can't just do 10min do, but have to go through all your reviews or it doesn't work. After 1500 cards in Anki I felt like Anki was using me, rather than the other way round!

Ketutar wrote:This is also something totally new to me... I don't think I have ever studied some 8 hours a day FOR THIS LONG!
It's really amazing and encouraging

Wow, how long have you been going at it like this now? I think the trick is to keep the actual "desk study" to a minimum while doing lots of fun stuff on the side. Yesterday I clocked 4 1/2h, of which 2/3 was different ways of having fun - reading, watching stuff, some Duolingo.

Ketutar wrote:Oh, I love LWT too

It's great, isn't it? I have it on my own computer too and use it every day now. It's kinda like training wheels for reading. I also have a kindle with a touch screen, but the dictionary just isn't as good.

blaurebell wrote:Would you read 3h?

Sure, I'd be happy doing nothing but reading all day long But that was not what I was referring to... it was "so I would learn my 5000 words about twice as fast through reading than through Memrise."

And you are not alone feeling the "passive" extensive reading isn't really that effective in reality.
On the other hand... that's the way I got my Finnish as good as it was (it's not as close to perfect as it was 20 years ago, because I am reading in other languages as well now-a-days... but it's the way I keep up my Swedish and English, and get better with them.

So perhaps one does need the 95-98 percent understanding of the language... and no A or B level language learner has that.

blaurebell wrote:The problem with SRS is that you can't just do 10min do, but have to go through all your reviews or it doesn't work. After 1500 cards in Anki I felt like Anki was using me, rather than the other way round!

I know the feeling.
The good thing with Memrise (and I haven't used Anki, but I think it works there too) is that one can ignore words one knows. I am not reviewing all the words I have learned, just those I haven't learned. Right now it's about 300 words of 1400. I only keep the 100 of the day along for the first review, then I remove all the words I know.

Ketutar wrote:This is also something totally new to me... I don't think I have ever studied some 8 hours a day FOR THIS LONG!
It's really amazing and encouraging

blaurebell wrote:Wow, how long have you been going at it like this now? I think the trick is to keep the actual "desk study" to a minimum while doing lots of fun stuff on the side. Yesterday I clocked 4 1/2h, of which 2/3 was different ways of having fun - reading, watching stuff, some Duolingo.

About a month, about 8 hours a day.
It's the 15th day of "100 words a day".

My daily schedule is right now:
15 minutes French A1 (this is the thing I have decided to do every day, come shine, come rain, in sickness and in health )
Then I come here and read some logs, and check out interesting things I read. Like some grammar point, "how to say - in French", an interesting book, tv series or movie, a podcast or blog or YouTube videos.
Then I do Duolingo, about 15-20 minutes
Then I watch a couple of episodes of a French sitcom
Then I do Lingvist, another 15 minutes
Then I read a book, about an hour,
Go learn my 100 words,
play a little at Lyricstraining
Watch a movie from my 100 French movies list
and I finish the day by reading some French cartoons and about an hour of a French book.
Right now the 100 words takes about an hour and the reviews another hour or two, when I'm done with that, I will use that time with reading books and watching movies and series etc.
The rest of the 8 hours is used in reading "French for reading", Madrigal's French course, playing with grammar, like parsing sentences, going through song lyrics and singing along, some LWT etc.

I got some bad news. Nothing "serious", but enough to make me really worried and anxious.
I have Asperger's. I can't handle worry and anxiety.
And my FM reacts, as if someone pushed a button.
I haven't been able to focus on anything, forced my way through the "obligatory" part of the study plan, with plenty of rest every 15 minutes. I won't be able to concentrate on reading today.
Only 4 1/2 hours of studies. I have slept more than that.
When I received the news, I was sitting here in front of the computer and shaking and crying, and sure of that I can't do any French today.
I decided to watch a movie, to get something else to think, and I watched "les yeux sans visage". Pretty good.
Then I slept and ate, and thought that I could at least do the 15 minutes. After that I did another 15 minutes. And so on.

Small steps. I hope you are okay, and that whatever news you have received is resolvable.

I have Asperger's too, so I understand about not dealing well with worry and anxiety. In my case, too much sets off my bipolar disorder and I can get a little crazy. One thing that helps me sometimes if I'm feeling a lot of stress, is listening to nature sounds like the ocean or a stream, or also New Age music. All those things can easily be found in great quantities on YouTube. Even just wearing earplugs helps a little because I don't tolerate all the noise in the world when I'm stressed.

Sending prayers your way. God bless you.

The situation has solved, and it was a lot of misunderstanding, it wasn't as bad as I feared, frankly, it wasn't really bad at all.
But it broke my streak.
I am disappointed with myself. Life happening shouldn't be a reason to change one's routines, but... *sigh*

Well...

There's something positive, too. About a month ago I tried to watch "Black Butler", a Japanese movie with French subtitles. I didn't understand much anything, and I didn't watch it more than some 10 minutes, if even that. Yesterday I started watching it again, and this time I can follow along well enough to enjoy the story

I suppose I should log it in as reading and not as a movie, because they speak Japanese and the French I take in is by reading, but I don't know how to estimate the number of pages The rule of thumb is 1 minute movie = 1 page of script, but I don't want to log in that many pages... this movie is based on a graphic novel, so it's very visual, and there's quite a lot of action scenes... Perhaps half the time?

I'm glad it all worked out! And hey, it happens to all of us. In fact, what happens to most people is that something throws them out of balance and pulls them away from the language learning, but they actually never go back to the language learning. You're back doing French again, so well done!

And you've come back to a nice bit of progress! It's worth checking out in the official rules, but I believe you can count watching with subtitles as audio for the super challenge