I'm just going to post my latest study routine - if you known me for a little while here, you are probably jaded or have little interest in reading on (that's why I've warned you- so if bored, don't read on!)
It's a four block rotation of one hour per block. Doesn't matter how many hours I do each day, if I finish on hour 3 on day 1 then I begin on hour 4 day 2 and so on - I rotate through these hours. Two of the four hour blocks of study contain multiple activities which I rotate through each time I get back around to that particular hour of study, choosing the next activity which follows the one I did the last time I was on that hour of study. And, some of these multiple activities are repeated within that hour block, as is the case with watching for example, because I feel it is more important to focus on a series 66% of my allotted watching time as opposed to Yabla.
SCHEDULE (rotating) :
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FIRST HOUR
ONE COURSE :
• French in Action
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HOUR TWO:
WATCHING and LISTENING
Rotating (one hour of):
• A series (Buffy - includes reading transcripts)
• A series (Buffy - includes reading transcripts)
• Yabla
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THIRD HOUR
ANOTHER COURSE :
• Assimil Using French
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FOURTH HOUR
READING
Rotating (one hour of):
Extensive reading
• A paper back
Intensive reading of either one of these:
• Bien-dire
• Think French
Extensive reading
• An e-book
Intensive reading of either one of these:
• Think French
• Bien-dire
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So that's me, nothing exciting, just yet another plan. I dropped the idea of courses courses and only courses and decided to go with a 50% courses, 50% other important stuff (ie reading and listening/watching)... I'm aiming to stick to this for a while, but you never know, time will tell.
Pretty keen to get into Buffy French box-set now- watched the first half of an episode this morning.
Also have entirely ditched flashcards. I don't care for them now. I'm writing some unfamiliar words in an exercise book and using my two heavy-duty dictionaries to search for unknown terms with a tendency to go for Le Petit Robert (French only) before the equally good bilingual Collins Robert French English Dictionary. It's good to change things up and nice to go a little old school. I'm actually pretty positive about this study schedule.
One of my work colleagues was talking about Holland today and Spain and the French and German languages got a mention too. Tell you what, it doesn't take much for me to get a little stirred with wanderlust. German and Spanish featured and of course Dutch. And I dreamt of living in Valencia.... a city I've never visited, but underlying all that is a rock solid steadfast fixation on French, il faut que je maintienne le cap ! [ même s'il fait plus beau en Espagne
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