Maintaining Languages? The most time effective ways?

[drp9341]

Hello everyone!

After reading through some old threads, and remembering a passage from this publication http://www.dliflc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/DLI_24_1_small.pdf (Shout out to Reineke for posting it,) I wanted to start a discussion here amongst the forum members concerning how you all maintain languages.

Counting my native English, there are 6 languages at which I am proficient enough to enjoy. I've never used a method, schedule, log, etc. for longer than a week, so I've always just kind of let my languages "hang." Luckily, I use them often enough so that no major loss of proficiency (among these 6 at least,) has ever occurred. Although there are obviously lots of ups and downs.

This year I will be living in Italy, where I will more than likely be using Italian almost exclusively. I want to make sure that I don't get worse in Spanish and Polish particularly, but I would also like to maintain (or even improve!?) my French and Portuguese.

Also, I will probably be back in the US for many years after this stint in Italy. When I'm home in the US, my languages get much worse.

I am quite lazy and really only ever use my languages for communicating with people and watching TV and documentaries. I don't write much outside of this forum, and though I used to read books for pleasure, the last book I read because I wanted to, (not because I wanted to improve a language via reading,) was probably 3 or more years ago. I do read tons of random stuff on the internet, though it's mostly in English and Spanish - rarely any of the other four.

I honestly don't find watching TV series that effective for maintaining languages, especially if my listening is weak, like with French, where I basically need French subtitles unless it's a documentary.

The thing that works best for me is required daily use of the language, even if it's repetitive and simple - like emailing students in Portuguese for over a year straight.

However, outside of a) explicit review and study for a few days every couple of months. b) having a social life requiring the use of multiple languages. and c) work requiring me to use the language a few times a week, I'm really bad at maintaining languages.

The biggest issue I have is a loss of "automaticity." I will doubt whether or not something is correct, I will be unable to retrieve vocabulary, and I will generally just not be as comfortable speaking that language as I would be with English and any other language(s) I'm using regularly.

So, what are my ideas for bare minimum language maintenance? (The most maintenance, for the least amount of time and effort.) (EXCLUDING using the language with other people.)
- Write short stories (journals?) once or twice a week - using context.reverso and dictionaries + getting it checked on lang8 or iTalki.
- Read something that's not too challenging for 30 minutes twice a week.
- Listen and read a transcript, (any links for these? I mainly use Lingq, but I like podcasts, and especially interviews with a transcription.)

Specific Ideas:
- Study the specific Spanish / Portuguese / Italian / French grammar differences and nuances with an Anki deck for all 4.
Like the subjunctive for example...
i.e. (ITA) Immagino/penso che = subjunctive, (ESP) Me imagino/pienso que = indicative, (PT & French) indicative, but subjunctive if you want to express doubt.

There's no way I would do all of this though. If I'm lucky, I'd spend an hour analyzing audio with a transcript for an hour once every two weeks for each language.

[coldrainwater]

Several of my immediate thoughts centre around automaticity and reminders:

Buy or create input material that you are interested in each of the languages to maintain and place in prominent places around your living area that you can't miss. Be creative and pick things that you really like. Use that as a memory cue to stay in touch with the resource and dive into when the whim strikes.

If you use a computer for your work or enough personally to benefit, find your primary applications and make sure to leave them in your maintenance languages, maybe on a rotation. Documentation and searching for answers will likely then be in the ML, so it is natural to stay there, especially when it is important to get an answer quickly and move on. The necessity factor often requires several pages of efficient reading with high frequency. The technical documentation itself is what is so often easily available in all languages. Many things naturally default to your ML if your operating system itself is in the language. I would just treat that as a cue to go off on a tangent in that language frequently. Switching takes minutes and provides a benefit that helps indefinitely.

For listening, I love pre-loaded podcasts and audiobooks on the smartphone. It may be a bit extreme but literally, any of my physical training comes by default with headphones and TL audio. As a general rule, bring the maintenance languages closer by making each more convenient. If you shop Amazon, do a lot of it on the maintenance language site, but the buying on your home site. For automaticity, I think setting email reminders, whether it be with short stories pasted right into the email or something else. Make sure to tack that email onto whatever you are currently forced to pay attention to.

Always have a default listen prior to bed/nap and that can be in the language of your choice.

For writing, I would make an effort to take any personal notes (which also often translates to thinking and reflecting time as well) in the ML. For me, that is a good springboard for longer uninterrupted periods thinking actively in the language.

It is not really a recommendation (yet), but I think one of these days I am going to have to bite the bullet and do some of my English procrastination in maintenance languages. For longer reading pieces, that might be as simple as grabbing an accurate deepl translation on the fly and reading it instead of the English. That requires an extra copy/paste operation, but the translation isn't necessarily untenable (it is not the best though). I am thinking a few years down the road, the idea may be more viable than it is today.

[iguanamon]

Maintenance for me starts by waking early, I read the AP en Español for my US news in Spanish in the morning. I read a chapter in the Old Testament Bible in Haitian Creole and Ladino, along with a commentary and podcast in HC. I listen to RFI Brasil on my morning walks, followed by either podcasts from Café Brasil, DW Português para África or something in HC/Catalan/Ladino.

Like coldrainwater, I always have podcasts; books; TL apps and TL music ready to go for downtime on my phone. Brazilian music and Salsa/Son are on heavy rotation in my car, along with said TL podcasts. I also use whatsapp for conversation and chat with friends.

Twitter is my go to for idle moments. I have created and curated a good feed for me in all of my languages plus Occitan (for getting used to it before I learn it someday). My feed includes authors of books I like; journalists; language institutes and TL specialists; non-academic "regular" people; musicians; poets; some news sites and even some politicians. With these daily habits and mix, I am guaranteed maintenance and even advancement. I wouldn't go so far as to use deepl to translate my L1, for a few reasons mainly having to do with efficiency, less than accurate machine translation and the fact that I actually like my L1, English, but if it helps... go for it.

Obviously, you're different from me, but for me it's mostly about forming habits. I've been listening to RFI Brasil's magazine show for so long that I can't imagine not listening to it. It's part of my soundtrack for morning walk. Maintenance doesn't even have to be every day. It doesn't have to include all the skills every day... but at least it should take place most days and all the skills should ideally get some work during the week. I enjoy using the languages I've learned, so I like what I do in them.

When learning a new language or improving a language while in a TL country, that language's urgency can push the others to the side and I've found that I have to make a constant effort to not let that take place so much that I lose what I worked so hard to get.

[StringerBell]

- Listen and read a transcript, (any links for these? I mainly use Lingq, but I like podcasts, and especially interviews with a transcription.)

Someone just recently recommended this really awesome language resource (podcasts with transcripts) for several languages: Polish, English, German, Latin, Spanish, Uzbek. The creator is someone who is a polyglot and loves language learning; his podcasts with transcripts are free, and you can choose to support him through Patreon if you like the content.

https://ioannesoculus.com

[tarvos]

I personally read a lot of books in my target languages. And I try to keep contact with people that speak that particular language. For some languages this is easy, for others harder... and that's why my levels vary so much.

[Ice Blue]

I maintain my languages the same way I learn them : by watching TV/movies/series/youtube videos, listening to songs and translating them and reading books/newspaper articles/manga Those are all activities I like doing in my native language so even though it takes a lot of time it's worth it for me - and effective.

[jeff_lindqvist]

Use the languages with enough frequency to maintain the skills (no surprise), enough variation to make maintenance interesting, and enough intensity to get into the right mode (flow?).

When you've found your way(s), please let us know.

[Saim]

Whenever I try and focus on "maintenance" I end up getting frustrated and it doesn't work.

What I do now is imagine that there is a difference between my overall linguistic competence and my active competence at any given moment. The first is a function of the total input I've gotten in my target language, the latter is a function of the input and active practice I have engaged in recently / on a daily basis. Active competence can fluctuate a lot, overall linguistic competence (evident in things like listening comprehension and passive vocabulary) takes much longer to erode. So chasing after maximum active competence at all times and in all languages is a fool's errand in my view.

I found that over the last year when I was reading in Serbian with the primarily goal of enjoying an interesting text and the secondary goal of learning new words (i.e. not maintain, but get better) I found it much easier to reactivate my maximum active level once I was back in Serbia for the summer, even though I wasn't overall spending more time on the language than in other years.

If you're going to use Anki, I would recommend just spending time reading interesting texts and making sentence cards with monolingual dictionary definitions for new words. It doesn't matter that the words are less common and not necessarily important to keep in your active vocabulary, in my experience this creates more "maintenance" than chasing after "maintenance". I don't think it makes sense to write lots of short stories in the languages you want to maintain, whenever I try to compell myself to write in lots of languages other than my main focus I end up procrastinating and burn out. I find that in cases like these it's more important to take the path of least resistence, you can only really push yourself if you have a single main focus. Or at least that's been my experience, maybe you're different.

[Kraut]

I do the back-translation (bidirectional) method. When i have practiced this for a while visually, left column - right column etc, I record my German translation and do the translation back into Spanish in a loud voice, you could call this "consecutive translation". Right now I have about 3 hours which I repeat randomly.

[golyplot]

What I do now is imagine that there is a difference between my overall linguistic competence and my active competence at any given moment. The first is a function of the total input I've gotten in my target language, the latter is a function of the input and active practice I have engaged in recently / on a daily basis. Active competence can fluctuate a lot, overall linguistic competence (evident in things like listening comprehension and passive vocabulary) takes much longer to erode. So chasing after maximum active competence at all times and in all languages is a fool's errand in my view.

This is pretty much how I see things too. The important part is establishing the initial level. Once you have that, you can always come back to it with a little bit of preparation if need be.