I have a list of 10 language-related activities for Korean. 1 activity for Mandarin Chinese and 1 for Thai.
The activities for Mandarin Chinese and for Thai are really simple and low intensity. I'm using some apps to practice handwriting in those languages. I can see the letter/character I'm practicing in a light color or outlined and I can write over it (so I'm not trying to write them from memory, which would increase the intensity of this activity). For Chinese characters I divided a long list into groups of 5 characters each because that's a small enough quantity to not take too much time (or effort) before I can get it perfect (in this case I'm practicing the right stroke order, and I can only move on to a new subgroup of 5 Chinese characters after I've written perfectly all 5 characters one after the other. If I make a mistake in one, I complete the round with all the characters and then go back for a new round with the same subgroup of characters until I get a perfect round.
And for Thai is even more simple, I have an animation showing me how to write the letters and I just follow the animation. My goal with this is just to get familiar with Thai letters (I'm not even paying attention to the names of the letters or their sound).
For Korean I decided to keep track of my activities as a way to motivate me. I have a spreadsheet that lists the activities on the first column and then the days of the week on the next columns. Each activity and its corresponding row is color-coded so I can easily differentiate between activities on the grid. To make things easier for me, I put a circle on the corresponding part of the grid of the day I have engaged in a specific activity from the list. I don't have a minimum goal for each activity or in total. As long as I've engaged in any of the activities for that day (whether for 1 minute or 1 hour), I put the corresponding circle on the grid.
From doing this I can see there are some days I've been so busy or tired that I haven't engaged in any of the activities. But when I do engage on at least one activity, I've noticed these are the two that pop-up the most (because I really enjoy them and their intensity is very low): - Watching TV shows or movies with audio (original or dubbed) in my native language (Spanish) and subtitles in my target language (Korean) at 0.75x speed. This activity is great for learning/reinforcing vocabulary in context while also having fun watching something I find interesting. I can also learn different ways of communicating the same idea, and reinforce/learn some grammar as well. This is my favorite activity for when I have time at the end of the day, but I'm too tired to do a more intensive activity. And it's also great for binge watching on weekends.
- Using "Memorion" (an Android app) in this way: Instead of the usual SRS where new cards get activated for study each day, I decided to use Memorion's cram mode and activate, from the start, ALL cards in my two decks (it's actually just the same nouns deck two times, the first one asks from Korean to English and the second one from English to Korean). In total I activated 5516 cards.
This is from my log:
AndyMeg wrote:But I'm not trying to get through all those cards in a single day. I go to the learn section, see the cue and think about the answer and write it by hand. In the "Cram mode" I have three options for the repetition interval: Done (it doesn't show the card again), OK (which means it'll be presented again after 15 minutes) and Play/Again. I go through 20 cards or so at a time and then I get out of the Learn Mode. If I don't remember an answer completely right, then I choose the OK (15 minutes) interval, so that I don't risk meeting the word again within the same session and having to continue tackling it until I get it right during that session. The reason for this is that I'm using the "Cram mode" more for getting familiar with those words and paying attention to them so that when I find them while interacting with native material I'm more aware of them. Also, this strategy helps me to immediately eliminate from the study list those words that I already know rather well, and that way I can focus on getting more exposure to the unfamiliar words. So it still serves as a SRS path, but in a more relaxed way as I don't have to go through a specific number of cards each day and I don't have to repeat each card until perfection in any given session.
Something that I've added now is that I activate the handwriting option even when I don't know the answer and then click on the "show answer" button so that I can copy it by hand on the screen. I've found that it increases the probability of me remembering the right answer later on, but it still keeps the activity low intensity.
My ultimate goal would be to deactivate all cards from the Cram mode by being able to handwrite them instantly and thus choose the "Done" option for each of them. I'm slowly reducing the "still active for Cram" cards and seeing that number get lower motivates me.
Also, Memorion has different games, and I've found out that the lowest intensity games for me are these two:-->
"Hang'Em": It's a "hangman game". It shows me a hint in Korean and I have to guess the English equivalent/meaning before the hanging man diagram is completed.
-->
"Just Listen": This one is ideal for when I'm doing the dishes or a similar activity. It shows an audiovisual cue in a language and it gives me some time to think about the answer before it tells me the answer. I can choose any delay for the answer between 0 seconds and 10 seconds. I usually make the delay last between 3 and 4.5 seconds.
Memorion is great for using at small periods of time throughout the day.By the way, I'm currently watching some Thai and Chinese TV/Web dramas (with English subs); but just for fun, as I'm not using them for active study.