How many tracks are too many tracks?
Posted: Mon May 31, 2021 1:31 pm
iguanamon made famous http://www.language-learners.org/2016/02/07/the-multi-track-approach-to-language-learning-guest-post-by-iguanamon/.
What sort of thinking goes into your balance between accomplishing a particular "track" and how many tracks you're following?
Does how disciplined you are affect your decisions?
Does the duration of the track come into your overall plan?
Does the portability of your track come into play? Can you make your tracks more portable?
Some concrete around the questions:
I'm doing 30 minutes of Anki and have 3 decks. If I only had 2, I could give the others a bit more time and would finish those tracks a bit sooner.
The FSI Basic Spanish course has once again become the centerpiece of my courses. I do drills in the car, review earlier units with the manual, preview future lessons with the manual, and have an FSI deck. Don't know that that's too many tracks for one track, but it's what I'm doing. (this is primarily speaking and structure (grammar in non-grammatical terms), but not conversation per se).
On the YouTube front, I've set out to watch the 300 episodes of the telenovela, La fea más bella, which is about 200 hours just to watch the whole thing once. I watch other stuff when I don't feel like focusing on the story, but that's not a track, per se.
I'd set myself the goal of 30 minutes of extensive reading per day and was doing pretty good for a few weeks, but have found the telenovela track taking time away from this.
Cien años de soledad is getting about an hour per week following a good actor/reader on youtube.
Using Spanish gets dabbled into in the restroom. Not systematically, but giving particularly challenging lessons some time over the course of a few days per lesson.
Started a Don Quijote track with Anaya's El Quijote adapted text. This fits in with extensive reading, but I've not been disciplined in reading 30 minutes per day.
i can see several of the tracks taking 6-12 months or so on their own.
Paul Nation has his notion of "the 4 strands". I saw another polyglot using 3 tracks in her example.
What do you all do?
What sort of thinking goes into your balance between accomplishing a particular "track" and how many tracks you're following?
Does how disciplined you are affect your decisions?
Does the duration of the track come into your overall plan?
Does the portability of your track come into play? Can you make your tracks more portable?
Some concrete around the questions:
I'm doing 30 minutes of Anki and have 3 decks. If I only had 2, I could give the others a bit more time and would finish those tracks a bit sooner.
The FSI Basic Spanish course has once again become the centerpiece of my courses. I do drills in the car, review earlier units with the manual, preview future lessons with the manual, and have an FSI deck. Don't know that that's too many tracks for one track, but it's what I'm doing. (this is primarily speaking and structure (grammar in non-grammatical terms), but not conversation per se).
On the YouTube front, I've set out to watch the 300 episodes of the telenovela, La fea más bella, which is about 200 hours just to watch the whole thing once. I watch other stuff when I don't feel like focusing on the story, but that's not a track, per se.
I'd set myself the goal of 30 minutes of extensive reading per day and was doing pretty good for a few weeks, but have found the telenovela track taking time away from this.
Cien años de soledad is getting about an hour per week following a good actor/reader on youtube.
Using Spanish gets dabbled into in the restroom. Not systematically, but giving particularly challenging lessons some time over the course of a few days per lesson.
Started a Don Quijote track with Anaya's El Quijote adapted text. This fits in with extensive reading, but I've not been disciplined in reading 30 minutes per day.
i can see several of the tracks taking 6-12 months or so on their own.
Paul Nation has his notion of "the 4 strands". I saw another polyglot using 3 tracks in her example.
What do you all do?