Making a vocab list for one language while listening to another

[Khayyam]

I'm in the process of learning how to balance multiple languages, and I've been experimenting with different setups. One thing I've been trying recently, and which works surprisingly well, is to make my vocab lists for a language I'm learning (Persian) while listening to something fairly easy in a language I've already learned to a high degree (German). To my shock and delight, vocab-list-making seems to be in the category of fairly rare activities that actually improve my concentration on audio. Unless I sit still with my eyes closed (and ideally use caffeine to prevent my falling asleep), I find I have to do something with my hands or body to concentrate to the max--hike, walk, do the dishes. As it turns out, making lists of definitions of new words seems to be in this category. Up to a certain point, anyway--if a Persian word is impossible to translate into English, or if I have to switch from Google Translate to a Persian-keyboard website because I don't know how to type a certain Persian character straight into Google, then my concentration will be broken and I'll have to back up the audio. But so what? It's no worse than being on a hike and having to dodge a mountain biker, or walking late at night and being annoyed by a popo car that slows way down because I'm a Suspicious Character in a Dark Neighborhood.

The only part of my receptive-skills-acquisition regimen that I dislike and find tedious has always been my list-making, so this is really good news. If it continues to work, it'll mean that I don't have to chew any broccoli at all to earn my dessert--I'll just enjoy the whole process. It won't all be dessert, exactly, but there won't be anything that makes my eyeball twitch with irritation.

Has anyone else ever tried this?

To be clear about what I mean by making a vocab list: I mean that I've already read a chapter, or whatever section, in Persian and circled all the unfamiliar words, and now I'm making a list of definitions of them to refer to when I reread the chapter.

[iguanamon]

No, I don't do that. I do one language at a time. I focus my attention on that language whilst listening to or reading it and I don't throw in another one.

Time is our enemy. There is never enough time. Even so, I find multi-tasking (except for walking or driving) too much of a distraction for me to make it worthwhile for me. I find listening to English, speech or audio, to be too distracting for me. Even if I'm reading in English, I try not to listen to songs with music. Jazz and classical are ok for me, but that's just me.

Of course, we are all different. If this is something you find useful, then why not?!

[Khayyam]

I understand that it's been proven that there's really no such thing as multitasking--it's really just attention-switching--but I feel like most of my list-making can be done on autopilot and it's just for very brief moments that my attention is pulled away from whatever I'm listening to.

I'm not really studying Persian while I'm listening to German--it's more like doing mindless data entry, mostly.

[Severine]

I feel like most of my list-making can be done on autopilot and it's just for very brief moments that my attention is pulled away from whatever I'm listening to.

I'm not really studying Persian while I'm listening to German--it's more like doing mindless data entry, mostly.

I think you're not wrong about this, but my line of thinking is that while data entry is not studying, it's still an opportunity to have another point of contact with vocab words. Data entry can, if done with focus, be another opportunity to strengthen the mental connections that help us remember.

So when combining them in this way, I would consider myself both losing some ability to notice interesting structures in the German I'm listening to (because some part of my brain is occupied with typing) and also losing the opportunity to meaningfully review my Persian vocab. I might still do it if the tradeoff (saving time, doing something I found pleasant, or whatever) felt worth it, but I would definitely consider it a tradeoff.

[easync]

If I'm doing a pure listening activity, I usually play a mindless video game because it paradoxically makes it easier to focus. Without it, my body feels restless and finding a comfortable position to sit or lay down seems impossible, but if I'm playing CS Deathmatch and listening to a podcast, it's like giving the restless child inside me a toy and distracting it enough that I can get work done. One part of me is controlling the mouse and keyboard and just shooting guys in a video game, but the other part is engaged with conversation on the podcast. This kind of multi-tasking seems beneficial, but only because the activities engage different parts of the mind. You can only do one cognitively demanding thing at a time, the other activity has to be something you could do with very little thinking i.e. driving, doing the dishes, a game you've played a lot etc.

I don't like mixing languages like you described though. Some people approach multi-language learning by "laddering" and using their L2 to learn their L3 and so on, but I keep it simple and just chunk out a piece of time in the day for each of my languages. Balancing languages can be as easy as just carving out a specific time in your calendar and maybe having in mind exactly what you're going to do so you don't waste time figuring that out during the time block.

[Iversen]

I can listen to music or watch TV without sound while I do wordlists, but I prefer not to listen to speech - and speech in a bad or mediocre language would be worse because it takes more of my concentration away. The curious thing is that watching TV without sound, but with subtitles (In Danish, English, German, Swedish, Norwegian, Spanish or Italian or whatever) doesn't seem to have the same effect, so I guess that the problem is that sound is obtrusive and comes when I least expect it - and then it totally spoils the memorization I'm doing in that moment. And then I get irritated.

I did however notice that Khayyam didn't explicitely refer to memorisation, but to just writing lists - which is supposed to be less taxing and therefore less likely to be disturbed by external speech. So maybe it's another activity with other rules.

As for laddering: well, Danish is not a world language so I do to a large extent learn my newer languages through older ones. But I don't see this as a strategy - rather as a necessity. Besides it's fun. I don't mind at all using funny tansaltion languages in my bilingual printouts, and a large proportion of my dictionaries do not have Danish as base language.

As for multitasking: true multitasking may not exist - at least not at the conscious level, though it does at the subconscious one (I don't stop breathing because I listen to a program in French on TV5). The thing that DOES exist is time-slicing, where you switch between different tasks. And one thing the learned ones have chosen to ignore that you CAN do this and keep the continuity in more than one task -but only if if those tasks aren't too difficult. So how do they then 'prove' that multitasking doesn't exist? Well, they make at least one of the tasks so difficult that it breaks the sense of continuity for the others, and then your level of productivity of course plummets.

[Khayyam]

I feel like most of my list-making can be done on autopilot and it's just for very brief moments that my attention is pulled away from whatever I'm listening to.

I'm not really studying Persian while I'm listening to German--it's more like doing mindless data entry, mostly.

I think you're not wrong about this, but my line of thinking is that while data entry is not studying, it's still an opportunity to have another point of contact with vocab words. Data entry can, if done with focus, be another opportunity to strengthen the mental connections that help us remember.

So when combining them in this way, I would consider myself both losing some ability to notice interesting structures in the German I'm listening to (because some part of my brain is occupied with typing) and also losing the opportunity to meaningfully review my Persian vocab. I might still do it if the tradeoff (saving time, doing something I found pleasant, or whatever) felt worth it, but I would definitely consider it a tradeoff.

Yeah, you're right--I don't do either activity with the focus I otherwise would. If I weren't listening to the German, I might be rereading the Persian as I went along to see if this time I can understand the circled words without looking them up, and if I weren't making my Persian word list, I would likely have thoughts about the German podcast that won't occur because my attention's divided. Even if I 100% understand the content of the podcast, I won't be able to really contemplate it.

With any content I listen to, I have to ask myself how much it matters that I contemplate it rather than just get it. In this case, it was two comedians telling an easy-to-follow story to a raucous crowd, and I felt that I probably didn't miss out on anything important by not fully focusing on it. If I'd been with it 100%, I might've remembered some incidental names, places, etc. better, but I don't care about remembering that stuff anyway.

OTOH, I would never try to make a list while listening to a physicist explain physics.

We were talking in another thread about the importance of doing things you like enough that they're sustainable, even if theoretically they're not the most efficient way. This might be another example of that for me. I mean, I'm sufficiently determined that I'll make my lists no matter how much it sucks, but I might actually end up getting through more of them faster, thereby advancing in Persian faster, if I just allow myself the indulgence of listening to stuff like German comedy shows while I make them.

[Severine]

We were talking in another thread about the importance of doing things you like enough that they're sustainable, even if theoretically they're not the most efficient way. This might be another example of that for me. I mean, I'm sufficiently determined that I'll make my lists no matter how much it sucks, but I might actually end up getting through more of them faster, thereby advancing in Persian faster, if I just allow myself the indulgence of listening to stuff like German comedy shows while I make them.

I am in 100% agreement. That's why I specifically mentioned 'doing something I found pleasant' as a possible reason to do it even though I'd view it, pedagogically, as a tradeoff. Honestly, I am willing to enagage in some scandalously non-optimal language learning activities as long as I am enjoying myself Aside from the obvious cross-cultural and social benefits, I learn languages primarily for fun, curiosity, creativity, and intellectual stimulation, so speed and efficiency are not my main concerns (although my personality is such that a truly ineffectual routine would be basically impossible to enjoy, so it's a bit of a balancing act).

In short, as long as you're not making errors, finding yourself frustrated, or noticing any other adverse effects, keep on keepin' on (in my humble opinion).

[leosmith]

I've already read a chapter, or whatever section, in Persian and circled all the unfamiliar words, and now I'm making a list of definitions of them to refer to when I reread the chapter.

This interested me. I tend to agree with the others, and have nothing valuable to add, but I'm curious about your method. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure it's effective; it's stood the test of time. But why the lack of tech? I'm a bit jealous tbh

[Khayyam]

I've already read a chapter, or whatever section, in Persian and circled all the unfamiliar words, and now I'm making a list of definitions of them to refer to when I reread the chapter.

This interested me. I tend to agree with the others, and have nothing valuable to add, but I'm curious about your method. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure it's effective; it's stood the test of time. But why the lack of tech? I'm a bit jealous tbh

I intend to start a new log soon where I describe my method in detail in my first post so I can just link to that any time I refer to my method in my posts. (It's not that I necessarily think it's so great that I should promote it every chance I get; I just can't help but refer to it frequently when talking about snags I've hit, etc.)

Re: lack of tech: what do you mean, exactly? Like, why circle words and go back and look them up when I could just look them up on the spot if I were reading on a device?