Plan: How to Learn

[Ольга]

Do you have any plans of how to learn one or another language?
I think my language learning is a bit chaotic.
I read and write in English, using the Listening-Reading Method for English.
But my level of German and French (not saying about Greek) is not enough for this method.
Usually, I watch youtube channels in German, French and Greek.
I dislike textbooks, it seems me too boring just to learn using a textbook. I even don't know how to make me learn the textbooks for my CPE exam.
How do you plan and make your studies more structuralized?

[peter]

Do you have any plans of how to learn one or another language?
I think my language learning is a bit chaotic.

I'm interested to see other replies to this, as there are probably as many plans as there are learners!

For what it's worth I'll tell you my current plan and recent experience, though it is at beginner level (I don't know your level - you may be well beyond this). I've never been successful at learning languages, and I think this was because of a disdain for the basics and not wanting to put in the effort. I am learning Bengali, and almost 20 years ago finished the grammar sections of my book, but I never thought much of learning vocab by drill (how dull is that?) believing it should come by osmosis or magic (why not? other things came pretty easily). I went too far with that too quickly, got bored at my inability to do anything with the grammar, and moved onto other things.

I dislike textbooks, it seems me too boring just to learn using a textbook.

OK, I'm the opposite. I always want a book when I start something new. Even with all the internet riches available, I want a solid book on my table - that is my guide, that is the foundation I'm going to absorb and base everything else on, that is my source of comfort in this scary journey into the unknown. Other people may like a coach/tutor to guide them through. Others may be more adventurous and self-assured. Neither of them is me.

But you certainly have to do more than just the book (or tutored time, even), and that was the mistake I made before.

My own approach at the moment is to, first, hit the vocabulary. I started this journey again at the end of September. I'm aiming to have 1000 words learnt by Christmas. Not just learnt, but in fairly active use. I start with learning wordlists in notebooks, then revision in Anki. The second part comes from my book and those paced grammar exercises. I do them as the book wants, and then redo them using some of the vocab I'm learning that week, and vocab for things from my daily life. I fill several pages in my notebook in this way. I enjoy this - it feels creative and productive. For example, one chapter had exercises about postpositions "on top of", "left of" etc. After doing my writing, I could sit back and say these phrases to myself whilst looking around the room "cup on the table", "chair left of fire" etc. Practising the grammar, practising the vocabulary. It has taken time, but in 6 weeks I've gone from saying a limited number of single words to consecutive sentences about many things in my daily life.

But the big thrill, as I wrote in my language log recently, is to start noticing some of these words and phrases in real material. Most real text remains depressingly impenetrable to me, but increasingly I spot the words I've been learning. Occasionally the bits I know coalesce in one place, and suddenly I can read an entire sentence! That's a great feeling. And gives me confidence I'm doing the right things.

How do you plan and make your studies more structuralized?

Of course, we all have different ways of learning, but most of us need a guide into a subject as complex as a language. For me, a book is essential for this plan and structure. Book learning does not bother me, and understanding the logic behind grammar is in itself interesting. This is also my second attack on Bengali, and I knew I had to supplement the book: limited vocab was a big weakness in how I was trying before, along with not practising beyond the exercises. I can also see a bright light in a few months as part III of my book will help guide me through reading some real texts. That looks an interesting place to be.

[rfnsoares]

At the beginning a structured plan then caos
I also do not like textbooks. I never finish them. But they are important at least at the very beginning of your studies, because of the audio files. Pronunciation is key when you are start learning a language. They usually provide slow audio files, which help a lot with pronunciation.
I prefer to work with grammar books. Why? My main usage and goal with the languages I learn are reading, from newspapers to novels. So I learn all aspects that I need to starting reading as soon as possible. For example, conjugations (tenses, active and passive voice, participles, etc), declensions, adverbs, adjectives, degrees of comparison, superlative, etc and etc. Everything I need to start to understand sentence structures. Usually I will be doing this for about 3-4 months.
I usually access my progress opening online newspapers from time to time. If I manage to understand the structures I am ready to start improving my vocabulary. At first I read newspapers and Wikipedia articles. I read, look up for unknown words, save them on a Excel sheet and review them. I do not like Anki. I won't lie, this process is hard but I will pay off
Well, of course, every language might require a different approach. I am a Portuguese native speaker. With the other main Romance languages I started reading from day one along with my grammar studies and pronunciation.
I hope I helped you.

[aaleks]

How do you plan and make your studies more structuralized?

I don't . I'm more about improvisation than plans .
Speaking more seriously, I think that first of all you need to know what your (current) goal(s) is. If you're going to take the CPE exam then it probably would be better to stick to those CPE textbooks you've mentioned. You could use them as guide books to make your own plan.
Since I really don't make plans I'm afraid my approach to learning wouldn't be of much help to you. I usually just follow my interest. Yes, I have my temporary goals, which are kind of reference points to me, e.g. in the beginning I was more foxused on listening, then on reading, later I found out that I needed to pay more attention to grammar, and now it's writing.

[David1917]

Здравствуйте, Ольга

I'm the opposite - I love textbooks and writing out endless pattern drills etc. It's the way I learn best. I think at some point, you may have to just bite the bullet and do one textbook - maybe something like the old Hugo series which allows you to choose the grammar points that give you trouble.

If you are trying to take a more sporadic approach, I would suggest doing intensive reading + Anki. Choose short texts that are of interest to you, like a German song or a French news article, and put the words you don't know into Anki. You can do the same with the youtube videos. Anki takes like 5 minutes a day, but it can be enough to grow your vocabulary and comprehension in a structured manner. But your input is still from the "chaotic" method which seems to keep you interested. Assimil would be great for this, too - one lesson per day, listen and read along a few times, put the words you don't know in Anki and move on. It's not like a textbook at all if you just use it as a means of getting 100 readings.

[smallwhite]

Do you have any plans of how to learn one or another language?

Your Language Learning Strategy...In 50 Words or so

Language logs

[jeff_lindqvist]

Do you have any plans of how to learn one or another language?
I think my language learning is a bit chaotic.

It's good to have a plan and a strategy to reach your goals, but chaos is not the end of the world. Some people think I'm very structured and disciplined, and alright, I spend some time on Duolingo and Anki every day but that's it. On a good day I find the time to read in a number of languages. I never use a tutor on Skype (or IRL), in fact I rarely speak any of my languages expect when the situation arises. Sometimes I pick up a grammar book and do some exercises (like in the beginning of this year when I was working with the book "Russian in Excercises"). And I sometimes watch movies in my target languages, or listen to radio programs without understanding a lot. If you read my log from the beginning, you'll notice that my enthusiasm comes in bursts, that I change approaches every now and then, that I take long breaks from certain languages...

[Willow]

I dislike textbooks, it seems me too boring just to learn using a textbook. I even don't know how to make me learn the textbooks for my CPE exam.

I used to have a contempt towards text-books as well, but I now I revised my approach. It was really difficult to deal with German grammar without any plan, moreover, I've recently realised that I started to have holes in English grammar as well.
So, I thing that books may appear quite boring when it comes to basics of language, but later they really help you to put you grammar skills in order.

How do you plan and make your studies more structuralized?

I mostly listen to my intuition, and in case i like the course, I'm trying to complete it.

[coldrainwater]

I wait until I make it to a new CEFR level and then go back and figure out how my plan must have worked to get there. They have to drag me kicking and screaming from one level to the next and I won't move more than one square at a time on the language board. I covered my plan going from A0-A2 in the '50 words or less' thread linked above. My summarized route from A2-B1 using a structure through habit approach went more like:

I picked my weakest area (listening was around A1 at the time) and built my main habit around it. Podcasts were low friction activities, so after a brief bootstrap using listen/read, I jumped into native podcasts by attaching my listening hours to a very strong pre-existing workout habit and gave that habit a month or three to take hold. I want an advanced ear (not sure how it will look or be shaped, hopefully like a "C" someday) and I have found it works well to divide new listening ventures into 100-hour chunks. To date, I have done this with podcasts, TV and am now working on audiobooks. I also added extra reading hours once the listening habit was in place to take advantage of the synergies offered, but that story didn't involve as much perceived challenge since I love reading and I am doing so in a language filled with cognates and refreshing grammar (Spanish). My page count is currently over 4,000 pages read and for what help it may have offered, it was enough for me to test at an intermediate listening ability. Hour estimates were around 400+ hours podcasts, 100 hours+ TV, 50 hours+ audiobooks. Podcast hours were lower quality sometimes due to distraction, but audiobook and TV hours were full attention. I might estimate that I had another 20+ hours on top of that that I somehow simply forgot about or didn't record, mostly spread out in the beginning stage of my journey. This tiny listening history took place over about eight or nine months. Receptive skills may now be at B2 but I'll say conservatively that they are not worse than B1.

Although I have for sure devoted some time to writing grammar, and speaking, they aren't my primary goals and I found it too tough to juggle all of it at once so I ended up frontloading everything with massive input. Like some other posters have commented, I can see myself hitting each of these areas (or more likely vocabulary as it is a wanderlust topic for me) once some extra hours open up that are currently being gobbled up by a very greedy listening habit. I would like to wake up one day and see 2000 hours listened, but I am not in a huge rush to get there.