Using Google Calendar for language learning

[tommus]

I find Google Calendar to be essential to keep track of all my daily activities, but I also use it extensively for language learning. Here are two ways:

1. List of helpful sentences. I do extensive online reading every day in my target language. I am constantly coming across useful sentences or expressions that I want to save to review later. So I set up a Calendar event and edit it. In the "Event Details" section, you can put a large amount of formatted or unformatted text. I find unformatted is better. Just "paste as plain text". Sentences, phrases, words, whatever. You can later run them through a translator if you need to. The size of this "Event Details" is not unlimited. When it gets big, copy it to a text file and start again. Very useful and always at your fingertips. I make these "Events" recurring events on the third Sunday of each month where I don't have too many competing events, and where I always know where to find them.

2. Language calendar. This is something new I am experimenting with, partly inspired by the discussion in Cavesa's log about a Retrospective Revision Timetable. You could do it within the "Event Details" as above in whatever format you can make there. If you want a more conventional time/date study timetable, then create a new calendar in Google Calendar. Go to Other Calendars on the left edge of Google Calendar and click on the plus sign (add other calendars). Name it whatever you like, perhaps the name of one of your target languages. You can have any number of these extra calendars. You can colour-code them to show up separately in your main calendar. You can click to display any one or more of your calendars together, or just look at one at a time. So you can view just your specific language calendar to see what your plans are for the coming day, week, month, whatever. Could be a great, very-visible encouragement to keep working on improvements to your target languages.

Do other people have some interesting and innovative ways they use their calendars to support language learning?

[Cavesa]

I am not sure the Google Calendar use you describe is compatible with the RRT. From the description in the video, it is supposed to consist mainly of lines with the name of the studied thing and then dates at which it was revised, highlighted by the appropriate colour fitting your performance.

I may understand it wrong, and I apologise, if that is the case, and will try to understand your description better. But it seems to me, that your method will nicely answer the questions like "What did I do last Sunday?". While the point of the RRT is to easily answer questions like "What did I study a suspiciously long time ago?", "what topics are my weakest ones?"

[Fenderman]

I use Google calendar as well but more to plan my days/time of day for what I want to do for my language learning to help keep me on track. However, my daily use of the app "Atracker Pro" is the one thing I can't live without since it keeps track of the time for each individual thing I do for language learning. I have individual tasks for things like: grammar, reading, Assimil, audio courses, etc. I can then see a nice breakdown of the hours spent for the day, week, month or year for each task.

[tommus]

I am not sure the Google Calendar use you describe is compatible with the RRT. From the description in the video, it is supposed to consist mainly of lines with the name of the studied thing and then dates at which it was revised, highlighted by the appropriate colour fitting your performance.

Well, Ali's RRT technique is not very complicated. It is simple columns and rows with colouring. I just suggested adapting the format into the simple "Event Details". You can make as many rows and columns as you need. And put (G) for green, (R) for red, etc. Very easy to see and change. Something like this (from Ali's video):

RRT.jpg

[Cavesa]

Well, Ali's RRT technique is not very complicated. It is simple columns and rows with colouring. I just suggested adapting the format into the simple "Event Details". You can make as many rows and columns as you need. And put (G) for green, (R) for red, etc. Very easy to see and change. Something like this (from Ali's video):

Yes, the simplicity is what I love about it. Simple to make, simple to interpret. Your method sounded a bit more complicated at first.