A language learners’ forum

Axon wrote:What exactly are you doing for your study time?

Smallwhite, you mentioned that you're just doing vocab or mostly vocab right now. How, specifically, does one study vocabulary in a way that can be sustained over more than three hours a day?

Breakdown of the 466 minutes of May 30th:

031 mins listening but mostly admin
028 mins speaking
084 mins looking for things to read + making parallel texts, maybe also reading without dictionary
200 mins reading with dictionary + new words into Excel + into Quizlet + related admin
108 mins Quizlet reps over 6 sessions
015 mins I spend a lot of time on LLorg which is 99.99% non-L1 but I only record 15 mins each day for the 6WC
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466 mins total
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Normally all that would be done over 3 days, for a language at B1~B2.

Axon wrote:What exactly are you doing for your study time?

My daily routine for French includes doing Assimil for about 20 minutes, and then two or three intensive 30-minute sessions of grammar using my French grammar book and Kwiziq. On some days I chorus Assimil which usually takes an additional 30 minutes. The other time is spent writing to my French exchange partners, listening to Coffee Break French, random listening exercises, and reading online articles in or about French. Throughout the day I engage with French in many different ways, but I don't count anything that is less than 10 minutes because I would go crazy.

I'm not going to meet my self-imposed goal for this challenge but overall I'm happy with the mix of textbook, Memrise, and vocab work I'm doing. I'd hoped to be doing more reading/watching, but I think I'm going to concentrate on that during the 6 weeks between challenges.

This is our last week, right? Everyone else achieving what you'd hoped to?

Yes, this is our last week!

I have achieved far more than I had hoped to in Turkish. I started Turkish early February, with an original goal of B1 in 360 hours. Having 6WCs on more than off during the past 4 months has really helped me do more hours per day. Together with a few efficiency tweaks, I've been achieving more while studying less. B1 happened in not 360 hours but 260 hours, and 360 hours produced not just B1 but B2 in grammar, reading and vocabulary as well, as tested online. I don't usually study beyond my goals but this time I can't stop

Turns out studying for just about an hour a day shoots you into the top ten pretty quick.

I've just arrived in Shunde (near Guangzhou). Probably won't do much more actual study, but if I do any significant amount of focused watching/listening/conversation practice this week I'll count it.

I hear about 10% Cantonese and 88% Mandarin on the street (the remaining 2% is Min, Hakka, etc). Still, I had three short tourist conversations in Cantonese already, which was exactly what I wanted and all the study is already worth it. Two people even opened with Cantonese!!! On me, a foreigner!

What a day!

smallwhite wrote:I have achieved far more than I had hoped to in Turkish. I started Turkish early February, with an original goal of B1 in 360 hours. Having 6WCs on more than off during the past 4 months has really helped me do more hours per day. Together with a few efficiency tweaks, I've been achieving more while studying less. B1 happened in not 360 hours but 260 hours, and 360 hours produced not just B1 but B2 in grammar, reading and vocabulary as well, as tested online. I don't usually study beyond my goals but this time I can't stop

This is incredible. It's hard for me to imagine getting to B1 in 260 hours, particularly in a language like Turkish. I'm very impressed and I would love to be that efficient in the future if I learn an L3. The time that you spend on your language each day makes me feel a little guilty for not spending more time on French. I have the whole day to do whatever I want, and yet I only study actively about 2 hours a day.

smallwhite wrote:Breakdown of the 466 minutes of May 30th:

031 mins listening but mostly admin
028 mins speaking

Out of curiosity, what do you do for speaking practice?

I had my last Russian exam a bit over a week ago, and haven't done any Russian since due to other exams. But I've now finished the last one, today, so either I'll start climbing the ladder again (you are hereby warned! ), or I'll collapse completely... I'm currently on the 8th spot on the focus language list, and the way up to the 5th seems doable. The results are already in, so there's no need to worry any more about getting a nervous breakdown while studying the stuff I didn't do so well on the exam (verbs of movement, to be specific)

zjones wrote:This is incredible. ... what do you do for speaking practice?

Thank you.

Shadowing, reading aloud, self-talk, textbook exercises, writing...

A related post of mine from the thread How to study on public transportation.

smallwhite wrote:
Challenge XXIX - May 2018

Starts: Tuesday, 1st May 2018 00h00m01s your time
Ends: Monday, 11th Jun 2018 23h59m59s your time

Getting ready to leave so I got up early to finish my day's German. Ending it at 86 hours--well short of my 100 hour goal, but I felt it was a very productive challenge for me. Lots of vocabulary progress, conversation, and finally got a handle on Datives.

How did everyone else do?