How do you deal with road blocks in language learning?
I was wondering how you guys deal with road blocks in language learning because I am currently faced with one right now.
I’ve been going at Korean for a little while now and recently have ran into a road block, and it seems as if I am not making any progress.
I’ve gone through a lot of content, but it seems the newer lessons that I start, they’re almost too hard to be able to study (more than 50% of the text is yellow words), and was wondering what you guys normally do when you hit moments like this in language learning.
Right now I’m currently trying to study more vocab with SRS, and about to start another beginner course which to me usually helps me solidify my base in the language more, and usually come out with a better understanding of the grammar and nuances of the language.
I would say cycle between things that are challenging, like a novel or podcast that you have trouble understanding, and easy content you have no problem understanding. Also, while studying Spanish every day, when I got tired (once or twice a month) I would take 3-4 day breaks which kind of refreshed my love for language learning and made me more motivated to get back to learning (also I feel like it gives the information time to sit. Every time I did this I came back feeling my Spanish was better than it was before the break). Also, I think short-term goals really help, like “I’m going to make 1000 LingQs this week.” My last piece of advice is to create an reason to improve, like schedule an italki lesson at the end of the week.
I did the break thing a lot when I learned French and Spanish, without even meaning to. It was more so due to burnout. But I always came back feeling a lot better with what I was working with.
I also think another reason might be getting burned out on a resource, such as LingQ. I’ve been using it pretty strongly lately and I think that is part of my demise. I’m relying too much on having a on hand dictionary that it actually makes it hard to branch out to real material, websites, videos.
Also I’ve never really set goals in language learning other than for specific topics such as “I want to be able to understand the news, so I plan to learn X number of words pertaining to it a day”. Setting a LingQing goal is easy to achieve for me, as I will sit down and knock it out, and I am already creating 200+ LingQs a day in Korean.
As of right now, I don’t plan on using Italki or anything to communicate with people, unless I’m at a solid intermediate stage where I can understand the majority.
However, I do like the idea of the goal setting such as spending 1 week on a longer harder lesson, working towards memorizing it. I feel this helped me in the past in French and Spanish when I learned songs over a long period of time.
I think I will take a couple days off, so that I can come back at it ever harder with more motivation and a better game plan.
Thanks for the tips and advice. Also good luck on your 90 day French challenge when you decide to do it!
Is your question just “what do you do when there isn’t enough material at the appropriate level in lingQ?” This happened to me in Russian, and I just went out and found my own material to use here as imported lessons. Have you exhausted all the free audio with transcripts from sites like TTMIK, Koreanpod101, etc? I’ve sort of got my eye on the TTMIK Iyagi. Not sure if it’s all free, but there must be at least 20 hours of intermediate native conversations covering basic topics in 10min or so segments. I downloaded all the content in Koreanpod101 after they made me a 1 month premium member for $1, and there are tons of pdf’s, so I assume that will take me some time to go through. Korean probably has the best resources of any asian language I’ve studied, at least at the time I’ve studied it. It’s quite amazing.
All that’s for my future of course. Right now I’m a Pimsleur learning machine.
I haven’t used TTMIK or KoreanPod but I’m afriad if they’re like other sites, they will have too much English on the audio or course. And I think you did nail the question right on the head, mor so my problem was not having enough suitable material. Every other language I’ve used on LingQ has enough, but with Korean there is a lot missing in terms of beginner content.
Thanks for the response. I will check KoreanPod and TTMIK, hopefully they won’t have too much English to edit.
There is way too much English in the beginner podcasts for your purposes, if I estimate your level correctly. But there are pure natural conversation podcasts too. Here is a sample: http://www.talktomeinkorean.com/shows/iyagi-1/
I see there are 150 of these, so about 25 hours of intermediate material. I think you can download it all free, but I could be wrong. I’d be curious to know what percentage of unknown words the first lesson is for you, if you have a chance to load it in lingq.
(edit - I see this lesson has been already shared here Login - LingQ)
Hey, thanks for responding. I checked the lesson out, and it’s around 25-30% of unknown. I can work with this and I think it will help me bridge that gap from where I’m currently at, to more authentic material.
I do still plan to be going through beginner material (either reviewing old stuff, or using new books) as well as using these podcasts.
Thank you so much, and good luck when you decide to tackle Korean on full time.
You bet. I’ll probably start using lingq heavily around the first of the year, possibly a little earlier. If you find any cool content before then, please post about it.