Power Language Learning Week 3: Controlling Our Language Learning
Hi there, Steve Kaufmann here again for week 3 of my Power Language Learning where I'm trying to learn three languages every day and make sure that I save 100 links, create 100 links. In other words, look up 100 new words every day in each of the languages.
I have to admit, it's becoming a bit of a chore to make sure that I get those 100 every day. I'm going to show you some snapshots of my profile to show you that I am more or less keeping up to the 100 a day. I think I had a day or two here and there where I wasn't able to. I can use my coins at LingQ to maintain my streak and then I looked at my statistics. In fact, I can show you one now. Let's just take Persian. In fact, I'll show the three of them now: Persian, Turkish and Arabic. I'll give you a five second look at each one of them.
The basic idea is that I am keeping up to the 100 links created every day. However, I have less time now for each language, given that I only have about an hour or so of listening time available, an hour, an hour and a half, when I make breakfast, do the dishes, workout in the gym, I'm on my bicycle, those kinds of things. I mean, there's only so much of that time. Obviously, I'm listening less to each language than when I was focused on one. So what I want to talk about today is controlling the things that you can control and not worrying about the things that you can't control.
Obviously, I am listening to less say Arabic than if I were only learning Arabic. Therefore, to that extent, I will progress more slowly in Arabic than would otherwise be the case. It's just a fact that there is only so much time I have available. I'm not going to spend three hours a day listening to the three languages in order to make up for the fact that I have to divide my listening time into three. The same is true of all the other activities. I am forcing myself to study three languages. I am creating 100 links every day, looking up 100 new words in order to make sure that I in fact do spend time on each language. I find at the end of the day if I only have 30 links created in Turkish, I'm going to have to sit down and find some content with a lot of blue or unknown words, which isn't difficult, and then go through and create 100 links. That's what I'm controlling.
Now, I can't control, for example, when I'm going to learn a word. Some of the words that I've saved before in Arabic, for example, 03:07.4, I can never remember the word for (03:14.7 inaudible). I don't know. I can't remember. I see it and every time I see it it's like a new word. For whatever reason, that word doesn't want to enter my brain. I can't control that.
I don't worry about it. In time it will sock in.
That's one reason, for example, why I'm not a big fan of spaced repetition systems. I don't believe that given the sort of frequency of reviewing something based on some algorithm is going to determine when I learn it. I'll learn it when I learn it. That's another reason why people say, well, how can you possibly save 100 new words every day? How can you keep track of them? I don't worry about keeping track of them. I can't control that.
I can control the fact that I look up 100 words in each language every day. That I can control. I can't control how frequently I will see those words, even a word that I see very frequently in Arabic because I'm listening to a lot of sort of political discussions and there are words that come up all the time. I mean, I'm getting lots of frequency of economics, politics, demonstrations, things like that, and some of those words, even with the same amount of frequency, some I remember, some I don't. I don't worry about it. I can't control that.
All I control is that I'm going to try to listen equally to all three languages every day, but it tends to be that I'm more on one language than the other. It looks like my Turkish is suffering. I can't even control the fact that at LingQ we have text to speech for Turkish and Arabic, but we don't have it for Persian, which makes it more difficult to learn Persian. I can't control the fact that the Persian text seems to get distorted on my iPad app, which doesn't happen with the Arabic and Turkish, our technical people are looking into it, so I have to study the Persian on the computer, which is less convenient for me than doing it on the iPad. I can't control that, so fine.
One thing that's important too is when I do spend whatever I manage to put in every day. I can't control if my wife wants to go play golf. I mean, we're down here to play golf. She likes to play golf. I can't say sorry, I'm going to try and put in an extra three hours today on language to try and get caught up. I can't really control that. I operate within the limits of what I can control. I am able to create 100 links a day. That I can control. I know that in time, gradually, I'm getting better. I understand more and more of these political podcasts in Arabic. I also can't control, for example, if they have a podcast in Arabic that some people speak more clearly than others. Some people drag in Egyptian or Iraqi Arabic in their supposedly standard Arabic discussions. I can't control that.
I was listening to Fargo in Persian and for the last long while they were talking about the sort of nuclear program in Iran and things of that nature with a lot of technical terms, which wasn't very interesting to me. Still, that's what I have available, so I'm using the Fargo. Now that they've had these demonstrations in Iran surrounding the increase in the price of gasoline, I find that a little more interesting and the vocabulary a little more useful. So I'm learning from that kind of content. Unfortunately, in Persian there are not a lot of resources out there. In French or Spanish or Russian or Japanese maybe there's a greater variety of things that I could use. I have to deal with what's available to me.
The other thing that I can control is to tell myself what you are doing is worth it. Learning languages, learning Persian, Turkish and Arabic is a worthwhile activity. Even when it's frustrating, even when you keep on forgetting the same words, I know that I will eventually learn the language. I think it's a worthwhile activity, I think that my method of learning is effective, so I just keep going.
I can control my attitude. I can, to some extent, control the amount of time I put in. I like having goals that I can control. Like 100 links every day, I can control that. But I can't control how quickly I'll learn. I can't control when words will stick. I can't control when certain aspects of the grammar will stick. I can only control what I do. I think it's important in language learning to focus on our activities, our level of activity, the kind of activity we engage in and not worry too much about the outcome because, to some extent, the outcome is not within our ability to control.
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That's what I have to say and I look forward to your comments. Bye for now.