I hope everyone is having a great start to the week. I wanted to see how people divide up their time learning languages for each activity and how many hours you dedicate to language learning in general.
As it stands, I feel like my current breakout is working well for the time being. That said, I plan on ramping up writing and speaking a bit more as the year progress.
One of the things I wish I had done early on when learning languages was to read a lot more. This has been invaluable to my progress over the past 2 years. I think the same goes for listening as well.
What about you all? How many hours are you dedicating to language learning each week and where is your time mostly spent?
I would prefer to have these a little more even, but it’s easy to listening the car in the morning and fitting in reading time elsewhere in the day is not always as easy. No speaking yet for me, other than reading aloud (which doesn’t really count other than to practice pronunciation) and occasionally speaking to myself.
From time to time, I’ll check grammar out, or do a deep dive into particular words that have very different uses.
SRS/Flashcards is a waste of time imo except at the very beginning to learn the basics. Beyond that, there just isn’ enough time in the day to review all the words once you get beyond a basic level. Better to get the review of words in real reading and listening. It can probably be helpful for certain words you might get stuck on. The problem is there will as well be LOTS of these words you get stuck on, so reviewing them over and over takes up time for new words that you won’t get stuck on. Plus, I think, seeing the words you are stuck on, if they are important words, you will see them later and in different contexts which hopefully will trigger your brain to eventually remember them.
I would like to do some writing. I think that would be useful, but just lacking in the time to do so =).
Time spent on each activity has tended to vary as I progressed in my target language. As a high intermediate French speaker, but useless at listening comprehension, I guess I should be concentrating 50% plus on listening. But I simply do not enjoy doing so because it takes so much effort and concentration that I end up getting bored and frustrated with it. (I have read loads of stuff about best ways of improving comprehension but nothing seems to work in terms of significant improvement.)
I take some comfort from the fact that it is much easier to read via LingQ and with the importation of very interesting articles and am at the moment spending 80% plus of my time reading. Bearing in mind that you are much more likely to stick with studying with something you enjoy, and taking a leave out of the Stephen Krashen theory of extensive comprehensive reading as the most effective way of language acquisition, I am happy to do this. However, after this 3 months Hard Core Challenge is over, my intention is to spend the next three months concentrating 80% plus on listening comprehension, in the (vain) hope that my extensive and intensive reading during this three month period will have improved my listening skills…not sure about that, but that’s the plan!
So, the above is by way of a bit of experimentation for me but normally the time I spend on activities is very similar to yours, DistractingMoose, apart from say 10%-15% speaking (to myself when walking the dog,) and say 10% writing…in my journal daily.
I mainly use Sentence Mode.
I test my comprehesion using the Google Translate. I translate from what the Google translate shows me from the original text and then I write down on the paper, without to see the original text. Then I compare the both texts and I listen the original. So I try to use all the words which I know at one moment and training my writing , too.
I learn 2-3 hours daily.
Reading 30%
Writing 30%
Listening 30%
Flashcards 5% ( 50 words / day )
Speaking 5%
I had something totally different in mind, but as of now I am doing 90% reading, 10% listening, 1 hour daily. As soon as I am done with the first Harry Potter book - hopefully around June or May - I’ll ramp up listening.
I am considering adding some Anki on top of my current activities next week, as long as it’s not eating all my time. I would like to learn simply one or two yellow words per day by dedicated practice
It’s been mostly 20 % grammar and 80 % listening/reading. The reason the 80 % is worded weirdly is because the listening part has mostly to do with the fact that I been watching a lot of Cuentame como pasó with is a Spanish program taking place from the sixties (first season) all the way to early nineties (20th and current season).
RTVE’s website from which I’m watching it has Spanish subtitles so I sort of get listening and reading at the same time. I love grammar so it is something that I do a lot but I have been watching a lot of Cuentame since it’s some while since I saw it the last time and I have been focusing very heavily on grammar these past months.