This is Day 18 of the French Revolution, my quest to learn as much French as I can in an hour or two a day for 30 days.
Today I was pretty unmotivated throughout the day. In the early morning I typed up around 2,500 words for a long article I'm planning, but I'm not sure when I'll publish it.
I'm not really feeling "in" to French today, so I'm only gonna do some flashcard review and a little sentence mining. It's very important to do reviews, even when you feel unmotivated. That's one of the great things about a spaced repetition system like Anki, it assigns you some reviews every day to make you study every day. It's better to study a little every day for a week than to do one or two big marathon sessions, even if the amount of material studied is the same.
I'm really feeling the effects of behavioral momentum right now. When I'm unmotivated, it's not so much like I can't do any work, but rather that I'm really susceptible to behavioral momentum. Behavioral momentum is basically just the idea that, whatever you're doing, you'll tend to keep doing. If you're just lounging around not doing anything, behavioral momentum says you'll keep lounging around not doing anything. If you're typing an article, behavioral momentum says you'll keep typing the article. The exception to behavioral momentum is when some other force causes the behavior to change. When I'm feeling under-motivated, I still have all the strength of behavioral momentum, I just have less willpower to exert that other force to change the direction in which the momentum is targeted. Thus, if I'm lounging around (which was pretty much most of my day), I don't have the willpower to stop lounging around and direct my behavioral momentum toward anything productive.
AUDIO PRONUNCIATION FLASHCARDS
Yesterday I mined a bunch of new audio pronunciation flashcards. So today I have 159 cards scheduled for review (69 old, 90 new). With French, pronunciation is definitely the hardest part of the language, at least for someone coming from English as their mother tongue.
How am I doing these pronunciation cards? The question side has a French word, and the answer side has an audio file of a fluent speaker speaking the word. I look at the question side and attempt to speak the word. Then I "look" at the answer (which causes the audio file to play), and check how accurate I was. If I was pretty close, I'll pass the card (if it was really easy, I'll even pass it as "good" or "easy", but most cards get passed as "hard"). If not, I fail the card and it gets shuffled back into the stack of stuff I'm reviewing today.
The flashcard program I'm using, Anki, looks at my ratings, and uses them to optimize the whole flashcard process. In that way, my time is spent very efficiently, never reviewing a card more often than I really need to. That's how I'm able to learn so much French in just an hour or two a day.
I'm really getting a good "feel" for nasal vowels now. I remember before I started really studying other languages, I couldn't really hear nasal vowels at all, or I'd hear then as "n". I like nasal vowels. They get the Glowing Face Man thumbs up of approval.
SENTENCE FLASHCARDS
If you haven't already, check out my sweet article about Sentence Mining. Sentence Mining is a cutting edge method for learning languages, which combines the intelligence of an adult, the raw computation power of a computer, and the natural exposure-based learning of a baby. Sentence Mining is the keystone of my French studies (and my Japanese studies too, for that matter). Today, I had just 96 sentences scheduled for review, all old cards, since I didn't mine any new ones yesterday. It took 23 minutes to review them. I could've been more efficient, but I wanted to listen to some music while I reviewed.
SENTENCE MINING
I mined the whole "conjunctions" chapter of Tex's French Grammar-- which isn't saying a lot, since it's the shortest chapter there. I only got 24 sentences out of the whole thing (not counting the introduction, which I had mined another day). It took eight minutes.
Previous Day in the French Revolution: Day 17
Next Day in the French Revolution: Day 19
You can also go to the French Revolution Table Of Contents...
...or to the French Revolution Introduction.
Here are some other articles I wrote.
Six Reasons To Learn A Language Together
My Time In The Seduction Community
Five Ways To Be Better At Math
Models Of Reality
Unconditional Thanksgiving
Today I was pretty unmotivated throughout the day. In the early morning I typed up around 2,500 words for a long article I'm planning, but I'm not sure when I'll publish it.
I'm not really feeling "in" to French today, so I'm only gonna do some flashcard review and a little sentence mining. It's very important to do reviews, even when you feel unmotivated. That's one of the great things about a spaced repetition system like Anki, it assigns you some reviews every day to make you study every day. It's better to study a little every day for a week than to do one or two big marathon sessions, even if the amount of material studied is the same.
I'm really feeling the effects of behavioral momentum right now. When I'm unmotivated, it's not so much like I can't do any work, but rather that I'm really susceptible to behavioral momentum. Behavioral momentum is basically just the idea that, whatever you're doing, you'll tend to keep doing. If you're just lounging around not doing anything, behavioral momentum says you'll keep lounging around not doing anything. If you're typing an article, behavioral momentum says you'll keep typing the article. The exception to behavioral momentum is when some other force causes the behavior to change. When I'm feeling under-motivated, I still have all the strength of behavioral momentum, I just have less willpower to exert that other force to change the direction in which the momentum is targeted. Thus, if I'm lounging around (which was pretty much most of my day), I don't have the willpower to stop lounging around and direct my behavioral momentum toward anything productive.
AUDIO PRONUNCIATION FLASHCARDS
Yesterday I mined a bunch of new audio pronunciation flashcards. So today I have 159 cards scheduled for review (69 old, 90 new). With French, pronunciation is definitely the hardest part of the language, at least for someone coming from English as their mother tongue.
How am I doing these pronunciation cards? The question side has a French word, and the answer side has an audio file of a fluent speaker speaking the word. I look at the question side and attempt to speak the word. Then I "look" at the answer (which causes the audio file to play), and check how accurate I was. If I was pretty close, I'll pass the card (if it was really easy, I'll even pass it as "good" or "easy", but most cards get passed as "hard"). If not, I fail the card and it gets shuffled back into the stack of stuff I'm reviewing today.
The flashcard program I'm using, Anki, looks at my ratings, and uses them to optimize the whole flashcard process. In that way, my time is spent very efficiently, never reviewing a card more often than I really need to. That's how I'm able to learn so much French in just an hour or two a day.
I'm really getting a good "feel" for nasal vowels now. I remember before I started really studying other languages, I couldn't really hear nasal vowels at all, or I'd hear then as "n". I like nasal vowels. They get the Glowing Face Man thumbs up of approval.
SENTENCE FLASHCARDS
If you haven't already, check out my sweet article about Sentence Mining. Sentence Mining is a cutting edge method for learning languages, which combines the intelligence of an adult, the raw computation power of a computer, and the natural exposure-based learning of a baby. Sentence Mining is the keystone of my French studies (and my Japanese studies too, for that matter). Today, I had just 96 sentences scheduled for review, all old cards, since I didn't mine any new ones yesterday. It took 23 minutes to review them. I could've been more efficient, but I wanted to listen to some music while I reviewed.
SENTENCE MINING
I mined the whole "conjunctions" chapter of Tex's French Grammar-- which isn't saying a lot, since it's the shortest chapter there. I only got 24 sentences out of the whole thing (not counting the introduction, which I had mined another day). It took eight minutes.
Previous Day in the French Revolution: Day 17
Next Day in the French Revolution: Day 19
You can also go to the French Revolution Table Of Contents...
...or to the French Revolution Introduction.
Here are some other articles I wrote.
Six Reasons To Learn A Language Together
My Time In The Seduction Community
Five Ways To Be Better At Math
Models Of Reality
Unconditional Thanksgiving
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