This is day 26 of the French Revolution, my quest to teach myself as much French as I can in an hour or two a day for 30 days. Except, today, I only spent about 10 minutes studying. Basically, my girlfriend came back and my quarter started at around the same time. That means a lot less time for flashcards.
You might be wondering why I didn't think of that when I was planning this 30 day challenge. The thing is, during our time apart, my girlfriend and I grew much, much closer together and more in love with each other. When I originally planned this 30 day French Revolution, I was doing it with the idea that my girlfriend and I spend evenings and nights together but are mostly apart during the day. However, during our time apart, we grew so much closer together, by being very open with eachother, and constantly sending each other love letters and talking very naughtily over Skype... basically, although being apart for almost a month was difficult to endure, it was one of the best things that could happen for our relationship. I'm actually typing this blindly, while sharing some tender kisses with her, lying on my stomach while she is lying on her stomach on top of me.
To be open with you, for the most part, I was only doing this challenge to kill time in a constructive way, while separated from her. As I already wrote in the introduction, I don't really have any interest in French on its own, and was only doing this to learn more about languages and language acquisition in general. And, I have been learning sooo much about these things. However, the past few days, I've mostly just been repeating the same pattern of reviewing flashcards and sentence mining. This has been improving my French, but not really giving me very many new insights into language acquisition in general.
I'm glad I picked French as the language, because my girlfriend is really thrilled to hear me reading some sexy French sentences. So for all the sentence mining fans among my readers, you'll be happy to know (if you don't already) that sentences have other uses besides just learning language.
Since, the past few days, I have already been following the pattern of "Review, Mine, Repeat", continuing this further won't really give me any new insights non-specific to French. So, for the remaining days, I'll shift tactics to focus on studying how languages are learned when you spend only a few minutes a day doing sentence mining. This is a terrible choice to make as far as learning French goes, but it's a great choice as far as learning about language acquisition: it gives me some new experience which I would not get by just following the same scripted pattern for the remaining days. (Not to mention, it's a great choice as far as having more time to spend doing sexy things with my wonderful delicious girlfriend)
I've already written before, about spaced repetition for busy people. In my article, Spaced Repetition Systems, I explain how the entire benefits of spaced repetition are still enjoyed even if you only spend X minutes a day doing reviews-- the only difference is that, if X is small, the benefits come significantly slower. I've experimented before, in my Japanese studies, with X=100 cards a day, or X=30 minutes a day. Now I'll do some more extreme experimenting, with X=10 minutes a day. Will this totally screw my French? I don't know-- but whether or not it does, I will learn a lot more about language acquisition.
MONOLINGUAL DICTIONARIES
I'm not using any dictionaries so far in my French studies, but if I were, I would try to use a French-French dictionary, rather than a French-English or English-French dictionary. There are many reasons to use a monolingual dictionary instead of a bilingual dictionary-- even though this flies in the face of conventional language study ideas. Check out Alyks' article about monolingual dictionaries for more info.
Previous Day in the French Revolution: Day 25
Next Day in the French Revolution: Day 27
You can also go to the French Revolution Table Of Contents...
...or to the French Revolution Introduction.
Here are some other things I've written.
My Time In The Seduction Community
Six Reasons To Learn A Language Together
Self Responsibility
Running On The Treadmill
What I Gained By Travelling
You might be wondering why I didn't think of that when I was planning this 30 day challenge. The thing is, during our time apart, my girlfriend and I grew much, much closer together and more in love with each other. When I originally planned this 30 day French Revolution, I was doing it with the idea that my girlfriend and I spend evenings and nights together but are mostly apart during the day. However, during our time apart, we grew so much closer together, by being very open with eachother, and constantly sending each other love letters and talking very naughtily over Skype... basically, although being apart for almost a month was difficult to endure, it was one of the best things that could happen for our relationship. I'm actually typing this blindly, while sharing some tender kisses with her, lying on my stomach while she is lying on her stomach on top of me.
To be open with you, for the most part, I was only doing this challenge to kill time in a constructive way, while separated from her. As I already wrote in the introduction, I don't really have any interest in French on its own, and was only doing this to learn more about languages and language acquisition in general. And, I have been learning sooo much about these things. However, the past few days, I've mostly just been repeating the same pattern of reviewing flashcards and sentence mining. This has been improving my French, but not really giving me very many new insights into language acquisition in general.
I'm glad I picked French as the language, because my girlfriend is really thrilled to hear me reading some sexy French sentences. So for all the sentence mining fans among my readers, you'll be happy to know (if you don't already) that sentences have other uses besides just learning language.
Since, the past few days, I have already been following the pattern of "Review, Mine, Repeat", continuing this further won't really give me any new insights non-specific to French. So, for the remaining days, I'll shift tactics to focus on studying how languages are learned when you spend only a few minutes a day doing sentence mining. This is a terrible choice to make as far as learning French goes, but it's a great choice as far as learning about language acquisition: it gives me some new experience which I would not get by just following the same scripted pattern for the remaining days. (Not to mention, it's a great choice as far as having more time to spend doing sexy things with my wonderful delicious girlfriend)
I've already written before, about spaced repetition for busy people. In my article, Spaced Repetition Systems, I explain how the entire benefits of spaced repetition are still enjoyed even if you only spend X minutes a day doing reviews-- the only difference is that, if X is small, the benefits come significantly slower. I've experimented before, in my Japanese studies, with X=100 cards a day, or X=30 minutes a day. Now I'll do some more extreme experimenting, with X=10 minutes a day. Will this totally screw my French? I don't know-- but whether or not it does, I will learn a lot more about language acquisition.
MONOLINGUAL DICTIONARIES
I'm not using any dictionaries so far in my French studies, but if I were, I would try to use a French-French dictionary, rather than a French-English or English-French dictionary. There are many reasons to use a monolingual dictionary instead of a bilingual dictionary-- even though this flies in the face of conventional language study ideas. Check out Alyks' article about monolingual dictionaries for more info.
Previous Day in the French Revolution: Day 25
Next Day in the French Revolution: Day 27
You can also go to the French Revolution Table Of Contents...
...or to the French Revolution Introduction.
Here are some other things I've written.
My Time In The Seduction Community
Six Reasons To Learn A Language Together
Self Responsibility
Running On The Treadmill
What I Gained By Travelling
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment