Having spent half the night reading the blog and forum about anything intensive learning related, I have decided to have a bash. Just wondering though is there any intensive learning guide all in one place. Some where I think I read about revising some bits after 1/2 /3 weeks but I think by that point is was 2 am and can’t find it again!
Having started lessons 1 and 2 more times that I care to count I think IL is now the only way to hit my goal of more Welsh in 2014. Would be grateful of any hints or tips, hoping to do 3 new sessions an evening once a week. … should I keep another evening to revise?
Diolch, Charlotte
Hi Charlotte - great, good luck with this! No, I’m afraid I haven’t put it all together into a ‘do it like this’ kind of booklet yet - too many variables so far - but it’s a very good idea, and I will have a shot at writing up all the different stuff I’ve learnt about this kind of approach so far.
The key things I’d flag up for you at this stage would be - no, don’t revise, unless you reach a session where you really can’t get anything out at all - pushing through regardless (as long as you give yourself as much time as you need with the pause button) is definitely valuable.
Once you’ve reached a breathing point - say for example that you want to get the first 10 sessions done and then have a break - it is worth revisiting the last one or (maximum) two sessions maybe once a month or so, and then gradually less often.
But maybe the most important thing of all - come on here and let us know how it’s going, and you’ll get plenty of support, as well as advice about any particularly tricky stuff you get stuck with…
While not full-blown intensive mode, a rhythm I got into at around half way through Course 1, and a lot of Course 2 was to do 2 lessons a day in the following manner:
(say) Monday: Lesson 10 and 11
Tuesday Lesson 11 and 12
Wednesday: Lesson 12 and 13 …
…etc
So, you were always moving forward, always had something new, but you also went over some “old” material (and it always seemed much easier than the first time). I didn’t think of this as revising exactly. It was more of a confidence builder.
I did occasionally also have the odd half-day of more intensive work (or should we think of this as playing hard?) with a decent break in between each lesson. But it wasn’t done particularly scientifically, and I can’t say definitely if it worked better than the more gradual approach. I guess it is good to experiment with different approaches and find out what feels best. I did find there was a danger of getting stale if you over-repeated things, and it was usually better to move on. I think that’s a fairly common experience.
I suppose it’s like riding a bike. If you slow down and start wobbling, it’s best to pedal a bit harder and keep going!
When I first did the SaySomethinginSpanish course, Two years ago this September, I did the first 6 lessons in one block, with no pauses and no rest. The main reason for this is that I was running a half marathon at the time, and didn’t have the coordination (or the right mp3 player) to pause and restart the player all the time.
The following week, I was able to restart the course on lesson 7, and I struggled with the most recent material (ie lesson 6 stuff) a bit, but otherwise was able to carry on with very little problem.
Not everyone will be able to do this (I love learning languages, so have had plenty of practice at crashing my way through people’s languages with full committed philistine grammar, and not worrying about it!), and if you’re experience differs, it just means you are different to me. Be thankful!
But from what I’ve seen and heard of other people’s experience, the main differentiator between learners is how willing they are to accept non-perfection without it having an effect on their confidence / enjoyment.
I want to sit down with the Cornish course one day soon, and will probably do that on a run or two. I find that doing something else rewarding at the same time means that I can gloss over the “what on earth are they talking about now” moments, and just plough on making it up as I go along until it falls into place.
Whatever you do, let us know - it will add to our understanding of what works and what doesn’t!
I definitely found, in the past, when I was trying to get a bit more intense, that pushing forward as long as I retained even a little bit of the last lesson was the best way to go. There were bits I didn’t properly pick up until a couple lessons later, but instead of slowly being more able to recall it, those bits just sort of suddenly CLICKED. Like, one moment I couldn’t remember it for the life of me, the next (2 lessons after it’d been introduced) it was just THERE, like I’d always known it, recalling it as easily as most of the words I’d learned in lesson 1.
YMMV of course, as everyone’s brain is slightly different, but with any luck that’ll work for you as long as you just keep plowing ahead.
(now if only any of it had stuck in my head after I got busy and dropped off of learning for a year…)
Agreeing with Kate, what I often used to find was that after the end of a lesson, I’d have questions, sometimes which had already been asked on the forum, and sometimes led to me asking them. Sometimes though, if I didn’t get round to asking on the forum, and just carried on, I’d find that one way or another, the question answered itself, a few lessons further on. Or my understanding of how things fitted together had increased. So I think that’s a good argument for pushing on.
