New blog post - High Intensity Language Training - how to make it work

Hope you’ll find this interesting - I’m looking forward to writing a lot more about the details of how I’ve seen the approach work so far, and I hope it will give you concrete stuff to help you with your learning… :sunny:

High Intensity Language Training - how to make it work

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I’m going to do “high intensity” (define high?? :slight_smile: ) language training with Spanish this year - started this month with a day of 5 lessons, and I’ll do the next five next month. I can let you know if anything startling occurs :slight_smile:

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I was amazed to discover I had an - amygdala.

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Mmmm, that’s a lovely approach. Make sure that the next five start off with new material - don’t give in to the temptation to ‘revise’ - and I’ll be expecting to hear that you will be flying along in two or three months from now :star2:

Kim, I think I saw you leave yours in an empty pint in the Ship once…:wink:

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Great post, Aran. I think that the point about the differences in attitude to mistakes (childhood compared to adulthood) is so important. The SSi ‘embracing mistakes’ philosophy transformed the way I approach language learning (and not just language learning, if I’m honest).

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Great to hear that, Jon. Although I’d probably suggest being a little less mistake-tolerant if you were, I dunno, a heart surgeon or something like that…:wink:

Helo! Once upon a time when I was a university student, I took a class called the Neuroscience of Learning and Memory. Reading the High Intensity Language Training Kindle book was a little bit like reading a literature review from that course. :slight_smile: One line of research I was kind of surprised not to see, though, involves the role of sleep in learning! Researchers have found that while you’re sleeping the brain re-activates the pathways used during the day, leading to strengthening of those pathways. So perhaps, @aran, you should be telling us all to do a lesson and then take a nap? :wink:

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I’d rather see you do seven or eight lessons and then pass out for eight hours…:wink:

Yup, sleep is really important - but so to a certain extent is all lifestyle stuff - exercise, eating well, etc - and I was/am trying to look at core differentials, rather than covering all the bases. But maybe a book called something like ‘The Perfect Language Learner’ would be interesting at some point :sunny:

:smile: 7 or 8 lessons in a day? Hmm…challenge accepted. I’ll let you know how that goes…if my brain doesn’t dribble out my ears first! :wink:

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Brief disclaimer (to avoid you jumping off a bridge or anything) - in my experience coaching one-on-one, everyone I’ve met so far has been capable of getting through 5 in a day with fairly generous use of the pause button. If you need lots of pauses, then 5 is a really valuable success - if you can get 20% or more out without the pause button, you should be able to push up towards 7 or 8 (although bear in mind that some of our lessons lengths go badly over the 30 minutes we were aiming for - if your run includes some of those, it’s best to target (say) 4 hours of content instead of 8 separate lessons).

But I’d love to hear how you get on if you give a really intensive day a shot! :sunny: :thumbsup:

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At the moment I repeat a lesson until it is >80%ish right and split lessons up with other tasks.
Is it better then to crack on with the lessons in a bigger block (>1 at a time), not repeating them at all?

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:smile: Appreciate the disclaimer, as there are quite a few bridges to be tempted by here in the San Francisco Bay Area! :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: We had a long weekend here in the States, so I ended up doing a Welsh weekend. Last autumn, I completed Course 1 with the vocab units, but then spent about a month doing nothing whatsoever whilst visiting family for the holidays. Apparently, it’s rude and antisocial to walk around with earbuds in muttering “gibberish” to yourself. :wink: I’d heard on the forum that the new Level 1 was a solid mix of new and old material, so I decided to go through it to get back into the swing of things (wasn’t feeling quite ready to jump into Course 2). I did the first 10 Challenges (2 Saturday, 6 Sunday, 2 Monday) and first 2 listening exercises. Brains didn’t dribble out of ears, but having a conversation in English with my mom Sunday night was…diddorol. The biggest thing I’ve noticed is my listening comprehension has gone through the roof. I have Y Gwyll on dvd. Previously, I was getting maybe 40-50% of what they’re saying. I was listening to it earlier and I’d say I was easily getting 80% of it. I don’t know what all the words mean, but I can hear the separate words and get the meaning! I plan to finish the remaining Southern Level 1 Challenges this week and then jump into Course 2. :sunny:

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That’s a fantastic effort - huge congratulations! I’m not at all surprised to hear that (especially with the listening exercises) you’re already seeing/hearing/feeling a real difference. Another two or three sessions like that (as long as you don’t fall into the trap of unnecessary repetition of individual lessons) will have you a very fully fledged functional Welsh speaker :sunny: :thumbsup:

Jenny, I’m wary of saying ‘Do it like this’, because one of the key elements is how you feel about it - a ‘less efficient’ approach that makes you feel great is likely to get you speaking Welsh faster than a ‘more efficient’ approach that makes you want to drown yourself…:wink:

So what you’re doing at the moment is absolutely fine if it works for you, and it’s very important that you don’t feel that you’re meant to be doing it differently.

Having said that, if you’re interested in these ideas, it might very well be worthwhile testing how you do it - have a go at doing three or four lessons in a single day, without repeating any of them - and then revisit the last of them the next time you have time, and see how it feels (if it feels really difficult, revisit it once more the following day, and you’ll almost certainly see a real difference :sunny:).

I will try that next time and report back!
Thanks, Jenny

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Challenges 1-3 done and although there are a couple of things I keep getting wrong I will plough on. The man problem seems to be saying things from the old course (that are second nature now!) rather than the new shortened forms.
Lots more to do today. See you soon!

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Excellent, well done! Don’t count interference from the old course as ‘mistakes’ - it’s fine for you to use them, and the exposure to the alternatives will help them become easier for you :sunny:

Finished challenge 6 now. I did fall asleep during 5 but from what I remember from psychology sleep helps in memory formation so I am viewing that as a positive thing :smile:

If you got through 6 okay, then it’s all good :sunny:

Thanks Aran - you are so supportive to us all! Off to try number 7

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Sorry, I have another question if anyone can help? Does it matter which way round things are in ‘mae … gyda fi / mae gyda fi …’?

Finished challenge 11 now and going well :slight_smile: