New blog post - Your First High Intensity Day

Very keen to hear from everyone/anyone who does any intense days :sunny:

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I tried this 2 weeks ago not really thinking that it would work. However the material does seem to have stuck (and I am not the brightest beacon in the harbour!) Thinking of trying it again next week :slight_smile:

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I’ve just started trying to learn this way. I only managed time for 3 sessions in a row last weekend but will try for more this weekend. I didn’t set out to do it that way as I found that I got tired towards the end of each session and thought I needed to stop, but five minutes later (I was stuck painting a room with nothing else to listen to) I felt refreshed and was ready to do another one, so I carried on, and went through 3 sessions without too much trouble. I’d have done more, but I ran out of wall to paint! I did the next single session midweek and didn’t find it any more difficult than usual, but I’ll probably need time to say whether any more Welsh has stuck.

One question: how long a gap do you need to leave between sessions, and how crucial is that gap? I thought I might try to do one intensive session a week, but after a day’s rest I want to go back to it, though usually would only have time for one lesson at a time in the in-between period (does that make sense?) Can you mix and match like that? Or is it a question of just trying it and seeing what works for me? I did a 2-week break recently after bobsled run and I found that while I remembered a lot of what I’d learned when I restarted, the break felt too long and I’m not sure that I benefitted from the second week’s rest. (Okay, so that turned out to be 4 or 5 questions!)

I’d love to hear how you get on with it - particularly if you press on with new stuff rather than do any ‘revision’ :sunny:

That’s one of the most common problems in language learning…:wink:

If the next single session didn’t seem any tougher than usual, you don’t need more time - the new material has stuck - if it hadn’t, the next session would really have hurt. It doesn’t necessarily mean it’s 100% yet - this way of learning isn’t about absolutes - but it does mean that the neural circuits have been built, and that they’re in the process of becoming long term memories… :sunny:

The length of the gap - no definite answers to this yet, I’m afraid. From us or from any of the academics focusing on this field! Most people I’m aware of testing in this kind of area tend to use a week as their longer gap - but we’ve seen huge success with people who’ve left six months, and also people who’ve pushed on much faster.

Your idea of doing one intense day per week and a single session in-between intense days would work fine, I have no doubt at all.

The two week break - one thing we do know is that there is more value when it’s harder to recall the material - so although it won’t necessarily have felt consciously useful to you, the bits that you didn’t remember straight away will probably now be more strongly retained.

Having said that, we differ a bit from most studies in the process of recall because the sessions themselves involve so much interleaving - I suspect this means that it would be possible to do multiple days in a row with the intense approach, and I’m looking forward to guinea-pigging that when we’ve got enough material in some other languages :sunny:

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I am planning to have another busy day today. This time with course 2 (while awaiting the rest of level 1). Not sure how it is going to go as course 1 feels so long ago and we didn’t get much sleep last night due to hyperactive toddler (who had been fed too much nutella on her pancakes by bad parents!)

Anyone who learns anything with a toddler in thhe house is a genuine superhero. How did it go?

I only managed 7 and not sure I can recall anything but will wait my 2 weeks and try again!
(Didn’t enjoy it as much as last time which was level 1 though)

7 is great, given how regularly we run over the 30 minutes! I’ll look forward to hearing how it consolidates for you :sunny:

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I have a week-long holiday coming up and I’ll definitely try to give this a shot.

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