I didn´t get the impression that Josemaria told me how to go about learning languages. Well, he did…technically…but my gut tells me that he just wanted to talk about his own experiences.
@Josemaria - correct me if I´m wrong^^
Well, I highly doubt that Julz would let any language take the life out of her. Getting burnt out is temporary at best.
Hmmm, perfectionist tendencies… I see :))
Sounds better in French.
Ooh yeh! Because I got right back up and started my “30 days of relaxed Russian from scratch challenge” yesterday:)
C’est pas faux…^^
Buena suerte:)
Danke 
You’re right Paul. I only tried to wish you good luck with your challenge. I’m also curious to know how much can be reached with the 90 day challenge beginning a language from scratch. Maybe I’ll try it in the near future.
¡Mucha suerte y a disfrutar!
Day 4 (About two hours)
- Listened to music.
- Went through some lessons on lingq
- Hung out with people who occasionally speak Spanish. I had my first…dunno…food related interactions…in Spanish. “Queres leche?” ← “Si, gracias!” stuff like that.
Day 5 (3-4 hours)
- Listened to Spanish lessons on my cell phone whenever I had the time
- Watched a Fallout 3 let´s play on youtube and used it to do some “sentence mining” (50 sentences, 30min of video)
Day 6 (3 hours?)
- Continued watching that Fallout 3 let´s play for an hour or so.
- Read articles and watched videos about the “alveolar trill”.
- Now my neighbours think I´m mentally challenged.
Fallout3 richar1979BetaCode chanell?
Nope. I´m watching CristianCode85´s let´s play. Fallout 3 Gameplay Español parte 3 La Tienda Superguay - YouTube
Me gusta mucho que estudiar los lenguas en esto modo:)
Paul I am so pleased you are doing a 90 day challenge from scratch in Spanish. I’ve just seen this, I work full time and have very little free time but if you happen to write out what you do each day somewhere, I’ll do exactly the same as you - in four/eight times the time. Your 90 days will be a year or two for me. It’ll take me longer due to the lack of free time, but I’ll gladly follow your method because I would love to learn Spanish and I have a feeling your method will work for me!!! Good luck Paul, and I hope you post your step by step pattern somewhere and I promise I will follow it - slowly, of course.
“I´m not a big fan of “public language learning”…” I understand this sentiment, but I’d encourage more lingq users to do something like this.
1- It gives anyone wanting to learn a language an insight into how an experienced learner would go about it.
2- It gives a great insight into one of the best learning techniques – how you can do what you, as an individual, enjoy doing - but just switched over to another language. Simple and fun.
3- It also gives ideas for resources. An extension of this would be experienced learners just listing out what they find useful or interesting, once they get to an ok level.
Note - what I am saying here is very different to wiki listing/pooling of ideas and resources - which tend to be a “race to the bottom” listing of every idea - good and bad - and then it loses that personal touch, or vetting, that is of particular interest to people, imo.
Good on you for this. Hope other lingq users take note. At the very least it is a lot more refreshing than the one millionth “be my skype partner” post…
Day 6 (3 hours?)
- Continued watching that Fallout 3 let´s play for an hour or so.
- Read articles and watched videos about the “alveolar trill”.
- Tried doing the aforementioned trill. Now my neighbours think I´m insane…
Day 7 (taking a break)
My brain feels a little “foggy” today, so I decided to play the drums instead of studying Spanish. I often read that exercising and playing music boosts language learning and that stress makes it harder to learn anything…
…playing the drums combines cardio-training and music…hell yeah.^^
那么你会不会讲中文呢。哈哈哈~
Exercise helps everything!
" I’ll gladly follow your method because I would love to learn Spanish and I have a feeling your method will work for me!!"
It´s flattering to read that but uhm…I don´t have a method. Well…I do…kind of…but it´s more like an anti-method…My friend Merriam told me that a “method” is…
A: a way of doing something
B: a careful or organized plan that controls the way something is done
My “way of doing something” is unorganized and sloppy. Intentionally. I have no idea what I´m doing. I just keep throwing mud at the wall…
Speaking from Day 1 works. Speaking from Day 1000 works. Learning grammar works. Not learning grammar works. Studying Chinese in China works. Studying Icelandic in Australia works. Even “traditional” language classes work…to some extent.
They´re not equally efficient, but they all work. It´s basically “Language ownage equals time multiplied by efficiency”. The only things you really need to worry about are having fun and avoiding boredom/frustration. Language learning is all about remembering things. Boring things are harder to remember than easy things. Fun gets done. More fun leads to spending more time on language learning which leads to better language skills. It´s a virtuous circle. Choosing lessons/videos/activities/whatever spontaneously is less boring than planning ahead. Meticulous studying is more frustrating than careless studying…you get the idea.
Besides that, language learning is an investment that costs time and money. Spending 100 hours and 1000€ on boring language-classes is a shitty investment.Spending 100 hours and some money on doing fun stuff through a foreign language is a good investment. I might never use Japanese for anything “useful” but I won´t regret studying it…because I loved it…and doing what you love is never a waste of time/money.
“Language ownage equals time multiplied by efficiency”
That’s definately the correct equation. Efficiency can certainly be tuned a bit, but time is the variable you have the most control over.