a language learning experiment

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i’m doing a language learning experiment: how well can i do on about 10 minutes per study a day? consistent practice seems more important than massive studying in brief spurts (at least for exams :p), so a small amount of consistent practice should work.

if this experiment works well, then i may’ve spent lots of energy on overstudying with rapidly diminishing marginal returns! impatience could be worth it anyway though… xD

i’m currently going for spanish, chinese, korean, and arabic. i started on 12 december 2014.

i’m using:

spanish: duolingo

chinese: chineseskill (an app)

arabic: http://www.madinaharabic.com/Arabic_Language_Course/Lessons/

korean: http://www.howtostudykorean.com/ + memrise

so far, duolingo is pretty awesome. it teaches me grammar through example and gives me pretty close to as varied practice as i can get in such a simple way. i’ve got to remember to ‘review’/’strengthen my skills’ and not just rush ahead though…

chineseskill is pretty good. it’s basically similar to duolingo, but with a few fewer features. it works pretty nicely too. the main difference is the lack of a general review option.

at first i tried finding some simple method that contains everything for arabic and korean too, but the memrise courses with grammar just didn’t cut it. they’re a bit all over the place. they may be good for review once you know the stuff. may. that and learning to read arabic is/was pretty slow. i can mostly read it now though.

now i’m reading a section (of a lesson) on howtostudykorean a day in addition to two quick memrise sessions. my vocab acquisition lags behind the lessons, but progress seems better.

ahh, i do know a fair amount of korean intuitively from kdramas. and in 2013 i studied korean for 2 weeks. i wanted to see how much i could learn in 2 weeks. i got basic grammar and about 400 words down before going to korea for 21 days. being able to read and write korean was very useful and pleasant when there :-). alas, i feel my spanish/chinese has already surpassed my korean (just not on the intuitive level).

let’s see how this goes! 😀