Learning a language is a delicate balance between extensive and intensive application.
When you are doing things in an extensive way, you process a lot of text lightly, skimming over it, skipping the stuff you don't know, being satisfied with grasping the overall story.
The intensive approach is more intense. You concentrate hard on the language's features and try to remember them.
That's study, in other words. That's work. It's forcing your short-term memory to do a job it's not designed to do. It's like heaping on the fertilizer in order to achieve artificial growth. And then you return the next day to see that your plants have collapsed. Or, if they still stand, see that they have mutated.
Nevertheless, you need a balance of both approaches. The balance point should favor the extensive side, but it's human nature to try to control the learning process by heaping on the intensity.
Don't think of 'learning', 'studying', 'memorizing', or 'drilling'. Instead, think of noticing various features of the languages as you gloss over it.
Miyamoto Mushashi tells us to perceive that which cannot be seen.
Yesterday I noticed that with Spanish some words start with a double 'L' and that sentences may not start with a capital if it is a 'small' word such as 'y'. I noticed how n's with a ~ above them are pronounced.
I must have noticed a 100 or more features. Each time that they do, they seep into my long-term memory a little deeper. I internalize them naturally. And all those features support each other in an organic, holistic, intertwined . . . what's the word I'm looking for?
Learning a language is a delicate balance between extensive and intensive application.
When you are doing things in an extensive way, you process a lot of text lightly, skimming over it, skipping the stuff you don't know, being satisfied with grasping the overall story.
The intensive approach is more intense. You concentrate hard on the language's features and try to remember them.
That's study, in other words. That's work. It's forcing your short-term memory to do a job it's not designed to do. It's like heaping on the fertilizer in order to achieve artificial growth. And then you return the next day to see that your plants have collapsed. Or, if they still stand, see that they have mutated.
Nevertheless, you need a balance of both approaches. The balance point should favor the extensive side, but it's human nature to try to control the learning process by heaping on the intensity.
Don't think of 'learning', 'studying', 'memorizing', or 'drilling'. Instead, think of noticing various features of the languages as you gloss over it.
Yesterday I noticed that with Spanish some words start with a double 'L' and that sentences may not start with a capital if it is a 'small' word such as 'y'. I noticed how n's with a ~ above them are pronounced.
I must have noticed a 100 or more features. Each time that they do, they seep into my long-term memory a little deeper. I internalize them naturally. And all those features support each other in an organic, holistic, intertwined . . . what's the word I'm looking for?
The Japanese have a name for Little Red Riding Hood, but not for Goldilocks. Strange, that . . .
Anyway, mining for sentences is probably the simplest, easiest way to gain exposure supplemented with a dollop of attention.
You simply go through a book in the target language sentence by sentence. Consider each one.
If you can read it easily, do so and move on to the next. If it is difficult, then skip it and go on to the next.
Therefore, spend no more than 5 seconds on any sentence.
If there are no easy sentences, find an easier book.
If there are no difficult sentences, find a book that’s more advanced.
Very good. That’s the exposure part of it taken care of.
As for paying attention—‘study’ if you like that word better . . .
Whenever you come across a sentence that ‘catches’ a little, but only a little, then make some sort of mark. Underline the last word, or highlight the full stop. Don't waste time. Continue.
After your reading session, go back and write out in full all those Goldilocks sentences. That is enough to focus your attention for a few seconds at a time.
And that’s all that you do.
Nothing more.
Eventually you may accumulate 10,000 sentences, as someone online once advised people to do.
But don’t try to study or memorize those sentences or enter them into a spaced repetition system. I don’t think that you need to. You’ll get more out of doing more of what you’ve done.
Of course, you may want to, but that’s a different matter.
