This post is part of a series that can be viewed here.
So. I've now been studying for 27 days (25 of which I've studied on) and a total of just over 8 hours of active study. Here are a couple of comments.
I've stopped doing bulk passive listening. The main reason for this is that I don't actually think it's that helpful. I think it does do something but I think that it's really overrated. I think that the necessary conditions for it to be successful are that you need to be listening to something that's within your Zone of Proximal Development, ideally something that you've already actively studied. I think that, for example, listening to news broadcasts in your target language (as I was doing) actually isn't a good use of time, even thought I just had them in the background whilst working, instead of the usual classical music.
With the above said, perhaps it seems like it would still make sense to do the passive listening, because it was just supplanting the classical music, so actually wasn't taking up any additional time. That's true, but part of the reason for me blogging about learning this language is to demonstrate how quickly and efficiently language learning can be done. I don't want people to think ‘yeah, you only took 100 hours to get conversational, but you actually did 1000 hours of passive listening!'. So I'm cutting it out, mainly to prove a point!
Today I hit a bit of a motivational speed bump. At the 19 minute point of my 20 minute study session I couldn't be bothered continuing and shut off the tape. This is maybe for a couple of reasons. One is that I have a heap of ideas of interesting projects going through my mind right now, and they're kind of distracting me. The other is because I feel that my brain is starting to hit a bit of a point of overload with the amount of content, and It's time for me to step back and bed some of it down a little stronger.
I think a good way to do this would be to do a language exchange with someone, and prepare for about an hour or so beforehand, really revising all of the things that I've studied to date.
So that's the project for today. Spend a bit of time actively searching out a language exchange partner… Wish me luck : )