Efficient Study Habits leading to more lessons learned per week
pretzellogic
October 18, 2009, 04:51 AM posted in General DiscussionI'm curious to know what other cpodders have found increases their ability to study more lessons in the same amount of time without degrading lesson retention. I've set a target of trying to learn around 2-3 lessons (20-50 words per week), and i'm not learning as efficiently as i'd like.
One strategy i've just started doing is listening to the lesson dialogue at the same time i'm looking at the pdf for the dialogue, and shadowing at the same time. I used to do the listening first, then look at the dialogue and try and write down the lesson later. I suspect doing listening, shadowing and pdf reviewing is the max that should be done, but also the most efficient way to get through lots of lessons fast.
pretzellogic
October 18, 2009, 07:19 AMMark, I'm curious as to why you're bothering with Newbie lessons. It sounds like you're relatively advanced, since you're capable of getting through Advanced lessons. I take it that you feel that listening to a newbie lesson is worth the trouble for the 1 word in a newbie lesson you didn't already know. That would be interesting in itself, considering that advanced lessons should give you most, if not all, of the new words. In fact, If newbie lessons are giving you any new words at all, I would start to wonder about the topics of newbie lessons. But I already know that newbie lessons tend to cover the same ground over and over again.
mark
October 18, 2009, 05:18 PMSometimes, but not often, newbie lessons contain some phrase or cultural insight I don't already know, some of the lesson banter is still kind of fun, but mostly it is just that I check what's on cpod each day. After feeling, "oh, drat, it is a newbie lesson" I give it a listen to see what's in it.
pretzellogic
October 19, 2009, 01:12 AMMark, thanks for that.
mark
October 18, 2009, 05:44 AMI think my efficiency at consuming cpod lessons improves with my ability. It also depends on the level of the lesson. At present my ability to consume a lesson is as follows: newbie, elementary: listen to the first iteration of the dialog (2 minutes); intermediate: listen to the whole podcast one time (15 minutes); upper intermediate: listen to the podcast once or twice, read the transcript (30 minutes); advanced: listen to the podcast, read the transcript, listen again (1 hour). At this point, I understand the lesson and have to do some periodic review to retain the new vocabulary.
I didn't always process lessons at this rate. When I first started listening to Cpod, the intermediate lessons took about an hour to fully understand, and the advanced lessens were inpenetrable.
So, I think you have to accept your present efficiency of study and be patient for improvement.