Lesson plans for teaching yourself a language.

I write my own lesson plans fory classes based on hesykkanus for their exams but I stumbled on this site with lesson plan ideas for teaching yourself and language

http://www.language-learning-advisor.com/language-lesson-plans.html

Thanks for sharing, Jade. 

Thank you so much Jade! I went through the site and discovered thoughtco.com

It is highly informative and really helpful. It contains pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, idioms, culture etc.

Jade.Xuereb wrote:

I write my own lesson plans fory classes based on hesykkanus for their exams but I stumbled on this site with lesson plan ideas for teaching yourself and language
http://www.language-learning-advisor.com/language-lesson-plans.html

Thanks for sharing - that's helpful. I think it's useful to have specific plans and goals when you're a self-learner. 

So all methods add up to like 2 hours right? Do you do this twice a week or every day?

Thanks for sharing! :) 

dragonsky wrote:

So all methods add up to like 2 hours right? Do you do this twice a week or every day?
Thanks for sharing! :)

It suggests at least twice a week.

If it your own individual planyoucan probably adjust it however you like

Oghenekevwe wrote:

Thank you so much Jade! I went through the site and discovered thoughtco.com
It is highly informative and really helpful. It contains pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, idioms, culture etc.

FYI, that web site (and its sub-sites) is what remained after the original about . com (which was Very Well Known, once upon a time) had been shut down. And of course, they are supposed to add new content from time to time, too (i.e. content that never was there on about . com). That site used to be "about" too many different topics. And they at least try to make some (sort of) experts write on whatever their field of expertise is, rather than hiring the average "John Doe".

These days, someone asked me (elsewhere) how my notebook is organized. It contains sort of my personal lesson plan for at-home study.

Now quoting what I told this person in its entirety. And yes, it is long. But it may still be interesting:

Because it [my notebook] is a multi-language one, it (currently) is organized by languages only. But I didn't reserve five pages for e.g. Polish and another five for Russian. Because it is Very On Demand Learning Oriented, even the headings (containing the language only for now) are written on demand as well.

I personally wouldn't care too much about writing nouns first, then verbs, then phrases. What I would do instead is to apply that On Demand Attitude here as well. Any language consists of many parts, no doubt. But I really love Holistic Learning.

You could organize your own notebook by topic, by day, or by something else.

It's just that there is a little pitfall related to the different categories like colors and animals.

It has been mentioned by one of the polyglots, namely Gabe Wyner. He said that when it comes to French, it still is a bit difficult to remember the correct word for green and blue. Because he learned both of them at the same time. End quote.

This is about the possibility of mixing up similar words. Is blue that similar to green? Wouldn't say so. Even if some languages use a single word for both of them. That's why there is an English translation of a (non-commercial) Japanese Vegetable Advertisement Song that calls people to buy "the big pale blue juice" (...). But back to the main topic. The colors blue and green aren't too similar. However, the words do have some big similarities, in regard of their Learning and Recalling Aspect. This is because they both belong to the same category. And because of that, one could easily mix them up. You could ask "anyone" who tries to learn all major colors at the same time, especially (but not exclusively) when using some "Brute Force Rote Memorization"...

What I like to do in cases like these is not to even write all of them on the same page, but "scattered". Some language courses (no matter if audible or written) do it the same way when introducing words like "I", "you", "he", etc.

And if I would be writing all colors on a single page, I'd still learn one at a time only, while also noting which one currently is in my Yet to Be Learned Queue. If I'd start with blue, I'd mark it with a pencil (not with any color, because marking blue with red and green with orange is... something I'd rather not do). And after having learned it, I could thicken that marking, or write a "check" symbol.

meifeng wrote:

dragonsky wrote:

So all methods add up to like 2 hours right? Do you do this twice a week or every day?
Thanks for sharing! :)

It suggests at least twice a week.

Jade.Xuereb wrote:

If it your own individual plan you can probably adjust it however you like

I agree with you tho, 2 times a week seems just fine. I guess 3 times a week can also speed up the process but anything more than that is overkill...at least for me personally, I am sure there are people that do that 7 days a week probably :D 

dragonsky wrote:

I agree with you tho, 2 times a week seems just fine. I guess 3 times a week can also speed up the process but anything more than that is overkill...at least for me personally, I am sure there are people that do that 7 days a week probably :D

Interestingly enough, I think that while time put in is important, being intentional in your learning is also important. 

I had a discussion with my former officemate once about Mandarin standards in Singapore (overall, not good). She was surprised to find out that Singaporeans learning Mandarin as a second language took it for ~1-2 hrs/day, 5 days/week for over 12 years, and are still barely fluent in it, despite passing the national exams. 

At the end of the day, you can be dragged to language classes, but if you have no desire to learn, all that is just wasted time. 

"Speak properly, and in as few words as you can, but always plainly; for the end of speech is not ostentation, but to be understood."

Thanks for sharing :)

Really great quote and definitely applicable to speaking a second language

Wow! Very helpful!