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I treat language learning as a batch job at the beginning. Works pretty superbly for me. I usually batch pronunciation, then writing system, then grammar, then

I treat language learning as a batch job at the beginning. Works pretty superbly for me. I usually batch pronunciation, then writing system, then grammar, then vocab. All the mean while try to do as much immersion as possible diving into native materials straight away and just enjoy the language in every way you can. There are a lot of different paths through language learning. They all work. But they don't all work for everyone. You just gotta try a bunch of different things and really find which path works for you.

yorwba 6y ago
> All the mean while try to do as much immersion as possible diving into native materials straight away and just enjoy the language in every way you can. Then you have already parallelized the process, have you not? > I usually batch pronunciation, then writing system, then grammar, then vocab. How does that ordering work in practice? I can imagine learning to pronounce each individual sound in isolation, and learning to write and pronounce each letter in the writing system before you know any words, but how do you learn about grammar without vocabulary to apply the grammar to? > There are a lot of different paths through language learning. They all work. But they don't all work for everyone. You just gotta try a bunch of different things and really find which path works for you. Agreed.
- james_s_tayler 6y ago
  Mostly works out fine. There isn't a perfectly strict separation between grammar ant vocab like you imagine. I do it through sentences, so naturally a little vocab is required for that, and that's ok. The goal in the grammar phase is to collect and Anki enough sentences to be able to parse sentences grammatically. I usually need about 3 to 5 sentences for each grammar point. The vocab phase is purely about vocab. Grammar is done at this point. I remember first year of Japanese study was Kanji then grammar. At the end of that first year I knew about 2000 words. The second year was purely vocab. I managed to acquire 10,000 new vocab by the end of the second year. After that point I could understand most spoken and written things with patches here and there. I could hold conversations for hours with a single person. In the 3rd year of study I did much the same. I remember my Anki vocab deck getting up to about 17k words before reviews were at about 300 to 400 a day and the returns were diminishing, so I just deleted the deck. Stopped cold. End of that 3rd year I could read novels pretty well. Hold conversations on any topic for any length of time in group settings. It worked remarkably well. It was damn hard work though.

yorwba 6y ago

> All the mean while try to do as much immersion as possible diving into native materials straight away and just enjoy the language in every way you can. Then you have already parallelized the process, have you not? > I usually batch pronunciation, then writing system, then grammar, then vocab. How does that ordering work in practice? I can imagine learning to pronounce each individual sound in isolation, and learning to write and pronounce each letter in the writing system before you know any words, but how do you learn about grammar without vocabulary to apply the grammar to? > There are a lot of different paths through language learning. They all work. But they don't all work for everyone. You just gotta try a bunch of different things and really find which path works for you. Agreed.

james_s_tayler 6y ago
Mostly works out fine. There isn't a perfectly strict separation between grammar ant vocab like you imagine. I do it through sentences, so naturally a little vocab is required for that, and that's ok. The goal in the grammar phase is to collect and Anki enough sentences to be able to parse sentences grammatically. I usually need about 3 to 5 sentences for each grammar point. The vocab phase is purely about vocab. Grammar is done at this point. I remember first year of Japanese study was Kanji then grammar. At the end of that first year I knew about 2000 words. The second year was purely vocab. I managed to acquire 10,000 new vocab by the end of the second year. After that point I could understand most spoken and written things with patches here and there. I could hold conversations for hours with a single person. In the 3rd year of study I did much the same. I remember my Anki vocab deck getting up to about 17k words before reviews were at about 300 to 400 a day and the returns were diminishing, so I just deleted the deck. Stopped cold. End of that 3rd year I could read novels pretty well. Hold conversations on any topic for any length of time in group settings. It worked remarkably well. It was damn hard work though.