Language cross training again

I have taken a few days break from Russian to work on Italian and German in preparation for my trip. After a two day break, now when I go back to Russian I hear it more clearly, I notice words and endings better. I am better at it, or at least so it seems. I have noticed this tendency before.

I think that language cross training works. I think everyone at LingQ should spend 10- 20% of their time on a minor language in order to get better results at their major language.I believe that it stretches the brain, refreshes it, challenges it, and make the brain better fit and more eager to engage the major target language again.

Any thoughts on language cross training? Has anyone had similar experiences?

Comments

[Chris]

Steve,

I'm very glad you brought this up. It's something I've noticed a lot lately. After a two month break from French, I went back to it and after a good solid week at it, not only had my French improved drastically, but German essentially sounded like English to me. I think it has to do with the fact that because my French is weaker than my German, spending time with it intensively makes listening to a language I know better feel like a breath of fresh air; ie. the workload in trying to concentrate and understand is lessened and it becomes more noticeable this way.

[John B.]

I have always studied more than one language at a time. Usually I focus on one and just "mess around" with the others, listening, reading a bit or even studying vocabulary and sentences. Sometimes, more in the past when I was younger, I did study 2 languages with equal effort but the results were not equal.

Right now I am studying French and I also study Latin as a side. I speak Spanish for work during the day and today I also spoke to my Aunt in the Netherlands in pretty weak Dutch to congratulate her on her 87th birthday! Still, we chatted for almost half an hour and I only had to fall back on her English (She's Dutch and so of course she speaks more than one language, heh-heh!) for a couple of words.

For me, I get bored stuyding only one language and the 2nd language keeps me interested in learning and also keeps a me excited. There is more to learn and know than can ever be learnt or known but it's fun to chip away at it.

I used to feel that spending time on more than one thing was counterproductive. I think I had the mentality drilled into me that we should finish one thing before starting something else. But, now I realize that it is just how I keep myself stimulated so I don't worry much about productivity any more and I know I'll never finish anyway. I just want to to enjoy the ride!

John

[Ana]

I did have a couple of similar experiences with French. Since I give English higher priority, sometimes I miss a week or two in my French studies. When I come back to it, I get surprised by feeling stronger in French than I imagined.
It's the opposite of your experience, since French is my weaker language. Maybe it would be an interesting experience to have a break in English to focus more on French and then see whether my English benefits from this.
But it's difficult, because I have found a bunch of interesting sites in English, I don't know if I can give up on them right now...

[Nicole]

I have found that not only focusing on natural language for a while helps, but sometimes it even helps to focus on a completely different type of language: music. Whenever I have a piano or a violin at my disposal for a week or so (rented or at my parents house because of a sleepover), I completely drop all language study and just practice my music. When I return to the language, suddenly I am more observant of tone differences and word-endings and so my speaking and writing is a lot more accurate. I try to do my creative writing in these periods, because I don't get frustrated as easily.

[J.D.]

Wow, how nicely and elegantly said Chris. I aggree with Steve, but I like the way that Chris mentioned the 'like a breath of fresh air' thing. It's true, because I have had the same experience. You could almost compare it to lifting weights! I also share some thoughts with John; You never finish, although I do belive that at one point you don't necessarily have to study a language consciously anymore, you just keep using it in reading, watching television, listening to the radio etc.

There are times when I just listen to a language over and over again, sometimes when doing other things. If I take a day or more of, it's exactly the way Steve said, everything sounds clearer, I notice more of the sentence structures that I couldn't get in to my mind conciously etc. etc. It is actually quite similar to working out your muscles now that I think about it. Rest and variation of exercise can be good.

I haven't noticed the things that Nicole mentioned, yet, but I do think that the two (studying languages and studying music) have some things in common, so maybe that's why it helps.

[Drake]

I have also experienced this cross training phenomena. I am fluent in Spanish, however if there was an area that was difficult it was speaking on the phone in my daily business. Since I have been studying Mandarin my comprehension on the phone has increased greatly. It seems now that I don't ever question whether I understand when speaking Spanish on the phone. It is quite interesting how the study of another language can improve your performance in another unrelated language. This leads me to believe that it does have to do with the malleability of your brain. As I increase my study of Mandarin I continue to notice an increased ability in Spanish. This is exciting to me because initially my fear was if I started to study another language I was going to forget Spanish. Does this same phenomena happen to people who can speak for example 5 or more languages?

[nobuo]

Interisting experience. I also suprise other persons have had similar experiences. I only focus to learn English and no interist to learn other languages right now. However as a member of LingQ, it may worth to try another language. It's hard for me to stop listening EnglishLingQ podcasts for weeks. (grin)
nobuo

[GeoffB]

I've been revisiting Italian and something prompted me to drag out my Spanish again - which I speak at work, poorly, and almost never study. I'm finding both the Italian and the Spanish coming faster.

I was talking the other day with someone who hasn't studied German in years but always falls back on it when her French, which she is studying, fails. This leads me to think that cross-training isn't just something you can get away with; it's a necessity to keep your brain in the habit of keeping your languages straight if you want to speak multiple languages.

I imagine that if you're paying extra attention to language when you're cross-training - which language you're using, how that language can help you achieve your communication goals, etc. - you'd naturally see a boost because the brain is doing more behind the scenes processing than usual to keep up. And since it's got more to work with in the case of your stronger languages, that's where you'd notice everything coming together instead of just the occasional a-ha moments that come with less familiar languages.

[doviende]

rather than a certain percentage component daily, i tend to do it more like i would with a weight-training program. With weights, i would do 12 weeks on, then 1 week off (with nothing), and then in the 14th week i would be stronger even with nothing in the 13th week.

With chinese, i find that i work on it hard for about 6 weeks, then take a week off and go back. I guess in that off-time, i could be doing another language, but sometimes it's other hobbies that fill up the time. I'll try filling it with german next time.

[Martyn]

Hi! I couldn't believe that Steve wrote about this topic, because this is one of the thing I had noticed a while ago but I had never heard anybody else talk about the phenomena. Here is a recent example. I had been learning Polish for about year, without amazing success at all, when I went on a trip to Italy for about 3 weeks. Of course, I didn't even think about Polish for all that time and when I came back (to Poland where I lived#, I was very surprised.

It was not really that I could speak better #i.e. more vocabulary and grammar#, but I had a much greater fluency #i.e. I didn't have to think about the sentences), and my understanding had grealty improved too and I noticed a big difference in my understanding of the radio especially. Everything seemed more natural and easy.

when you think about it... it is amazing indeed how all the patterns seem more natural and even the vocabulary, etc... But... When you learn another language, you learn new sounds, you eventually get used to them and therefore you train your ear. The more you train your ear to different sounds, the better it comes at differentiating them. It is wrong to think that you learn how to listen to or pronounce a single language. What you learn applies for any other language you learn aor will learn in the future. The more languages you speak, the more sounds you can understand and produce and the easier it may become to understand languages that were already a bit familiar to you.

The grammar is also similar... of course one may think that between Japanese and French, there is a bit of a gap, however, when you learn a foreign language, by assimilating the sentence patterns you understand better how language works or any language works. SO you become better at "guessing" an important part of language learning in my opnion which consists mainly of itnerpreting the meaning of a word in a conversation (or even a text) from the context. It is important as usually, you do not always have a dictionary close, when the meaning you suspected is confirmed by a native speaker or another context, then you remember this word much better than learning off word lists... and better, you know how to apply it.

Just like Steve, I learned most of my languages mostly thanks to the time I spent listening and talking. I bearly had any Polish lesson but still managed to survive well in Poland. The same thing happened with Japanese and Italian but in different contexts.

After discovering this, I started learning several languages at once and this is when my interest for languages grew. I think that learning several languages at a time or in alternance is definitely a key part to language learning and I am glad that so many other users found out the same thing.

[James LaRue]

I am listening to you right now, in your interview with Annik Rubens in her podcast Schlaflos in München. I noticed right away your easy and casual command of the German language, without having to struggle to remember words. You then mentioned "language cross training" and said a few things about that. I googled and found your page easily using those keywords. I want to add my comments to those above to say that I've noticed this to be a true concept. When asked by friends how I'm able to study so many languages, I often tell them that one language helps me to improve in another and that when I study French, my German gets better.
Looking at the titles of some of your other posts, I know I'm going to be reading a lot on your site.
James L.