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Recovering from a period of demotivation

By Peter on Oct 24, 2008 in Motivation

I need to make a confession. Over the past month or two, I’ve not been studying Spanish or any other language as I should. I found myself neglecting my SRS for up to a couple of weeks at a time. I was not studying any new material. I was not playing My Spanish Coachspacer on my Nintendo DS and I was not listening to any of the Spanish podcasts that I had subscribed to. I was not watching Spanish television and I was not practicing speaking and listening with my Spanish-speaking friends.

There are many things I’d like to blame. A stressful personal life. A busy work schedule. Lack of sleep. I’m sure these were all contributing factors, but I think I know the source of the problem: me.

More specifically, it was my decision not to spend at least a few minutes a day on my SRS or any of my learning materials. Even when I was the most busy and the most tired I could have done at least that much. Another problem was that I decided that it was absolutely important that I learn all the verb endings for the preterite and imperfect tenses quickly, so I input all the possible conjugations of hablar, comer, and vivir in those tenses into my SRS. This was a big mistake! My SRS study became pure drudgery. It’s supposed to be fun! If it isn’t, why bother?spacer

I am happy to say that I’m on the path to recovery. I’ve taken Khatzumoto’s advice and have begun to delete all those boring conjugations, choosing instead to rely on adding sentences to my SRS. I now understand why Ramses says I should read about the rules, but not learn them. I’ve burned a CD full of various Spanish podcast episodes so that I can listen to them at time when I listen to audio the most: in my car. As soon as I finish this post, I’m going to grab my DS and play My Spanish Coach.

Once I realized I was avoiding my studies because it had become work, I took steps to correct that, and now I’m excited about learning Spanish once again!


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5 Comment(s)

  1. Good to see that you’re back on track, Peter. One more tip: if you don’t have time because you need to do other things, but still can listen music: listen Spanish music.

    At this moment about 7 hours of my everyday immersion is music.

    Ramses | Oct 25, 2008 | Reply

  2. @Ramses: I’ve been having trouble finding music that I like. I may have found something recently but I haven’t really checked it out yet. It’s definitely on my list of things to do.

    peter | Oct 26, 2008 | Reply

  3. Peter: This may look like a plug, but it could be of real use to you – we have a site called Spanish NewsBites (www.spanishnewsbites), where the idea is you read and study a small bite of Spanish every day or two. If you’re pressed for time for your Spanish study, please do pay us a visit. I know that Ramses has found us of use.

    Freddy Rivers | Nov 1, 2008 | Reply

  4. True, always a great way for input. Not only you get text with explanations, you also have the audio.

    By the way, it’s www.spanishnewsbites.com, with .com ;-).

    Ramses | Nov 3, 2008 | Reply

  5. Thanks Freddy and Ramses! That site looks perfect for my needs and I’ve added it to my feed reader.

    peter | Nov 4, 2008 | Reply

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  1. Jan 14, 2009: from All Japanese All The Time Dot Com: How to learn Japanese. On your own, having fun and to fluency. » Secrets to Smoother SRSing, Part 6: Maintain Only the Baseline/SRS Holidays

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