This is a lightly modified version of an account I wrote back in October 2020…
About 3 months back (around the beginning of July) I started to try watching Spanish costume dramas on Netflix. I love costume dramas and there is a ton of Spanish ones on Netflix each with many more episodes than the typical English language dramas.
Alongside I studied on Duolingo. At first I could not understand very much at all. A word here and there. Now after a decent number of Duolingo lessons and probably many times more episodes I can understand fairly well even without the help of Spanish subtitles. I still cannot speak or write very well but that I think will happen quickly if I practise and do more Duolingo lessons.
For the first time in many years an improvement in a skill has been perceptible. This happens when one can distinctly remember how it was like when one didn’t know something just a brief time ago. That is usually only the case when the change occurs over a brief time. Otherwise one remembers the fact of not knowing but not the feeling of it.
I wanted to analyse how this has come about so that I can apply it to other areas:
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I watched at least an hour almost everyday = consistent practice = habit
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As soon as I could pick up more than a couple of words I enjoyed watching due to the fact that I like costume dramas and because you are naturally carried forward by a story = intrinsic motivation
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I studied Duolingo alongside almost everyday at least at first and tried to do at least 2-3 lessons if not more = learning theory and fundamentals
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I practised understanding what the words meant but without regarding it is as practising learning rather as understanding the story = practising skill / intrinsic motivation / putting skill to use
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I continued watching episode to episode even when I didn’t fully understand and I didn’t spend too much time trying to look up words I didn’t know
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I found that gradually I was able to infer more and more from the context and surrounding words and learned new words and phrases as well as the ability to recognise sounds better
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It didn’t matter if I did not succeed = no pressures
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I wanted to watch costume dramas more than to learn Spanish = indirect goal
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After I began to understand better there was a real excitement to hearing a new language
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It was satisfying to watch earlier episodes again and understand them a lot better
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I didn’t progress until I did Duolingo each day. I also watched German episodes and listened to German audiobooks and hardly understood anything as I wasn’t studying as much of German on Duolingo (until I came across German fairytale adaptations during Christmas time when a couple of weeks’ worth of episodes significantly boosted my ability to understand spoken German)
Some of these are obvious like consistency and motivation. I found 5 interesting because that is not something I would do in other learning situations. If I can’t solve a problem properly I wouldn’t move on to another problem or if I did barely understood the week’s content in a course I would be reluctant simply to go on to next week without pausing to revise. But that is maybe because in courses there is progression that doesn’t exist here.
On the other hand getting more exposure even when you don’t succeed at first seems to help you later. There is the further fact that the failure happens in private. You don’t face any penalty for failing. Even in the absence of a penalty merely observing others succeed whilst you don’t can be an implicit obstacle which didn’t exist either in this situation.
Here are some possible learnings
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You should work towards something other than what you actually want to achieve and make that your goal
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You should be intrinsically motivated to achieve that goal
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To achieve that goal it must be necessary to make use of some particular skill or knowledge.
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Working towards that goal must become pleasurable very quickly regardless of how skilled or knowledgeable you are
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You must keep on working on the task and and it must be possible to make progress at it even if you can’t do it that well
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You should be able to revisit earlier work and redo it without finding it tedious but instead finding it satisfying that you can do it better now
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Your first priority should be to achieve the goal but it should be such that if you don’t invest enough independent effort into the skill or knowledge, you won’t achieve it
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You must be able to practise the skill or use the knowledge in such a way that you are typically not conscious of doing so but rather feel that you are working towards the goal
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You must be driven by something else other than the wish to get better at the skill in order to get better at the skill
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Your desire to work on the goal must be greater than your doubts as to whether it is possible to achieve it
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You should not judge the supposed worthiness of the goal - the important aspect is that it should be capable of enabling you to acquire the skill or knowledge with limited perceived effort which might be more characteristic of a seemingly frivolous activity than a serious one.
In addition I have observed that the comprehension seems to generalise to other areas
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I can read and understand large blocks of text such as news articles to a reasonable level. My only effort in this direction involving reading subtitles where the text is 1/in small fragments, 2/ primarily conversational.
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I can also otherstand Italian, which is somewhat similar to Spanish, reasonably well now. My exposure to Italian was much less compared to Spanish, limited to 1-2 Duolingo lessons per day. But soon after I started to understand Spanish, I found I could I understand Italian audiobooks fairly well. In addition my Italian comprehension improved much faster. So far I have only listened to 3 audiobooks in Italian, around 20 hours in total, and I think I can undestand it almost as well as Spanish, where I must have gone through >100 hours of content.