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Language Learning: Why I’m Cutting Back on Media Consumption
And increasing speaking time instead!
I’m very excited right now because I’m breaking through huge mental resistance in my target languages. I keep relearning that to move forward to new and greater things, I also have to let go of some things.
Even if those past activities once produced massive returns.
I would loosely estimate that 1 hour of speaking time is equivalent to 3–4+ hours of media consumption time. My multiple could be way off. However, my results from mostly speaking for a few weeks have equated to months of results under my older media-dominant strategy.
It’s hard for me to reconcile how pivotal media consumption was for my early Finnish journey. Yet now that I’m closing in on B1-level Finnish, watching media in volume does very little for my Finnish.
The only media that works for my Finnish is the little I’ve been able to find that has an introspective voice. Even when I’m speaking English, I have to translate my abstract thoughts (in no language) into English.
When I look at a chair, for example, I don’t think, “chair” but rather something like, “an object for sitting.” Even “object for sitting” is a “translation” of the initial thought I have when I see a chair.
This is why my written command of the English language is so much better than my speaking. I get an infinite number of chances to “translate” my abstract language into the best possible form of the English language. Speaking only gives me one chance to do this.
I remember the look on my kitchen coworkers’ faces when they asked me if I was feeling better after calling out sick. My response was “I’m two-thirds of the way back.”
“Two-thirds?” They probably expected me to say a “cleaner fraction” like 75% or even the vague, “I’m feeling much better.” But to me, thirds are beautiful fractions, even though it’s weird to use them in spoken English.
So you can imagine the barriers in translating my abstract thoughts into “concrete” spoken Finnish.
Watching target language media with subtitles is still highly useful in the absolute beginner phase. I talk about the most efficient…
