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.
