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October 29, 2013 7:44 AM   Subscribe

Is there a (preferably online) tool that will track how much time I spend on learning a language?

I'm a native English speaker and a near-native Spanish speaker. I've spoken the former my entire life and the latter for over 2/3 of my life. And now I am working on picking up Mandarin Chinese.

I've done my Chinese learning in many different ways: formal university classes when I was in college, individual tutoring sessions, auditing more university classes, out-of-class study groups, weekend Chinese school, week-long test preps, and individual study/conversation. This has been over the course of about 7 years.

I've reached a point in my life where I want to solidify the language I know and move forward about a year in my studies (I would guesstimate that I have a university 300 level ability. I would like to be able to do grad work in Chinese soon-ish in preparation to go back to school). I have all the tools as to HOW to learn, but I want a tool that will track HOW MUCH and WHEN I spend time on this possibly foolish goal.

I'm thinking of something like MyFitnessPal for nutrition, or MapMyWalk/Run/Ride for exercise, but for language learning. A tool that allows me to input X number of minutes/hours spent on flashcards, or conversation, or reading practice. Something that will let me track my way up to that mythical 10,000 hours, or at least help me become aware of my study habits.

Is there a program that will do this? Preferably online. I am not getting what I want no matter what words I use to Google. Bonus points if it will let me add in the work I have already done, and will change an input like "3 credit Chinese 101 course - Fall 2005" to a number of hours.
posted by chainsofreedom to Education (2 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
Is there a reason you need a time tracker that is designed solely for tracking language learning, instead of one of the many generic ones that let you enter your own categories? That seems like a very niche use case which would be covered well by a generic tool, so I'm not surprised you're not finding anything designed specifically for that.

will change an input like "3 credit Chinese 101 course - Fall 2005" to a number of hours

It is not possible to programmatically translate that into a specific number of hours, because the amount of class time for three credits varies widely from school to school (and the number of hours of study involved is going to vary even more from student to student.)
posted by ook at 7:55 AM on October 29, 2013


Many of your component learning apps will do this. For example, both Anki and Skritter track how much time you spend studying. I recommend both, more especially Skritter, for Chinese study.

It would be hard to "change an input like '3 credit Chinese 101 course - Fall 2005' to a number of hours" because a credit hour of college work is supposed to be three hours of work per week - each hour of class time is supposed to have two hours of preparation and review outside of class. That is why a course load of 12-13 credit hours (36-39 hours) is considered "full time". The "conversion" would not work because you would have to account for what preparation, if any, you did for the November 3, 2005 class, for example. Also, did the professor have your strict attention or were you distracted? All of these confounding factors prevent a conversion of a college course into hours of study.

People talk a lot about "10,000 hours", but at best, that is a necessary but not sufficient condition. It matters what kind of hours they are. If you are doing the same hour over and over again, that's not much different than trying to make a baby in four weeks by hiring ten pregnant women.

As a language enthusiast, I recommend that instead of setting self-reported "hours with the language" that would be rather inaccurate, set concrete goals. For example, "I am going to pass HSK6 by X date" or "I will read 水浒传 this year". When I am keeping logs of my language learning efforts, I keep track of what I did rather than how long I spent doing it, although I do have a general idea of how long certain tasks take.
posted by Tanizaki at 8:36 AM on October 29, 2013


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