How to maintain my first foreign language as I plan to move onto another?

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MaxwellMiky
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How to maintain my first foreign language as I plan to move onto another?

Postby MaxwellMiky » 2021-05-07, 16:25

I reached b2 fluency (call "fluency" what you will) and have decided to just maintain it while I move onto Thai which I will be using the FSI course because I've heard good things about it. As the title says I'm curious how some of you may maintain your languages while you move onto other languages that you want to learn.

Here's a plan I think might work but am unsure since I've only ever learned spanish as my first foreign language. I plan on doing at least 2-3 hours of listening and occasional reading in the language with some google searches to keep the content coming and less stale. Is this how maintaining languages works or am I doing it the wrong way?

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Rí.na.dTeangacha
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Re: How to maintain my first foreign language as I plan to move onto another?

Postby Rí.na.dTeangacha » 2021-05-07, 17:14

Do you have any friends or family who speak your first foreign language with whom you would have regular contact? I find that having the language have a solid, significant and organic place in your life is a pretty sure way to keep it active.
(pt-br)(ja) - Formerly Ciarán12

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linguoboy
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Re: How to maintain my first foreign language as I plan to move onto another?

Postby linguoboy » 2021-05-07, 17:21

Sounds like a reasonable plan. When learning languages, the recommendation is frequency over duration. That is, five minutes a day provides more reinforcement than a half hour once a week. But I don't know that that applies to maintaining languages. I would still try to spread out your Spanish revision somewhat, though that may not be very feasible if you're pursuing Thai very intensively.
"Richmond is a real scholar; Owen just learns languages because he can't bear not to know what other people are saying."--Margaret Lattimore on her two sons


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