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Studying from home, a new lifestyle during #Covid19 plague

Every library is closed, so are universities and you may be desperate because the library was the only place where you were able to focus.. I totally get you! But as someone who’ve spent most of its school years studying at home.. I can assure you that it’s totally fine! You just need a few techniques and organization skills and you’ll see that everything will be ok ! So here we go : 

Clean and declutter your study space. Store the books you don’t need anymore and only keep the essentials on your desk. I’ll share with you an old article I wrote on Tumblr about how to upgrade your workspace!

Block distractions : give your phone to your mom, use the Forest app, the Flipd app or just put it in airplane mode !

Cut the outside noise : a good playlist (my Lofi playlist for example :P), earplugs and the door shut can help you be in the « library » mood…

Make a study plan and try to stick to a routine.. It’s easy to lose track of time when you spend all of your days at home! This is why keeping a healthy routine and set hours for meals and breaks is really important!

Since it’s easier to get distracted at home, make sure to take more breaks than the usual (for example a 45min study session and a 10 min break).

If you have online lectures and a #studybuddy that you trust, why not split the work (for example you follow half of the lectures and your colleague the other half) and then sharing your notes? Also, why not creating a Google Drive with your colleagues so everyone shares their notes? The quarantine will be long so a little support from each other is more than welcomed!!

You can also have skype sessions with your colleagues to debate about a subject, or quiz each other so you don’t feel too alone and you keep track of your progress :)

You can also take the time to go deeper into the subjects you have to study and not only scratching the surface like you may be used to do ! This is also a great way to discover if you’re more interested in some subjects than others and who knows, maybe you’ll find a new passion !

If you feel like you can’t focus anymore then.. stop. It’s totally fine to not being able to study all day, especially when you have nothing else to do and when the deadlines are still far and unsure. So Take this time to enjoy your family, work on yourself, read a book, or start a new hobby.

Studygram

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2020.04.16

Did not sleep well and barely managed to wake up at a decent hour after snoozing all the alarms. Woke up with a headache, but it’s gone now. I always get affected by the weather and it’s so gloomy today… Checked how my ivy babies are doing (we are growing roots!). Surrounding my desk with plants was the best idea ever! Picked a green highlighter for this morning studying session. Let’s start the day! 

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(Messy) desk situation: trying to stay hot and cozy while studying for finals

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(Messy) desk situation: trying to stay hot and cozy while studying for finals

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this is how i spent all of autumn break. in my dads mock-studio which is just a bright room in our summer house (honestly the light in there is magical). studying economics until my eyes bled. 

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light

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studying made better with coffee, almond croissants and good company

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Language learning timetable

Hi everyone, I’m back with a language learning timetable (sort of)! It’s the updated version of the one I made for Russian. I hope it helps you organize your studies 😊

Choose between 1 / 2 / 3 hours daily, you can alternate and study 1h on weekdays and 2-3h over the weekend, for example.

Grammar. 30 minutes / 1 hour / 1 hour.

Review old rules and learn new ones

Take notes of grammar rules and verb conjugations in notebook1

Solve textbook exercises in notebook2

Vocabulary. 16 minutes / 30 minutes / 30 minutes.

Review old words and learn new ones

Write down vocabulary lists on notebook1

Add word sets to Memrise, Anki or Quizlet with mixed topics

Reading. 4 minutes / 8 minutes / 30 minutes.

Read children’s or graded books, news, articles

Write down unknown words with their meaning in notebook1

Listening. 3 minutes / 7 minutes / 30 minutes.

Listen to audiobooks while reading

Listen to music while reading the lyrics

Watch cartoons, shows or youtube videos

Speaking. 3 minutes / 7 minutes / 15 minutes.

Speak about the last topic you learned

Writing. 4 minutes / 8 minutes / 15 minutes.

Write about the last topic you learned in notebook2

Write summaries of cartoons, shows or books in notebook2

Write short stories

Write a paragraph in your diary

This is the image I used as reference:

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I’ve just rewritten my notes on sequences, a fascinating topic of Mathematical Analysis 1! 

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Drinking black coffee and studying John Milton’s Paradise Lost for my Explorations exam in May. This Satan character seems pretty cool.

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aug.12 | I tried to be productive by rewriting a bit of my pathology lecture this morning :D

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2020.04.29

Finally managed to wake up at a decent time again and study. Have finished Basic Spanish 2 and wanted to move onto Basic Spanish 3, but from the first glance it looks like I’m expected to know more than I actually do *sweating emoji*, so I am considering going over the things I’ve learned with my Spanish textbook first and then come back to the course. 

I use mechanic pencil to write my notes, so it’s impossible to take a legible photo of them. Should I switch to a black ball pen instead?

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foggy essay writing vibes 

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doing physics lab online is not the move but this whipped coffee 100% is 🤩

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How to learn a language when you don’t know where to start:

General Plan:

Weeks 1 and 2: Purpose:

Learn the fundamentals sentence construction

Learn how to spell and count

Start building a phrase stockpile with basic greetings

The Alphabet

Numbers 1 - 100

Subject Pronouns

Common Greetings

Conjugate the Two Most Important Verbs: to be and to have

Basic Definite and Indefinite Articles

Weeks 3 and 4: Purpose:

Learn essential vocabulary for the day-to-day

Start conjugating regular verbs

Days of the Week and Months of the Year

How to tell the time

How to talk about the weather

Family Vocabulary

Present Tense Conjugations Verbs

Weeks 5 and 6: Purpose:

Warm up with the last of the day-to-day vocabulary

Add more complex types of sentences to your grammar

Colours

House vocabulary

How to ask questions

Present Tense Conjugations Verbs

Forming negatives

Weeks 7 and 8: Purpose:

Learn how to navigate basic situations in a region of your target language country

Finish memorising regular conjugation rules

Food Vocabulary and Ordering at Restaurants

Money and Shopping Phrases

Present Tense Conjugations Verbs

Weeks 9 and 10: Purpose:

Start constructing descriptive and more complex sentences

Adjectives

Reflective verbs

Places vocabulary

Weeks 11 and 12: Purpose:

Add more complex descriptions to your sentences with adverbs

Wrap up vocabulary essentials

Adverbs

Parts of the body and medical vocabulary

Tips for Learning a Foreign Language:

Learning Vocabulary:

What vocabulary should I be learning?

There are hundreds of thousands of words in every language, and the large majority of them won’t be immediately relevant to you when you’re starting out.Typically, the most frequent 3000 words make up 90% of the language that a native speaker uses on any given day. Instead try to learn the most useful words in a language, and then expand outwards from there according to your needs and interests.

Choose the words you want/need to learn.

Relate them to what you already know.

Review them until they’ve reached your long-term memory.

Record them so learning is never lost.

Use them in meaningful human conversation and communication.

How should I record the vocabulary?

Learners need to see and/or hear a new word of phrase 6 to 17 times before they really know a piece of vocabulary.

Keep a careful record of new vocabulary.

Record the vocabulary in a way that is helpful to you and will ensure that you will practice the vocabulary, e.g. flashcards.

Vocabulary should be organised so that words are easier to find, e.g. alphabetically or according to topic.

Ideally when noting vocabulary you should write down not only the meaning, but the grammatical class, and example in a sentence, and where needed information about structure.

How should I practice using the vocabulary?

Look, Say, Cover, Write and Check - Use this method for learning and remembering vocabulary. This method is really good for learning spellings.

Make flashcards. Write the vocabulary on the front with the definition and examples on the back.

Draw mind maps or make visual representations of the new vocabulary groups.

Stick labels or post it notes on corresponding objects, e.g when learning kitchen vocabulary you could label items in your house.

How often should I be practising vocabulary?

A valuable technique is ‘the principle of expanding rehearsal’. This means reviewing vocabulary shortly after first learning them then at increasingly longer intervals.

Ideally, words should be reviewed:

5-10 minutes later

24 hours later

One week later

1-2 months later

6 months later

Knowing a vocabulary item well enough to use it productively means knowing:

Its written and spoken forms (spelling and pronunciation).

Its grammatical category and other grammatical information

Related words and word families, e.g. adjective, adverb, verb, noun.

Common collocations (Words that often come before or after it).

Receptive Skills: Listening and Reading

Reading is probably one of the most effective ways of building vocabulary knowledge.

Listening is also important because it occupies a big chunk of the time we spend communicating.

Tips for reading in a foreign language:

Start basic and small.  Children’s books are great practice for beginners. Don’t try to dive into a novel or newspaper too early, since it can be discouraging and time consuming if you have to look up every other word.

Read things you’ve already read in your native language. The fact that you at least know the gist of the story will help you to pick up context clues, learn new vocabulary and grammatical constructions.

Read books with their accompanying audio books. Reading a book while listening to the accompanying audio will improve your “ear training”. It will also help you to learn the pronunciation of words.

Tips for listening in a foreign language:

Watch films in your target language.

Read a book while also listening along to the audio book version.

Listen to the radio in your target language.

Watch videos online in your target language.

Activities to do to show that you’ve understood what you’ve been listening to:

Try drawing a picture of what was said.

Ask yourself some questions about it and try to answer them.

Provide a summary of what was said.

Suggest what might come next in the “story.”

Translate what was said into another language.

“Talk back” to the speaker to engage in imaginary conversation.

Productive Skills: Speaking and Writing

Tips for speaking in a foreign language:

If you can, try to speak the language every day either out loud to yourself or chat to another native speaker whether it is a colleague, a friend, a tutor or a language exchange partner. 

Write a list of topics and think about what you could say about each one. First you could write out your thoughts and then read them out loud. Look up the words you don’t know. You could also come up with questions at the end to ask someone else.

A really good way to improve your own speaking is to listen to how native speakers talk and imitate their accent, their rhythm of speech and tone of voice. Watch how their lips move and pay attention to the stressed sounds. You could watch interviews on YouTube or online news websites and pause every so often to copy what you have just heard. You could even sing along to songs sung in the target language.

Walk around the house and describe what you say. Say what you like or dislike about the room or the furniture or the decor. Talk about what you want to change.This gets you to practise every day vocabulary.

Tips for writing in a foreign language:

Practice writing in your target language. Keep it simple to start with. Beginner vocabulary and grammar concepts are generally very descriptive and concrete.

Practice writing by hand. Here are some things you can write out by hand:

Diary entries

Shopping lists

Reminders

What could I write about?

Write about your day, an interesting event, how you’re feeling, or what you’re thinking.

Make up a conversation between two people. 

Write a letter to a friend, yourself, or a celebrity. You don’t need to send it; just writing it will be helpful.

Translate a text you’ve written in your native language into your foreign language.

Write a review or a book you’ve recently read or a film you’ve recently watched.

Write Facebook statuses, Tweets or Tumblr posts (whether you post them or not will be up to you).

Write a short story or poem.

Writing is one of the hardest things to do well as a non-native speaker of a language, because there’s no room to hide. 

There are lots of ways to improve your writing ability, but they can be essentially boiled down to three key components:

Read a lot

Write a lot

Get your writing corrected

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19/07/17 (July 19th, 2017)

Wrote notes for hours at Starbucks ☕️

Tried to catch up with my summer studies

Practiced writing Russian ✒️

[Listening to: Get Some by Lykke Li]