Recommended daily activity in Rocket

Hello, I am new here and would like to ask a few questions. Sorry if this has been answered before, but I have looked all over the site and youtube but did not find any answers. It is pertaining to the best way to study in this site.

1. 1. Do you do the audio lessons and the language & culture lessons in sequence? i.e: for each module, finish all of the audio lessons before doing the language & culture lessons
2. 2. For audio lessons, do you do all of the activities (flashcards, hear it say it, etc) in one sitting? or do you do one activity per day? Same question for language & culture lessons

Thank you soo much for your time!

Bonjour hayate12,

The first time that I went through the lessons, I structured my time so that I was studying the material for each lesson one day and doing the exercises for that lesson the next day. So, I routinely did exercises at the outset and finished the day studying. Bear in mind, that I do this several hours every day, and as I progrssed through the material, some of the lessons are quite dense and may have required more than one day of studying, but I always made it a point of testing my retention by doing the exercises the day after I finished studying the material. Some lessons, on the other hand, are quite short and may be done completely in one sitting depending on your available time.

On a side note, when I first started, I would get bored studying and decided I would just learn from doing the exercises over and over. I soon decided that this was a really ineffective approach, and went in the opposite direction of studying the material until I felt I could nail all the exercises the first time. After reviewing the entire platform 3 or 4 times, I still do it the latter way.

I suggest you do the lessons in the given order the first time through. The material in the lesson you're working on very often references something you should have learned in a recent lesson without reviewing it. Skipping around will just complicate things.

Robert

Hi Robert, 

Thank you for your response

How do you “study” for a lesson? currently I'm still at module one. In the interactive audio lessons we are given some sentences along with the meaning. So what is your process to study them? do u play the audio multiple times? 

Hayate

Hyate,

The first time through, my goal was to be able to recite, correctly, and to the satisfaction of the recorder (not necessarily the same thing), each sentence without looking at either the French or English, before going on to the exercises. And, yes, the twenty-word sentences were mind-bending for a beginner. I would often go through the material a second time, with the goal of just glancing at the sentences to refresh my memory before reciting them - rather than relying on rote memorizing them for a few minutes.

Also, and you should take this with a grain of salt, as it's certainly not for everybody, for at least the first year, I spent half my time studying French grammar on the internet. I wanted the best, most comprehensive explanation for everything I encountered, but any language's grammar is a bottomless pit. You have to know when to say, when.

Everybody is different, and there are many ways to go about it. Ultimately, it's really up to you. Whatever you can think of to keep it interesting, within and without, the platform. 

Robert

Congratulations Hayate on starting your journey.

There is no single correct way to learn, so as you go, adapt to what works for you.

I do the lessons in the order they are presented (for the reasons Robert mentioned). The reinforcement builds skill and when you get to the toughest part (at least for me), the “Know It!” section, you have drilled the concepts several times.  Now that I am on Level 1 Module 5, those long, seemingly impossible sentences are now flowing off my tongue. Keep it up, you will get there.

When I get to the end of a module, I go through each lesson in the module again. This reinforces the lessons I learned.

I also do daily Anki flash cards (more on that below) to help with vocabulary and learning the grammar (by speaking the sentences).

The one question I have in my mind is when I am going to do the Survival Kit section. I have decided to do that section at the end of Level 1, but I think doing one between each module (there are 10 of them) would also be reasonable.

As for how long, a little every day is better than longer a few times a week (or month!), so I set a goal of 300 points every single day (223 days is my current streak). 300 is not terribly difficult (it gets you through a lesson in 3 days typically) but it is an achievable daily goal. If I am feeling it today, then I do more, but I try not to do more than 30 minutes (I don't want to burn out).  I also put all the vocabulary and sentences in Anki (a free flashcard program) and go through 20 new cards and the assigned review cards every day. I find Anki to be much more useful because they keep bringing up older stuff  (and cards I had trouble with show up more often) and it is much quicker to flip those cards than it is to flip through previous lesson cards in Rocket Spanish. It is a pain to enter in all those cards, but I plan to make the cards public very soon (maybe this question will nudge me to do it today!).  It is a program you use on your computer (the cards are stored on the AnkiWeb.net cloud). If you want a phone version, you have to pay $20 (as I recall). The phone version isn't quite as good as the PC version , but definitely works when I am out of town(I guess it is very similiar to the Rocket Spanish mobile app).

Good luck and enjoy!

Scott