I used do a lot of surfing on piano forums. One topic that kept coming up while surfing was 'diminishing return.' Apparently practicing for 3 hours a day gives you the most return on your time invested. While practicing longer doesn't hurt, after this mark it's not really worth it.

Do you guys believe there is an optimum amount of study time regarding language? If so what do you believe is good number? How do the different aspects (hearing reading speaking) play into this time?

I'm curious about your thoughts on the matter.

3 hours a day!??! Man, I'm feeling guilty only practicing 30 minutes a day now -_-

Yeah i've heard of this before although I dont play piano i've just heard of it in the context of doing things in general... It's known as "the law of diminishing return" like for instance putting in effort up to a certain point nets you a big gain but after that you have to exert more and more effort for a smaller and smaller gain. Think of licking a bowl of icing clean when you were a kid. At first it was easy to get lots and lots of it but as you slowly scraped away at the bits left you had to scrape harder and harder to get less and less. Hence the law of diminishing return. It also applies to getting ready to go out... you can only make yourself look so good before the law of diminishing returns kicks in and you're beginning to waste your time ^.^

In terms of language... I have no clue. Maybe it doesnt apply? I find the more I study *cough* do fun stuff in japanese *cough* the more I know and understand. So, so far I havent seen exactly how the law of diminishing returns applies to Japanese, although now you've mentioned it, I think i'll keep an eye out.

I don't believe in 'diminishing return', at least when it comes to the amount of time invested. I believe that diminishing returns only apply if you're trying to learn too much and don't give your brain sufficient time to take in all that you know.

For example, I've been pretty much going at it with kanji for about 12 days, rotating between 10 minutes of 'fun' things and then 10 minutes of study.. and before that, I did two weeks of kana study (without a book or anything, just a website chart.. I could have done it faster, but I was rather stubborn and didn't use other sources). I'm an AJATTer so unless it's RevTK or some site that absolutely requires it, I avoid most forms of english communication. I mainly just listen to japanese music or watch some japanese TV (via keyhole) while I study.

So, where am I sitting at now?

Well, I know pretty much all the kana (including compound pronouncations like kya, cha, ji, etc - I don't really know any of the 'newer' kana like ヴァ.. but katakana's pretty much got all those, or so I've heard) and I know about 675 kanji (only 470 of which are in my Box 3 - but I'm only 12 days in, I'm sure I'll improve at some point). Ego stroking aside, this doesn't seem like diminishing return at all despite all the time I've invested into it. If learning japanese was like learning to ride a bike, I'd certainly say that there'd be an exponential return INSTEAD of a diminishing return. You can only get better at riding a bike as long as you've still got all yer limbs, right?

EDIT: Having read the previous post, I do have one other thing to add: if the law of diminishing return applies to, say, finding new things to learn in your L2, isn't that a good thing? When it's hard to find things that look new to you, you're obviously close to your goal or you're just not looking hard enough.

There are definitely diminishing returns playing guitar. Usually around the point where your fingers start bleeding.

Jarvik7 Wrote:There are definitely diminishing returns playing guitar. Usually around the point where your fingers start bleeding.

Fingers are for the weak. Man up.

Jarvik7 Wrote:There are definitely diminishing returns playing guitar. Usually around the point where your fingers start bleeding.

Hey, I started out playing four hours a day! The worst I got was friction burn, and that goes away after a day. There was definitely diminishing returns in my situation, though, because I don't like to listen to much metal, and thus, I'm a soulful blues player and not much of a shredder.

D'you play guitar, though? How long have you been playing for, if so?

http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blo...n-japanese

These books state that every 6 days on you should have one day off. According to the writer, when you are absorbing a lot of language information there is an unconscious process that sorts and categorises the new stuff. If just keep piling in new stuff your brain doesn't have a chance to catch up and it can't properly deal with what it has learnt.

I spent 3 months doing homestay in Japan getting a lot of Japanese input. I did find that my brain felt overwhelmed. I started to struggle to keep taking Japanese in and a day off did help clear my mind. So maybe it is true. Not sure if you need it if you are only getting a moderate amount of exposure.

Here is the passage that explains it btw. I'm hungover and can't be bothered translating it now, but might do it it sometime next week.

「ほんとう？でもどうして一日休むんでしょう？」
もっともな疑問である。
「ちょっと難しくなるが、それは言語が人の頭の中に貯蔵される時の特殊なメカニズムのせいなんだ。留学生時代、ドイツで読んだ医学書の受け売りだが、人間の脳は新しい言語を受け入れる時、特殊なプロセスをたどるらしい。まず、入ってくる言語をかたっぱしから詰め込んでいき、その流入がやんで以降、初めて整理や分析作業に入り、最終的に分類を行うという作業を踏む。そして、入ってきた情報がある程度分類された時点で、その言語専用の‘部屋’が出来上がるというんだ。
「専用の部屋？」
「そう、もちろん、これは比喩だけどね。脳はあらかじめその専用の引き出しを用意して新しい言語を受け入れるのではない。むしろ、たくさんの情報処理を必要に迫られて泥縄式に行う。それからやっと、それをしまい込む引き出しを決めるというわけだ。走り出してかなりたってからゴール地点を設定するようなもんかな」
「なるほど」
「だから、もしひっきりなしに情報が入り続けるばかりだと、整理整頓が追いつかず、情報はあちこちに乱雑に積み上げられたままで、分類や体系化ができなくなる。引越し荷物の整理に似てるね。脳の情報処理作業がうまく進まなければ、当然、理解や記憶効率も悪くなってしまう。六日続けて一日休むのはその整理期間、もしくは、分類した情報をいまいこむ部屋の建設期間を確保するためなんだ」
「平日にいっぱい情報収集して、日曜日にそれを整理するようなものですね」
Kのたとえのが分かりやすいようだ。
「詰め込むだけでなく浸透させる時間を設ける。それによって、言語をつかさどる脳のある部分にその外国語専用の部屋がつくられ、頭の中で外国語が次第に体系化されていくということですね」
「そのとおり。その医学書でも、そんな表現を使っていたね。もともと生まれたばかりの人間の脳は柔軟で言語をつかさどる部分の間口も広いらしい。ところがある程度年をとると、母国語がその大部分を占めてしまうことになる。それで、年を重ねるほど外国語の取得能力は落ちる。逆に。若いほどその能力は高く、多くの言語の習得も年配の人ほど苦労はしないというわけだ。

I dont know for the last post and I have always thought it was a pretty lame excuse for those who were lacking self discipline and organisation .

But otherwise rather than resorting to a fancy new expression like " diminishing return" you d better study your basics : it s called the 20-80 law or Pareto law and with Occam razor it s maybe the most fundamental law that exist . It seems like every once in a while someone rediscover this law and try to market it as something new : sturgeon law , tim ferris 4 hours a week principle ,etc... they re all a more fashionable way to present the Pareto law.

3 hours a day? I can assure you that aspiring concert pianists practice much more than that When I played violin competitively, most of the kids practiced 6 hours a day.

ghinzdra Wrote:I dont know for the last post and I have always thought it was a pretty lame excuse for those who were lacking self discipline and organisation .

But otherwise rather than resorting to a fancy new expression like " diminishing return" you d better study your basics : it s called the 20-80 law or Pareto law and with Occam razor it s maybe the most fundamental law that exist . It seems like every once in a while someone rediscover this law and try to market it as something new : sturgeon law , tim ferris 4 hours a week principle ,etc... they re all a more fashionable way to present the Pareto law.

80/20 / pareto is also a good one. How can we apply this to Japanese?

It s not necessary contradictory....
It s the difference between relative and absolute .
the kids you talk about are would be professionnal . They don t want to be just good and save as much time possble . They just want to be the best possible no matter how time it takes .

And indeed they are definetely better . But they got to sweat a lot more for that.
Relatively speaking they re less efficient than most good amateurs.

My brain is the most fresh when I first start studying, so I can quickly learn 1 word in about 15 seconds. If I do that each day, then I can learn 100 words in only 25 minutes. Unfortunately it will take 100 days to accomplish. In other words, after only a small amount of studying, the returns begin to diminish. That is not to say that I am not learning at all, only learning less quickly than I could be. A more relevant question would be, do the returns significantly drop off after a certain point (like 3 hours), or, does studying past a certain point negatively affect what we learned earlier in the study session?

KaitouJS Wrote:I don't believe in 'diminishing return', at least when it comes to the amount of time invested. I believe that diminishing returns only apply if you're trying to learn too much and don't give your brain sufficient time to take in all that you know.
.

its not called "the theory of diminishing marginal returns" its called the "law of diminishing marginal returns."

diminishing return my ass,

Practice guitar scales for 6 hours and you'll come out looking like you've practised complex pieces for 50 hours.

Just study until you are worn out. I don't know much about piano but surely there's a similar story with Piano scales vs Piano pieces.
Nothing beats pracitisng scales, all the masters (in classical guitar anyway) emphasise it more than practising pieces.

My gut feeling is that for whatever you do, doing multiple say 90 minutes sessions is better than doing one 3 hour session.

I suspect that sweet time lasts for a different length for different people, and for the same person it'll be different at different times of the day, or week, or depend on so many other factors, stress, health, etc. When so many variables are involved, I suspect it is very difficult to be too scientific about it. Ya just have to go with the flow. I know when my Pareto 20% time is up, or I know when I feel like I'm hitting a wall.

In my translation of the above it talks about "osmosis" 浸透させる時間. Ya stick the cucumber in the brine, and if ya leave it in there long enough, ya get a pickle. It's not that the cucumber is busy studying or working out or doing it's pickle SRS reps. That pickle analogy goes for the immersion, AJATT technique or method. The pickling occurs faster in higher concentrations of brine, etc. Temperature is relevant too. Ya don't want the brine to get "cucumbered"!

So, there's just this difference between actively studying and getting pickled. That active study part is going to remain sweet for a different interval for different folks, and at different seasons for that same guy.

I say use any given resources as long as you're extracting new things to learn from it at a decent rate, when that starts to slow (ie lesser return on investment for time spent) then move on to another resource. I certainly find this true in my study.

Seems there's a mix going on here. The law of diminishing returns is not the same as the impact of long hours in a study day.

With respect to time spent per day, I've found with an SRS, the danger of long study hours not being affective is reduced or removed. Now it's only boredom that would stop the studying.

For physical practice (violin, karate, writing, golf), I think the limiting factor is fatigue. How one practices can help. Anyway, I think this has been covered fairly well in a New Yorker article linked by AJATT. The physical aspect takes determined practiced to improve over time. Something we do with an SRS but difficult to do for a golf swing or violin.

This daily practice though goes into the next area. Impact over the long haul which goes into the law of diminishing returns. We see it on this site. The 1000 kanji that covers 80% of literature takes the same amount of time to study/memorize as the next 1000 kanji that covers the next 15% and the next 1000 that cover 3% (numbers not accurate). The return on your time invested is seemingly reduced. Same example would apply to those learning vocabulary or grammar concepts.

Seeing the difference between someone that's practiced 100 hours versus 200 hours is obvious. The difference between 1000 and 1100 hours of practice is less obvious. The difference between 10,000 and 10,100 hours is impossible to note. Now get up to 30,000 hours of practice like World Class musicians and athletes. It's people like that that practice hundreds of hours to shave fractions of seconds off time, or 1 more point on average per game, or hit every note perfect in a 10 minute piece.

Something tells me the world class level practiced more than three hours per day even before they were world class.

There s indeed another theory for that ....
and it has also been marketed in something more fashionable : Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers: 10000 hours. Khatz refers both to the this idea http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blo...prehension and to the book http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blo...tlierswait
Speaking of which AJATT itself is just a fancy presentation of the good old immersion principle and krashken's works....

Outliers is a really good book and you can find it in Japanese now(It's called 天才 I think). However there is a book that I think is even better, "Talent is Overrated" by Geoff Colvin. It's similar, but it focuses specifically on practice. I suggest reading both if you have time.
Anyway, in my experience the law of diminishing returns effects almost everything in life. I think studying is effected by this just like anything else. I can learn 1 word in a min and if you ask me later that day what the word means I think I would remember(I think I could remember it for the next few days too). There are 1440 min in a day, so it should be easy for me to memorize 1000 words a day. That still leaves me with 440 min to do whatever I want with. That said, I'm sure anyone who has tried will tell you that 1000 new words a day is impossible(or almost impossible). Even though this affects your study doesn't mean there aren't ways around it. If you break your practice into segments you can get around this law(to a point at least).
For example if you have 2 people, Mr. A studies 8 hours a day and Mr.B studies 8 hours a day. Mr. A reads Japanese for the whole 8 hours. Mr. B on the other hand reads Japanese for 6 hours and listens to Japanese for 2 hours. After 1 year I'm sure Mr. A would be better at reading than Mr. B, but not by much. I think most people would rate them at the same level, but certainly Mr. B's listening skill will be much higher than Mr. A's.

Nukemarine Wrote:This daily practice though goes into the next area. Impact over the long haul which goes into the law of diminishing returns. We see it on this site. The 1000 kanji that covers 80% of literature takes the same amount of time to study/memorize as the next 1000 kanji that covers the next 15% and the next 1000 that cover 3% (numbers not accurate). The return on your time invested is seemingly reduced. Same example would apply to those learning vocabulary or grammar concepts.

ahhh, you've hit the nail on the head with that one! That's exactly how the law of diminishing returns applies to learning Japanese.

it also has been around for a while now....
it s called kanji odyssey 2001 : 60 percent of reading ability with only 550 kanjis (book1) 80 percent with only 1110 kanjis (book2) .

Aijin Wrote:3 hours a day? I can assure you that aspiring concert pianists practice much more than that When I played violin competitively, most of the kids practiced 6 hours a day.

I started playing at 17. I started playing because I loved it, so I wasn't really concerned with being a concert pianist. I had the great opportunity to watch how jaded some had become because they were never told they had to practice 88 hours a day before they turned the age of 3 in order to really make it in the field. They were very talented individuals and yet they were overshadowed by those individuals whose parents decided their destinies before they were even born.

Let me ask... of those studying 6 hours or more a day, how many actually became concert violists? How many developed bad posture and other bad habits? What sort of injuries began to manifest? 6 hours a day for a kid is kinda absurd. Unless they've been playing for 8 or more years it could even be seen as a form of torture . And if they're been playing for 8 or more years and they're still considered a kid, that too is probably a form of torture. (Langlang) (>_<)

I used to be one of those who practiced more than 3 hours a day (on some days　ｆ（＾＾；）　), but I've yet to find a teacher who recommends it.

HerrPetersen Wrote:My gut feeling is that for whatever you do, doing multiple say 90 minutes sessions is better than doing one 3 hour session.

One teacher recommends short 15-20 minute goal oriented sessions. By using this technique, by the time I finished a single practice session, I'd done more work than I had ever done just sitting down and going through like normal. It also showed me my limits. In 3 hours I was exhausted. I'd convinced myself that all those hours sitting at the piano before were hard work when I didn't even know the meaning it.　Like with Heisig and the Movie Method, efficiency out weights sheer time invested.

liosama Wrote:diminishing return my ass,

Practice guitar scales for 6 hours and you'll come out looking like you've practised complex pieces for 50 hours.

Just study until you are worn out. I don't know much about piano but surely there's a similar story with Piano scales vs Piano pieces.
Nothing beats pracitisng scales, all the masters (in classical guitar anyway) emphasise it more than practising pieces.

It's not stating you get nothing back, just that you don't get as much bang for your buck.

Nukemarine Wrote:Something tells me the world class level practiced more than three hours per day even before they were world class.

At 3 hours a day would take 30 years to reach that 30000 hours mark. Some would argue that 6 hours a day would take 15 years. However, because of diminishing return it would be more somewhere between 15-25 (out my ass). Who knows what sort of impact using more efficient methods would have.

mezbup Wrote:

Nukemarine Wrote:This daily practice though goes into the next area. Impact over the long haul which goes into the law of diminishing returns. We see it on this site. The 1000 kanji that covers 80% of literature takes the same amount of time to study/memorize as the next 1000 kanji that covers the next 15% and the next 1000 that cover 3% (numbers not accurate). The return on your time invested is seemingly reduced. Same example would apply to those learning vocabulary or grammar concepts.

ahhh, you've hit the nail on the head with that one! That's exactly how the law of diminishing returns applies to learning Japanese.

That's interesting.

Yeah, it does apply. 100 new vocabulary words means much more to the beginner than it does to those with a larger knowledge already.