I'm studying 2 languages at two different levels. My english is in a intermediate-ish and my french is beginner. I don't organize what I'm going to study, but I generally study every day. Outside of these hours that I'm willing to focus and get things going, I also have contact with the languages (in a more passive way), though it's more difficult for french due to my level of comprehension.
So, what exactly I do when I sit to study? I get a text with audio and I search for words or sentences I already know, then I look for what I don't know. When I think I understand 90% of the text or more, I try to write it listening the audio only. Next, I go to study the text again, but focusing on the words that I still don't get it. After I did it all, I use the bidirectional translation method and finally I write some sentences with the words I had more difficulty and post on HiNative for get corrections (I split theses processes into several days).
My grammar study is random, I study when I want, but I know what I need to study, on account of the journals I'm writing now or my erros in translating.
Now, I will talk a little about what I think I should be doing or what I'm doing wrong.
I don't practice my speaking skills and I believe it is the reason I'm still in this intermediate hell 🥲. Now, you're probably thinking, then just go there and talk, make friends. Yeah, so, I tried that, I download Tandem, Hello Talk and all these conversation apps, but it really didn't work. I couldn't connect with anyone and I really wasn't confortable with it. I'm shy and introvert, so even in my native language, I don't talk much. Currently, my hopes are that writing posts here and reviews on goodreads will made me reach fluency.
P.s.: Thanks for reading and helping me.
P.s.²: I would love to hear about your studies and if you have any tips about what I can do to improve mine, let me know.
Well, I think writing here on Journaly is definitely the way to go, certainly for an intermediate language like English. It won't help you that much with your pronunciation, but it surely will boost your fluency. So my advice is to focus on the writing process. I know you wrote that yourself, but I'm writing it here because, to me, that's the essential point of the whole post. I'm not using anything like HiNative or whatever, but from what a 2 second Google search tells me (a very exhaustive research, you see), those things are nothing compared to Journaly. Of course, this is just my very personal opinion. I'm been using Journaly for 11 months and the cool thing is that it doesn't (always) feel like studying or even language learning, but often (especially in the comments section, once you get to chat with people) simply as human interaction in a (mostly) friendly atmosphere. So that's just great. Another piece of advice is, as you often hear, to focus on content you enjoy. Again, Journaly provides an optimal filtering functionality for that: you have tags and a quite exhaustive choice of topics to choose from. To me, your technique of "going and regoing and going once more over a given text" is overkill. Instead, I prefer to improve my language skills by (a) reading books, (b) writing on Journaly, and (c) listening to audiobooks. Again, this is my very personal opinion. The "listening to audiobooks" (or podcasts, or whatever you enjoy) could help you with your pronunciation, if you focus on how natives (or advanced speakers with a decent pronunciation) speak. There are people out there who do things like "Shadowing" (I don't), so you could try that and see if it works for yourself. In my case, I simply prefer to focus on content than technique. You'll learn what your brain finds interesting and relevant, and that's usualy not a bad thing.
@edufuga I already tried "shadowing", but it isn't for me neither. Anyway, thanks for share your studies, I love seeing how people do things differently.
find a song where the words are said quite quickly, such as rap or hardcore, memorize it and try to say it as fast as you can. It might take a month or two to learn one song and be able to rattle it off, but hopefully it should be a challenge that you can see yourself getting better at, as you memorize a few more words each day. It will help with pronunciation and will get the muscles in your face accustomed to switching between different positions that you otherwise aren't used to quickly switching to. It will give you a real feeling of accomplishment, because at the beginning you will think it is impossible, and after a couple months you will find it is all just muscle memory.
@Nemvagok It seems fun, I'll try it.