How can we engage in the process of learning?
If learning was not an independent process, how many degrees should we dive into the pool before we can call it a process of learning?
It all depends.
I am learning French these days, but my statue of learning should not be recognized as a traditional state of learning. It’s too causal and has too little density compared to the student in school. And it lacks the systematic required in the age of “ten thousand hours of practice”.
I actually learn it every day. It shows some systematic in an obvious way, and I must emphasize the importance of it - the persistence of learning. The difference between me and the “ten thousand hours” is that I continue to learn even after the practice time has passed. It’s not because of the need of practice, but because it would be not only part of my skills, but part of my life, and the “practice” is a way to diversify my angles of observing the world and my life.
With this kind of opinion, I’d rather tend to make the “learning” process integrated into my daily life. It doesn’t mean that I have to recall the things every time in my daily life. It means to abstract true things that can be understood and practiced in ordinary time.
For example, in French, “Je vais au parc en voiture” can be understood as “I am going to the park by car” and “I am going to the park in a car”. The difference here is between the way English speakers look at the car and the way French people look at the French world - “en”.
For the English, the car is a means of transportation, it is used to make the commute comfortable. It is used by people. This use makes the car a clearly focused object. When people focus on the functions of other uses, they can use other words like “in” or “on. While French friends have different considerations, they use the word “en” to represent the statuses in the car. The “en” combines all the states in a car.
Je vais au zoo “en” voiture.
When perceived in English, we should change the “en” according to the different directions of our willingness to use the car. In French, the word “en” can be in charge of all the uses, here this single word represents all the interactions people would do in the car. So the “en” is not just an “in,” “on,” or “by.
Although the French has “grande différence” when it comes to the choice of first person, second person, and third person. Its structure has proven to be as consistent as any other language.
The word “en” thus represents all the interactions between “voiture” and “humain”. Its meaning varies each time we use it. If there was a difficulty in understanding, the language would provide all the necessary details that are sufficient for us to understand. We can perceive the interactions between the object and the subject if we use this language carefully.
However, the time of study is not the most important issue in language learning.
The problem we have here is the way of understanding the language we want to master. Perspective is a precious angel that helps us plunge into the hypostasis of the world and its law of motion.
Certainly, recitation can help us remember some of the detailed information in a short time, but the mastery of a language lies on the solid foundation of deep perception rooted in the language.
And the key here is the interaction - how we perceive the objects around us, how we react to those objects, how we understand the objects’ reactions, how we respond to those reactions, and how we redefine ourselves in the whole process.
Ultimately, it would be a process of getting to know yourself again.