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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6696 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes  Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 3625 of 3959 30 May 2014 at 12:10am | IP Logged |
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In response to some questions posed by another member of the polydog forum (aimed at "those who don't like either Anki or wordlists" I wrote the following rant, which also says something about my current Serbian project:
"I spend more time on intensive studies than on extensive reading these days. One problem is that when I find a book or really long text about a suitable theme on the internet, or when I read magazines in the local languages bought during my travels, I tend to get through them so fast that they don't really can't oust my short intensive texts from the prime position as time gobblers. Luckily I listen to things in different languages on TV and on my computer, and this helps to bring about some balance in the time expenditure - but so far I haven't got TV in a number of crucial languages like Russian and Greek (and I'm still waiting for my Serbian TV channel). During all my intensive activities I collect words for wordlists, and in defiance of eminent names like Prof Arguelles and Luca I also do wordlists based directly on dictionaries - and I like it! The thing is that once you are past the beginners stadium OR you are studying a language close to one you already know there will be an immense amount of purely linguistic associations available to you, and for me those are just as real as words in sentences said by somebody in a film. Or you may have a vague feeling that you have seen certain words before - and you probably have if you have been battling with a language for some time. Linguistic associations are also a kind of context, but probably not to the same degree for everybody. For me it is pure bliss to discover that the Serbians say "бламирати се" just as we do here in Denmark ('blamere sig' = make a fool of yourself), and I don't think I have actually to do it to remember this specific word. However I don't like Anki (because I think my general reading serves me enough surprises), so with this lame excuse I should like to answer the questions of Peregrinus: 1) Do you already possess the vocabulary necessary to comfortably read a general interest newspaper (i.e. 98%+ coverage for English)? I have just read an article about Plaka in Athens in Greek without even reaching for my dictionary, and Greek is one of my weak languages. There will always be words which you might want to learn more about (or check that you have understood correctly), but lack of vocabulary is not one of my problems. 2) If not, how do you plan to acquire that vocabulary, assuming you are interested in reading a newspaper in addition to other passive or active activities in a L2? I may learn specialized vocabulary from technical literature or even newspapers during extensive reading activities, but the bulk of my vocabulary in recent times has come through intensive studies, including wordlists. However there is a philosophical problem here: if I read a book about the construction of medieval wind instruments, I may learn a lot of new words, but only if I do an effort to remember them. But isn't that also intensive study, although under the cover of studying instrument making? 3) How long, as in how many hours per day for how many months/years do you think it will take to acquire that vocabulary? If I should count vocabulary from the zero point to now, I can't use languages I have known for ages, but only those I have staretd recently. And with Serbian, which I started learning in February I have been shocked by the overlap with Russian , Polish and even Danish so even though I haven't done a vocabulary count for Serbian yet I'm fairly sure the number is up somewhere in the thousands already. But the absolute numbers are less interesting than the percentage of words in a midsize dictionary - though my Italian <--> Serbian dictionary is at the short end of the scale with its paltry 2 x 10.000 words. Just for fun and with no scientific expectations I have just counted known/unknown words on a page I have been through with a wordlist and another which I haven't reached yet: 20 known and 8 unknown on the first page, and 11 vs. 17 on the second, i.e. respectively 70% and 40%. So it seems - based on this very limited tidbid of evidence - it does seem possible that doing wordlists isn't a total waste of time. 4) How much time per day on average do you spend on extensive/intensive reading and listening? Well, most evenings and some shorter periods during the day (I work a lot with spreadsheets, and you go berserk if you don't do something else in between - and I do languages in those pauses). Many travels also have a linguistic aspect." The kind of statistics mentioned in section three could actually be quite interesting. I have two Serbian dictionaries (both fairly small) and yesterday evening and today I have done А and Б, so when I reach the midpoint (hopefully before my expedition to Berlin next month) it might be revelatory to see the real difference between the part fo the part of the Serbian language I have pushed through the wordlist machine and the part which hasn't been worked through there - with the reservation that I never use all the words on any page, and I also do other things with Serbian alongside the wordlists. If I feel really energetic I could also do a test on the wordlist words after I have returned from Germany to see how much is left then. Well, my first concern is of course to get as far as possibible with the азбука (<-- word for the Cyrillic alphabet). And apart from that I have of course studied two pages about Plaka in Greek, as mentioned in the quote above. Edited by Iversen on 30 May 2014 at 12:24am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6696 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 3626 of 3959 31 May 2014 at 10:54am | IP Logged |
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I have now done the experiment I mentioned above.
As I have written elsewhere I am trying to learn some Serbian, and I'm making solid progress especially at the passive level (even though I still haven't got my Serbian TV channel, which I ordered in April!). I have been doing the usual copies, retranslations and extensive readings, and I have done word lists with the unknown words I ran into. Wednesday evening and Thursday I started out doing wordlists directly from my two dictionaries (both relatively small), and I got through the first two letters of the Cyrillic alphabet. Friday I made a simple repetition simply by copying the Serbian words and adding a translation whenever the meaning of a word was in any way unclear. Then it struck me that I had an one-time opportunity to measure the short-term effect of this most nerdy exercise. I took three pages from the 'read' part of the alphabet and three from the still-not-read, and then I calculated the number of known or guessable words. In the part I had studied I knew 60% of the words and could guess a further 18%. In the rest of the dictionary the numbers were reversed: I knew 18% (inclusive 'international' words) and could guess a further 19%, so 63% were still unknown. Now working directly from a dictionary isn't the first thing you should do so I have waited 3 months to start doing it, but it seems that it is worth doing for the whole azbuka right now. There is one aspect more: it is sometimes affirmed that words you learn without a context (or rather: without the canonical kind of social or narrative context, as there certainly is a linguistic context for the words in a dictionary) disappear faster than words you have learn in a social setting or from literature. After 2½ day I can't yet check the longterm effect of doing wordlists from a dictionary (or two) in Serbian, but I have a couple of short term indications: for once I did my first repetition round (yesterday afternoon) simply by copying the Serbian words, except that I added translations to 18% of the 365 words on the list because I had forgotten the meaning or felt it was shaky. But later in the evening I covered the translations and checked all the words again, and now only 7 among the dubious words were absolutely incomprehensible. I'll probably put these words on a list later (in the best goldlist style) and then I think the the matter is dealt with. The relevant thing then is how many of the 365 words I forget within a couple of weeks or a month or so. But I would almost certainly have forgotten some words whatever the method I had used to learn them. The difference is that I can quantify the loss as long as I take care not to throw the pages with the first 365 words away. You can't judge how many words you lose if you just have picked them up from extensive reading and didn't bother to write them down. And no, knowing a lot of words is not the same thing as being able to speak a language. We are speaking passive vocabulary here. This morning I have been doing 1½ Serbian letters more, and I have been watching Spanish and Italian television. SP: En TVE española he visto un programa para personas con discapacidad auditiva, donde los participantes se refirieron a temas come por ejemplo cursos de idiomas para niños, una aplicación que se podía traducir desde y hacia el braille y un festival de música para sordos - el que me recuerda de una serie sobre una percusionista femenina sorda que vi en la televisión danesa hace mucho tiempo. Y por supuesto había subtítulos y un montón de lenguaje de signos -, pero hay una cosa a la cual yo no puedo reconciliarme en relación al lenguaje de signos: ¿por qué está siempre acompañado por estas muecas exageradas? Luego siguió un programa sobre las recientes elecciones al Parlamento Europeo, y vi mucho de esto aunque se hicieron un montón de afirmaciones dudosas. Pero cuando llegamos a la mesa redonda inevitable, no pude soportarlo más y cambié a Rai uno en Italiano. IT: Su Raiuno ci è stato la Linea Verde Orrizzonte, che generalmente si rivela un pochissimo meno abominevole e superfluo degli altri programme di questo canale. Questa volta abbiamo visitato la Sardegna, ed alcune sezioni sono infatti state tollerabile, ma ho avuto abbastanza quando si è mostrato una clip di un pastore e le sue pecore con una cantante disgustosa come accompagnamento. Avrei preferito sentire la pecora belante. In contrast I get more and more happy about my Croatian channel (HRT1). I have just switched to its Saturday morning program, which is showing people in small boats in a harbour somewhere. And guess: there is no background music! The one thing I don't understand is why a country with such a cultured and delectable channel has got the most noise polluted busses in Europe? EDIT: OK, maybe they couldn't support so much praise. Right now they have changed location to a market with ugly noise. But at least it is authentic noise from the location, not something added by an evil tonedeaf employee. Edited by Iversen on 02 June 2014 at 1:24pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| drygramul Tetraglot Senior Member Italy Joined 4461 days ago 165 posts - 269 votes Speaks: Persian, Italian*, EnglishC2, GermanB2 Studies: French, Polish | Message 3627 of 3959 31 May 2014 at 11:40am | IP Logged |
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IT: Su Raiuno ci è stato la Linea Verde Orrizzonte, che ogniqualvolte si rivela un pochissimo meno abominevole e superfluo degli altri programme di questo canale. Questa volta abbiamo visitato la Sardegna, ed alcune sezioni sono infatti state tollerabile, ma ho avuto abbastanza quando si è mostrato una clip di un pastore e le sue pecore con una cantatatrice disgustosa come accompagnamento. Avrei preferito sentire la pecora belante.
You can't use ogniqualvolta this way. Ogniqualvolta is always followed by a temporal sentence. It's like tutte le volte che, ogni volta che. For instance in this case: ogniqualvolta è trasmessa, ogniqualvolta va in onda. Moreover it's quite outdated and doesn't sound very fluid. Here ogni volta it's correct, easier and more natural. Cantatrice is outdated too >> cantante I hope you don't mind if I pointed out some mistakes, but I found these ones pretty curious (I guess you found them in some old books). It still needs some refinement in grammar, but otherwise it's quite understandable. Convengo che i canali Italiani facciano pena. Non guardo la tv Italiana da circa 12 anni ormai. Edited by drygramul on 31 May 2014 at 11:42am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6696 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 3628 of 3959 31 May 2014 at 12:11pm | IP Logged |
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It is definitely correct that some of my Italian vocabulary comes from outdated sources, like the word "cantatrice". It exists, but according to Google mostly in French due to the title of a play by Ionesco. Another reason I should have chosen another word like 'cantante' is that 'cantatrice' seems mostly to be used about opera divas, and the music that spoilt that pastoral scene ("scena agreste"? *) was definitely not in that league.
As for 'ogniqualvolta' I have replaced it with 'generalmente', which doesn't have the same meaning, but which is closer to my assessment of the program in question. * sorry, but I can't resist using outdated language ogniqualvolta che si presenta una opportunità Edited by Iversen on 31 May 2014 at 12:24pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| drygramul Tetraglot Senior Member Italy Joined 4461 days ago 165 posts - 269 votes Speaks: Persian, Italian*, EnglishC2, GermanB2 Studies: French, Polish | Message 3629 of 3959 31 May 2014 at 12:36pm | IP Logged |
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Ogniqualvolta it's an elegant word indeed, but it's always less common and less used in common speech. In your last example the usage is correct, and on spot :D
Such a pity that the Italian langages is becoming featureless. I usually read newspapers comments online, and the widespread ignorance of grammar and paucity of vocabulary is depressing. The tendence is always to simplify, because people don't want to engage in any mental effort. Edit: I mean from natives Edited by drygramul on 31 May 2014 at 12:38pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6696 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 3630 of 3959 01 June 2014 at 1:16pm | IP Logged |
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Just a short notice regarding the wordlist technique (based on something I mentioned in the preceding message, but didn't elaborate)..
As some of you may know I have developed a layout for wordlists with three columns: one for foreign words, one for translations and one for the same foreign as in the first column. The words are learnt in groups of 5 to 7 words, and all words in a group must be learnt before column 2 and 3 are filled out. The whole thing is explained in a wiki and in my guide to elarning languages here at HTLAL. Nothing has changed in my method at this stage, except that it took me some time to realize that the sue of dictionaries as a source only is meaningful when you already have a secure footing and some experience in a language. I have however experimented with the repetition round (or rounds). First I used a simplified layout on a separate sheet: 1 column with translations (copied blockwise from first round, column 2), one with retranslations - and as usual filled out one block at a time. I later integrated the columns in the same sheet as the coulmns from round 1, and this still functions well. Later I found out that a close and meticuluous rereading af the original source (provided that it isn't a dictionary) would function just as well as repetition, so now I often do that. However in connection with my Serbian project I have been experimenting with a third possibility, which gives less writing time than method 1 and more control than method 2. I simply copy the foreign words from round one to a separate sheet with column two covered. WHen and only when I'm tempted to peek under the cover I also write the translation down on the repetition sheet. So far it seems that I average around 15-20 % peek-a-boo words, which indicate that about 80% or more already have settled in my longterm memory - but it will take a an extra control round later to check whether they stay there. So far I have done one same-day control on a small dataset to see whether the second round had an effect, and as you can see above it certainly had - I was only in doubt about the meaning of 7 of the 'peek-a-boo' words on my Serbian wordlist. EDIT: I have since checked all 365 words again and found 27 dubious words, but as earlier indicated only 7 of these were among the forgotten words from round 2 - so basically I have relearned the words that were singled out as problems, but forgot some of the others from day 2 to day 3. Summa summarum: 7% is definitely less than the original 18% dubious words, so maybe a second repetition round is worth doing after all. The point is that with less writing in repetition rounds I'm more liable to do a round three, and that way I can also test whether the words stay put. Ebbinghaus' classical 'forgetting curve' indicates that our longterm memory is like a leaky bucket, but the trouble is that curve it has been interpreted to mean that it is irrelevant whether you make a repetition within a few minuts or a day or so - and therefore both SRS systems like ANKI and the goldlist method are built squarely on repetitions after days or months. To me those long repetition intervals are meaningful, but my own experience is that I forget things immediately if I don't do something to retain and recall the facts as soon as I have seen them, and they have to be refreshed soon after. So far I have been satisfied with my retention rate with just one repetition round - of course on condition that I do other things in the language afterwards. The assumption has been that I may meet the same words again, and if not then the world is full of other tempting words. Whether it is important to meet exactly the same words again 'on the loose' is a moot point, but that's something that in principle could be tested. The key question is the following one: can I learn more new words than I loose among the old ones if I follow my current strategy with just one repetition round? If yes, then it shows that there are other considerations than just the classical forgetting curve. If I pour water in a leaky cauldron then the water level will keep rising as long as I pour more water into the container than flows out of it. Edited by Iversen on 02 June 2014 at 1:43pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6696 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 3631 of 3959 04 June 2014 at 3:23am | IP Logged |
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SE: Ја сам наставио своје студије на српском језику, сада са словом Д, и нашао сам низ веома корисних речи, као што су "дневник лета". Али постоје ствари у мом Енглески-српског речника, који ме води неповерење, и то укључује низ цомпунд израза који изгледају вештачки: "darts" = "бацање новчић y метy", "tandem" = "бицикл ца два седишта", "to dial" = "бирати телефонски број" итд. И избор властитих имена је донекле идиосинкразијски: Абел Тасман, Амундсен Роалд (!), Арканзас, Атенбороу... Али величина је добра - око 12.000 речи у правцу хверт.
My Serbian project continues - I did the letter 'd' today. My new repetition layout functions very well: for the first repetition I copy all the Serbian words, but only add the translation if I'm in doubt about the meaning of a certain word. And one day later I run through the repetition list again, add dots at words I still haven't learnt - shame on me! - and add new translations in another color wherever I run into new forgotten words. And luckily the number of problem words goes down after each round: it seems that I'm hovering about 20% misses in the first repetition round and 10% or so in the second round (with an overlap of roughly 5%). According to the disciples of Ebbinghaus I ought to continue my repetitions for weeks, but I simply find that the effect of the repetitions wane as I forget the memory hooks I used during the first memorization phase. And yes, I can see a clear effect of doing wordlists, although it was clearer with my Italian<->Serbian dictionary (8000 words) where I got around 60% known words for the first two letters (А,Б) and 18% for later letters in the alphabet. For the letters В,Г,Д I have used the English<->Serbian dictionary (12000 words), and here I have found 55% known words with В,Г,Д and 31% later in the alphabet. It should however be emphasized that I can recognize many words from Polish, Russian and - surprise - Danish!, and I also remember a fair amount of words from earlier activities in Serbian, including textbased wordlists. Otherwise 31% known words in a new language would have been a joke. Those who are less interested in vocabulary studies may wonder why I spend valuable time on these numerical studies, but the point is that they prove dictionary based wordlists used at the right stage of my language learning has had a decisive and provable effect - measured on the Italian dictionary I tripled my vocabulary,and I doubled it when I used the English dictionary (where I have to leave more words out). And I can only do this test now where I'm partially through my first comprehensive dictionary based wordlist. Another reason is that I actually learn a number of words by chewing my way through selected parts of a dictionary - even if it is done in order to count words. --- It is now past 3 o'clock in the night here. I would have written about some other activities, like making an Italian translation of a full page from the magazin of my Travel club plus some TV viewing, but it's too late now. I'll just mention that my cable TV provider finally has opened the Serbian and an Albanian channel I ordered in April - but there is apparently no signal from the Serbian station. And the Albanian one seems to show speeches by politicans all the time. It is quite boring as the only word I understand is "Kosova", and I haven't time to delve into the mysteries of this language right now. The irritating thing is that I was immensely impressed with the quality of Albanian TV programs last time I visited Tirana (lots of documentaries) - why has Yousee then chosen this one? Edited by Iversen on 04 June 2014 at 12:23pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6696 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 3632 of 3959 05 June 2014 at 2:32pm | IP Logged |
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I did Е and the strange letter Ђ yesterday evening plus repetition of Г and Д. There are however not really new things to be said about this topic - I just work my way letter by letter through the Serbian alphabet, and at the end of it I expect to be able to read simple texts in Serbian without too much trouble. My new Serbian TV channel is still stubbornly refusing to show anything, but I regularly watch Polish and Croatian TV. Sometimes there are interviews with foreigners whose language I understand (like a EU commissary yesterday who was interviewed in English for the HRT1 dnevnik), and then I follow the subtitles. The opposite situation rarely occurs, except in the series about Croatian kings on the History Channel which has been sent several times by now. But now I actually can begin to follow the Croatian speech, aided by the subtitles. The main problem is that they use words occurring after the part of the alphabet I have studied in Serbian. I know that there are differences between Serbian and Croatian, but so far I only study Serbian. Just to take an example: the names of the months are 'poetic' in Croatian just as in Polish - I have however not yet checked whether they are the same as in Polish, where they also have funny names. I n Serbian they are the usual Latin lot.
But life is not just about learning some Serbian, even though that for the time being is my most time consuming project. Yesterday I translated more page more of Danish travelogue into Italian, and I read about the Mosasaurus in Indonesian. IN: Mosasaurus adalah makhluk laut yang sangat besar (sampai dengan 18 meter) dengan mulut besar yang penuh gigi tajam, dan telah hidup selama periode Kapur. Saya menggunakan sebuah artikel dari www.isains.com, tapi artikel yang sama mengatakan di tempat lain. Saya juga menemukan sebuah artikel yang mengklaim bahwa foto yang lama dari 1931 menunjukkan Mosasaurus membusuk di pantai - tapi klaim ini saya tidak percaya. Edited by Iversen on 05 June 2014 at 2:44pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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