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Is learning nouns by category good? | ||
Tags: Vocabulary learning | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| bobby1413 Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4009 days ago 32 posts - 32 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian | Message 1 of 11 02 August 2013 at 11:46am | IP Logged | ||
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I've got this A5 notepad with about 10 different sections or coloured pages. Eg, 50 red pages, 50 orange, 50
green etc... All in one notebook. I've been doing Assimil and still a beginner in Italian. I was thinking... Maybe I could split the book up: Red pages - food: listing all the relevant food words - like chicken, tuna, salad, pepper, knife, fork etc... Orange pages - home: door, sofa, kitchen, window, bathroom Yellow - travel stuff Then I could focus on different elements and categories to learn the words to help understand the context of sentences. Any thoughts on this as an idea? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Andrew C Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom naturalarabic.com Joined 5001 days ago 205 posts - 350 votes  Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written) | Message 2 of 11 02 August 2013 at 2:19pm | IP Logged | ||
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Personally, I don't like the idea. I think you're more likely to get confused between the
items if they are put together and taken out of context. However, there are many vocabulary books which group the way you suggest, so some people think it's a good thing to do. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5480 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin | Message 3 of 11 02 August 2013 at 3:25pm | IP Logged | ||
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There is a lot of evidence that this is actually a very poor way to learn words.
Of course, it may help you "sweep up" a few missing words in each category if you are already advanced. or if you wish to focus on some specialist area of interest. For general vocabularly, though, you are much better starting out with a frequency dictionary. Once you have a few thousand high-frequency words covered, then you can move onto specialist lists, collocations, and low-frequency words. My speech at the polyglot conference (available on youtube) talks about this in some detail based on hundreds of studies in applied linguistics. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| schoenewaelder Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5371 days ago 759 posts - 1197 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 4 of 11 02 August 2013 at 3:40pm | IP Logged | ||
I'm not a fan of themed vocabulary either, but the suggestion here seems different than the usually discussed idea of trying to learn vocabulary from themed lists or dictionaries. He is suggesting that he organises his own vocabulary by theme ([edit- possibly] as and when he acquires it.) I can imagine looking at a chicken and thinking "I know that's a red word" or whatever, and it could be helpful. [ps, not seen your latest video yet, so don't know if you did specifically address that] [pps, anyone know if there's a simple way in Chrome to stop it putting in line breaks all over the place?] Edited by schoenewaelder on 02 August 2013 at 3:46pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Retinend Triglot Senior Member SpainRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4119 days ago 283 posts - 557 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish Studies: Arabic (Written), French | Message 5 of 11 02 August 2013 at 11:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think it depends.
If you're not fully comfortable asking for one piece of fruit then it's better to learn how to ask it with just one fruit-name as a stand-in. If you're comfortable asking for one piece of fruit, then it might be a good idea. If you're ever in a situation where you're in front of the fruit in question and need to use the word, some circumlocution with "that" or "it" will suffice. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| yuriFromRoma Groupie Italy Joined 4524 days ago 48 posts - 69 votes Speaks: Italian* Studies: English, Russian | Message 6 of 11 03 August 2013 at 5:29pm | IP Logged | ||
Here is the video. Great stuff! Kudos! Regarding the short term memory (from now on: STM) and its link to "guessing" activity as a habit for learning vocabulary suggested in the video... I'm not entirely convinced that such thing as STM can actually be increased to a great extent in adults - at least for what concerns your native language. What can really be increased, though, is the STM related to a foreign language, for it is usually (much?) shorter than the former one. Put in other words, if I do try to rehearsal a sentence back as soon as I heard (or read aloud) it, there is a difference whether the sentence is in my native language or not. In fact, I can repeat back in Italian sentences longer than English ones (even though the gap is narrowing over the time ... somehow), let alone Russian! :) And this also applies to lists of words. Not sure how much can be done to fill the gap directly, but anyway the process of figuring out how broad is it in terms of STM between your native language (=max value within reach) and the one you are learning can provide a helpful clue for (self-)evaluating how deep the latter has grown on you. Yuri Edited by yuriFromRoma on 03 August 2013 at 5:41pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4639 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 7 of 11 04 August 2013 at 3:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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I don't know if this applies to language-learning or not really, but I find in some
situations, remembering a phone number just long enough to dial it for example, an aural memory works better than a visual one or purely mental one. So if I say it out loud after looking it up, I can then "play back the recording" of saying it, in my head, and remember better than I would otherwise. This is just a short term thing though, usually very short. In certain other respects, my memory is more visual, but in general, it seems to work in a combination of ways, so I would not call myself primarily a "visual learner". Edited by montmorency on 04 August 2013 at 5:36pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| yuriFromRoma Groupie Italy Joined 4524 days ago 48 posts - 69 votes Speaks: Italian* Studies: English, Russian | Message 8 of 11 04 August 2013 at 3:55pm | IP Logged | ||
You are right, WM is related to aural memory, in fact most tests usually require you reading aloud or listening to a sequence of "verbal output" (numbers, words or entire sentences). A weird fact I read about it is that a person can hold in WM what he or she can say in about 2 seconds. Therefore, fast speakers usually perform better than slow ones at this task. Yuri Edited by yuriFromRoma on 04 August 2013 at 4:05pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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