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Learning a multitude of vocab correctly | ||
Tags: Vocabulary learning | German | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| J0sh Newbie United States Joined 3696 days ago 4 posts - 4 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 1 of 6 06 October 2014 at 11:06pm | IP Logged | ||
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I am currently attempting to learn German and my long term goal is to be able to speak
conversationally with friends of mine that live in Germany. My short term goal is to be able to watch/listen to A1/A2 native media until I am able to read A2/B1 native material. My current approach is composed of Assimil/Pimsleur/Hugo(grammar)/Anki, this is going well for me but I know that I could be learning much more vocabulary via Anki in my free time. My question is what would forum members recommend I include on these Anki vocab cards? I plan to use a frequency list of 1000-3000 words and I will add them in systematically, but should I be including gender and multiple context sentences or should I just stick with learning the meaning of the word at first and integrate grammar rules later on? What has worked for you? What hasn't? Edited by J0sh on 06 October 2014 at 11:08pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cabaire Senior Member Germany Joined 5589 days ago 725 posts - 1352 votes  | Message 2 of 6 06 October 2014 at 11:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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It is normal to have only a cloudy idea of the semantical range of new vocabulary. You will encounter the different uses in the real life later.
But I personally am very bad at learning words bare-boned. Give me a vocabulary list and I will despair. I need context and sentences in order to appropriate them to myself, or better said, to "befriend" them and become acquainted with them. But that's maybe only my way. PS. If you learn naked German words, learn always "der Mann", not "Mann", or you will regret it later, if ever you want to be productive. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Lemberg1963 Bilingual Diglot Groupie United States zamishka.blogspot.coRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4229 days ago 41 posts - 82 votes Speaks: English*, Ukrainian* Studies: French, German, Spanish, Polish | Message 3 of 6 10 October 2014 at 5:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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The Routledge frequency dictionary comes with a short phrase for each word. I recommend doing cards Q: Phrase in English + Image, A: Phrase in German.
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| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6572 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 4 of 6 10 October 2014 at 5:48pm | IP Logged | ||
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What I do is add all new words in each Assimil lesson into Anki, with just the word on the front and the meaning, as well as an example sentence on the back. You could add some grammatical information if you want, but personally I prefer just learning passively in the beginning, and letting my active abilities play catch-up. This way the gender of most words will come naturally after you've encountered them enough times, and then you can add separate gender Anki cards for the words with which you have problems.
In the beginning, I'd recommend spending more time working intensively with the Assimil lessons (such as shadowing them), and less time bulk learning vocab. It's a lot easier to get vocab to stick once you're more used to the language, so learning loads of words early means you're spending needless energy learning words that could be learned "cheaper" later on in your studies. Here's the approach I find the most useful: * In the beginning, work intensively with the material you have and really learn it well. Go for overlearning the basics. * Once you've got the basic framework (all the Assimil lessons) down pat, go for extensive reading and listening. Do look stuff up if you want, but don't add to much into Anki. If you're like me, this will be hard, but the time is better spent getting massive amounts of exposure, and most medium-frequency words can be learned by exposure. * Once you're at decent comprehension levels but you still have a lot of holes, go for massive vocabulary learning. There are a lot of low-frequency words and these are hard to learn through extensive methods. Here Anki is great. Now you can also work on active skills, and it's a good idea to memorize conjugations and declensions at this stage. Learning words is a lot easier now that your brain is thoroughly used to the language. --- Of course, this is my preferred way of learning, and it's not everyone's cup of tea to wait so long before working on active skills. Some people want to speak from day one. YMMV. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4899 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 5 of 6 10 October 2014 at 6:02pm | IP Logged | ||
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I prefer to keep my vocabulary cards simple, and a small part of my total time. So I just make two sided cards based on a single word. I don't take the time to add pictures and I don't like sentence cards. There are loads of objections to my approach, but I think it's fine as long as you use the words you learn (e.g. by lots of reading, watching, listening, talking, etc).
Since you are learning German, Deutsche Welle has a nice set of vocabulary podcasts, Audiotrainer, which could fit your needs quite well. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4523 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 6 of 6 10 October 2014 at 6:27pm | IP Logged | ||
I learnt the general meaning, gender and plural forms for all words I used in Anki. For every word I added 1-3 sentence cards as well (these were just the word in context and I had to be able to understand it to move on). The sentence cards disappear pretty fast in SRS, but they are useful for learning the word. At a certain point you have to give up Anki, and then you'll just have to learn the gender etc from context as you access native materials, but it's probably helpful to learn the gender for the first couple of 1000 words as you go. BTW: I would be a little careful of just learning frequency lists. I think it's more effective to use Anki like a notebook. Add in everything you come across you want to remember. When I was starting what was very effective for me was to add word cards I needed to learn, plus EVERY sentence in my lessons as separate cards. As I progressed it meant that I reinforced all the course material on a daily basis. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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