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Kuji’s Krazy Log II | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5972 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes  Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 129 of 706 13 March 2013 at 9:17am | IP Logged | ||
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You could try just adding the grammar examples from your textbook. That way you'll already have both the example sentence and English translation right in front of you.
The problem I have with Anki is it's almost too easy to fall into a daily grind of data entry and review which sucks all the fun out and, if it ends up taking up most of your language time, is not so effective anyway. I haven't solved the vocabulary problem for myself yet so I'll be interested to see how you do it! With respect to native materials, however, my advice would be to relax. Don't turn it into a sentence mining exercise every time. Just dip into things to see what you can understand. Eventually you'll find something that you'll want to keep reading! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| The Real CZ Senior Member United States Joined 5639 days ago 1069 posts - 1495 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 130 of 706 13 March 2013 at 12:19pm | IP Logged | ||
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What has worked for me is switching between intensive and extensive studying. Intensive regarding to what you're doing now, i.e. trying to add everything you come across, and extensive trying to see/hear/use the language as much as possible with little "study." It really helps because intensive studying all of the time can lead to burnout.
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| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6542 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 131 of 706 13 March 2013 at 2:20pm | IP Logged | ||
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My Anki vocabulary deck (for Korean) contains only single words, no sentences at all. I agree that doing the reviews is boring but I firmly believe it's the most effective way of getting the words into my head and that keeps me going. I've been building my deck for 10 months now and the results are excellent, I believe in Anki more than ever. I plan to continue using it for at least 10 more months.
Of course, you can learn a language without using an SRS program at all, it's just not as effective. As for single words versus sentences, I chose the former because it's easier to enter new notes that way and because I believe that learning words without a context leads to better results than learning them as part of a sentence. To be fair, the second reason is just my assumption, I haven't tried this method so I can't say for sure. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4837 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 132 of 706 13 March 2013 at 2:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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@g-bod and @The Real CZ - Thank you very much! I think you are right; I study like I'm in a "sentence-mining competition", where everything new I encounter must go into Anki. I think, like chocolate, cookies and wine gums, a bit of moderation is needed. No need to input everything, just things I could put to use immediately.
I do agree, g-bod, that the grammar example sentences are very useful, and I'll continue to add those. For the reasons you stated, those are fairly easy to input. The process of finding and adding sentences for all the new words I come across - not to mention looking up the meaning - is what drives me crazy. So yeah... moderation. @Evita - Thanks for reading my log! I'm interested in why you think learning words out of context leads to better results for you, because I hear a lot of people say the opposite. Right now I'm thinking of a mix of single word cards and sentence cards, just so that I can remain sane. Some words need a sentence (and grammar definitely does), but some words do not. The more time I spend away from Anki is more time I can use to enjoy books, articles, media, etc. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6542 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 133 of 706 13 March 2013 at 3:12pm | IP Logged | ||
I think that if you learn a word in one context you will have trouble with the word in other contexts. Maybe it's not true, I know lots of other people use sentence decks successfully but that's how I feel. I imagine all the words as tiny little dots that could be connected to hundreds and thousands of other dots; I prefer to learn the dot by itself first and then the connections. Oh, and another thing I do with Anki is - I limit the number of new words introduced per day. For example, even if I read a text one day and enter 20 new words I will learn only 6 of them on that day if my limit is 6. I do it to keep the number of reviews in check and it works well. If the number of reviews gets too high I decrease the limit, and the other way around. If you are going to make both sentence and single word cards, I suggest you put them in different decks. It will help you with organization and also while reviewing. I recently started a sentence deck as well but that's strictly for grammar. All the new words go into my vocabulary deck anyway. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5252 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 134 of 706 13 March 2013 at 3:20pm | IP Logged | ||
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Kuji, what I mean by using more than one resource is, since you are still a beginner in Portuguese, that in addition to your DLI course, (instead of random articles) you should concentrate on just a couple of "outside the course" resources. My advice may not be relevant to you. You may have to adapt it to your needs as far as material goes. Bilingual parallel text resources really make things easier. You can cover up the English, while you try to figure it out in context, then consult an online dictionary or the English text to verify if you're correct. Here's some advice on creating some of your own resources:
1) Learn how to make your own bilingual resources that are relevant to you. For example: When I started learning Portuguese I found the Deutsche Welle Learning By Ear- Aprender de ouvido. I used the Fábulas Áfricanas series but maybe you might be more interested in Futebol em África- muito mais que um jogo. The audios are only about 10 minutes long and the texts are short. The language is not overly complex as the series is geared to a young audience. There's plenty in just one episode to keep you busy for a while- and the English text is available for a bilingual text. 2) Next find the English here: Soccer Made In Africa- more than just a game. 3) Download the mp3 and pdf in Portuguese for the first episode. 4) Download the pdf in English for the second episode. 5) Open a word/open office document and insert a table with two columns and one row. 6) Copy the text from the Portuguese and insert it in the left hand column. 7) Copy the English text and insert it in the right hand column. 8) Print to pdf and put the text on a tablet or even a phone or kindle, or, just print it out- not that many pages. 9) Align the texts so that they are as side by side as possible- NB sometimes the Portuguese texts are longer and sometimes the English texts are. Just do the best you can. You may have to delete some redundancies, adjust font size, etc. Since the text is in play format, it's not that hard to figure out. 10) Go through the Portuguese text with the audio reading and listening- 10 minutes or so. 11) Read the Portuguese text glancing at the English when you come upon an unfamiliar word or construction. 12) Make notes- consult linguee.com.br. 13) Keep going at it for a few days or a week until you get tired of it and move on to the next episode. 14) Do this along with maintaining your DLI studies. 15) If you find it's too much time and trouble to make the bilingual text, you can print out the English and Portuguese texts and use them that way. You can also open two pdf documents side by side on your screen simultaneously by shrinking and moving them next to each other. Obviously, the sequence of working with the text can vary. You could read/listen the English first and then work with the Portuguese. You could try to decode the Portuguese first, or you could use the English side as your dictionary when you need it. Do what works best for you. Now, I know that this is African Portuguese spoken by Mozambicans, which uses grammar more oriented towards the Iberian model. That's ok. The "tu" conjugations are not really used in Brazil. Still, you are getting good exposure to Brazilian sources. At some point during the day, try to set aside 10 minutes a day to listen and read the NHK World (Brazilian Portuguese) news, as well. I don't know if you're still doing this or not. While this may not be exciting stuff, doing these things is where your synergy starts to happen. You learn a word, a phrase, a construction or a conjugation in your course. You see it in your reading. You hear it in your listening and it starts to make connections in your mind. Soon you find that you may not really need anki as much. I've never even used it, myself. To really tie it all together, a once a week 30 minute skype session with a private tutor can be had for as little as $5 US or even for free in a language exchange. As far as materials go, sometimes you have to make your own. I'd recommend O Pequeno Prinicipe or Branca Neve e os Sete Anões to you but that's apparently not your thing. For me, reading material doesn't have to be gripping or super interesting. I've gone through (modern translations) of Genesis and even a story created by the US Army Corps of Engineers telling the story of a rain drop's voyage through the Everglades in Haitian Creole (intended for elementary school students) which also had the English translation. My joy comes from being able to decode the text (still, I ended up liking "Wayne Drop") and put the puzzle together. To me it's all about focusing on my goal of learning the language (Iversen gives great advice on working with texts). I don't really care all that much about the news from Japan but it sure helped me with my Portuguese. Seek and ye shall find. Do and you will achieve. PS: I've already sent you a pm. Edited by iguanamon on 13 March 2013 at 10:52pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5156 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 135 of 706 13 March 2013 at 4:23pm | IP Logged | ||
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Let me tell you abotu my experience with Anki. I've been very reluctant of using Anki because I believe learning is supposed to be fun. I'm not getting anything from my language learning, so, I don't want to it to be a painful activity.
That said, I started to use Anki a few months ago because I noticed I was having a hard time retaining words, mainly in Chinese. So, now I have 1 or more than 1 anki for each language I'm learning and even for those I'm not learning now, like German, as a way to keep it active. I still find it annoying when I have too many reviews or when I have to translate a word from German or English into Portuguese because it's an unusual word I haven't learned in any of my languages yet. So, Anki isn't the most fun part of the day, but it is important as a supplementary resource. I like sentences better than words because I get to know words in context and review grammar at the same time. When a deck consists mostly of words, you get hundreds (literally) of words you're already familiar with, and you get to repeat them endless times, until you start getting useful words. In the case of sentences, though, I tend to limit it to 20 or 40 sentences per language each day. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5972 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 136 of 706 13 March 2013 at 7:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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For flashcards, I found words to be better as a beginner, but sentences to be better at an intermediate level. Entering and reviewing single words is definitely quicker, and as a beginner I didn't have to worry about words for abstract concepts or synonyms, because my vocabulary was so small to begin with anyway. I reached a point where single word definitions were no longer helpful and context became much more important, maybe after the first couple of thousand words or so, and then the switch to sentences made a lot more sense. I just wish it didn't take so much time.
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