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Flashcards - good or bad? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4837 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 33 of 45 15 February 2013 at 4:05am | IP Logged | ||
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This thread is, as always, "awesomeness on toast."
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| gmat2013 Newbie United States iforeignlanguage.com Joined 4293 days ago 3 posts - 4 votes Speaks: Italian | Message 34 of 45 15 February 2013 at 4:36am | IP Logged | ||
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As regards the use of flashcards, I think it depends on your learning style. I think for those who learn visually it is great, if however, you are an audio learning they may not be as useful. When a person starts to learn a language, they have to ask themselves, what is the best way that I personally learn words? Once that question is answered then they can proceed with the proper methods.
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| RRouse Newbie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4299 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 35 of 45 16 February 2013 at 2:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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Flashcards have been a great help in my study of Spanish. They were very useful in the first stages to learn
colors, days, clothes, etc. Now I find them most helpful as an aid to reading longer texts in which the vocabulary is repeated throughout. I add the vocabulary to Anki from the start as read, usually adding a batch by chapter. I study them in Anki. When I see the word come up again in the reading, it.... a) stands out as recognized but still totally unknown (and I want to kick myself for not being able to recall it in spite of my having "learned" it in Anki) b) is there for me but requires me to do a little digging (say, go through a mnemonic) to use it in the reading (usually translating to English first) c) is sitting on the tip of my ear-tongue, and there's only a slight delay before I use it to understand the sentence d) goes by barely noticed (unnoticed?) because I understand the sentence without really thinking that it's a word I am learning. As I progress through the book, I start to have smaller and smaller batches of words. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| PeterMollenburg Senior Member AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5466 days ago 821 posts - 1273 votes Speaks: English* Studies: FrenchB1 | Message 36 of 45 10 August 2014 at 2:54am | IP Logged | ||
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Ahhh flashcards,
I"m not black or white, i'm grey, on the topic of flashcards that is. There is so much for them and yet so much against them, with a lot of decent arguments on both sides. I've been having an off and off dilemma with flashcards for some time. They ARE tedious and I believe they DO interfere with 'flow' when learning. I do use a mixture of methods including some native material, but when using course material at least, which I feel is there for intensive focus on language structure and vocab, any new words are entered into my flashcard deck. Kinda crazy that i'm not even using advanced courses yet, but my flashcard count is well beyond 8000 now. As for audio... I don't use Anki and don't know if it utilises audio, but I use Flashcards deluxe which applies text to speech technology that works rather well. You can (if you want) set up a deck of cards duplicated from your 'main deck' that has all the audio dowloaded and set it up through your car stereo, headphones, whatever to 'play' and it will play the audio of cards one after another at random (both sides)... an interesting feature. However I've stopped using audio even when using flashcards sitting down at my desk as it interferes with my wanting to speak them out loud. If I'm not sure I have pronunciation correct, it's not a concern as I label the 3rd side with phonetics of difficult words (plus gender and other simple notes). However I'm really not liking flashcards much lately, i'm going to paste a link here to my log which shares my flashcard issues. I'm not necessarily posting this here for more responses, I just feel it's relevant to share my thoughts in the appropriate thread on flash cards: The latest flashcard dilemma An earlier flashcard dilemma (message 62 onwards) Edited by PeterMollenburg on 10 August 2014 at 2:55am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4434 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 37 of 45 10 August 2014 at 5:29am | IP Logged | ||
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Personally I have nothing against people who use flashcards. However, I tend to think reading single
words and occasionally a few phrases is not as effective as reading whole sentences or listening to spoken words from a native speaker. Right now I'm doing French with a set of audio on computer with English translations at the bottom of the screen but all the speech is in French. I would listen to the spoken words / phrases without looking at the captions/ subtitles unless necessary to catch the sound patterns in my head. Flashcards that show individual days of the week (lundi, mardi, mercredi, etc.) doesn't do anything for my French conversation. I prefer whole sentences starting with the question: "Quel jour est-ce?" (What day of the week is it?) and the response would be "lundi" or a more complete sentence "c'est lundi" (it's Monday). Someone might ask you: "D'où venez-vous?" I'd like to be able pick it up and answer: "Je viens de New York" (I come from NYC or wherever). In the beginning if I miss an accent mark over a vowel or "-" hyphen between words is less of an issue than being able introduce myself from day 1. Following the advice of the polyglot Moses McCormick, I'd rather misspell a word occasionally than not to be able to follow a conversation. When you see an apple on the table I'd like to be able to say: "c'est une pomme" automatically instead of "it's an apple" and then translate it back to French. If someone said the name of an object in French, I'd like to pick it up without visual aids. People who are successful learning languages would agree it is better to know a few basic phrases and pick up vocabulary gradually up to 5/day. You can always look for words & phrases online when you need them. There are many second-generation Chinese here that are fluent in the spoken language but have no ability to write the characters. The worst case scenario for someone learning French is to be in a conversation where the person you speak to can't understand a word you said. Learning a collection of words like fruits: la pomme (apple), l'orange, la banane, etc. gets a bit boring and repetitive. The focus should be learning whole sentences such as: Je vais à la bibliothèque pour emprunter un livre à lire /我去图书馆借一本书来看 / I'm going to the library to borrow a book to read. Edited by shk00design on 10 August 2014 at 3:31pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| betelgeuzah Diglot Groupie Finland Joined 4391 days ago 51 posts - 82 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English Studies: Japanese, Italian | Message 38 of 45 10 August 2014 at 10:24am | IP Logged | ||
I guess it may come down to how comprehensible the material is. If you know/understand only 10% of the words in a sentence I don't think it is more effective than reading single words in isolation. It may also depend on the language difficulty. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4434 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 39 of 45 10 August 2014 at 3:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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Every learning method has different levels. With flashcards you usually have a picture like an apple and
the word "la pomme", a pear and the word "la poire" underneath. As you advance, you'd come across a list of professions such as: "le médecin" (doctor), "le photograph" (photographer), l'homme d'affaires" (businessman). An audio recording with subtitles is a more active way of learning because you can see both the words and hear the sounds at the same time. You can read the words on your flashcard aloud. A language like French uses the same alphabet like English but some of the time you may find discrepancies when comparing what you said and how it is pronounced by a native. Like using flashcards you would start with the basics like "Quel jour est-ce?" followed by "c'est lundi, c'est mardi, etc." (the days of the week). And then the time "Quelle heure est-il?" followed by "il est deux heures et quart, il est trois heures et demi, il est un heure de l'après-midi" (the time: a quarter past 2, 3:30, 1 o'clock in the afternoon) sort of thing except that a person in the recording would be saying it out loud. You get the advantage of reading the subtitles and hearing it from a native speaker. With flashcards you have 1 stack with all the personal pronouns individually: "je" (I), "tu" (you singular), "il/elle/on" (he, she, one), etc. And then another stack with all the professions: "un étudient" (student), "un artiste", un boulanger (baker), etc. When you put the 2 sets together in a phrase like: "he is a student" you'd say "il est étudient". However, in French words ending in a consonant and the next starting with a vowel are usually tied together when they are pronounced as if they are 1 single word. In other words "il est étudient" would sound like "iles-tétudient". Knowing individual words is 1 thing but getting into a conversation and being understood is another matter. Edited by shk00design on 17 August 2014 at 5:43pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4818 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 40 of 45 10 August 2014 at 6:52pm | IP Logged | ||
But as I recently suggested in another thread, you can always add context to make it more "fruitful" :-) e.g. "Bananas are yellow, or sometimes green, and are easy to peel with your fingers." "Oranges are harder to peel than bananas and are usually not as sweet". "Apples can't be peeled with your fingers - you (would) need a knife. But you don't really need to peel them, unless perhaps you are (were) cooking with them..." etc. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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