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Crippling effect of technology | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| wv girl Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5239 days ago 174 posts - 330 votes  Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish | Message 17 of 36 14 October 2011 at 12:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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I also feel that I remember better when I write something down. Having learned French in my 20s to a competent
level, I decided to add Spanish. Although I'd studied on my own to a low intermediate level, when I went to the university to "improve," I was confronted with language study via Quia, which required that everything be entered on line, accents and all. I struggled more with how to type in everything than with the subjunctive! I was, in my late 30s, almost the oldest student in the class. I knew what worked for me in terms of language study, but plain old writing on paper wasn't acceptable to my tech-obsessed teacher. Although I love being able to find things to read & listen to on line, nothing can replace for me the act of writing, of seeing the words on paper. I've never used SRS or flash cards ... simply writing the words a couple of times on my own list gets the vocab. in my head. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| DNB Bilingual Triglot Groupie Finland Joined 4886 days ago 47 posts - 80 votes Speaks: Finnish*, Estonian*, English | Message 18 of 36 14 October 2011 at 3:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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I feel like people are polarizing the question of whether it is valuable to use an SRS-
method, or on the other hand, a more 'old-school' way of learning, as if you could only do either of these. I use SRS everyday - I don't 'learn' new words as in being able to use them myself on the spot with the right context, but when combined with a general multi-pronged approach to language learning, it certainly is a great tool. SRS for me is about getting familiar with the added words, but mastery of the vocabulary comes with all the other aspects you engage in in your language learning on the occasion you encounter the word within a reasonable context. I got the impression that the 'anti-SRS' users assume that the 'pro-SRS' users assume SRS to be the central part of learning a language — While it is not, it is still a great enhancing tool for language learning when used correctly, and almost invaluable for learning Chinese Characters as in my case. It gets tedious from time to time, but the benefits are usually worth it. Maybe SRS isn't as convenient for learning a language similar to one's own, such as English -> Norwegian or Italian -> Spanish, so in this case I could understand why one wished not to spend time on it since just reading alone can get one quite far. On the other hand, learning a language like Korean is notably easier with Anki when most of the words are of totally foreign origin. So in summary (in my humble opinion): A multi-pronged approach with as many perspectives as possible is the key to efficient mastery of a language, and I especially emphasize this when learning more distant languages. Also,
I don't get what prevents one from writing the character on a piece of paper a few times during a review, and adding the pronunciation in Pinyin and a picture of the stroke order along with the existing character on the flashcard — It's easily doable so making such a statement seems somewhat short-sighted in my eyes. 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| dongsen Newbie Taiwan Joined 4809 days ago 30 posts - 44 votes Speaks: English | Message 19 of 36 14 October 2011 at 4:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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The SRS systems are sold on the basis that the underlying principles will help you remember something for
life. They are sold as the primary mechanism for remembering facts. Hence I think it is valid to criticise SRS on this basis. If you demote SRS to simply a "tool" that can aide in learning a language then it is very useful. If you try to use an SRS application in the way it was designed I believe it is more of a hinderance. At this point in time I believe SRS has usefulness under the following limited circumstances: 1) You are trying to bootstrap the number of words you know to a level when you can start to read parts of real/native content 2) You are trying to learn new lists of words. At this point in time I believe that reading real native material and speaking to native speakers that are written/speaking at your level is a far more constructive usage of time. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5381 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 20 of 36 14 October 2011 at 4:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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This seems to have turned into a debate about SRS.
What about other aspects of technology used in learning languages? How would you compare writing by hand as opposed to typing? Or reading on a screen as opposed to using a book? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5262 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 21 of 36 14 October 2011 at 4:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've always loved books. Then, I moved to the Caribbean. Books just don't hold up well here. No one can afford the electricity it takes to have an air conditioned home. It would be needed 24/7 and it would defeat the reason we live here anyway.
As a consequence of not having air conditioning and having to open all the windows, the heat, dust and humidity are very detrimental to books here. Not to mention the breeze/fans blowing the pages. I never looked back once I got my Kindle. Now, I also have a tablet. I find it much easier to read in Spanish and Portuguese. The convenience of my integrated monolingual dictionaries is a godsend, and no more shipping charges! Plus, I can make me own e-books from on-line content and read on the beach. I actually get a little perturbed when I have no choice but to order a physical book. One thing I've noticed is that I read more now than before. I don't like reading pdf's on my laptop but on my tablet it is much more natural. Reading pdf's on my Kindle and tablet, once I've formatted them properly, is a dream- no eyestrain. Edited by iguanamon on 14 October 2011 at 4:59pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6909 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 22 of 36 14 October 2011 at 5:22pm | IP Logged | ||
Although I don't do much with my Chinese these days, I've found that a character doesn't stick that well until I've written it myself several times - and later on, progressing to whole sentences à la Arguelles' scriptorium method. For other languages, I haven't found writing by hand as important (if I see a Spanish word once, I know how to say it, remember how it's spelled and so on), but still very useful (it's the combination of skills: I see the text, write it myself, say it aloud, hear myself saying it...). Reading on a screen isn't a problem for me - I've probably read more on screen than paper for well over a decade now (and the screens keep getting better). Since I'm not online all the time, I still read newspapers, magazines and books (hey, I work in a library!). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5766 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 23 of 36 14 October 2011 at 5:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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One aspect that hasn't been made clear enough yet is that the use of new media is claimed to measurably change the way people deal with the information they have to process in their daily life.
Usually people either remember the information itself or the way they can access it, not both at once. The availability of easily accessible data storage with an ever increasingly capacity seems to teach us to favour the mental map or blueprint for how we can look information up agan over the actual content. Another weird glitch I notice in myself is that ever since I started typing a lot, my spelling has become less accurate when writing by hand because I make mistakes that can only be classified as typos - adding a wrong letter because it came to mind first, leaving out letters or even turning around the order of letters. I explain that to myself with reduced concentration when writing because I expect it to be possible to edit my writing. From that reasoning, it isn't a far stretch to assume that my concentration on the actual writing increases again when I write more by hand (and with it my accuracy.) Still, I can't tell if my concentration is lowered when writing other languages with a computer in comparision to handwriting. Edited by Bao on 14 October 2011 at 5:41pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| QiuJP Triglot Senior Member Singapore Joined 5855 days ago 428 posts - 597 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French Studies: Czech, GermanB1, Russian, Japanese | Message 24 of 36 14 October 2011 at 6:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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One of the most observable crippling effect of technology( here in Asia) is that younger
generation has problem writing their native script. Who needs to write Chinese characters when the input of hanyu pinyin generates the characters you wanted? Writing has become a chore to some youngster that they forget how to write! 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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