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Kuji’s Krazy Log II | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4844 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 257 of 706 12 July 2013 at 5:04am | IP Logged | |||||
So true. I think that the hardest thing for me to do is to be aware of my progress. Like iguanamon said earlier, the victories at the intermediate level are small and subtle, and I need to learn to notice those and appreciate them. I want to put a poster or something somewhere that says in big letters, "ARE YOU MAKING PROGRESS?" Then, if I ever get the urge to look for a better technique, a better way to read, a better way to do Anki, etc., I should first ask myself, "ARE YOU MAKING PROGRESS?" If the answer is Yes, no need to change anything. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4844 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 258 of 706 18 July 2013 at 2:18pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I was busy posting in this thread about "learning vocabulary without studying vocabulary", because I was frustrated with Anki. Studying vocabulary without doing lists, flashcards, or the like - letting words come "naturally" - is very intriguing to me, and a lot of friendly people posted their experiences, thoughts and opinions on the matter.
In the end, I've decided that I'm not yet ready psychologically to drop Anki right away and try that. Maybe a gradual change is in order. But it is apparent that I need to immediately change how I do things with Anki. I think I've been doing a lot of "don'ts" as far as Anki is concerned, and not only has that led to Anki becoming frustrating and boring (after being so helpful for several months over last fall, winter and most of the spring), but Anki has started to become stressful as well, and my struggles have had a negative impact on my language study. Put simply, I no longer control Anki. Anki controls me. Here are the "don'ts" that I've been doing: 1. Spending too much time on Anki reviewing. I have four Anki decks, a Japanese deck, a Japanese kanji deck, a Portuguese deck, and an Esperanto deck. (I hardly put anything in my Esperanto deck, so reviews are minimal. Some days I don't even bother reviewing.) I had each of them set to give me on a daily basis 100 old cards to review, and add 20 new cards to learn. If I reached the maximum number of cards for my decks - not counting the Esperanto one - I would need to look at a total of 360 cards a day! And that doesn't take into consideration cards I fail and have to look at again. No wonder I was frustrated! I also used Anki's timebox feature to keep my reviews for each of my decks at 10 minutes. But 10 minutes would go by fast, especially for Japanese, as with all the Chinese characters, reading is slow. But I have the option to continue, and I was always more concerned about finishing all my reviews than stopping at 10 minutes. Geez. Moreover, in retrospect, considering the time I spend on each language per day, even a 10-minute timebox is too long. Maybe 5 minutes is best. I'm going to remedy these problems by cutting everything by 50%. That means 50 reviews instead of 100, and 10 new cards instead of 20. If that is still too much, I'm gonna cut everything by 50% again, and keep going until I find the right amount. And I'm thinking of just not using the timebox feature because it doesn't work for me anyway. It doesn't stop me from doing more cards, like the maximum review number does. 2. Spending too much time making new cards. When I read something, I feel the need to add all the new words and expressions I come across into Anki. This turns all language activities into "vocabulary mining exercises." I think I would do well with a limit of, say, five new cards made per day. 3. Putting boring or inappropriate material into Anki. I've been reading a lot of news articles in Japanese and Portuguese lately, and that's fine. But at my lower intermediate (Japanese) and beginner (Portuguese) levels, do I really need to make Anki cards for words like "litigation", "prospectus", "submit", and "annulment"? The other day, I made a Japanese Anki card for "juvenile literature." Sure, that might come in handy one day, but right now? No wonder my cards are boring. I remember that I tried to use Anki learn the word for "to reflect (on something one did)" before I learned the word for "to carry (something)". É sério?!? Nossa! I'm not saying that I don't need those words; I just don't need to put them into Anki at my current levels. Besides, I think I could learn words like "litigation" solely by reading the news everyday, with a pop-up dictionary. And by the time I reach an advanced level, when I'm ready for such words, I won't need Anki. I think it would be good if, before I add a word to Anki, I ask myself "Could I see myself using this word in a conversation with a 9-year-old (for Japanese), or a 4- or 5-year-old (for Portuguese)?" Obviously, there may be some adult words that I find extremely interesting that I could add, but this is a good starting point. In addition to that, consider the source! I understand now what Serpent meant when she talked about adding "fun" and "awesome" sentences to Anki. Get them from interesting sources: stories, TV shows, movies, Twitter, etc. (Personal Note to Serpent: Thank you thank you thank you!) The stiff language in news articles seldom make for good Anki material. No wonder I hated looking at those sentences over and over. They were torture! Same for those example sentences in the dictionary. 4. Changing my "Anki time." Anki and I were on good terms last fall and winter, during a time when I had a nice teaching schedule at school. The period after lunch happened to be free for me every day, and the office was also quiet at that time, so I did Anki reviews every day during that time period - a nice routine. Then when I bought my Android Walkman in March, I started doing reviews during my morning train commute - getting them out of the way first thing in the morning - and that was the best! I don't remember feeling frustrated about Anki then. But then I wanted to study both Portuguese and Japanese every day, so I decided to use my mornings for Portuguese study. That means I have to do Anki during breaks at school. But my schedule is not as nice as it was last school year, so it's been hard to find a "groove". I'm reconsidering going back to my old study schedule and doing Anki reviews in the morning. Well, this post is long, but it has helped me to think about how to break the shackles and regain control of Anki. I'm not sure if the above changes will work out in the long run, but it's worth a shot, right? 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| The Real CZ Senior Member United States Joined 5646 days ago 1069 posts - 1495 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 259 of 706 18 July 2013 at 5:15pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm glad you found a solution for your Anki troubles. I had the problem of trying to learn 100-300 new words per day through Anki, making me an Anki slave. However, the volume was way too high for me to try to remember all of those words. However, when I tried doing a low number per day, it just didn't feel like I was learning enough. From what I've experimented with, MCDs for grammar seem to be the most helpful for me when it comes to Anki, but the cards take too long to make, which is why I abandoned Anki altogether.
Anyway, good luck with your new plan! 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5163 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 260 of 706 18 July 2013 at 5:38pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I know exactly how you feel, kuji. I'm a Slave to Anki, too (reminds me of that 80's song:)
Tell them I'll be waiting In the usual decks With the tired and weary And there's no escape To learn a language You've got to know How the brain gets weaker And the vocab gets poor Slave to Anki (na na na na) Ooh (na na na na) Slave to love Digressions apart, I have the aggravating that one of my decks has audio which I can't practice anywhere because of that, another one is Georgian-German and I often have to translate the German words too and for the new ones I add from the web I have to do custom study because I can't change study options for one of them without making them the same for all of them. I've decided I'm not adding new decks for old languages. That is, no Anki deck for Chinese, Russian, Georgian or Norwegian for the moment, unless I find that really awesome deck that fits exactly my needs. So, I tend to reduce my decks to a number I find acceptable. My Chinese and German-Portuguese decks are huge and are likely to follow me through lifetime, but other than that I plan to be done with a few ones only this year. I use Anki not exactly as a SRS tool, since I stop reviewing once the word got mature, but even so I still find it so stressing. I think it's useful the most to make the transition A1-A2 and in middle A2. Then when you can use native material, just use native material. I'm gonna read your vocabulary topic, I have several friends who say they'd never use SRS or wordlist in a way that would spoil the fun with language-learning, and I start to agree with them more and more, even tho I do admit Anki was very useful for Norwegian and Papiamentu (which are closer languages to my native and for which I would already use native resources where I'd meet the words again in a proper context). 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5979 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 261 of 706 18 July 2013 at 7:24pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Kuji I can totally understand where you're coming through. I've been through Anki rage a few times on my language journey too. I think the problems come when it turns into a way of life, rather than just a way of cramming a few hundred words.
Anyway, rather than getting into a general debate over the importance (or not) of deliberate vocabulary work, may I make a suggestion which is tailored to your own situation? I've come to think that you don't need to study vocabulary as a separate task in order to learn vocabulary. If you love wordlists or flashcards that's great and you should use them, but if you don't, there is no compelling reason to do so. However, unless you are already literate in a language which uses Chinese characters, I think it would be some kind of Herculean task to try and learn kanji without studying kanji. It doesn't have to take the form of Anki, or flashcards, or anything like that if it doesn't suit you, but I think it does need some kind of deliberate effort to study and review them. Kanji is the hook that got me interested in Japanese in the first place, but when you get a hook stuck in you, it hurts... So my suggestion to you would be to have a go at learning vocabulary organically for Portuguese and Esperanto, but keep up the Anki for Japanese. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5163 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 262 of 706 18 July 2013 at 7:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I am studying Chinese and evne though I do use hanzi books (curently Peng's Fun with Chinese characters) I don't enforce them either. I mean, they're already more "contentful" than Anki decks, but even so I just read through the pages and I expected to meet the most important characters again on the sample sentences belonging to other characters. Anyway, the way I've learned most characters is through graded-reading in the form of doing beginner's books over and over again. You skip the grammar points you don't need anymore and you focus on vocabulary. If you read 1 sentence and find only two unknown words/characters then you can focus on it while getting context. That is: I repeat the level as long as I still need to master it, but I don't repeat the material/rsource. I come across new dialogues and eventually find new words. The further you go, the more different resources diverge, that is, in the beginning odds are high that the first 200 words will be about 90% the same through each textbook, but as you get to higher levels you meet more and more different words but yet you don't get overwhelmed with lists of 100% new words. For example, i'm currently going through Learn to speak Chinese book 1 and I come across 5 new words through lesson and I get to learn those words in no time, no pressure and in a fun and motivating way, because after all I'm reinforcing the well-known words. Meanwhile I do pick up unknown resources, but the fact I go through familiari material during some parts of the day with the specific intention of acquiring vocabulary helps keeping myself motivated.
2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4844 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 263 of 706 19 July 2013 at 6:12am | IP Logged | |||||
Expugnator, that song made me laugh! Nice one!
Yeah, I've started to do that as well. I'm starting to delete mature cards, which, as you said, goes against the theory of SRS. But I'm ready to "break" theory if it will keep me sane. Back when I was using paper flashcards, I would throw away cards after a few weeks' use, so I wouldn't have a huge pile of paper cards at home, and that was fine. I still have a lot of words in my long-term memory from that. So it should be no harm for me to do the same in Anki.
That is a very good suggestion, and actually I've been thinking about that same thing for the last 24 hours. I'm going to keep using Anki for Japanese, precisely because of the kanji and having to develop the skill of recognizing the various readings in various sentences. I've all but deleted my Esperanto deck; I hardly review with it. As for Portuguese... I'll talk more about that in the next post. Edited by kujichagulia on 19 July 2013 at 6:13am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4844 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 264 of 706 19 July 2013 at 8:54am | IP Logged | |||||
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While I'm changing how I do things with Anki, I'm going to take a risk and do something radical with my Anki decks.
For Portuguese, I'm going to move to a recall-only system. Before, I was doing almost all recognition (Portuguese on one side, and English, an image, or a Portuguese explanation on the other), with a very small amount of recall cards (cloze deletion to work on grammar points). I'm wondering if this was problematic for me. It's hard to put into words, but I'll try. When I review, I look at a word or a sentence, and my brain immediately starts to think about the meaning of the sentence. Instead of focusing on the language in front of me, I start to wonder, "What does this mean?" So I tried doing things like saying the language out loud, or if people were around, saying it softly while moving my lips. That was great for pronunciation practice, but the same thing was happening in my brain: "What is the meaning of this sentence?" It didn't matter if I was thinking about the meaning in English, or the definition in other Portuguese words, or trying to visualize the meaning in pictures in my head. Yes, I did get the meaning of most sentences and words while reviewing. And I suppose that is what doing recognition drills is all about. You see something and guess the meaning, or see if you can understand it. But I guess that, for me, I wasn't really "using" the language, or "internalizing" the language. I may have been moving my lips, but I felt like my brain was busy trying to understand the language, and not using it. I think some of my boredom came from that. Sometimes it felt unrewarding. So now I'm switching directions. I look at the English and I try to think of the Portuguese. I experimented with this a little on paper (I've avoided Anki for the past couple of days), and I think this could be good. I'm working with the Portuguese in my head, with minimal English, as the English is provided on the card. If I see "rabbit", I think of a picture of a rabbit (usually my own pet) in my head, then o coelho pops up. Then if I can, I can go ahead and say it out loud. Then I'm speaking Portuguese and thinking Portuguese, and the English is out of the way by that point, and I'm not worrying so much about the meaning. I feel that is much more rewarding for me at this point. I hope you can understand that, but if that sounds confusing, I apologize. I'm not the most eloquent person when it comes to writing. And yes, I do teach English at a high school in Japan. Anyway, I'm excited about this, and even moreso after seeing this webpage and this webpage Both of those pages talk about using output while reviewing vocabulary. Some people say you shouldn't go from native language to target language in an SRS, because when you translate, you might say one sentence but there's a different sentence on the answer side. In that situation, you may not know if the sentence you gave is correct or not (and it could be). But I'm not aiming for perfection here. I'm aiming for fluency and automatic responses. I'm aiming for better usage of the language. At this point, I'm not really worried about being perfect anymore, or sounding like a native. That adds extra stress. I just want to be understood, and I just want to enjoy the language. If my answer is close enough to what is on the back side of the card, or if I used a synonym, that's fine. Another benefit is that the material I put into Anki will be filtered down only to what I want to say, at my level. If I have to translate "The member states of the European Union are discussing austerity strategies" into Portuguese, I'm probably not going to put that into Anki, because that won't be fun. But that is exactly what I was trying to do when I was doing recognition cards. So recall-only it is for Portuguese. Of course, doing this kind of activity takes more brain power, so I'm going to reduce my daily reviews even further to 25 cards a day, and add 5 new cards daily. We will see how it goes. I wanted to do this with Japanese as well, but the fact that Japanese has a lot of Chinese characters that need to be mastered, I cannot do recall-only. So I will have both recognition and recall cards, but with one change. For my recognition cards, instead of trying to remember the readings of the kanji AND understand the sentence, I'll just pass a card if I can remember the readings. This will help make cards more enjoyable, I think. I know that this goes against what a lot of Anki users believe. But I'm trying to make my learning experience less stressful and more enjoyable, and if that means going against the norm, than so be it. Besides, I don't have to make many changes at all in Anki, just move some things around in the card templates. If I fail at this, no problem, I can go back and quickly edit things to the way they were before. 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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