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Sick and tired of SRS | ||
Tags: Spaced Repetition (SRS) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| ScottScheule Diglot Senior Member United States scheule.blogspot.com Joined 5230 days ago 645 posts - 1176 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Latin, Hungarian, Biblical Hebrew, Old English, Russian, Swedish, German, Italian, French | Message 33 of 52 20 February 2014 at 11:14pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Bao, I agree that such connections make things easier. Indeed, that's why I make lots of cards, e.g., cards for a camel hair blanket, camel toe, etc. I also, if a word proves difficult, add etymological information to it, since that shows the connections between that word and other ones I know.
I grant and granted that sometimes words will become easier. I just don't think that's a winning strategy. More cost-effective, it seems to me, to learn what a camel is, and then be able to easily pick up what a camel hair blanket is in the future rather than vice versa. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5534 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 34 of 52 20 February 2014 at 11:21pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I realized, long ago, that I could not rely entirely on natural language learning: I interact with one French speaker on a regular basis, whose English is still far better than my French. The natural "ceiling" for my French skills is roughly A2 active/B1 passive, which I hit long ago. If I try to improve my French the same way I learned English, my French will slowly get worse, not better. If you put a child into my situation, natural language acquisition will fail. French always represents an unnatural act for me: I deliberately use a weaker language at home, I order expensive books from another continent, I enjoy TV shows that nobody around me has ever heard of. Now, I can all these things pretty well, at this point. Indeed, I treasure them. But I never lose sight of the fact that English is the path of least resistance. When I take my kids to the tiny town library, I'm in awe at how many books they can pick from—compared to the effort and money I need to invest to find 2 or 3 good books. So this is why don't mind dedicating 20 minutes a day to reviewing amusing things in Anki. It's a cheap, fun way to deal with slightly stubborn vocabulary past the 10,000 mark. And if it's unnatural, well, so is knowing French. :-)
Well, as anyone who reads my log has probably noticed, I also find amusement in weird bits of grammar. :-) For me, it doesn't matter why a card is fun, merely that it carries some intrinsic reward. That might be the content, or the grammar, or both. Why sit through 28,000 boring Anki reps when I could be doing fun ones? It's not like it's that hard to find fun materials. OK, sure, fun materials are easy in French, because it's a huge language and I can enjoy native materials with ease. But Middle Egyptian has been dead for about 3,000 years, I only have 40 Assimil lessons under my belt, and I'm already reading stories about people getting devoured by magical wax crocodiles. :-) And these stories are full of useful, challenging grammar.
At least in my personal experience: 1. Words that I only know in context can be painlessly upgraded to words I know anywhere, simply by reading and listening. But it's really no problem if I only recognize obscure vocabulary in context. 2. There were words in my original L1<->L2 decks that I beat my head against until I was just about ready to cry, and yet never mastered. But a few months after I started reading in earnest, I learned these words almost without effort. This has happened to me so many times it isn't funny. Take it for what you will. But after tens of thousands of Anki reps, I have a pretty good idea of how this works for me. No guarantee that it's the same for anybody else, though. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| ScottScheule Diglot Senior Member United States scheule.blogspot.com Joined 5230 days ago 645 posts - 1176 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Latin, Hungarian, Biblical Hebrew, Old English, Russian, Swedish, German, Italian, French | Message 35 of 52 20 February 2014 at 11:45pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I think we've made our disagreements and the reasons behind them pretty clear at this point. Everything else seems to hinge on personal appraisals of how we learn best and our philosophy as to how enjoyable the learning process should be and what makes it enjoyable.
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| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4535 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 36 of 52 21 February 2014 at 1:25am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
But aren't you reading a lot and also watching films - these are also natural language learning activities. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5768 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 37 of 52 21 February 2014 at 1:31am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Well, but you can't make them all at once. That was the point I was trying to make. You have to add information little by little, and sometimes you have to realize that a certain word which seemed to be interesting and important is actually of relatively little importance at your current stage in your learning process and links up to very little else you know or can say in that language. And, at the point when you start learning your 'camel' you don't know whether it will link up to any relevant proportion of the rest of the language, so you do not know if it will, in some distant future, pay off if you put in the extra effort to memorize the word, if it is indeed a leech. It might pay off to add all that extra information, but you could also decide to suspend/delete the word for now, learn other new words - which will probably go faster than making a leech stick - and when you encounter the first word again, and it seems important, decide to try once again. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4535 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 38 of 52 21 February 2014 at 1:36am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Or you could just read books at your appropriate level, and you will automatically learn the words that are most relevant to you without needing to worry about leeches etc. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5768 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 39 of 52 21 February 2014 at 1:47am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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If you go back to what emk said, yes, you can do that but sometimes boosting the frequency of low frequency words/expressions/grammar points artificially does help, for exactly the reasons he gives. This might not be necessary when you are in the position to conduct most of your daily life in the target language.
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| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4535 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 40 of 52 21 February 2014 at 2:17am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Perhaps. It's true I do do a lot of German in my daily life, but I also believe if you only have a little bit of time to study (say two hours/day) or whatever then you are better off hitting the native materials rather than Anki - once you get to the point where you can access native materials in an effective fashion. BUT of course everyone has their way of doing things. We are all idiosyncratic learners. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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