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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| MeshGearFox Senior Member United States Joined 6695 days ago 316 posts - 344 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian | Message 1 of 10 26 February 2007 at 11:36pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Flashcards aren't working as well for me lately. When I started using SuperMemo for my German back in, oh, November, I was moving relatively quickly and retaining a lot, doing okay on a word list of 500 or so cards that I'd built up between late November and early January. That's about 55 words a week, and they generally stuck pretty well. Honestly, I'd rather be learning about 80 words a week, but 55 isn't bad. Method basically involved putting the English word on one side and the German word on the other.
Okay, here's the problem. Lately, I have trouble managing fifteen or so words a week. And even those don't stick. My methods ultimately are in need of a change. I can name a few things that don't seem to work for me. Picking stuff up from context isn't doing much. My vocabulary is lacking to the point where I generally can't understand enough to infer meaning. I also doubt that Iverson's word list method would help much. It seems relatively similar to Leitner. If anyone else, other than Iverson, has used that with good effect though I'd like to hear about it. Also, er, mnemonics don't work for me, and I get the impression that I'm not alone. They're confusing and tend to get in the way. I guess I'm just looking for some more... perhaps esoteric methods? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| kinoko Tetraglot Senior Member Japan Joined 6636 days ago 103 posts - 109 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, Japanese, Spanish Studies: German | Message 2 of 10 27 February 2007 at 1:27am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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This is my advice, based on my current Japanese studies. As you may guess lack of vocabulary is the main obstacle in a language so very far from my native one, thus my studies tend to be heavily vocabs oriented.
I remember starting with mnemonics too at the very beginning. It stops working after you pass a certain line, let's say after 1000 or so words. Then I got into kanji and study of vocabulary became a pleasure and an easy thing as well. Now I can memorize more than 50 words a day out of the 100 or so I jot down every day. This is how I do. words are not a casual line of letters. They have an origin and a root. Only the most basic of the vocab a foreigner learns may look completely unrelated, but you are well after those first few hundreds words you had to acquire at the beginning of your studies. After that words build up like bricks. Studying kanji this becomes very obvious and allows me not to think about a word in terms of a simple foreign sound anymore. Thus if I come across let's say the word "seish*tsu" which means "nature" as referred to human character, like in "a good-natured person". In that word "sei"stands for something you have from your birth, while "sh*tsu" is "quality". This way it becomes very easy to remember and develops a deeper understanding of the language from the inside rather than rote memorization. Doing this word analisys word for word before trying to memorize it makes it stick it better in my experience. For example: let's say I'm studying English and come across those words: approximately, streamline, globalization. I would try to understand the words before memorizing them. ap is sort of a prefix which conveys the idea of dragging something close- come to mind approach, apparatus, apparition, appear, append, applause, appoint, appraise, approve... in a way related. Just look at how many different words of almost completely different meanings start making more sense. from the latin proximus you have proximal, proximity, proxy... all convey a sense of vicinity. then you do your language math, and while doing this your vocabulary will expand like the branches of a tree. Streamline:stream plus line, with the same reasoning you end up understanding it very well and learn at least other 20 words in the process. Same goes for glob, global, globe, and all the final -tion words to indicate certain phenomena. You write a list of all this world both side and try to memorize them right afterwards. much easier and effective. After that you put everything in your Supermemo or Mnemosyne to make sure they come up all randomly for random review. That's the method I use. It's not as long as it looks. Once you get better at your "language math" you start seeing inner meanings in every new word almost immediately to the point they stick without even making any attempt to memorize them. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6703 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 3 of 10 27 February 2007 at 5:06am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Me too. But I think there are a couple of major differences between my word list techniques and Leitner. The first is that I don't wait for the words to pop up, I take them in the order I have decided myself. The second is that I practice more than one word at a time, - for me this is a crucial element, because it forces me to use intermediate term memory rather than the immediate flash recollection. And the third element is that there is translation in both directions involved from the beginning, which ought to make it more likely that the words become active and not just passive words that I can recognize when I meet them. But as I have written all over the place: I don't expect everybody to fall in love with word lists or my use of them. If you think they are boring then they will fail miserably for you. In that case the idea of studying groups of words that have something in common may be an alternative. Or use association techniques, use games, read actively (even more than now) or bring yourself in social situations where you need certain words, - everything that has a motivating effect is beneficial, and any change in your study habits may also have a motivating effect just because of the novelty element. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Linguamor Decaglot Senior Member United States Joined 6618 days ago 469 posts - 599 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Danish, French, Norwegian, Portuguese, Dutch | Message 4 of 10 27 February 2007 at 6:24am | IP Logged | ||||||||
How do you decide this order? I learn them in the order I encounter them, since this, at least roughly, should reflect their frequency, and their usefulness to me.
When I'm reading and I come across a word I don't know and decide to look it up in a dictionary, this means I need to hold the word in my memory a short time while I'm searching for the word, and then hold the word and its meaning (not necessarily a translation equivalent) in memory until I reread the sentence, or go on to the next sentence. Do you think this is in any way related to what you are referring to as intermediate term memory? Holding the word a few seconds in memory this way seems to help me remember it more easily, and for that reason I will sometimes even look up words I understand from context.
This I just don't understand. How do you know how to use a word actively that you have learned from a wordlist? Edited by Linguamor on 27 February 2007 at 6:42am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6703 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 10 27 February 2007 at 8:23am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I decide the order when I make the word list. In this very moment I'm writing a Romanian word list straight from the directionary (I'm doing 'p' right now, I did the final part of 't' plus 'u' yesterday). Yesterday I also made a word list in Greek mainly with words for clothing and transport. In the first case I have the alphabetical order as a memory aid, in the second I have the thematic connection. The thing I like about wordlists as opposed to flashcards is that I pass through ALL the words, there is no element of chance (I get enough of that when I read real stuff).
The idea of looking at more words in one go is to provoke my memory to function in a more future-oriented way. If I can think of a word, leave it, think of 5 other words and then return to the first one and find that it is still there, then it must have been stored somewhere outside the immediate memory, and this other place - the intermediate memory - is just one stop from the true longtime memory, where the word eventually should go.Frankly I don't know a thing about the neurological background for this, but I can see it function in practice. I have never felt that my memory was particularly good, but since I changed my habits with word lists, I can learn 5-7 words just by looking them through a couple of times in a structured way. There must be something I do right. As for the active use of the words we are speaking about two different things. It is true that knowing a simple word does not imply that I know how to use it, - I expect that to follow when I read and listen to real stuff and try to write and speak the foreign languages. But in the post above I'm referring to something much more concrete, namely my ability to recall the word. If a hint in Danish or English is enough to make me remember a Romanian or Greek word, then it is probably a word that I can count on in a real life situation, - i.e. it must have become an active part of my vocabulary. But remembering a word is of course not the same thing as knowing its idiomatic uses or even its morpholgy. Word lists are just one element in language learning, but in my opinion the single most efficient method I have ever tried. Edited by Iversen on 27 February 2007 at 8:35am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| montyd Newbie United States Joined 6539 days ago 32 posts - 38 votes Speaks: English* | Message 6 of 10 27 February 2007 at 12:49pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I always envy people like Iversen who can take such a clear logical approach and really make it work for them. The most extreme example I ever heard was of a Belgian who was studying Greek in Greece by starting at the first page of the dictionary and working his way through. One day the teacher asked the meaning of a particular word and he was the only one in the class who knew, despite being the only non-Greek.
My method resembles rather more that of Linguamor. I set aside one volume as my current study text. When I read that book I look up every word that I don't know, and often those that I know but would not use myself in the way they are in my book. Using a cheap school notebook, I write down the word on one side of the page and the meaning on the other side, just a one word translation if possible. I know that I can reasonably memorise between two and three pages of vocabulary in a day so when I reach that limit I put my study text aside. I then sit down and read aloud my word list from start to finish, trying to keep up a reasonably metronomic thythm. Word, meaning, word, meaning, word etc. The absolute key is to read the words aloud and to keep up a speed which means that I concentrate 100% on what I am doing. I then cover up the translation column and try to repeat the word, meaning sequence at approximately the same speed as before. When I get to a point that I can't remember the meaning, or just hesitate for too long, I take a peek, repeat just that word and the meaning out loud then go right back to the beginning. And when I have managed to get through my list two or three times without making any mistakes I then cover the other column and go through the whole process again, this time meaning, word, meaning, word, until I can pretty much repeat the whole list at speed no matter which half is covered. Then once a week I take my lists for the previous week and try to repeat the process once each way. Words I don't know then get put on a second list and the whole procedure is repeated with them. As I said above, the absolute key is to repeat the words out aloud, not silently in your head, or even under your breath, but in your normal voice. (This has the added benefit of helping you get your tongue around some of the real monsters in languages like Greek). It also makes you involved in the process so that you care when you can't remember a word. I usually end up shouting out the forgotten word a few times and bashing myself on the head with my exercise book before going back to the start. It also, surprisingly, does not take long. When I really get into the swing I reckon I can learn between 70 and 100 words in about twenty minutes. Not only that but I need that many words for it to be effective. If I begin to repeat a list and find that I haven't forgotten anything, then I know that everything will be gone the next morning. Getting stuck on the third word, then next time the tenth word, then the fifteenth word etc. gives me a sense of progress and achievement. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6943 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 7 of 10 27 February 2007 at 1:58pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Not being able to manage 15 words per week suggests a need for some (temporary?) adjustment, not just a change of memorization technique. If you haven't had any major changes in your lifestyle and are able to study more or less the same hours and in about the same physical condition as before, you may have simply saturated on what you've been doing, or hit a plateau, and need a change of routine. It's also worth looking at the source of words. Are these fairly common words that you meet while listening or reading, or are you trying to memorize some rare vocabulary from an abstruse text? Otherwise, I'd try to forget about the word counts and just work on consolidating your knowledge for a while, at least until you feel like you've moved off the plateau. A few specific things you can try: (a) Look up some of the words you meet, but don't record them. If you have to look up the same word a few times, it's nothing to worry about. (b) Instead of flashcards, record the new words and their translations in a notebook and read over the the cumulative pages ever so often, but without deliberate memorization. (c) Reread the texts you get the words from, including some of the simpler ones you used at the earlier stages of study. Edited by frenkeld on 27 February 2007 at 2:11pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6703 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 8 of 10 27 February 2007 at 5:02pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I find the method of Montyd very interesting. To be honest I can't see myself sitting on the floor surrounded by lots of paper and reciting scores of words while bashing myself on the head with a textbook, but I do see the logic in what he is doing. By making the word lists into sort of a rap poem he is using the same technique that made it possible for old bards to recite interminably long poems, or that allows a modern day opera singer to sing Wagner for 4 hours without even one tiny peek into the libretto. People who learn Talmud or the Bible or the Koran by heart use similar methods, so they must have proven their efficacy.
Edited by Iversen on 27 February 2007 at 5:04pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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