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Lists vs Flashcards | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6597 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes  4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 17 of 34 12 September 2012 at 3:18pm | IP Logged | |||||
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| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6597 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 18 of 34 12 September 2012 at 3:20pm | IP Logged | |||||
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| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4828 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 19 of 34 12 September 2012 at 4:31pm | IP Logged | |||||
If I understand Iversen correctly, they are sort of contradictory. One of the benefits of of wordlists (which applies to manual flashcards as well I suppose) is that you decide when and how often to repeat/review/revise or whatever you want to call it. And I think with word lists, you are supposed to kind of know when it's not necessary to repeat any more; more of a gut feeling, if you want to put it that way. Perhaps not so rigorous, unless you are naturally a rigorous kind of person... :-) I think there is an implicit assumption about it that you will go on to do your real "repetition", by meeting the words again in the "real world" of your TL. 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 20 of 34 12 September 2012 at 5:35pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I agree with Montmorency - it's a gut feeling that tells me whether it is worth repeating a word or even a whole list, and I generally have the idea that once you have reached the level where you can read reasonably well and maybe even think/speak/write then those activities are responsible for making your vocabulary active, not even more repetitions of a wordlist or some flash- or Ankicards.
Wordlists and SRS/cards supplement each other because they cover both the initial learning phase and the long timespan afterwards. But like Serpent I would probably also soon feel exhausted if I had to put all my wordlists through the SRS/flashcard machine. If you use both methods then use them on different sets of words and expressions. Edited by Iversen on 12 September 2012 at 5:36pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6582 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 21 of 34 12 September 2012 at 6:57pm | IP Logged | |||||
I have never used physical flashcards and I still don't use SRS. SRS is not the electronic equivalent to flashcards. SRS is the electronic equivalent to the Leitner system. It's perfectly possible to have tons of flashcards without spacing them with an SRS algorithm. My favorite implementation of electronic flashcards is when it's integrated with a dictionary application in my phone. Whenever you look a word up you can make it into a flashcard with a single tap. If it's a really good dictionary app, like Pleco, you can then arrange your cards into different decks. So I might create a deck with all of the words I had to look up when reading a certain text. Then I'll work with the deck for a couple of days, using it to memorize the words. After this I'll reread the text again, without the help of the dictionary. Or, if I'm reading something longer, like a book, I might collect all of the lookup words (except ones too obscure for my current level) in a deck as I'm reading. When I stop reading I go through the deck once, to freshen them up again. Before I start the next reading session I go through the words of the last session once more, and then delete the deck and create a new one. And there are lots of more ways of working with flashcards electronically without using an SRS system to space them. I've come to dislike SRS because it tells me how much to study. I'm very irregular in my study habits, studying five hours a day for a week and then nothing for a week and then a big boost during one weekend and then half an hour a day and so on. This doesn't work well with SRS:ing, which jives better with a smooth, steady rhythm. 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 22 of 34 12 September 2012 at 9:53pm | IP Logged | |||||
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"SRS is the electronic equivalent to the Leitner system. It's perfectly possible to have tons of flashcards without spacing them with an SRS algorithm."
True - and that's the situation I wrote about where the thickness of the stack determines when you see a flashcard again. Leitner's system was more sophisticated, because it introduced differentiated intervals by distributing the cards into different groups. And then the elecrtronic systems came which could calculate the optimal moment to show each card according to a formula (with Supermemo as the pioneer, and Anki as the winner). I still prefer my oldfashioned wordlists. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Wulfgar Senior Member United States Joined 4671 days ago 404 posts - 791 votes Speaks: English* | Message 23 of 34 12 September 2012 at 10:03pm | IP Logged | |||||
I think it's possible to adjust Anki so that you just work when you want to - no mention of daily goals, etc. It doesn't really affect how the program works, or the overall results, from what I've heard. As far lists and flashcards being the same, or flashcards and SRSs being radically different, I'm not concerned about it. The poll is far from perfect, but it's a nice way to start a discussion. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4707 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 24 of 34 12 September 2012 at 10:54pm | IP Logged | |||||
Grammar drills work the best for me but I don't do them a thousand times, just two or three to get the idea down (and that's usually enough to get it right 80/90% of the time). The times I don't, I just ask people to correct me if I am not understood. I tend not to worry about grammar details until I'm actually at a stage where these grammatical details truly matter. For example, my German grammar is terrible but I still speak German fairly well. I simply have the vocabulary and fluency to keep a conversation flowing, and once I've got the machine rolling I can go back and iron out the details. Of course, I do not skimp on learning the basics like important verb conjugations, noun declensions if they are important, and so on and so forth. I just don't bother getting them exactly right or memorizing all the exceptions. This probably means that my Russian is riddled with grammatical holes, but it doesn't stop me from conversing and expanding my vocabulary which is what I really need - the words to express the most important concepts I'll use and the grammar to be accurate enough that even with a tiny mistake here and there, I will always get my point across. Once I have achieved that level then I start worrying about actual details. This is for example what I am trying to do for my French, where I understand how all the conjugations and agreements work, but I do not yet have the innate feeling of when exactly to use what tense, or what gender belongs to what word, or what preposition belongs to a certain verb, etc. I know it mostly, but not 100% accurately, and it's at the 80-90% correct stage that it makes sense to get into grammar truthfully deeply and iron it all out. But I don't learn by heart unless I really, really have to. In Russian, I just pick up natural stem change patterns and end up using some of these verbs so often that I'll notice and use them instantaneously, without actually thinking oh, видеть has an irregular stem in the 1st person singular, must learn this by heart. No. I just notice I say я вижу a lot. Grammar is fun when you already know what you're trying to say. Then it allows you to get it just right. Edited by tarvos on 12 September 2012 at 10:55pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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