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Not Memorizing Sentences in Anki | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Sterogyl Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4372 days ago 152 posts - 263 votes  Studies: German*, French, EnglishC2 Studies: Japanese, Norwegian | Message 17 of 21 20 February 2013 at 11:37am | IP Logged | |||||
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I know that most people won't agree, but I find sentence cards in the direction L1->L2 quite useful. I have done it with about 500 French sentences and it really helped me to memorize certain patterns and collocations. But I do think that it becomes too difficult with more cards (e.g. 10,000) or with more difficult languages (Japanese...). What I would propose here is to give hints in form of the first letter of each word of the L2-sentence. For example:
FRONT: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. (hint:) h=n k=w t=t ch=t=o s s. BACK: はじめに神は天と地とを創造された。 I don't think it's a disadvantage to limit yourself to exact constructions and words. Especially for difficult languages such as Japanese, the learner usually has problems to find the correct words and constructions that are normal in the language. When he basically memorizes many sentences in the target language, he will naturally internalize patterns of the language and will eventually be able to build new sentences with the same patterns. However, without hints, it would be too difficult and failure prone, since there are, of course, always many ways to express the same thing. Only recognizing and understanding the meaning of sentences is, in my opinion, a bit too easy. I know that many language learners are convinced of input only methods, but I find it quite important to concentrate on output also. Cloze deletion is an output method, but you only have to know a single word, and it becomes easy to ignore the rest of the sentence. It is effective, yes, but the translation method is even more effective, I think. Instead of flash cards, translating/memorizing entire texts is also a good method to improve L2. Assimil uses the same method, basically. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| stifa Triglot Senior Member Norway lang-8.com/448715 Joined 4878 days ago 629 posts - 813 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, EnglishC2, German Studies: Japanese, Spanish | Message 18 of 21 20 February 2013 at 1:40pm | IP Logged | |||||
It doesn't have to be hard and time consuming to be benefitial. ;) 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4852 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 19 of 21 20 February 2013 at 2:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
"ものすごく＝とても" came straight out of my textbook, An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese. Therefore I thought I could trust it. It could be that they are simplifying things for the learner's sake. Still, it sounds like the difference between "extremely" and "terribly" in English - yes, you can demonstrate a difference between the two, but you can still use them interchangeably in any everyday situation. However, that in no way suggests that putting Japanese definitions is a bad thing. I in fact do have a few cards with definitions from dic.yahoo.co.jp. I only include them, however, when I can understand the definition without having to look up additional words, to keep Anki input fast. Edited by kujichagulia on 20 February 2013 at 2:43pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5537 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 20 of 21 20 February 2013 at 3:05pm | IP Logged | |||||
Yeah, I certainly don't intend to criticize Sterogyl's choices, which probably make perfect sense given his needs. But at least for me, there's no reason why Anki needs to be painful. I've used big L1->L2 vocabulary decks in the past, and I found that they became utterly agonizing once I knew multiple reasonable ways to express an idea, because I always guessed wrong. I also briefly tried L1->L2 idioms, which were even worse. When I switched over to L2 sentences (with a word or two defined on the back) and single-word cloze cards, Anki became downright pleasant. And if anything, I actually learned more. Now, there may be times and places where hard L1->L2 cards are useful. But in general, I prefer to keep Anki fun and easy, and stick with it for the long haul. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sterogyl Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4372 days ago 152 posts - 263 votes Studies: German*, French, EnglishC2 Studies: Japanese, Norwegian | Message 21 of 21 20 February 2013 at 4:00pm | IP Logged | |||||
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For me personally, the L1->L2 "method" is not really hard (under the condition that I have hints...it would be too hard to reproduce a long sentence without them), it's actually more fun than just reading and recognizing a sentence. I've done this (just reading and recognizing) with a few thousand Japanese sentences and I always found it very boring. It improved my reading ability, but it hardly improved my output ability. On the other hand, Japanese MCDs are somehow too difficult for me. I cannot remember particular Japanese words. Whole sentences with hints are much easier for me, but nevertheless efficient. I have to know every single word and its meaning, after all (and all the characters, which I write down then).
It's a good feeling to be able to produce a whole sentence. Moreover, I also find it very beneficial for languages that are closely related to my own. For example, I can read Norwegian newspaper articles quite well, because Norwegian is so similar to German. But, despite my understanding them, I have actually never learned these words and would never be able to produce them myself. Thus, only recognizing a sentence in Norwegian wouldn't be so efficient, because it would be too easy. But of course, if it is agonizing to you and you don't like it, by all means don't do it. There are many ways to acquire language knowledge. And it doesn't have to be hard at all! Reading and listening attentively is the most important factor, shadowing is also very good. Flashcards is not everything. You surely can do without them. Don't overdo it. I wouldn't recommend sitting in front of your anki for hours every day. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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