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I don’t like SRS | ||
Tags: Spaced Repetition (SRS) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| atama warui Triglot Senior Member Japan Joined 4632 days ago 594 posts - 985 votes  Speaks: German*, English, Japanese | Message 33 of 46 01 April 2012 at 12:05am | IP Logged | |||||
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I do learn vocabulary items in isolated fashion.
It's not necessary for me to see the context while reviewing. When I encounter a completely new word, I look up example sentences ONCE. When I know the meaning of a word and its nuance, I don't need it in my face over and over again (this would actually disturb me, plus it takes a lot of time) I also think isolated vocab learning is useless in the beginning. If you have no clue how to use words, because you lack even the basic grammar, these words have no grounding. They will be erased within your next 2-3 sleep periods anyways, unless you repeat them (and then, what's the deal? It's still "useless information" for your brain, so there won't be connections, hence, they're dead weight). From B1 on, amassing vocabulary in isolated fashion is the way for the biggest bang for your buck. You don't even need to know every nuance. You need to know enough to understand the meaning when you see it in use, then learn on to a deeper level of understanding from how it's been used. That will be the Advanced stage of C1. A1/A2 is still the stage where one is busy like a one-legged man on an ass-kicking competition just trying to not get lost in simple sentences with only 2 or 3 unknown words. At that level, most natural sentences will be way over their level anyways. Vocab acquisition at that time will have to take place in context, best in combination with learning or practicing grammar points. 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5361 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 34 of 46 02 April 2012 at 6:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I won't attempt to argue against something that is working well. I would however take issue with a blanket statement that the higher your general proficiency the more learning of isolated words one can do. For me it's somewhat the contrary. I find that the higher levels of mastery demand more knowledge of details and nuances. And this comes precisely from seeing how words are used in context.
For example, one of the distinguishing characteristics of C1 and especially C2 levels of proficiency is the knowledge of idioms. English is notorious for extensive use of idoms, but I think all languages do this. Or take something like the subjunctive mood in French and Spanish that most learners never master at all and simply avoid. And even things as simple as the basic tenses where the present and future tenses in French can be used for past events. All of these features simply cannot be learned in isolation. That is exactly why many people never master them. For example, one of the worst things to do is learn verb conjugations tables by themselves. There is no doubt that certain things like technical terminology can be learned in isolation. But I would not agree with the idea that it depends on the level of proficiency. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5157 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 35 of 46 02 April 2012 at 8:39pm | IP Logged | |||||
Yes and no. This comes from seeing how such details and nuances are expressed.
Exactly; yes and no. An unexplored key here is how tricky the definition of "word" is. But rather than pursuing some chimerical definition that won't satisfy everyone anyway, I'd like to point out that there's no big difference (other than the spaces) between learning words or idioms in isolation or context, as long as they have similar degrees of specificity. Really, items like "reconciliation" or "then the penny dropped" or "make sb's blood boil" are tremendously specific and all of them pretty much stand by themselves. Granted, no isolated item means a great deal alone, everything must be related to something else (the context). However, such items are so specific that it's really not relevant what they relate to, in the sense that they add exactly the same nuance / information to every possible context, within obvious limits. And these are the kind of items one cannot expect from most learners at the lower levels. On the other hand, simple items like "bark" are much more likely to interact with possible in many different ways (think for example "dogs bark" vs "trees bark") due to fitting different grammatical categories, polysemy, etc. It is those items that challenge both any SR support system and the learner because they need a lot of additional information to cover any meaningful fraction of collocations, meanings, etc. How does items specificity relate to proficiency? Again, I say the more specific an item is, the more likely it is to be related to proficiency extremes, i.e. pretty high or pretty low. Which one? Well, there's a key factor missing here, and it is how specific an audience it has. That can only be judged case by case, but you can easily guess that I think specific items with broad audiences roughly match lower levels while specific items targeting a specific audience are more likely to match higher levels. Of course, it is possible to find environments that require high degrees of specificity in vocabulary and not other high level skills, but there's no perfect theory and I think these cases are a minority. Edited by mrwarper on 02 April 2012 at 8:47pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5361 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 36 of 46 02 April 2012 at 10:54pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Again, I'm not arguing that there is one way to use flashcards, or any language-learning tool for that matter. What I'm arguing here is that for myself, and possibly others, it is useful to see an actual contextual use of a word or a phrase when we are learning or reviewing it.
Let me give a specific example of a slightly more advanced nature. I apologize to those readers who are not familiar with Spanish. On one of my flashcards I have on the front "con diferencia" and on the back "by far / de loin." I found this idiom intriguing because it was so unlike any usage of the cognates "difference" and "la différence" that I was more familiar with. I then added to the front of the card the following example: ...es el tablet más vendido con diferencia. This example makes all the difference (no pun intended) because it gives me an idea of what other words this idiom can be associated with. The important thing to note here is that if I didn't have that example, I would have to rely solely on the English or French translation to guide me in the use until I found some examples. Far from me to want to be polemical about this, my basic point is why not put that space (paper or electronic) to good use. Edited by s_allard on 02 April 2012 at 11:19pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| buchstabe Tetraglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4633 days ago 52 posts - 108 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, French, Spanish Studies: Czech, Swedish, Japanese | Message 37 of 46 03 April 2012 at 2:35am | IP Logged | |||||
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As for using SRS for getting from C1 to C2, I believe it helped me a lot with getting from C1 to high C2 in English.
I didn't use just cards with my native language on one and an English term on the other side, however. On the front of my cards, I put one or several definitions of the target term in English which I took from the CALD, merriam-webster.com, other online dictionaries or the OED. To those I added, still on the front side, several slightly different usage examples (often 4-5), pilfered from the same sources, replacing the target word / idiom / phrasal verb by three dots. On the back, I put the expression in question plus etymological background information (from etymonline.com and the above mentioned sources) and sometimes pictures I found via Google's image search. When I tried the first practice exams, my results were just good enough to probably pass; a year later, in the actual exam, I scored close to 100% in all written papers. The only other thing I did was to watch more BBC and do some practice tests, and I don't think that was what made the difference. My bottom line is, I believe as long as you modify the design of your flashcards to provide the right challenge (not too easy, not too advanced) for your current level, they can speed you up at any level. (If you like in the first place them, that is.) Edited by buchstabe on 03 April 2012 at 2:35am 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| atama warui Triglot Senior Member Japan Joined 4632 days ago 594 posts - 985 votes Speaks: German*, English, Japanese | Message 38 of 46 03 April 2012 at 5:16am | IP Logged | |||||
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Well, I've talked about the stage when you need to amass vocabulary to broaden your understanding, and to not sound like an uneducated cave man when trying to utter something in your Lx.
When you're at C1 level, more vocab will meet the diminishing returns phenomenon. You might be able to call your darling "Schatz" or "Liebling" or "Engel" already, rendering words like "Augenstern" useless - unless you encounter it, and, depending on if the context makes it worth it, you look it up. In such a scenario, the word will be yours immediately. But that's the stage where your Lx already maintains itself. I didn't describe this above; only talked about the Beginner and Intermediate level, where first learning basics in combination, then vocab in isolation is a very fast and efficient way that works for most people. That doesn't mean that other methods don't work, or that these methods also work for you (although it's very likely they would). SRS is also painful. Then again, you need to decide yourself what price you're going to pay for proficiency. I'm currently an Intermediate student of Japanese, and vocab is the most useful thing to level up. And the fastest way to amass it is SRS, because it forces words into your memory, even if you have it erased a 100 times. All these words WILL stick eventually. Edited by atama warui on 03 April 2012 at 5:19am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| aokoye Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5472 days ago 235 posts - 453 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Dutch, Norwegian, Japanese | Message 39 of 46 11 April 2012 at 12:51pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I too really don't enjoy or find much, if any, use in basic SRS software like Anki
(when I say basic I mean "it does one thing and the exercises don't change"). Platforms like Memrise, which is SRS but in a format that actually works for me and is very different from Anki tend to work, but Anki, not so much. Here's what I really have a problem with, and I will preface it with saying that it will probably sound judgmental. I think there is perhaps too much praise in Anki and SRS in general on this forum. It seems to have gotten to the point that when most people challenge it (and by "most people" I mean people who aren't exceedingly popular for one reason or another - so Kaufmann would be one of the popular people), they get dismissed or told that their views are invalid or wrong. I should note that I am not just taking this from this thread but from others as well. SRS isn't the holy grail. I think that a lot of people on HTLAL need to realize, when they come to threads like these, no matter how much scientific basis something like SRS has, it's just not going to work for everyone. Furthermore, people need to realize that most, if not all, people who say "hey look, SRS doesn't work for me" actually know themselves and their learning style significantly better than you, the person replying, does. Essentially, what I'm saying is that a lot of people need to really digest the fact that SRS isn't going to work for everyone. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Javi Senior Member Spain Joined 5912 days ago 419 posts - 548 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 40 of 46 11 April 2012 at 6:16pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Could you please elaborate a bit on what you said about memrise? In what way is
different from Anki? Not that I've ever used Anki, but I'm familiar with SRS in general. Is memrise supposed to be general knowledge now, just like Anki has been thus far? I hate it when I have to do a research just to understand a single post. Regarding the rest of your comment, sorry but it looks to me just like beating the straw-man once again. That said, I have no problem with people giving vent to their frustrations on the Internet. It's not my thing, that's all. Edited by Javi on 11 April 2012 at 6:36pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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