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slucido
Bilingual Diglot
Senior Member
Spain
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Joined 6610 days ago
1296 posts - 1781 votes 
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Studies: English
| Message 41 of 83 27 January 2011 at 8:02am | IP Logged |
aabram wrote:
I've no doubt forgotten quite many words but then again, would it be worth it to try to retain
words like "custody", "detergent" or "falconry"?
How does one determine exactly, what they need to retain? Where do you draw the line? The
more I think of it the less I could do it myself. I'm confused. Which words and phrases
do you have in your SRS? |
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You have to follow your instincts.
I began with 8,000 words of vocabulary, but I become sick and I deleted them.
I use sentences right now. Anki is my SRS.
Question: Spanish.
Answer: English (audio).
I work on production. I say the English translation aloud and I check my answer. I only work with sentences.
Sometimes I get sick and I do it in a passive way. I think it is useful for me because I am not immersed in the language and it is the only "method" that I consistently use.
Maybe tomorrow I delete everything. It depens on my feelings.
1 person has voted this message useful
| ratis
Hexaglot
Newbie
Germany
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Speaks: German*, English, French, Italian, Spanish, Latin
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Studies: Hindi
| Message 42 of 83 27 January 2011 at 8:23pm | IP Logged |
If your goal is to have a large passive vocabulary, you won't get around memorising words
- preferably with context information and usage examples, of course.
How else I could I cram a 5-digit number of words into my head in two years? They won't
magically pop up. Even learning by immersion wouldn't work as it's unlikely to encounter
rare words often enough to remember them. You need to have some kind of repetition, and
SRS is only a way to make sure you do it efficiently.
2 persons have voted this message useful
| Newty
Newbie
United States
Joined 4986 days ago
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Studies: Mandarin, English*
Studies: Vietnamese
| Message 43 of 83 27 January 2011 at 11:15pm | IP Logged |
Cainntear wrote:
tracker465 wrote:
On the other hand, I believe that developing a
large vocabulary sooner, rather than later, can greatly facilitate one's ability to
progress in the foreign language. I have had more success learning grammar points (via
a book, course, etc) and then complimenting the vocabulary in the book with additional
vocabulary, while putting the important words on flashcards. At this point in the
game, I feel that since there are more foundational words to know, flashcards become a
quick way to learning the necessary words to be able to converse. Once reaching the
stage when one can converse, then it becomes much easier to dance around the point and
pick up new vocabulary without the usage of cards. |
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I was planning on writing a fairly long blog post on this topic, but I'll give a quick
summary just now.
The problem with learning vocabulary is that words don't exist.
There is no such "thing" as a word: a word is a collection of morphemes. Where we draw
the boundaries between words is arbitrary -- it's just what seems most convenient to
us.
If we believe in words as something separate from morphemes, then we end up drilling
the most common words early on. But many of the most common words are less common than
the most common bound morphemes (morphemes that cannot be used by themselves as
a word).
So, for example, there is no noun in English that is more common than the plural -s
suffix or the possessive -'s suffix. I don't believe there is any verb more common
than the singular third person present -s, the past -ed or the continuous -ing. ("to
be" may be, if you include all conjugations. I'm not 100% sure.)
The effects of frequency of occurrence are quite profound. Automaticity is a function
of frequency of occurrence. "Functional" morphemes are individually very common in
natural language, and no language has many function morphemes. By functional
morphemes, I mean those that have no explicit concrete meaning: pronouns, conjunctions,
grammatical markers. "Lexical" morphemes, on the other hand, are generally much rarer,
and there's always a lot of them in the dictionary.
If you achieve greater automaticity with lexical morphemes, you're in a bit of a hole,
because natural language is all constructed with the assumption that you will
understand the functional language easier and quicker than the lexical language. Your
language is therefore back-to-front. |
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I find myself at least of average intelligence, but wow I could not read this at all.
I could not keep my attention span fixed...
4 persons have voted this message useful
| hrhenry
Octoglot
Senior Member
United States
languagehopper.blogs
Joined 5065 days ago
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Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese
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| Message 44 of 83 27 January 2011 at 11:37pm | IP Logged |
Newty wrote:
I find myself at least of average intelligence, but wow I could not read this at all.
I could not keep my attention span fixed... |
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Thanks for today's laugh. I needed it.
You'll find this happens a lot with discussions around here.
R.
==
2 persons have voted this message useful
| leosmith
Senior Member
United States
Joined 6485 days ago
2365 posts - 3804 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: Tagalog
| Message 45 of 83 29 January 2011 at 4:48am | IP Logged |
Newty wrote:
| I could not keep my attention span fixed... |
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Try Ritalin?
1 person has voted this message useful
| tmp011007
Diglot
Senior Member
Congo
Joined 6004 days ago
199 posts - 346 votes
Speaks: Spanish*, English
Studies: French, Portuguese
| Message 46 of 83 29 January 2011 at 7:55am | IP Logged |
mmmmm, ritalin (yummy :P)
...
Are flash cards a necessary evil?
I don't think so. if that suits you just go for it but some people would rather different approaches (like moi)
I prefer industrial amounts of listening-reading-chatting (in short: exposure) and a few mnemonics
my memory tricks are quite poor and "underdeveloped" so, I have to rely on old collected advice like
http://www.paulstips.com/brainbox/pt/home.nsf/link/11052006-Six-steps-for-learning-difficult-subjects-quickly wrote:
Step 1: Bombard yourself with information
Many people try to slowly and methodically digest difficult material. They underline things and re-read paragraphs ten times to try and understand. This approach might eventually work, but most people get fed up with it and give up before finishing. Our brains hate this way of learning.
Instead, try to get through the material as quickly as possible. Don't worry if you don't understand everything, just keep reading on. Push yourself to get the damn textbook finished, and don't worry too much about how much you take in.
Skip any exercises or quizzes and just keep ploughing through.
Some people can read an entire textbook in a couple of sittings, but not me. I like to digest 10-20 page chunks, then go and do something else for a while to give my brain a rest. If you do this three or four times a day, you can finish a 600 page textbook in about two weeks.
The only time I stop to go back is if there's some key concept that's being repeated a lot and I don't know what it means. Then, I might allow myself to read a key paragraph or two on that topic, but no more. Otherwise I just challenge myself to get through the book as quickly as possible.
Step 2: Identify the key concepts and make them yours
Once you've finished the text, think about what the key concepts were. Don't concentrate on the details at this stage, just identify the core ten or so ideas that form the basis of the subject. Look them up again and try to define them as simply as you can. Putting them in your own words, with an example, rather than learning by rote is important.
For example, The Economist defines the concept of Opportunity Cost as: "The true cost of something is what you give up to get it. This includes not only the money spent in buying (or doing) the something, but also the economic benefits that you did without because you bought (or did) that particular something and thus can no longer buy (or do) something else. "
So you could say to yourself: "Opportunity cost means not being able to spend your resources on one thing because you've already spent them on something else. I can spend my Saturday night doing homework, which means the opportunity cost is that I can't spend that time going to the movies."
Step 3: Only memorize what absolutely has to be memorized
Most facts and figures can be looked up. Don't fill your mind with junk trivia that's only a mouse-click away. Instead of the raw data, concentrate on understanding the ideas of a subject.
However, in any topic, there are some things that simply must be memorized. Cut the list of these down as much as possible, so you're only remembering that which absolutely and definitely has to be remembered.
There are all sorts of memory tricks around, but the one I find most useful is pretty simple. I just repeat out loud the thing that has to be remembered ten times or so. Then, I wait until later in the day and try to remember it again. If I can't, I look it up and repeat it out loud again. Then I wait for later and try to remember it again - and so on. Usually, you can burn a fact into your brain pretty quickly using this method.
Step 4: Get some feedback on your understanding
Now that you've filled your head with stuff, it's time to get some feedback on how well you've understood it. A good way is by doing some kind of mock-exam. You can find these for various subjects on-line, or you might want to try some of the exercises in the textbook.
Again, break this dull task up into chunks if necessary, doing a few different tests over a few days.
You'll probably find that you did pretty badly when you mark yourself. After all, you raced your way through the text. But if you look up the questions that you got wrong, you should amaze yourself at how quickly you start getting a detailed knowledge of the material.
What you're trying to do is build up a framework of the subject in your mind and then fill in the details. This will probably be pretty fuzzy at first, but clarity usually comes quickly as you teach your brain how the concepts are related.
The important thing is not getting the answers right, but looking up what you got wrong and learning it. Do this as quickly as possible. Try to avoid reading whole chapters unless you feel you absolutely need to.
Step 5: Bombard yourself with some more information, but from another source
Now is the time to get some information from other sources. Often, hearing something in a different way helps me to understand it better. It also gives some flexibility to my comprehension.
I'm not suggesting reading another whole textbook. Instead read a few short articles on the subject in magazines and on websites.
Step 6: Get some real-world feedback
Now's the time to get some real-world feedback. If you've learnt a language, try speaking to a native in it. If you've taught yourself anatomy, try having a discussion on the subject with a doctor.
The best real world feedback of all is if you attempt to use your knowledge for fame or fortune (on a small scale of course). Throw yourself in the deep end, in other words. Join a discussion board on the subject and pick an argument with one of the participants. Or try to get paid employment using your new knowledge. |
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1 person has voted this message useful
| William Camden
Hexaglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 6207 days ago
1936 posts - 2333 votes
Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French
| Message 47 of 83 29 January 2011 at 12:25pm | IP Logged |
Over time, I have developed something of a feel for how common vocabulary words are, but it takes a while to acquire this.
Flash cards are most useful in the earlier phases of vocabulary and language learning, I think.
1 person has voted this message useful
| mrwarper
Diglot
Winner TAC 2012
Senior Member
Spain
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| Message 48 of 83 31 January 2011 at 1:33am | IP Logged |
Of course flash cards are a necessary evil. They're not necessary, they're not evil and we all know what a double negative is ;)
OK, on a serious note. They're not necessary because most people do not use them yet they manage to learn. However, as any other tool, they can be good, useful, etc. if used correctly. But then again, there are the questions of 1) What is a flash card, and 2) how do you want to / can use it?
I take 'flash card' in an extended sense: it is something with two 'sides', that are somehow related (that's why they can be used as learning tools) and which can be displayed at the same time (or played sequentially for audio flash cards) or not. I guess we could invent more kinds, but language is either written or spoken, so for language-related tasks we're pretty much done.
If both sides are displayed/played, this is just an alternate, modern version of multiple/double entry lists. These can be obviously used to force-feed a relatively big amount of things that are to be used later; f.e. learn (or at least become familiar with) the most basic 500 words/set phrases/whatever of a language before trying to wade through it (think Iversen on words lists), the infinitive/past/p.participle of English irregular verbs, etc.
Displaying/playing only one of the 'sides', then asking yourself what the other is can be used as a self-challenging tool / game for learners: you actively try to reinforce memory, as in 'try not to forget this interesting thing I came across'.
The main advantage of 'decks of cards' (or lists of bilingual audio bits pairs, or whatever) vs 'plain lists' is that you can shuffle them between passes if necessary, so you focus on associating both 'sides' of the card, and not one of the card items with the preceding or next one, thus allowing to avoid this very common phenomenon. [Note: shuffling, as everything else, is NOT mandatory, but you should try and see what works better for you - EDIT: it is however HIGHLY recommendable--if you get considerably better results by not shuffling, you're very likely associating things by position in the list/deck which won't work in real life where surrounding items won't be there to help you]
There might be other uses (suggestions welcome!), but I think these are the most obvious and useful ones.
Now, what do we put in 'cards'? It depends. Answer, what kind of stuff do you want to learn, and when/why, and you're done.
Personally, I'm currently using paper flash cards (and probably their mobile phone counterpart at some point in the future) as a more efficient (more portable, lightweight, 'shuffleable') replacement for a simple notebook where I'd write down words and expressions I consider worth remembering for whatever reason (usually to have them ready to use when appropriate). Whenever I'm idle for a short period of time I pop them out and have a little review, pure Barry Farber's style.
And I plan to use them to cram in my first 1000 Russian words once I'm really able to read, which will allow me to do some experiments. Same with Japanese Kanjis.
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Edit: As I've seen Cainntear's and others comments, I've added the relevant information/amendments here to keep things tidy.
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Edit: A final note about cards piling up, etc.
Flash cards, either as learning tools or as memory reinforcement devices, are supposed to be transient. Once things finally sink in your memory (read: you learned them) either way, you can stow those cards away (if not getting rid of them), thus letting you not to waste reviewing things you already know.
That's the purpose of the Leitner system, list distilling or any spaced repetition method(s), either manual or software-aided.
Or, in other words: if cards pile up, you're not really learning what's in them.
One would think that is only common sense :)
Edited by mrwarper on 01 February 2011 at 5:38pm
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