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Lists vs Flashcards

 Language Learning Forum : General discussion Post Reply
Poll Question: Which is more effective:
Poll Choice Votes Poll Statistics
13 [44.83%]
16 [55.17%]
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34 messages over 5 pages: 13 4 5  Next >>
tarvos
Super Polyglot
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China
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 Message 9 of 34
11 September 2012 at 4:17pm | IP Logged 
I personally use groups of 7.
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Bao
Diglot
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Germany
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 Message 10 of 34
11 September 2012 at 4:40pm | IP Logged 
In my case wordlists are better for initial acquisiton, especially with Iversen's ingenious idea of force-cleaning your working memory. Flash cards are better for things like practicing how to write Chinese characters, remembering tones, gender etc - information that is relevant to the language, but that easily deteriorates in my memory because I can't yet use the language at a level at which this information becomes natural to remember. (I guess randomly compiled quizzes from such flash cards would also be a helpful addition.)
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Serpent
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 Message 11 of 34
11 September 2012 at 5:16pm | IP Logged 
tarvos wrote:
even though Anki works fine for me, I prefer wordlists because I get sick of repeating words 6 months to the day I added them. Anki might help, but my memory is not THAT bad that I don't remember those words. Two repetitions tends to suffice in 95% of cases for me, and the words I don't remember are ones I don't use as much anyways.
That's just a matter of input:-) If you've had those 'repetitions' in RL instead you can just delete the word.
I don't have this problem with sentence cards, btw - I'm just glad to see the 'old friends' again <333 As I'm not memorizing an entire sentence, the emphasis is on refreshing it in my memory: does it feel familiar by now? does it feel natural? would I come up with a similar sentence on my own?

I voted for flash cards but I almost don't use them for single words.
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Wulfgar
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United States
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 Message 12 of 34
12 September 2012 at 5:39am | IP Logged 
Has anyone ever used an SRS to space their lists? I wonder if that would be more effective.
Some sample vocabulary learning techniques:

A) The Word Brain
suggests that we should "Learn new words on day 0 and repeat them on day 1, 3, 6, 10, 17, and 31." If we do this, when we become
fully saturated (day 31 and on) we will be learning 20 words a day and reviewing 6 old lists of 20 words each, or doing 120 reviews a
day.

B) I learned 20 words a day with anki earlier this year. It took about 2 months to reach 100 reviews, but about 3 weeks after that it was
close to 200.

C) Last year, with word lists I did 50 words on day 0, and reviewed on days 1 and 2, for about 2 months. I got exposed to a hell of a lot
of vocab that way, but even thought I was doing a lot of reading and listening, I felt that it didn't stick very well.

I might try something like A), since B) spirals out of control fairly quickly. C) wasn't very satisfying for me. I suspect the real answer is to
either stop trying to learn so much vocabulary in one day, or be satisfied with things not sticking as well.



Edited by Wulfgar on 12 September 2012 at 6:15am

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Ari
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Norway
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 Message 13 of 34
12 September 2012 at 6:49am | IP Logged 
Ok, so to be clear, in this poll "flashcards" = "SRS"? Because I was about to vote for "flashcards" but if that means SRS I'm not sure. I grew out of love with SRS some time ago but I still love flashcards. Creating a deck of flashcards for all the new words in a certain text, practicing them on and off until you feel you've "got it" (whilst working in other ways with the text) and then deleting the deck would not count as "flashcards" for this poll? Would it count as a list? Or neither?

Sorry to be a nitpick, but in my mind there's a big difference between "flashcards" and "SRS" and if this poll is to be representative we need to know what we're voting on.
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Iversen
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 Message 14 of 34
12 September 2012 at 10:47am | IP Logged 
SRS is the electronic equivalent to flashcards, and the most known SRS system is Anki. In the electronic systems it is some kind of mathematical formula which determine the distance between repetitions (with longer and longer intervals), while it is the thickness of the stack and your diligence alone which determine when you will see a given flashcard again. So that's a relevant difference. And as Ari points out there is also a lot of difference between sitting with a stack of physical cards in you hand and seeing some words flashing by on a screen - it's for the exact same reason I do my wordlists on paper with oldfashioned coloured pens and not on my computer in Word or Excel.
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tarvos
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 Message 15 of 34
12 September 2012 at 11:07am | IP Logged 
Quote:
That's just a matter of input:-) If you've had those 'repetitions' in RL instead
you can just delete the word.
I don't have this problem with sentence cards, btw - I'm just glad to see the 'old
friends' again <333 As I'm not memorizing an entire sentence, the emphasis is on
refreshing it in my memory: does it feel familiar by now? does it feel natural? would I
come up with a similar sentence on my own?


I tend to get there naturally by speaking/writing so I never bother with this. I just
make the wordlists and if they show up again I'll use them. Most words require only a
few repetitions to really sink in for me :). It makes Anki a little superfluous so I
definitely just prefer wordlists. If I've seen it twice, I'll use it well.

Edited by tarvos on 12 September 2012 at 11:08am

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stifa
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Norway
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 Message 16 of 34
12 September 2012 at 11:14am | IP Logged 
I think I should start to use lists to drill readings of new Japanese words I add. When
using a dictionary, I tend to just copy the words, definitions and example sentences
without paying close attention to the reading.

Writing on paper has never been my strengths; I suffer from nistagmus, albinism and
something in latin which I don't remember. The former do affect precision based
activities such as handwriting, thus handwriting becomes a burden and makes me focus
more on the writing that what the heck I'm writing.

I will also start just adding 10 words a day instead of 20-30 because there is
absolutely no chance that I can keep up with that. With German, it is different though,
because then I only need to remember the word and its meaning, instead of meaning and
reading.

I prefer SRS though, because I don't have to spend much time writing out lists and I do
not use Norwegian/English definitions anymore in German and Japanese, which would make
it more difficult and time consuming to write those lists.

SRSing kanji has helped lots though. Even if I don't encounter them often, I still have
a retention rate of >80%, and it would be a waste testing those 80% too often...

Edited by stifa on 12 September 2012 at 11:18am



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