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Learning similar words together? | ||
Tags: Vocabulary learning | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| IronFist Senior Member United States Joined 6437 days ago 663 posts - 941 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 1 of 7 12 August 2012 at 8:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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In your experience, do you learn words more easily when they are grouped into similar categories?
For example, say you are studying a language and you get to the chapter on prepositions, and you learn: in, on, behind, in front of, beside, above, below, inside of, outside of, etc. in your target language. Do you learn them better that way, all at once, or does that cause you to confuse them all? The reason I ask is because I think I learn them better if they're NOT grouped. In chapter one, teach me "in." Let it sink into my brain. In chapter two we can learn the normal material plus "next to." By that point I already have the word for "in" memorized and I know that the next preposition I've learned is "next to." I think Pimsleur does it this way (at least with the languages I've used that program for). You learn a few numbers here, a few numbers there, a few prepositions here, a few prepositions there, a few places here, a few places there, and it seems to work better for me. 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 2 of 7 12 August 2012 at 9:26pm | IP Logged | ||
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I just learn the words I see. There's no rhyme or reason, just a huge mass of exposure
and I pick out what I really need, plus the idiomatic phrases. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ZombieKing Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4527 days ago 247 posts - 324 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin* | Message 3 of 7 12 August 2012 at 10:06pm | IP Logged | ||
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For German, I just learn whatever I come across in my German reader and assimil.
For Chinese I pick a couple of commonly used characters, and learn the most common compounds with them. I find that by learning multiple compound words per character (and thus seeing it many different contexts), I can remember that character more easily. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| nimchimpsky Diglot Groupie Netherlands Joined 5611 days ago 73 posts - 108 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English | Message 4 of 7 12 August 2012 at 10:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think it is important to distinguish between lexical sets and thematical vocabulary. Learning several items of fruit in one go is difficult and probably confusing, but I am not so sure if the same applies to learning the words sleep, bed, dream, and tired together.
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| IronFist Senior Member United States Joined 6437 days ago 663 posts - 941 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 5 of 7 12 August 2012 at 10:58pm | IP Logged | ||
Right, I agree with what you just said. It's not necessarily related words like dream, sleep, and tired, but learning a bunch of fruits together would be confusing. I think it's logical to assume you should learn all the fruits together, for example, because you might have the thought like "what if I'm at the store and I know the word for apple and orange but I want to order a banana? I should just learn them all!" But I get them confused. Especially prepositions, for some reason. I need to learn them like one at a time. The man is in the car. The boy is in the house. The girl is in the restaurant drinking coffee. Ok, now I've mastered "in." On to the next preposition. Otherwise I end up saying like "the girl is on top of the restaurant drinking coffee... no wait, she's behind the restaurant! No... uh... she's... uh she's inside to the restaurant. Yeah that's it!" Except that's still wrong lol. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Swift Senior Member Ireland Joined 4608 days ago 137 posts - 191 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, Russian | Message 6 of 7 12 August 2012 at 11:18pm | IP Logged | ||
I agree. When I was at a lower level, I hated learning "fruits", "animals", etc. It isn't impossible, it just requires more effort, is boring and not that effective compared to other methods for me. I wouldn't have trouble learning a group of prepositions like the OP mentioned. I can't really explain it, my brain just distinguishes between them far more easily. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| nuriayasmin70 Diglot Senior Member Germany languagesandbeyoRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4521 days ago 132 posts - 162 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: SpanishB1, Portuguese, Czech, Hungarian | Message 7 of 7 13 August 2012 at 12:01am | IP Logged | ||
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I don't mind learning thematically related substantives together, I actually like it. So groups of fruit or animals or body parts are no problem. However, I can't learn prepositions or verbs in groups as I need them with a context, either content-related or grammar-related. So with the exceptions of substantives I prefer to learn expressions or short sentences, not just single words.
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