|
 |
Sentences instead of Words | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6542 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 9 of 21 19 April 2007 at 8:30pm | IP Logged | ||
As long as we're clarifying approaches, could you give some examples of how to make target to target sentence flashcards? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| awake Senior Member United States Joined 6628 days ago 406 posts - 438 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Esperanto, Spanish | Message 10 of 21 19 April 2007 at 10:16pm | IP Logged | ||
|
I can chime in here with a couple of possibilities. With japanese this is
possible because you can have the sentence be fully (or partly) in kanji and the flip side be in kana. Alternatively, you could have kanji on one side and kanji with furigana on the other (to guide your pronunciation). Or in a language like Spanish, if you're at a pretty advanced level, you could have "hints" instead of a direct translation on the reverse side of the card. For example, if a sentence has some words that you're not familiar with, you could use a monolingual Spanish dictionary to define them on the other side in Spanish (or perhaps even notes about relevant Spanish grammar on the other side written in Spanish). The idea of having Target -> Target flashcards is that you keep your brain working in the target language. it's more immersive that way.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6542 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 11 of 21 20 April 2007 at 9:56am | IP Logged | ||
While I'm sure ther are benefits to this method, it seems like the same benefits are to be had by just reading. What are the advantages of using flashcards here? I was hoping to hear some suggestions for more traditional flashcards (vocab, grammar, etc) using L2 to L2. Any ideas? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Farley Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 7084 days ago 681 posts - 739 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, GermanB1, French Studies: Spanish | Message 12 of 21 20 April 2007 at 3:58pm | IP Logged | ||
|
I have a few things to add. I think the target->target or target->native styles cards can be effective, but the comments by Andy or Leosmith still apply. For one, you really don’t have to create cards when you can find a good book with the same format. Read it cover to cover until you have it down pat. And second, this method works given that you have ample time for repetition or you are in an immersion environment, either real or created. The benefit to this is that you get plenty of practice imitating correct sentences rather than creating bad habits. Also, just to second what Awake said, you keep your brain in the target language.
I used a passive sentence method ten years ago with great results, but I was in Germany and had hours of active practice, and I was a student with no job or family to worry about. Add ten years, a job and family – my old passive method is not so effective. Some native-to-target practice is essential, to get the words and syntax to stick, considering I don’t have hours to practice. To try and compensate I’ve done a lot of target->native->target for native->target->native to try and get the best of active and passive practice. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Andy E Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 7095 days ago 1651 posts - 1939 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 13 of 21 23 April 2007 at 3:42am | IP Logged | ||
No you're not being dense, it's just that some idiot (that'd be me then) failed miserably to check the post he'd just written. I've now corrected it. Andy. Edited by Andy E on 23 April 2007 at 3:43am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6695 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 14 of 21 23 April 2007 at 6:51am | IP Logged | ||
|
Of course learning words from sentences is a good thing, but it is not necessarily the answer to all problems in language learning. If you are a beginner you don't understand normal texts or normal speech, - that's part of the definition. So either you have to get something very easy prepared for people at your level, or you have to use other methods to get there faster. I use word lists, while others prefer flash cards.
With flash cards you have the possibility of adding a sample sentence with the foreign word to show how it is used in practice, and with word lists you can add simple directives for the morphology and syntax of the word. However you can't expect to learn all features of a complicated word from even a good dictionary, nor from studying a single sample sentence. The methods for vocabulary boosting are not meant to give you that, their job is to make it easier for you to deal with large amounts of genuine texts later. Knowing most words beforehand (with a rough idea about their meanings) has three effects: 1) you don't have to look up as many unknown words to understand the text, 2) you have a better background for spotting and understanding idioms, quotes and other stylistical elements, 3) the more you know of a language the easier it is the remember just one element more. So for me the sentence approach is immensely useful, but primarily for learning other things than basic vocabulary, and to get the most from it it should be used in conjunction with memorization techniques, particularly during the initial stages. And though learning single words from spoken sources certainly occurs, it is the worst possible scenario for that (unless you have a native speaker completely at your disposal). Learn your words beforehand and then listen for speech patterns, expressions and pronunciation. Edited by Iversen on 23 April 2007 at 7:01am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Andy E Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 7095 days ago 1651 posts - 1939 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 15 of 21 24 April 2007 at 1:56am | IP Logged | ||
|
I'd agree with what Iversen has posted above. I don't use the sentence approach + spaced repetition for anything other than improving my Oral Production. For me, it's meant to build on (or even replace) an Assimil Active Wave where you translate dialogs and exercises from native to target. It's not meant to help me understand radio or read books in the target language - I have other methods I use for that.
It's certainly not the answer to all problems in language learning and for some people it may not be an answer at all - if I've learnt one thing from this site, it's how many different ways and means people have employed to achieve their language targets. An Active Wave is not the starting point for a beginner - you should already have done some amount of work on the language in whatever form and as Iversen says, for complex words a one-off sentence is insufficient. The advantage of concentrating on sentences is that instead of word + sample, if you invest the time, you simply create a number of sentence-based flashcards to get the meaning down pat or you create them as you come across the variations and subtleties. For example, tener is a relatively "simple" verb (putting to one side it's irregular inflections for the moment) but one sample sentence is clearly insufficient to cover the various nuances one needs to know. I have an entire set of cards devoted solely to tener and its use. For grammar points or to highlight idioms, I add a reminder note to the target side of the flashcard to reinforce the point. When I'm learning more complex idioms, I often put the literal translation as a note on the native while the main "question" has the approximation in my own language. My problem is that I don't get on with hand-written wordlists anymore than I did with single-word flashcards. It not that they're not effective for me, I know that they are. I've still got a few thousand single-word flashcards I used for basic Spanish vocab several years ago and I've done hand-written wordlists for French and German in notebooks many moons ago. However, using them required constant motivation that long-term I found too difficult to maintain. On the one hand I suppose it's sheer laziness but on the other I find that I need to enjoy my language learning to keep at it on a daily basis. It's the need to keep my interest going that has led me to experiment with other ways of learning that at first glance may take longer but because they are not abandonded will probably save time in the end. Andy. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7197 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 16 of 21 24 April 2007 at 5:20am | IP Logged | ||
That reminds me of an article I read recently on The Bizarreness Effect as a memory aid to language learning. There are also the Self-Reference and Generation Effects that it seems a language learner could utilize when making sentences. 1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
