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The "piling up" effect | ||
Tags: Spaced Repetition (SRS) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6002 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes  Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 17 of 26 10 October 2010 at 3:00pm | IP Logged | |||||
What do you mean by children's books? Do you mean things like Spot or The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe? In my opinion, the "learn to read" type books (Spot etc) are dumbed down to the point of uselessness. When I child starts to read, they have an almost-complete picture of the language, and they use that picture to make assumptions about the written word. (I studied this to a fairly superficial extent for my degree an it's fascinating to see the process kids follow written out.) I learned to read from old Ladybird books of fairy tales. It was easy because the language was in the same style as the bedtime stories my mum would read to us anyway. She also used to read children's novels (Swallows and Amazons, The Hobbit, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe etc) and I quickly moved onto reading these. The books I got at school were overly simplistic, and since then I've watched them get worse. Big print, excessively bland sentence structure, and (worst of all) present tense narrative. All of this designed to make the process "easier", but in fact failing to do so because the language is so artificial that the child can't make any assumptions from it. But if we avoid the learn-to-read books and go straight to children's novels, we hit another problem: kids books are grammatically more complicated than adults' books. This is an observed rule that holds in the general case for most languages. Why? Well, it's hard to be sure, but they theorise that most children's authors have a desire to educate, or at very least a desire not to mislead a child's understanding of the language, and so they write in a very sophisticated, "correct" manner. So I always say that you can't really start reading properly until you've got a firm grasp on the grammar, at which point you may as well go to adult novels. And then:
Exactly. The longer the novel, the more useful it is. I can't remember the exact percentage, but the majority of the language used in a novel appears in the first 100-150 pages. Novels always recycle language, and as we're talking about SRS in this thread, I think it's pretty clear why that recycling and repetition is useful. Because of this repetition, novels get progressively easier the further you get into them, so while long novels may seem like hard work, it will actually be easier at the end than a shorter novel, meaning you'll be able to enjoy it more. I'd say 300 pages is the minimum useful length for a learner and if you're into reading (I prefer spoken language to written, personally) then you should be breaking the 600 page barrier very quickly. (By the same principle, I always recommend people to watch TV serials rather than just films -- the film is over before you're used to the characters' accents and ways of speaking.) And trying to bring things back on top a bit more... Reading is a good way to get vocabulary without piling up in the SRS. Any words in your SRS deck that you practise outside the SRS will drop in repetitions quickly, and reading is one way to practise. Also, you'll find that certain words come up enough in the book that you don't need to put them in the SRS anyway, and you can keep the input into the SRS at a manageable level. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| hypersport Senior Member United States Joined 5872 days ago 216 posts - 307 votes Studies: Spanish | Message 18 of 26 10 October 2010 at 6:51pm | IP Logged | |||||
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When I went to the bookstore to find my first books in Spanish I found a series that had been translated into Spanish from English. The series in English is "The Magic Treehouse". In Spanish "La Casa Del Arbol".
The target audience is 6 to 9 years old. The books are full of adventure and aren't dumbed down. All tenses are used including equal amounts of the subjunctive. I found myself amazed at the massive vocabulary that kids have as I read several of the books, it was really eye opening. I read about 10 of the books before I decided to start moving up into books more advanced. The book that I'm reading now "Diecinueve Minutos" has 629 pages. This is my 13th novel. They have all been in the range of 500 to 600 pages and I've read all of them out loud at least 95%. Sometimes a situation won't let me read out loud. This is a very valuable tool in language acquisition but as always it comes down to the individual. Most won't seek out books and make the time to read because it seems boring or too time consuming. Serious language learners know the value and do it. Edited by hypersport on 10 October 2010 at 7:38pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Javi Senior Member Spain Joined 5972 days ago 419 posts - 548 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 19 of 26 10 October 2010 at 11:51pm | IP Logged | |||||
Actually we could say that once you're familiar with the phonetic system of your TL, the easiness of a word depends to a great extent on the frequency you encounter it outside the SRS and how meaningful and memorable are the contexts where you do so. That includes reading, as well as listening to the radio, talking, etc. I don't know what's that special about specifically reading books. You can read magazines, blogs, Usenet newsgroups, ect, but if my memory serves me right, the topic wasn't about reading. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| hypersport Senior Member United States Joined 5872 days ago 216 posts - 307 votes Studies: Spanish | Message 20 of 26 11 October 2010 at 3:04am | IP Logged | |||||
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The original poster said he had a problem with vocabulary and SRS.
I suggested he read books as an alternative to the SRS program. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6002 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 21 of 26 11 October 2010 at 9:51am | IP Logged | |||||
As both myself and noriyuki_nomura have said, the advantage of reading books is that language repeats itself in a novel. This is because of the limits of the author's style and the fact that the whole book is on the same subject. Hypersport was suggesting reading as an alternative to SRS, but noriyuki_nomura was recommending reading as an additional activity, to make the SRS easier. In effect, a book has its own embedded SRS that (eg) a newspaper won't have. This is advice that I was given at high school and I've found it very useful ever since. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5547 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 22 of 26 11 October 2010 at 2:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I went through years of frustration with SRS, and believe me, I must have tried nearly every piece of software out there. I made lots of decks (even bought some), recorded hours of audio directly with native speakers, and even added cool pictures to go with my lovingly mined sentences. I dare say, Flashcard Exchange was even like a second home for a while.
My problem, however, was that I could never really get past the mind-numbing duty of reviewing hundreds (and for some poor souls, I guess this means thousands eventually) of words each day. It felt like being on the factory line sorting radishes again (oh, the joys of student summer jobs). I found the process of being constantly reminded how many words I'd forgotten to review (or simply how many words I'd completely forgotten) more demotivating than inciting, and it all started to feel quite demanding and punitive the further I went down this road. Each day, in a way, began to feel like a red letter day, and as dairwolf rightly points out at the beginning of this thread, those bills really start to "pile up" after a while, and with interest too. I know some people really love using flashcards and it seems to work well for them. I definitely support the use of SRS in preparatory review of kanji (this is something I currently do online with "Reviewing the Kanji", and I even have the official Heisig set of paper flashcards on my bookshelf for use one day in the future). It can also serve as a good alternative to wordlists and swotting up before an exam or two for others. I've also heard several strategies to cover taking a holiday or time off, and ways to tweak the setup so that the demands of the software align better with my schedule. In particular, I found that adding no more than 5-20 cards a day to be much more realistic in the long run, and would simply set the number of cards to study a day to zero whilst on holiday. So I'm not here really to knock SRS, but simply want to say that it just didn't work out for me in the end for most cases, and that I found another way. Like Cainntear and others have suggested, I find that listening and reading to lots of interesting novels (or at least fun material that offers lots of exposure and contextual repetition) provides all the review I need now, and does so in a natural and thoroughly enjoyable intuitive way. I also learn a lot more than just vocabulary using this method, and end up feeling much more motivated and less stressed at the end of the day. I'm a great believer that you need to really enjoy what you do to get the best out of it, and that if a given solution or method is really painful or overly distressing, then perhaps it's worth looking at another way around the problem. :) Edited by Teango on 11 October 2010 at 2:08pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Javi Senior Member Spain Joined 5972 days ago 419 posts - 548 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 23 of 26 11 October 2010 at 10:49pm | IP Logged | |||||
So, yours is a case of hundreds of reps or zero reps. At this rate we'll soon see support groups on the Internet for SRS junkies. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| CaitO'Ceallaigh Triglot Senior Member United States katiekelly.wordpress Joined 6848 days ago 795 posts - 829 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Russian Studies: Czech, German | Message 24 of 26 22 October 2010 at 6:09am | IP Logged | |||||
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I use Anki, but for some reason, it only allows me to "learn" 20 new cards a day. Isn't that the default?
I also have several different decks, like over thirty now, and counting. When I really feel bored with one, like I just can't review it anymore, I delete it. I use the iPhone app mainly (I download new decks daily), and fit in quick reviews through out the day. Most decks turn up about 7 cards each time, and that's at the most. If I can't study all at once, I don't worry about it. The majority seem to be a null or even 1 sometimes. I had used SuperMemo for a very long time, and indeed, after awhile, I did feel overwhelmed by the repetions, which had reached well over 100 a day (if not double that). Somehow, Anki keeps it under control. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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