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Accelerated vocabulary building strategy | ||
Tags: Word List | Vocabulary learning | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| maydayayday Pentaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5210 days ago 564 posts - 839 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Italian, SpanishB2, FrenchB2 Studies: Arabic (Egyptian), Russian, Swedish, Turkish, Polish, Persian, Vietnamese Studies: Urdu | Message 1 of 12 18 October 2010 at 3:37pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I thought I'd share my successful accelerated vocabulary building technique with you, I'm concentrating on learning Spanish & Polish but brushing the rust off some others.
In each language I have two wordlists. List 1 follows a version of Iversens excellent word list method, abstracting lexemes from my dictionary and I hand write them onto a column on one page of my paper notebook while having breakfast. I put the date at the top of the page. This is my structured method. I hand write because I touchtype and nothing seems to be retained if I just type up a page. List 2 is composed of words or phrases I came across while consuming native language materials either audio or reading; I look each of these up in online dictionaries; I like Reverso for Spanish because it give you idiomatic phrases too which appeals to the less structured side of my mind, and can be quite fun. For example I started with the words estoy bajo de moral which could have been I have low morals, which seemed inprobable. The version I used was I feel blue [in the sense of being depressed/down] and the links I made from that one page include the idiomatic chunk: entre la espada y la pared = between the sword and the wall = between the devil and the deep blue sea. I got two extra words and an possibly useful idiomatic 'chunk' for nothing. It should be useful in my C1 exam next year if I can work out when that is available! Through the day when I have a few spare moments I review each list and once I am sure I know the equivalent in both languages I cross through with a highlighter. As each page is completely highlighted I add the date at the bottom of the page. On Saturday I review the completed pages and on Sundays I will add the completed pages to Anki and review them to make sure I do actually know them. The average I have achieved up to now is 2 pages of Spanish 66 words/phrases and a page of Polish 33 words/phrase chunks in a day. This takes less than sixty minutes out of the day. I haven't yet tested to see what is my upper limit of words. I will do that when I take some leave. I have done just two months of this with two weeks off. One week at the beginning of the session and one week when I hit a wall with Polish. Its not big and its not clever but it works for me, take what you like from it. Regards Edit for a clarification of notebook ! Edited by maydayayday on 18 October 2010 at 3:40pm 8 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6694 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 2 of 12 18 October 2010 at 8:44pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Glad to hear that you can use the wordlist method which I have devised once upon a time (the 'structured' method).
Actually I also have unstructured lists. When I study a text intensively (with or without a complete handwritten copy) I leave a right margen for unknown words. But I use these unstructured lists as raw material for structured wordlists, alongside with those I base directly on dictionaries. The weak point in my three-column wordlists is that there isn't space for expressions of more than a word or two. I mark the 'interesting' expressions in the texts I copy, and sometimes I also take notes from my extensive reading - but I haven't really systematized the memorization of expressions to the extent I have done with single words and wordlike combinations. Edited by Iversen on 19 October 2010 at 4:12pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| mauselmaucs Newbie Philippines samuelcamus.wordpresRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5134 days ago 32 posts - 39 votes Speaks: Tagalog* Studies: English, Latin | Message 3 of 12 26 October 2010 at 11:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I do listing also but my vocabulary doesn't meet any improvements just like you. The words I listed oftenly have been forgotten. I have a low memory so the tendency is checking back the list frequently. I want to be someone like you or all the members on this forum having more than one language. Probably you will notice my English grammar. I'm not very fluent on this. I'm lucky that I found community like this which could help me to improve my English grammar and vocabulary. I don't understand some methods posted on this forum but I'm still looking some other one that will suit to my learning capability. As you read my situation, do you have some other methods or advice to improve my English? Edited by mauselmaucs on 26 October 2010 at 11:09pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ALS Senior Member United States Joined 5795 days ago 104 posts - 131 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Norwegian, Finnish, Russian | Message 4 of 12 01 November 2010 at 6:05am | IP Logged | |||||
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Thank you for describing your technique. I may do this myself as putting words I don't know well right into an SRS just means I'm going to have to repeat it 5 or 6 or more times before it actually enters into a spaced repetition rotation, which ends up skewing my statistics a bit unfairly I think. Using Iversen's list method as the first step would help this.
Do you ever have problems with memorizing words by their place in the list and surrounding words though, instead of by their meaning? I found this happened to me a lot while using list methods such as putting small lists on flash cards, but I haven't tried Iversen's method of large lists in a book yet. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6694 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 5 of 12 01 November 2010 at 3:10pm | IP Logged | |||||
Actually my lists are made on ordinary sheets of paper, but sometimes I take the words from books (including dictionaries). My problem with SRS methods (including flashcards) is that I don't want to be interrogated about single words in a random order - I get that kind of control just by reading something. Instead I like to see myself as a harvester which drive through a certain piece of land and sucks up everything on its path. Edited by Iversen on 01 November 2010 at 3:11pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| maydayayday Pentaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5210 days ago 564 posts - 839 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian, SpanishB2, FrenchB2 Studies: Arabic (Egyptian), Russian, Swedish, Turkish, Polish, Persian, Vietnamese Studies: Urdu | Message 6 of 12 02 November 2010 at 4:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
Yes, this harvest becomes my unstructured word list. I am impatient I am also learning a small dictionary which has probably about 10,000 lexemes. One disadvantage is that at the moment I have a great of vocabulary for words beginning with A, B and C which is great for alliteration. The target is to have them all known by Week 36 and I'm on week 8 of this method now, hopefully I will also pick up a few that aren't in this dictionary, after all it was only £0,99 from an end of line book sale. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ALS Senior Member United States Joined 5795 days ago 104 posts - 131 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Norwegian, Finnish, Russian | Message 7 of 12 03 November 2010 at 3:17am | IP Logged | |||||
Interesting, though that doesn't really answer my question about the issue of remembering words by their place on the list. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6694 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 8 of 12 03 November 2010 at 11:34am | IP Logged | |||||
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Then I try another answer and hope it is more adequate:
If I do wordlists directly from an alphabetical ordered dictionary then it may be a useful memory hook that a certain word comes just after another in the alphabet - and therefore also on a wordlist. But strictly speaking the order is irrelevant. If I learn a group of 5-7 words which all start with an A then that's the information I remember, not that it was number 3 or 4 in this specific group of words. The only isolated words I have ever bothered to learn in sequence are things like "an auf hinter in neben über unter vor zwischen" or "a de pro cum sine ex", and I learnt those primarily as 'musical' entities (or Gestalts). If I learn an expression consisting of 5 words their order is of course also of paramount importance, but once again the whole thing is learnt as an entity, comparable to learning a melody. And that's why I say that memory tricks that permit you to learn for instance 52 playing cards in their correct order aren't directly relevant for language learning. Edited by Iversen on 03 November 2010 at 11:35am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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