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Hoarding data instead of learning?

  Tags: Memory
 Language Learning Forum : General discussion Post Reply
17 messages over 3 pages: 1 2 3  Next >>
atama warui
Triglot
Senior Member
Japan
Joined 4701 days ago

594 posts - 985 votes 
Speaks: German*, English, Japanese

 
 Message 1 of 17
15 July 2012 at 5:19am | IP Logged 
..while reading through a bunch of posts.. people seem to hoard data and _administrate_ their target languages instead of learning them.

Flash cards, word lists, text files with grammar rules, phrases..
Did you ever think about it?

Feels kind of weird. I wonder if we wouldn't be better off doing away with parts of that, to make our brains aware of the fact they better _learn_ that stuff or it will be lost (until we stumble upon it again some time).

That's kinda what killed ANKI for me. When I entered words, they were mine - they never entered my brain, but I felt (too) safe.

Edited by Fasulye on 15 July 2012 at 7:29am

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freakyaye
Senior Member
Australia
Joined 4838 days ago

107 posts - 152 votes 

 
 Message 2 of 17
15 July 2012 at 5:23am | IP Logged 
you're right, I have 50 different ways to study French, but I won't :-)
1 person has voted this message useful





Iversen
Super Polyglot
Moderator
Denmark
berejst.dk
Joined 6703 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
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 Message 3 of 17
15 July 2012 at 5:27am | IP Logged 
I plead (partly) innocent. My wordlists are made for memorizing, not for hoarding. Once I have finished a wordlist and revised it (or checked it against an original source text) I put it away on a shelf, and I rarely go back to an old wordlist because I prefer making new ones.

Edited by Iversen on 15 July 2012 at 5:27am

3 persons have voted this message useful



patrickwilken
Senior Member
Germany
radiant-flux.net
Joined 4533 days ago

1546 posts - 3200 votes 
Studies: German

 
 Message 4 of 17
15 July 2012 at 8:54am | IP Logged 
I don't quite get your point. I use Anki every day and it's helped me, in conjunction with other techniques, to improve my language comprehension a great deal.
1 person has voted this message useful



Julie
Heptaglot
Senior Member
PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 6903 days ago

1251 posts - 1733 votes 
5 sounds
Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, GermanC2, SpanishB2, Dutch, Swedish, French

 
 Message 5 of 17
15 July 2012 at 11:06am | IP Logged 
atama warui wrote:
That's kinda what killed ANKI for me. When I entered words, they were
mine - they never entered my brain, but I felt (too) safe.


For me, the words aren't mine until I've learned them. You should use SRS for repetitions
ainstead of just adding new words. That's why I love SRS so much: it literally makes you
repeat words and learn. In the case of traditional notebooks, word lists, random
vocabulary files on my computer etc., I would often write new words down and never go
back to them. SRS doesn't allow me to do that and that's what's so great about it.
4 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 6 of 17
15 July 2012 at 11:57am | IP Logged 
I don't use ANKI at the moment because my language learning software includes a vocabulary trainer which is much better but when I used ANKI I found it quite useful. It reminded me every day how many words I had to repeast and when there were too many, I just repeated and didn't add any new words. Vocabulary has to be repeated and not just added, that would be a waste of time.

However, I used to have another problem concerning hoarding material. I once had the tendency to buy three or four different courses for the same language because I thought it would be good to have more exercises and read different explanations for a certain aspect of grammar. As a result it took me ages to make progress and I lost my motivation.
1 person has voted this message useful





emk
Diglot
Moderator
United States
Joined 5532 days ago

2615 posts - 8806 votes 
Speaks: English*, FrenchB2
Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian
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 Message 7 of 17
15 July 2012 at 1:44pm | IP Logged 
If I put stuff in Anki, I learn it and remember it. I'm not inclined to argue with
anything that works so well.

Mind you, I no longer do L1<->L2 vocabulary flash cards in Anki; I've long sinced moved
onto formats with more L2 context and almost no L1. So my Anki reviews mostly involve
reading interesting sentences and maybe filling in some blanks.

There's a natural rhythm to how I use Anki. For example, I'm in the middle of a 30-day
listening comprehension project.

- At the beginning, I was taking dictation and listening closely to French audio. But
this was hard to do every day. Some days I'd put it off until evening and couldn't find
all the pieces or the energy required to do a good job.

- I spent a day hacking together some scripts and made 100+ Anki cards. Each contains a
recording of some tricky dialog, with a transcription on the back.

- I told Anki to give me 15 new cards per day. I listen to these and check my
understanding against the transcription. All I need to do this is my phone and some 10-
minute blocks without background noise.

When I get a couple free hours, I can create another stack of cards. So Anki makes
effective use of both big blocks of focused time, and bits and pieces of low-quality
time. And the repetition just keeps grinding away—each time I see a card, the heavily
reduced speech seems more and more natural.

atama warui wrote:
..while reading through a bunch of posts.. people seem to hoard data
and _administrate_ their target languages instead of learning them.


Over at AJATT, one of khatzumoto's readers observed that he had become a logistics
officer. He spend a lot of time arranging for interesting Japanese content to show up
at his door on a regular basis—searching for vendors, reading reviews, placing orders,
and so on.

I know the feeling. If I want all kinds of interesting French books, TV shows and
websites at my fingertips, there's a lot of logistics involved. But so far, it's
working really well.
3 persons have voted this message useful



Cavesa
Triglot
Senior Member
Czech Republic
Joined 5009 days ago

3277 posts - 6779 votes 
Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1
Studies: Spanish, German, Italian

 
 Message 8 of 17
15 July 2012 at 2:13pm | IP Logged 
I am partially guilty. When I found this forum and even slightly before, I was hoarding
learning material and I had a (small) trouble with wanderlust. The latter is in my
opinion quite typical of younger people and understandable, especially if you are
temporarily feeling a lack of success in your life.

But neither of these was a serious attempt to get wonderful skills by hoarding and
"owning" resources, it was more the need to explore what is out there. When it
fulfilled my expectations, it ended naturally. Yes, had I used the time to study one
language, I might have learnt more but I am not sure.

The long-term results of this exploring era:
1.I know what languages I want to learn and I no longer feel the need to learn too much
at once. I am focusing on current few and when I feel like it (doesn't matter whether
in a month or a year or a decade), I will easily choose the next one.
2.I have learnt a lot of things about various languages and cultures which I take as an
enrichment of my education.
2.I know really well what kind of resources I need. I am now learning much better than
if I would have started before exploring the ground first. I do not waste my time with
things that are bad or I just take the useful pieces.
3.I have learnt a lot about learning in general which has already helped me immensely
both with language and with university studies. I have discovered SRS, mindmaps, a lot
of info on time management and staying motivated, a lot about handling stress etc. I
would have found nothing of this without using languages as lab rats and "hoarding" as
a way to explore extensively.

So briefly: I believe the hoarding process can be beneficial as long as you know when
to stop.


6 persons have voted this message useful



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