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Practical use of flash cards | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| zoleero Newbie Sweden Joined 5615 days ago 6 posts - 6 votes Speaks: Swedish | Message 9 of 18 21 July 2009 at 7:40pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
Finally some constructive ideas! Thanks a lot for your help! I will try Google, maybe a bit time consuming but nevertheless the only helpful answer of the last three.
A reply like "be creative" is not going to help me in any way. A reply about HOW TO be creative would be a lot more helpful to me! That was what I was asking for. Okay I should burn the cards!? I mean what is this?? If you do not find flash cards useful, why do you even enter a thread that discusses it AND take your time to even reply? (that was a rhetorical question)
And YES as reasonableman said, those words were only examples. It seems to me that clearly you have missed the whole point of my post. I thought that a forum was a place where one could get some help and engage in constructive discussions about different topics. I don't see the meaning of bashing other people's posts. To me that is a waste of time for me but also for the ones that are doing it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5675 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes  Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin | Message 10 of 18 21 July 2009 at 8:13pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
I always use flashcards going L1->L2 also. But I was inspired by Michel Thomas rather than Feynman. Previously, I had used L2->L1 and I would see a word like "Chobotnice" and ask myself "what does that mean?" until I (sometimes) came up with "Octopus". It made seeing an L2 word an uncomfortable experience when I was unsure of the answer, and when I did know the answer the pleasure came from seeing the L1 word. It felt the wrong way around to me - I wanted to have pleasure from L2. After listening to a Michel Thomas course, I realised that he rarely asks "what does that mean?" rather he usually asks "how do you say?" Inspired by that, I started using my cards with F1 and would ask myself "How do you say Octopus" and the answer I searched my brain for was "Chobotnice" and I would get a happy feeling automatically associated with saying the L2 word. I find it makes a great difference - since I am now going from what I do know (L1) to what I don't know (L2). The good feeling of success is now associated in my brain with my target language. When I went the other way, the L2 word was never the reward - it was always the problem to be addressed - and the feeling of success always came with an L1 word. Now, I don't normally go along with psycho-babble, but changing these cards around really has made me associate pleasure with coming up with an L2 word, rather than the earlier pain of seeing one. Instead of 15 minutes with flashcards being a chore, I can go for longer and find it enjoyable. Amazing what a large difference it has made - and (more importantly) it means that the L2 words are now on the tip of my tongue when I think of something in L1 that I want to say in L2. Edited by Splog on 21 July 2009 at 8:21pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Lizzern Diglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5915 days ago 791 posts - 1053 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 11 of 18 21 July 2009 at 8:16pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
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Gee, it was just a joke, no need to overreact, lol. The title of the thread asks for 'practical' so I couldn't help myself.
I was going to say, after my first post as a mandatory jibe against flashcards (because I can't stand them and cause... the title of this thread was just begging for it), that if you want sentences for your flashcards you can find plenty of good ones in articles, song lyrics etc, i.e. your sources of real for-natives input, which is probably a better approach than taking words out of dictionaries, because you'll never know then if it's a word you'll actually need. If you take your sentences from real sources you will learn the language as it is. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6017 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 12 of 18 21 July 2009 at 11:38pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
No I haven't, and I realise that they were "only" examples, but at the same time, they were examples that you chose. I do not believe that you can separate what you want to learn from how you want to learn it. If I had wanted to learn bilboes and pillories in a foreign language, I would not use translation because I wasn't familiar with the English terms before now (and I'll probably never forget them now!) -- I'd have to use a picture for something like that if I was making a flashcard, so that would have to be a "word" card, not a sentence.
I was actually trying to help, not "bash your post". 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Javi Senior Member Spain Joined 5987 days ago 419 posts - 548 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 13 of 18 22 July 2009 at 1:18am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
I don't agree on that. All my cards are words and that means that the answer field contains the word I'm trying to learn. On the other hand, the question field contains whatever thing that helps me recalling the word, like for example a picture, a short sentence, a long sentence, a paragraph, a dialogue, a definition from the dictionary, a combination of definition and sentence, etc. All that in my target language, although occasionally I may use a word or sentence in L1. Since I'm not trying to learn my native language, the answer field doesn't have any trace of L1.
Definitely. One card per word, sense and possibly, case of usage, that is, the use of prepositions, articles and verb endings that usually go with the word in that sense.
As I said above, putting your L1 in the answer field makes absolutely no sense. You could leave that field empty and it wouldn't make any difference. Don't waste a second worrying about your native language, you already know it.
I would only use it once I'm working with real native material and I can understand a monolingual dictionary. About conceiving sentences, why do that? There are millions of sentences out there produced by natives that are correct and idiomatic, don't invent, or if you have to do so, check your invention with a teacher or native speaker before you start drilling it. All that said, for me it is more important the way you choose the sentences and the part of the sentences you pay attention to. There are several points you might find useful: 1) Get your sentences from material you really enjoy, so that you won't get bored of seeing them over and over. Consider having both sound and text, not necessarily in the same card, but for example you could have a clip from a movie of TV show to practise listening, and then a lot of cards based on the subtitles. 2) Make a card about whatever thing that catches your eye in the sentence. It can be a lot of things, like something that is said differently in your native language, an article you wouldn't expect, or the lack of it, a preposition, or simply a word you still don't know. 3) Don't think you are going to learn the grammatical stuff just by seeing the sentence and understanding it, maybe you'll do but maybe not. Learn the word along with the prepositions, articles and verb endings, or consider making a card just about something like a preposition. Recalling, or at least attentive reading is essential, so be careful if you are using the SRS program in a only input mode. 4) Don't worry if a sentence holds a lot of new concepts. All you have to do is being sure that you can read the sentence aloud, and then add it as many times as new words it has. In my experience this redundancy solves the synonyms problems by the way. 5) Get all your sentences from a single place, like for example a TV series your are crazy about, or a book or series of books you have read dozens of times. That way the context is always in your mind. 6) Sentences don't have to be short, it doesn't have to be actual sentences either. You may want to use a dialogue of a few paragraphs if you feel like it is necessary for the context. 7) Read the sentences aloud whenever they appears. 8) Before adding a sentence, use as many resources as necessary to check it on correctness, actual usage and register. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| zoleero Newbie Sweden Joined 5615 days ago 6 posts - 6 votes Speaks: Swedish | Message 14 of 18 22 July 2009 at 11:09pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
Javi, thanks a lot for your most interesting reply!
So if I have got this right, you are using monolingual flash cards? Suppose you are reading a book and find a word that you do not understand and you would like to make a flash card for it. How do you know what to write in the question field? You can not use the sentence that the word occurred in because the word you are trying to learn are suppose to be in the answer field and NOT in the question field, right??
How do you use flash cards before you can understand a monolingual dictionary? Or do you use dem before? Where do you start?
Could you please explain this a little bit more?
Could you please explain this more in depth? Do you add the same card, say three times, if it have three unknown words in it?
How does it solve the problem with the synonyms? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Javi Senior Member Spain Joined 5987 days ago 419 posts - 548 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 15 of 18 23 July 2009 at 2:16am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
Sorry, I forgot to mention that I do use the sentence, but with the word in question hidden. I first learnt about SRS reading the Antimoon site and after trying out different kind of cards I found that this method works the best for me. Follow the link and notice that the sentence method is not the only way.
You can do it at an earlier stage, but then you've got to use bilingual cards and bilingual material to get the sentences, which most of the time means material designed for language learners. I prefer to go through the courses as quick as possible and switch to real stuff, so I won't drill courses putting then into the SRS program. Other people may have other preferences, but I reckon there is not a practical way of working with native material and do bilingual flash cards, as simple as that.
I think it is a well known fact that just because you can understand a sentence, it doesn't mean that you could produce that same sentence without mistakes. Look at this.
Yeah, that's it. You practice recognition on all the words the card is not about, and recalling on the word in question.
Well, I think it would be a mistake to underestimate the power of memorisation in language learning, and long term memorisation is all what SRS is about. Aiming to memorise would be a bit silly and discouraging in the long run, but it is a welcome side effect of some practices like repetitive listening, reading aloud and putting sentences in the SRS collection, more than once if necessary. If you do all that over the same content, you end up knowing the material almost by heart, so there is not a problem of synonyms. Edited by Javi on 23 July 2009 at 2:24am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| zoleero Newbie Sweden Joined 5615 days ago 6 posts - 6 votes Speaks: Swedish | Message 16 of 18 23 July 2009 at 4:27am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
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Javi, thanks a lot for your help. It has been most useful and I will visit the links you have given me to get a greater understanding.
1 person has voted this message useful |
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