|
 |
Hours of study with flash cards? | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| w.shipley Groupie United States Joined 5684 days ago 42 posts - 43 votes Speaks: English* | Message 1 of 13 02 July 2009 at 1:52am | IP Logged | ||
|
I often read of people studying for amazing amounts of time during the day. In order to progress in a language, vocabulary must be learned (my preferred method is the use of flash cards). My question is this: for those who study for hours a day, how is it possible to move on that quickly? I mean, vocabulary takes time to sink in. Do you make flash cards and drill them for hours and hours and then do the next exercise/reading, completing chapters of study a day?
I'm sorry if this is a dumb question. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Paskwc Pentaglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5685 days ago 450 posts - 624 votes  Speaks: Hindi, Urdu*, Arabic (Levantine), French, English Studies: Persian, Spanish | Message 2 of 13 02 July 2009 at 2:23am | IP Logged | ||
|
I'm not sure if this relates to your question, but I personally use Spaced Repetition Software such as Anki. While I haven't been able to progress at an incredibly fast rate, half an hour or so with the program everyday has shown considerable results. If use this forum's search function and type in Anki you can find out more.
Cheers. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| delta910 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5883 days ago 267 posts - 313 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Dutch, German | Message 3 of 13 02 July 2009 at 2:40am | IP Logged | ||
|
Well, I have found that doing flash cards actually bores the crap out of me when I'm studying.
How do I move on so quickly? I don't really know. Maybe it's me but I can retain vocabulary much faster out of context than using flashcards. So, I learn vocabulary this way. What I do is I listen to the dialogue with out the text. Then I listen to L2 while reading L2. Afterwords, I listen to L2 and read L1 to get the word meaning. This is when I pick up vocabulary. Then, I listen to L2 only without text. (Each "part" is in a wave of thirty minutes.) Basically, the more I see and hear the word, the better the word sinks in. The more time spent studying, the more you are going to retain. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6058 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 4 of 13 02 July 2009 at 5:57am | IP Logged | ||
|
Think of it not in terms of how "quickly" you can move along, but how "deeply" the word gets ingrained within you. For example, I study 50 words a day at the moment. It is not the case that I study these 50 words and utterly memorize them the first day. I do have them "memorized" but only at a superficial level. The trick with SRS is the 3rd or 4th time you recall the card...this is when the action starts happening. This is about the time when the word gets *really* memorized and ingrained within you. So ingrained that you can immediately think of it in a stressful real life conversation, and "contextualize" it (this is a whole other issue). Once THIS happens, you can say you truly are starting to know the word, because you have activated the word in context, in situ. To sum up, it is like sowing massive amounts of seeds in a field, not planting grown trees. The field is infinitely large, and if you sow enough seeds and wait long enough (drill), you will have a bounty. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tricoteuse Pentaglot Senior Member Norway littlang.blogspot.co Joined 6686 days ago 745 posts - 845 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Norwegian, EnglishC1, Russian, French Studies: Ukrainian, Bulgarian | Message 5 of 13 02 July 2009 at 7:32am | IP Logged | ||
Not a *stressful* real life conversation, but that happens to me a lot. Like when my friend started talking about how another (drunk) friend started climbing trees the last time we were at a party together, and my mind immediately went "лазить по деревьям!" Also, I tend to wake up and think about Anki words. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5677 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin | Message 6 of 13 02 July 2009 at 8:07am | IP Logged | ||
|
Flash cards (and words lists) are intensely taxing and also quickly become boring.
My experience is that more than thirty minutes at once is too much. In fact, I believe that Anki (the flash card software system mentioned above) limits the daily use by default to ten minutes. I have used Anki, but prefer BYKI (a similar system, although it costs money alas). To get over the thirty minute hurdle, I spread the sessions out. In the morning I study forty cards, at lunchtime another thirty, and in the evening a final thirty. Since the gaps between these sessions are approximately four hours, my brain seems to have recovered enough enthusiasm and ability by the time the nest session comes. In terms of retention, most cards appear to "stick" in my brain within the first three viewings. A tiny percentage do not, and these go into my "hard drilling" pile for intense study. Finally, there is an ongoing debate about where to study isolated words (to give focus) or sentences (to give context). I do use both, but most of the cards in my deck (I have approximately 4000 cards) consist of neither isolated words nor sentences, but rather word clusters. For example: "between you and me ...", "putting that behind us ...", "before we get to that ...", and so on. These seem to stick better in my mind, and - more importantly - they are readily combined with one another to form flowing sentences. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| james1 Senior Member Korea, South Joined 5632 days ago 121 posts - 145 votes Speaks: English* | Message 7 of 13 02 July 2009 at 10:59am | IP Logged | ||
|
I use flash cards and lots of them.
I find it very important to make my own. I study a lot at work. I cut up A4 size paper into 4. Then fold them to make flash cards. When I study something, I look it up and make a flash card. Usually, with a sentence, or like Splog does, word cluster. I write one side the English meaning and the other side the Korean meaning. I try to make 20 a day, depending on time. Saturday or Sunday I can get carried away. I sometimes make pics to help. I enjoy spelling them. I rarely write just one word. Spend about 1 hour a day making them, and them spend about 1 hour and a half studing them. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6917 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 8 of 13 02 July 2009 at 3:13pm | IP Logged | ||
Huh? I can easily have the program running for longer than that, especially considering that the program (after a finished "daily session") says how many words you'll have to review "tomorrow" (which usually in my case are at least 300 words). You might confuse it with the delay of a word you don't know (which I think is 10 minutes, but you can change that if you want). 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. |
