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Confused: SRS question, studying German | ||
Tags: Spaced Repetition (SRS) | German | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| Javi Senior Member Spain Joined 5923 days ago 419 posts - 548 votes  Speaks: Spanish* | Message 17 of 21 06 April 2009 at 2:43am | IP Logged | |||||
Why do you want to test production? That's complicated even if you use L1->L2 cards, because there's always more than one way to say something. I only test words, idioms and phrasal verbs, whereas sentences are just input for me. I use them to illustrate the word I'm testing. I create one card per word and per sense and use the same text to illustrate all the unknown words in it, with the expression I'm testing in each case hidden. That redundancy helps me remember things and that way I avoid the problem with synonyms. Most of the sentences are from my favourite TV shows, so I know the lines almost by heart. I prefer to copy and paste a definition from a monolingual dictionary rather than spend my time thinking of a L1 translation. Translating, even to your native language, is not that simple, and anyway, it is the text more often than the definition what leads me to the missing word. I think this intensive work with the language is more than enough to make you able to produce. Extensive practice using content that is interesting for you, that is, reading and listening, is great to pick tons of vocabulary. The problem is that you don't pay enough attention to the little details, you don't observe the language carefully enough. For example which preposition goes with which verb, and a lot of grammatical details like that. You will never learn that neither through spontaneous production nor through content-driven listening or reading. So, in your example I would create two cards. A picture-word card for hamburger (I've actually got this one) and another one for the verb, just like this: Q: to desire a particular thing: I ____ hamburger R: want a Of course I'd never use that silly sentence, because it tells me nothing and after a month it would be impossible to remember if it was I want a hamburger, I need a hamburger, I could do with one or whatever. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ortho Groupie United Kingdom Joined 6292 days ago 58 posts - 60 votes | Message 18 of 21 06 April 2009 at 11:03am | IP Logged | |||||
In general, for the same reasons "furrykef" outlined here, in a thread that you also participated in. I can't go much further into the discussion at the minute because I haven't decided whether I agree with you or not, but I'll return once I make up my mind. On your other points: -I'm especially not worried about there being more than one way to say something. If, for example, I had a card that said (in English), erm, "He did it without even warning me" and I came up with "Il a fait ça sans même m'en prevenir", and I looked and the answer maybe used "avertir" instead. I'll think about it for a second, decide if I've used a valid way of saying the same thing, and in this case if I had produced the French sentence immediately but with the synonym, I'll go ahead and give it a "4". I'm not trying to train myself to prefer one synonym to another, but just giving myself an occasion to produce the thing and see how well I did. -One spot where this is not working for me, though, is in using the English concept "to think." It is my most annoying (to me) habit in French, because when I want to say "I think..." I am forever saying "Je pense que..." and, even though that is strictly correct, "Je crois que" is much better in that spot. "Penser" in that spot is an artifact of when I was forcing an English shape on French, and it bothers me every time I do it. In this instance, I would see a card that says "I think sdfajfwe", I'd immediately come up with "Je pense que asdlkj", say "Doh!" either before or looking at the answer, mentally hit myself with a stick, say "why oh why do I keep doing that", fail the card, and eventually in the session I'd get it right but tomorrow I might fail it again. -What you are saying about repeating the same sentence with blanks in different spots, or trying to remember one word per card, etc. I completely agree with. I often find even now that I am putting in chunks that are too big and end up breaking them down into multiple cards later. I totally, totally agree with you on the utility of redundancy and of simple cards, though. In an instance where there might be 3 new things on the card, and you remember the first two and forget the third, it gets very tedious to slog through the long content and try to hit that third one, plus you're not really giving the thing you want to learn the focus it deserves. Three cards for three things, one thing per card, so much easier, more efficient, and more useful.
I think I agree with you here, but I am still thinking about it. Where I am not sure if I agree with you or not is whether you can "bootstrap" your way to useful production simply through knowledge of vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, and "build" sentences on the fly without having practiced production as a skill in itself. This is certainly due to my own experiences in French where I got to the point that I could read roughly anything in the language but still wasn't any more able to speak when I was there than I was when I started. Production of what I already knew became an important skill to be practiced. Anyway, thanks for your thoughts. I will continue to think about this stuff. Edited by Ortho on 06 April 2009 at 11:05am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Amiro Triglot Newbie Sweden Joined 5660 days ago 3 posts - 3 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Swedish Studies: German, Japanese | Message 19 of 21 06 April 2009 at 6:46pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Thank you everyone for the great answers to my question. Here's a little article I've read today. It discusses how one can acquire great output skills without practicing output. http://www.antimoon.com/how/input-boydell.htm
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| Ortho Groupie United Kingdom Joined 6292 days ago 58 posts - 60 votes | Message 20 of 21 06 April 2009 at 8:51pm | IP Logged | |||||
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That example has been discussed here before, but for me it actually weakens the input theory for several reasons:
-The man was writing, not speaking. Being able to compose in writing and verbally are two very different things in my opinion, and writing is much easier. -No mention is made of the circumstances of this. Did he take 5 minutes to type this out on his special typewriter? 5 hours? 5 weeks? Without a single typo, spelling error, odd error of usage, anything? It would be odd for a trained native writer to not have some artifact in there somewhere when using a new means of communication. -I feel it weakens the theory because this man is clearly a pathological example. His circumstances and ordinary circumstances are totally different. If it was very common for people to learn solely through input, you'd just point to thousands of people who have done it, and not need this mythical anecdote about this disabled man. -He was native in English. This is not a second language learner. -Finally, I disagree, even if the facts presented are 100% true, that he had never composed English before. He could've rehearsed these sentences, the things he would say if ever he got the chance, thousands of times over 20 years. To me, that equals output practice, and the extract doesn't address that at all. -In any event, there is at the very least some amount of physical practice involved in speaking (physically being able to voice the sounds) that are simply not physically possible to do, even if you know how, without some practice. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| icing_death Senior Member United States Joined 5803 days ago 296 posts - 302 votes Speaks: English* | Message 21 of 21 07 April 2009 at 9:15am | IP Logged | |||||
One can acquire some output skills without practicing output, but the only way to acquire great output skills is by practicing output. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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