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How long does it take to learn a word? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5556 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 1 of 7 15 April 2011 at 3:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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Recent research led by Dr Yury Shtyrov at the MRC CBSU in Cambridge suggests that the brain is capable of building new networks of neurons, i.e. enough to register a long-term "memory trace" (a structural alteration in brain cells following learning), after 14 minutes of repeatedly listening to the same new word every 5 seconds (i.e. 160 times).
This raises several questions for me regarding the efficacy of intensive short-term vocabulary learning vs gentler longer-term strategies. For example... 1) If someone were to listen to the same word 160 times over the course of a month or even a year instead, would they exhibit a similar memory trace by the end? 2) Perhaps there's no need to listen quite so many times over a longer period with more efficiently spaced repetition and review? 3) And how long would this long-term trace really last after just one short intensive session? I mean...fingers crossed...it's unlikely that I'll forget simple well-established words like "house" or "cat" in my lifetime, even without any further review; but how about this "14-minute word" - will these test subjects recall it several years down the road without any further review too? All interesting food for thought! :) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tbone Diglot Groupie United States Joined 4991 days ago 92 posts - 132 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Russian | Message 2 of 7 15 April 2011 at 5:20pm | IP Logged | ||
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re: 2): Pimsleur's 1967 algorithm was 5 seconds, 25 seconds, 2 minutes, 10 minutes, 1 hour, 5 hours, 1 day, 5 days,
25 days, 4 months, 2 years. That's twelve exposures instead of 160 to shift it into long-term storage. Far more efficient for our purposes of learning thousands and thousands of words. Have other intervals been published? 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5766 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 3 of 7 15 April 2011 at 9:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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It doesn't work that way. As far as I was told, it's more like this: Upon getting a new piece of information, the brain builds a network of neurons that communicate using electrial charge and hormones. When within a certain time frame you get a new stimulus, the network is reinforced. Rinse and repeat - until finally it is deemed important enough for a molecular alteration to happen. When a piece of information has been assigned a lot of 'emotional value', the brain sends out the impulse to re-activate the network by itself, when awake and even more so when asleep. (This is the most vivid as flashbacks after a traumatic experience.)
But if there come no new stimuli and the emotional value of the experience is not strong enough, the neural networks is disassembled again and used to process new information. Which means that no learning takes place. If you do it 160 times during one year, it means that 160 times you build that network and disassemble it again. :) When that initial learning has taken place, the information can still be recognition/passive usage only, and you need to practice accessing it voluntarily in the right context. tbone, the algorithm only describes how frequently you need to get a new stimulus to be able to learn something. If I recall correctly, the language course tells you to repeat each lesson until can actually meet the 1 day mark for most words. And if I recall it correctly, after the initial stimulus each repetition is threefold (learner, course, learner). Forced recall makes the brain invest more into keeping a new neural network running - it kind of adds hidden repetition. Edited by Bao on 15 April 2011 at 9:58pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Guests Guest Group Joined 7376 days ago 0 - 22 votes Logged on | Message 4 of 7 06 May 2011 at 7:47pm | IP Logged | ||
Well put. Force recall is what I like the most about language learning. You really feel it in your brain. Close your eyes and concetrate; it's as if you quickly browsing library shelf for THAT book. It's an amazing thing really. If I would stop drinking I'd be so damn good at it. But no way I am cutting of alcohol from my diet. | |||
 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 Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 7 06 May 2011 at 11:44pm | IP Logged | ||
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Listening 14 minutes to ONE WORD??? In my opinion that amounts to banging nails into the test person's skull with a hammer.
But worse than that, the method is also ineffective because you don't get the benefits of meeting a word again after a pause. It may not be mathematically correct to equate 14 minutes of incessant repetitions with one single exposure, but there is something about it - the pauses are very important for learning new words. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6439 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 6 of 7 07 May 2011 at 12:02am | IP Logged | ||
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When I was trying to learn Polish pronunciation, I sometimes spent hours looping minimal pairs. I would literally listen to two words for an hour, thousands of times each.
I can't say I even remember all of the words involved at this point. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5766 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 7 of 7 07 May 2011 at 12:29am | IP Logged | ||
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I absolutely agree with you on that, Iversen. But I do think that methods based on intensive short-term exposure might be very beneficial when it comes to things like learning the phonemic inventory of a language that has little overlap with those you already know.
What this and other new-ish studies show is that lasting results can be achieved in a shorter time than was previously thought based on psychological learning models. ETA: Volte, how did you do that? I still need to work on (especially) my Korean listening and would like to try out minimal pairs, but I don't know where to start. Edited by Bao on 07 May 2011 at 12:31am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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