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How many reviews till secure in memory? | ||
Tags: Memory | Vocabulary learning | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| s0fist Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4989 days ago 260 posts - 445 votes  Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: Sign Language, German, Spanish, French | Message 9 of 32 22 January 2014 at 5:00am | IP Logged | |||||
Thank you for the article, an interesting read. However, that's 160 repetitions over 14 minute period for aphasia patients, I don't think it quite applies towards language learning, although I'd be interested to try it, and have others try it. In all honesty, it sounds too much like a miracle to apply to LL: repeat a word 160+ times over 15 minutes and "learn it". 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6646 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 10 of 32 22 January 2014 at 10:53am | IP Logged | |||||
That's also my strategy. As some may remember from earlier threads I have experimented a bit with wordlists, and I have even defined my own layout where I work with blocks of 5-7 words and translation both ways (L2->L1, L1->L2) in order to squeeze as much training out of the memorization phase as possible - contrary to systems like Anki or Huliganov's goldlists, where you don't make much fuzz about the first repetition round, but follow up over many months with new repetition rounds. I do a repetition round or two, and then that's that. The 5-7 block idea is a simple way to obtain as situation where you have to 'forget' each new word, but under controlled circumstances where you know you can recuperate it. If you learn words directly from TV or radio or conversations or other streaming sources you have absolutely no control over the words you don't remember - they disappear out into the blue and you just have to hope that they return at suitable intervals. If you have written a word down with its translation on a sheet of paper or put it into Anki then it won't disappear without a trace. The use of translation both ways secures at least two repetitions within a few minutes, and then I add at least one repetition round one day later, either in a similar format or by running through the original source for the words on the list. But after that I rely on native sources to show me the relevant words again and again, just like those who relied on chance from the beginning. And when I read extensively I often remember that I once had a word on a word list - it so to say rings a bell, even though it might not have become an active word at that stage. But the main reaon for entrusting the later repetitions to chance is that it would be extremely boring working with the same words again and again and again as a ruminating cow. I have no idea about the number of times I have to see a word again before it enters my active vocabulary (or at least the passive vocabulary in the sense that it not only rings a bell, but also conveys a meaning) - when you leave the later repetitions to chance you loose that possibility. The article in The Telegraph says 160 repetitions, ok, but with uninterested guinea pigs (or even aphasic patients) and no active involvement. That's simply not realistic. If I had to see each and every word in twenty languages 160 times I wouldn't have been able to learn the many thousand words I actually know. But luckily there are things that can speed up the process. Like doing a proper job during the early phase, being alert when you read or listen to something and turning 'prodigal words' a couple of times in your mind when you meet them again - or maybe even using them yourself while you still remember them. And then the number of repetitions should hopefully be far below 160, but I can't just say a number and cross my fingers. How can you do statistics on the words you didn't remember, when you can't even be sure how many times you have seen those you do remember? Edited by Iversen on 22 January 2014 at 6:51pm 9 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4611 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 11 of 32 22 January 2014 at 5:46pm | IP Logged | |||||
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From my experience: 7 times of active memorization :( Edited by Medulin on 22 January 2014 at 5:49pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6852 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 12 of 32 22 January 2014 at 7:05pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Well, my Anki stats show that a certain word has been reviewed.... *drum roll* 856 (!) times. Do I know that one (or the next four with significantly lower reviews)? Short answer: no. It's likely that I wouldn't even recognize the Chinese characters if I saw them.
Of course, this says a lot about my (bad) memorization skills (maybe due to lack of motivation at the time I added the word(s)), my chaotic Anki deck, my (lack of) exposure to texts where these words are included, but also that brute force cramming doesn't always work. 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| geoffw Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4631 days ago 1134 posts - 1865 votes Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian | Message 13 of 32 22 January 2014 at 7:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Everyone above hit the context nail on the head: seeing something 2-3 times in a very
memorable context can work. Seeing it 50 times without a memorable context may not. In Barry Farber's book, he described a memorization technique that makes a big difference, too. It involves thinking of the most ridiculous, over-the-top image you can come up with as a mnemonic. I've found that I can learn words fairly quickly this way, but if I'm lazy and/or don't come up with a good image, the word simply won't stick at all. This technique seems to serve a function similar to seeing a word in context "in the wild," in that it gives the word an anchor in your mind so that it stays put while you're doing your repetitions. Once you succeed at enough repetitions, it tends to grow roots and stay put, but the problem is if the word slips out before those roots have a chance to grow. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| sctroyenne Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5334 days ago 739 posts - 1312 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Irish | Message 14 of 32 22 January 2014 at 8:42pm | IP Logged | |||||
There is that phenomenon where after you first learn about something (be it a new word or phrase, or an artist or other cultural reference) you start running into it everywhere. And then you wonder why you hadn't noticed it before. Our brains are really good at sifting out what it deems to be superfluous information so you can be running across something for years without ever noticing it. With a wordlist method, if the word you're learning is really that important, you'll probably experience this phenomenon. For words that I draw from my exposure (such as from my online/digital reading thanks to emk's handy dandy SRS Collector tool), I favor getting them into Anki and reviewing it since I clearly already encountered it in native materials. Though if you don't encounter it again and have trouble retaining it, it may be okay to just suspend/delete the card since native materials sometimes make use of esoteric or even made up terms.
This is part of what the "memory palace" technique entails (there's a TED Talk and a book, Moonwalking with Einstein, by reporter turned memory champion, Joshua Foer) but I've never tried to use it extensively myself. It's supposed to be very effective, though. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| FuroraCeltica Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6808 days ago 1187 posts - 1427 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 15 of 32 22 January 2014 at 9:15pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Context seems to be key here
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| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4476 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 16 of 32 22 January 2014 at 9:23pm | IP Logged | |||||
I am not really sure what your question means. What does "solidly consolidated" actually mean to you? I am sure that pretty much every time you see a card it leaves a trace in memory. I pretty sure that's not what you mean though. Do you mean leaves a strong enough trace to be useful while reading? Or able to use actively? I used to do about 500 reviews in Anki a day and learnt about 30 new cards/day. So I guess for me it was about 15-20 repetitions before I remembered a card (but a lot of those cards were sentences so it's probably somewhat higher for single word cards - 30? - note I was learning also gender/plural forms). However, seeing the same card 30 times in a row would not have lead to me remembering the card. I had to recall it 30 times over an extended period of time. Also many of my cards had the word embedded in sentences, which made it much easier to understand than seeing the word out of context. So in that sense too the question doesn't make much sense. It's not just "how many repetitions" but also over what repetition period and with what sort of context the word appears, and what sort of information about the word do you want to remember (gender? plural form too?). Edited by patrickwilken on 22 January 2014 at 9:26pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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