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Frequency vocab method

 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies Post Reply
55 messages over 7 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6
doviende
Diglot
Senior Member
Canada
languagefixatio
Joined 5745 days ago

533 posts - 1245 votes 
Speaks: English*, German
Studies: Spanish, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Hindi, Swedish, Portuguese

 
 Message 49 of 55
02 November 2009 at 9:22pm | IP Logged 
Maaku: What you mention is precisely what I've argued against. If someone is going through a boring list of words with no context, it's going to be an incredible struggle to learn them.

There are two parts to building a memory for something. 1) repetition, 2) context. Sometimes you can create "context" by making up a funny story or a mnemonic, or anything else to connect it to your other senses and memories. This is also how people do things like memorize hundreds of digits of Pi...you have to make up some meaning for groups of numbers, because it's extremely hard to just memorize it as a stream of random digits. Once you separate those numbers up into some groups and find interesting little patterns in them, it's actually not as hard as it sounds.

If I add words from a dictionary to my SRS, then they're hard to remember because of the lack of context. I mostly avoid that. I usually do exactly what tommus says above: I add sentences from the native content that I'm reading or watching, and I usually remember the exact scene from the movie or book several months later when I see that sentence again.

I find it VERY helpful to get extra exposure to these new words using the SRS, so there's no question for me about whether it's useful. The answer is definitely yes.
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Cainntear
Pentaglot
Senior Member
Scotland
linguafrankly.blogsp
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Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic
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 Message 50 of 55
03 November 2009 at 12:44am | IP Logged 
maaku wrote:
I'll let you in on a dirty little secret of spaced repetition systems: they were not designed for learning languages. Indeed it is a task they are poorly suited to. (source: I'm the author of a certain proprietary SRS software package you've certainly never heard of.)

Ah, so that's why we've never heard of your package: you're not willing to make spurious, unsupported claims about its miraculous ability to teach anything. You clearly didn't major in marketing. ;-P

I'm not a fan of flashcards, although I am currently experimenting with gradint to make audio revision notes.

One observation I'd like to make is that SRS is good at repetition, but fails to address any other form of reinforcement. That is to say that SRS can put one thing into one context and show it again and again, and you can put the same thing into two different contexts and they'll come up again and again independently of each other, but it will never take advantage of the relationships between phrases to help you build, break down, compare or contrast the contents.

It's far from an optimal tool, but I feel that the speed and volume of repetition can be quite helpful.
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carlonove
Senior Member
United States
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145 posts - 253 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Italian

 
 Message 51 of 55
03 November 2009 at 2:29am | IP Logged 
In general response to several of the last few posts:

I don't use SRS to fully memorize and understand vocabulary and phrases. It's more useful and less time-consuming if you use it as a method of "implanting" new vocabulary into your brain, and with repetitions keep that first impression from fading. It's only helpful to me if I complement it with intensive reading to add the ever-important context that's been mentioned quite a lot.

Reading introductory didactic materials is generally far too boring for me, and reading native materials is far too tedious if I don't know enough of the vocabulary. SRS helps because instead of having to look up every third or fourth word, it gives you a bit of an edge. The out-of-context SRS reps of a new word coupled with in-context reps through native materials is generally enough for me to make things stick.

The other benefit of SRS I will mention is that it gives you good quantitative feedback with real statistics. I'm pretty lazy when it comes to vocabulary, so the idea that I can look at 100 new cards in ~15 minutes feels like time well-spent. It's very good reinforcement when you see 70-80% of new cards answered correctly the first time, or 90-95% of mature cards answered correctly.

I probably would not be such a forceful advocate of SRS if I didn't have, in my opinion, a really great pre-made vocabulary list (from Bodmer's Loom of Language), and if I weren't fully aware of SRS's limitations. It's a reading and thinking aid much more than a speaking one, and it's pointless if you're not complementing it appropriately with other methods.

--carlonove

Edited by carlonove on 03 November 2009 at 2:29am

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Glendonian
Bilingual Diglot
Newbie
Canada
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26 posts - 37 votes
Speaks: French*, English*
Studies: German, Italian

 
 Message 52 of 55
05 November 2009 at 5:42am | IP Logged 
carlonove wrote:
SRS helps because instead of having to look up every third or fourth word, it gives you a bit of
an edge.


That's exactly why I'm using it, so that I don't have to face a wall of unknown words and have to try to get through
it all somehow, knowing only a third of the vocabulary. I certainly grant the other points that have been made, but
when I'm reading (slowly, of course), when I run into a new word I think I naturally don't have a proficient
understanding right away without thinking. But thanks to the SRS I can think: "that means... I know! It means
glutinous [or something]"
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The Real CZ
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5408 days ago

1069 posts - 1495 votes 
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Studies: Japanese, Korean

 
 Message 53 of 55
06 November 2009 at 12:06am | IP Logged 
I'm too lazy to use a SRS, I just use mnemonics to learn vocab on its own. Works much better for me (yes, for me, just putting it out there before the legions jump down my throat) than seeing the word day after day, then every few days, then weeks, etc. Then actually using the word and seeing in context reinforces it.
2 persons have voted this message useful



Cainntear
Pentaglot
Senior Member
Scotland
linguafrankly.blogsp
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 Message 54 of 55
06 November 2009 at 12:26am | IP Logged 
The Real CZ wrote:
I'm too lazy to use a SRS, I just use mnemonics to learn vocab on its own.

Genuine question: how do you remember the mnemonic? I always find I only remember the mnemonic after I've remembered the word.
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The Real CZ
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5408 days ago

1069 posts - 1495 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Japanese, Korean

 
 Message 55 of 55
07 November 2009 at 4:24am | IP Logged 
Sometimes they just stick, sometimes I'll have to remember the mnemonic the next day.
If you want an example of how I do it, then:

수건 (sugeon) - towel

Sue(수) is gone(건) with the towel.

For ones where it's really hard to use the word or parts of the word in the mnemonic sentence, I treat the word as a person in the sentence. Example:

바로(baro) - right away; correctly, just like

Do it correctly. Right away, just like 바로.

If I can use parts of the word like the first example, it is easier to remember. The ones like the second example usually take a second day for it to stick, but it works well for me. Even for Japanese, where my remembering rate is a little lower, (I probably remember 75%), it's still better than the 35% I was remembering just by rote memorization.

What I do is study 5-15 words at a time, and repeat each mnemonic story three to five times. Psychology class is actually useful (I based my new methods on what I learned in class), as I repeat it enough so that it goes from short term memory into long term memory, and I don't study too much at once. I used to sit there for an hour trying to remember 100 or so words and was lucky to remember 20 the next day.

Of course, after I study the vocab in isolation, I tend to see the words pop up in sentences and recognize what it means and hear it in dramas and so forth.

--

I would also like to point out that I also learn other vocabulary words in context. Right now, I'm just going through frequency lists, learning 5-50 words a day from them, and also learning other words in context, and since the words I'm learning are the most frequent, I do see how they work in an actual sentence.

Edited by The Real CZ on 07 November 2009 at 4:37am



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