feanarosurion Senior Member Canada Joined 5096 days ago 217 posts - 316 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish, Norwegian
| Message 1 of 7 01 July 2010 at 6:39pm | IP Logged |
I was looking at some language logs last night, and I saw someone mentioning goldlists in their method. I hadn't heard that term before, so I just googled the term, and found out that it's a form of learning vocab for the long term. I liked the simple look of it, and the idea that it would help me with my long term recall. However, I have an active Anki deck that I'm using extensively, and I can't help but feel that the two systems would be conflicting. Now, I'd love to be able to do both. Have the goldlist supplement my Anki studies. However, the idea with that is long term memory, and if I'm constantly reviewing words with Anki, I'm not sure how effective that would be. Also, with Anki, I'd just like to be sure that it works well for long term memory. I haven't actually gotten any words past roughly 15 day intervals, so nothing is considered mature yet. I'm wondering, is Anki good for retaining in the long term? If so, then I'm OK with either going without the goldlist, or using it to supplement Anki without worrying about functionality. Either way, any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks.
1 person has voted this message useful
|
johntm93 Senior Member United States Joined 5142 days ago 587 posts - 746 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish
| Message 2 of 7 01 July 2010 at 7:12pm | IP Logged |
I can't speak for the goldlist method (I'm looking it up right now), but I have started using words actively from my Anki deck. I've had words from about a month long interval.
I'd say try both and see what works better for you. If you don't have a chance to use the words shortly after you learn them (ie you have no one to practice with) then I'd say try and build your short term memory. If I use a word a couple of times in a conversation it normally cements it into my memory pretty good, so if you can practice a new word shortly after you learn it then use Anki.
1 person has voted this message useful
|
Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5484 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin
| Message 3 of 7 01 July 2010 at 7:44pm | IP Logged |
Both ANKI and Goldlists are Spaced Repetition Systems. The key difference is that one is automated and the other is manual.
ANKI has has the advantage that it uses a quite sophisticated spacing algorithm - whereas Goldlists are quite blunt (review every 2 weeks the stuff you don't remember well from 2 weeks ago).
On the other hand, Goldlist enthusiasts claim there is a connection between writing out by hand and the brain remembering things (and typing is no substitute for this).
So, it comes down to: do you want fine-tuned repetition spacing, or do you believe in a handwriting/brain connection?
1 person has voted this message useful
|
Bob Greaves Groupie United Kingdom Joined 6494 days ago 86 posts - 91 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Japanese
| Message 4 of 7 01 July 2010 at 8:08pm | IP Logged |
I think that there are 2 main aspects to the Gold System:
1) a practical way of organising new vocab and keeping it for review (hand-written in lined books)
2) the idea that if you place too much attention on the short-term memory it will inhibit the transfer of the information into the long-term memory.
I personally didn't find 1) very appealing and find Anki much more practical.
I found 2) an interesting idea, although it doesn't seem to be supported by any real evidence. I would not dismiss it because of the lack of evidence though.
However I have amended Anki to space the repetitions into 16 day cycles to see if it has any benefits, but have found it difficult to prove one way or the other.
1 person has voted this message useful
|
Akalabeth Groupie Canada Joined 5334 days ago 83 posts - 112 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Japanese
| Message 5 of 7 01 July 2010 at 11:51pm | IP Logged |
I've never heard of the Goldlist method before, but I can provide stats about my
experiences with Anki if your concerned about long term use.
Kanji deck
Highest interval card: 8.1 months (previous interval 3.1 months)
Mature cards: 86.9% success rate (1710 cards)
Young cards: 78.3% success rate (290 cards)
Average interval: 63.6 days
My Kanji deck has been somewhat 'stable' for a while. I haven't added any cards in
several months, and the cards that are still young I'm pretty consistent about
forgetting over and over. I think about 20 cards have graduated from young to mature in
the last month. Very frustrating. My mature rate is lower than I'd like it to be, but
it has gone up about 0.5% over the past month, so it's slowly improving.
Japanese vocab
Highest interval card: 1.4 months (previous interval 12 days)
Mature cards: 91.7% success rate
Young cards: 79.0% success rate
Average interval: 7.9 days
I only recently started drilling vocab cards, which is why the intervals are so low. I
add about 200 cards each day, although a fair number of them are the same facts, just
being tested in different ways (6 total). I go until I've got 10 wrong cards in each
direction. It's hard to say if my stats will change over time for this one since this
one is so new. Also hard to say how accurate the success rates are, since this is from
a deck that has stuff other than vocab, and the success rates appear to be aggregrate
per deck.
Japanese exercises
Highest interval card: 5.9 months (previous interval 2.2 months)
Mature cards: 91.7% success rate
Young cards: 79.0% success rate
Average interval: 73.2 days
This is part of the same deck as the Japanese vocab cards, which is why the success
rates are the same. These are pretty much all "conjugate this verb into this
form/tense" type questions.
Trivia deck
Highest interval card: 1.7 years (previous interval 7.1 months)
Mature cards: 91.7% success rate
Young cards: 81.9% success rate
Average interval: 196.5 days
This deck is essentially random trivia that I add to occasionally, partly as a sort of
informal experiment to see if using mnemonics+SRS would eventually result in my being
able to recall the facts without needing the mnemonics (largely, it hasn't). You could
think of this deck as being 'pure' in a sense. All of the questions are things I'm
unlikely to encounter day-to-day (the highest interval card is "What is the 24th
element of the period table?") and are unlikely to reinforce each other like my
language decks are, so I think my Anki drilling for any given question is the only
thing that's keeping it in my long-term memory. Odd that it's my best deck, but it's
also my oldest, and fairly small (367 facts, 608 cards), which probably affects the
stats positively.
I'm a pretty big fan of Anki if you can't tell, so I think it's pretty damn useful for
long-term memory. My Kanji deck takes about 10 minutes of review per day to remember
2000 characters, and my trivia deck takes about 2 minutes per day, and would probably
be quicker if it was at all mentally engaging. I couldn't really imagine trying to
study without it.
As for writing by hand, it's not like you can't do that with Anki if you decide to.
I've currently got clipboard with graph paper on my lap filled about 60% with Japanese
vocab.
Edited by Akalabeth on 01 July 2010 at 11:52pm
1 person has voted this message useful
|
BartoG Diglot Senior Member United States confession Joined 5262 days ago 292 posts - 818 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Italian, Spanish, Latin, Uzbek
| Message 6 of 7 02 July 2010 at 12:44am | IP Logged |
As I understand it, Anki is a spaced repetition system that brings up words at variable intervals so that you can learn without a lot of unnecessary review. It assumes that the better you know something, the longer you can go without reviewing it, but that you do still need to be reminded every now and again.
The goldlist method does require you to review things at specified intervals, but it has a different approach. The purpose of the goldlist is to find your language gold - the items you don't know but should. Likewise, it helps you find the items you do know, so that you can stop wasting time on them.
With an Anki deck, success comes in sight as it gets bigger and bigger. With the goldlist, success comes in sight as it gets smaller and smaller - all those words that used to need review no longer need review.
I experimented with goldlists and found it painfully tedious copying out and whittling down the listed. I also experimented with Anki, but found it unsatisfactory because after a while, I kept coming back to words I already knew pretty well and the words I still needed to learn just weren't coming up enough in proportion. Then again, I am usually not very good with most automated learning systems, however elementary or basic they may be.
If you are the sort of person who enjoys these things though, here is what I would suggest: Build smaller Anki decks. Learn the material till you're clicking at least 4 most of the time. When you've got a pretty good handle on the deck, do a goldlist with it through three or four iterations. When you're done, make a new Anki deck with the words that haven't been eliminated from your goldlists. That way, you'll have a tool to learn the words - Anki, a tool to make sure you've learned them once you've got the Anki deck down - the goldlist, and a tool to learn the words your goldlist indicated you still need work on. And you won't have such gargantuan Anki decks to manage when you start moving beyond basic mastery.
1 person has voted this message useful
|
feanarosurion Senior Member Canada Joined 5096 days ago 217 posts - 316 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish, Norwegian
| Message 7 of 7 02 July 2010 at 12:44am | IP Logged |
Alright, that seems fair enough in terms of long term memory. And what I do is I write every fact on a seperate, hard copy flash card, so I can engage the writing aspect anyway. Much of what I do is certainly extremely redundant, but that's almost the point. I'm just trying to figure out now if adding this extra element would be beneficial. The format is very organized and has measurable progress which I would be happy with. And I suppose that the other system also assumes other contact with the words.
If you want some information on the Goldlist method, check out this link:
http://www.usenetposts.com/goldlist.htm
1 person has voted this message useful
|