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Sentence Flashcards | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| fiziwig Senior Member United States Joined 4675 days ago 297 posts - 618 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 1 of 15 07 October 2011 at 6:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've been playing around with an idea that seems to be helping my fluency in creating novel sentences in my target language (Spanish). I have made a set of flash cards out of standard file cards. The flash cards are divided into groups depending on what type of drill I need.
As a very simple example, suppose I need to practice adjective agreement in Spanish. I may know, in theory, how to make adjectives agree in gender and number with their noun, but what I need to drill on is fluency in rapid-fire conversation so that I don't have to take 1 to 2 seconds to think about each adjective I try to use. For this particular simple example I would use two stacks of cards. One stack with singular and plural nouns in English and the second stack with adjectives in English. The two stacks must have a different number of cards in them. Now turn over the top card of each stack, for example "red" "books", and supply the answer aloud "los libros rojos". (These are words that you already know so there is no "answer" on the back of the card.) Then turn over the next card on each stack, (e.g. "La llave amarillo") and continue through the deck. Since the stacks have a different number of cards you will run out of one stack before the other. Just turn over the used stack and start reusing it. If you have, for example, 25 nouns and 17 adjectives you will see 25*17 = 425 different combinations by the time you work through the whole deck. For other drills, such as verb tenses, person and number you can have more stacks. I'm using one right now that uses five stacks, a stack of subjects (I, you (formal), they, my parents, ... etc) a stack of verbs (has, needs, wants, sells, sold, buys, bought,... etc) a stack of determiners (the, a, some, several, 26, all of the, ...) a stack of adjectives (small, large, blue, heavy,...) and a stack of nouns (book(s), briefcase(s), hat(s), key(s)... etc) With this set of cards I can get thousands of different sentences to drill on like "My father asked for some blue hats."... etc. Some of the sentences come out sounding a little silly, but they still work for spoken fluency drill. I've found my spoken fluency improving noticeably after only a couple days of using these decks. I'm toying with the idea of implementing the method in PHP so I can put it on a web server, or a local server like LWT. --gary 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6360 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 2 of 15 07 October 2011 at 6:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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do you find this more effective than an SRS?
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| fiziwig Senior Member United States Joined 4675 days ago 297 posts - 618 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 3 of 15 07 October 2011 at 11:13pm | IP Logged | ||
It has a completely different purpose than spaced repetition. Spaced repetition helps you memorize new words. I use Anki for that and find it very useful. Real-life interactive conversation puts you in a different kind of situation where you are forced to think fast and generate spoken sequences on the fly. The sentence building decks use words you already know, but forces you into a situation where you have to respond quickly on the fly, just like in real conversation. It's a different skill entirely that's being trained. It's the skill of putting words you already know together in sequences you have never seen before, rather than simply repeating the same words or sentences over and over. The purpose is not to memorize anything, but to practice a skill so your brain can put words together more fluently and with less hesitation. All I know is that as I practice with the decks my response time is getting quicker and quicker and I don't have to pause and think about each word, like deciding which tense to use and which person and number. I know how to conjugate Spanish verbs, and I know when to use each particular tense, but I still have to stop and think about it for a few seconds each time. With this kind of practice it's becoming more "instinctive" and I'm eliminating the awkward delay while I think it over. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6360 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 4 of 15 08 October 2011 at 5:34am | IP Logged | ||
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I don't find anki very useful for new words. I find it most useful for words that I've already "barely" memorized, and
most effective only for a few months. Before memorizing, and after several months, I don't find it very useful. I've also used it to do the same things your technique does. So although you may use them differently, it's incorrect to say what you're doing has a different purpose than an SRS. Flashcards are flashcards, but I'd be curious to know if what you're doing is more effective than using an anki deck for the same purpose. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 songlines Pro Member Canada flickr.com/photos/cp Joined 5019 days ago 729 posts - 1056 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 15 08 October 2011 at 6:06am | IP Logged | ||
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That's an interesting technique, fiziwig. It would be ideal if this could be incorporated into a flashcard programme in some way. That is, to be able to have separate parallel stacks, decks, or sets (whatever terminology your flashcard programme uses) running together, whether at random (like the symbols in a slot machine), or using spaced-repetition principles.
Have you tried suggesting it to the people responsible for Anki, Quizlet, or any other flashcard programme? Edited by songlines on 08 October 2011 at 6:07am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| fiziwig Senior Member United States Joined 4675 days ago 297 posts - 618 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 6 of 15 08 October 2011 at 6:18am | IP Logged | ||
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In my mind a "flashcard" is something with a question (or word) on one side and the answer (or corresponding translation) on the other side. I think of this as being quite different from something like a list of sentences in a textbook that are to be translated. Maybe my mistake is in referring to my cards as "flashcards". They are a way to generate sentences to be translated, making them more like the translation exercises in the textbook, except that because of the way the deck is organized it is capable of generating thousands, and perhaps millions of different sentences.
Unlike flashcards, you will probably never see the same sentence twice. For example, I put together a quick-and-dirty program in C++ to generate sentences and out of the first 10,000 sentences there are no duplicates. And my list of nouns and adjectives is quite small in this test example. Here are the first few: Are we going to sell that first black pen? The foolish doctor should send some black soap to María's father. Will José buy that old book? Mrs. Johnson, you can have several brown shoes. Do the gentlemen want to see 19 orange hats? I sell several interesting books. Doctor Smith, you asked for this interesting painting. Do we need to see the third big briefcase. José, you should give those green notebooks to Juán. Mrs. Lopez, do you want to give a grey pen to the ladies? We can discard another small car. The old teacher sold another grey hen. Can we have those green tables. Madam, are you going to give the small key to my children. We should send the second blue hen to my sister. The short boy should send several black hens to Juán. Do we want to ask for the interesting key. Sir, did you buy some black briefcases. I need to win the third green car. The sad boy buys that pink hen. The boys can discard the second blue pen. I am going to have 9 black shoes. Alicia, you ask for many blue hens. Hector, you need to give many black pens to the lawyers. María, you should give many interesting shoes to his cousin. Some of them are silly, but all of them give you fresh material for drill, not the repetitious and boring same few sentences over and over that you get with "flashcards". So permit me to correct my earlier mistake. This is NOT flashcards. It's a random sentence generator for drill or practice that can be implemented with file cards. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6360 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 7 of 15 09 October 2011 at 2:54pm | IP Logged | ||
No, it was my mistake. I read your post quickly and didn't understand it. My apologies. This method is often used in the classroom. The teacher points to the words to be used, the student produces the sentence, and the teacher corrects it if necessary. You have found a way to automate this for self study. Well done! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Luai_lashire Diglot Senior Member United States luai-lashire.deviant Joined 5638 days ago 384 posts - 560 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto Studies: Japanese, French | Message 8 of 15 10 October 2011 at 12:06am | IP Logged | ||
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It certainly sounds useful! I may implement this technique for Japanese conjugations.... if only there were a
computer program already for this, now I'm going to have to go buy more paper cards..... ;P 1 person has voted this message useful |
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