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Learning 625 words a day | ||
Tags: Memory | Vocabulary learning | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5327 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes  Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 9 of 23 07 February 2014 at 5:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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I would be impressed—and more than a bit surprised—if you can learn 500 words per day. I've heard of people who could memorize lots of vocabulary quickly, but they had previously undertaken extensive memory training.
The last time Iversen and I compared notes, it looked like we both required something like 3 minutes total time—often spread out over multiple reviews—to truly "own" a word. (But it's incredibly hard to get accurate numbers.) He used word lists; I used Anki cards with lots of context. Assuming you need 8 hours to eat and sleep, there are 960 minutes remaining in a day. But I doubt either Iversen or I could learn 320 words in a day without frying our brains. Personally, my limit is about 40 minutes/day. If I recall correctly, Iversen seemed to be good for a couple of hours, but not every day. But hey, the world record for memorizing an entire deck of playing cards is 21.9 seconds. So I wouldn't be surprised if somebody did manage to learn a lot of vocabulary quickly.
You're in Spain. To borrow an expression from Khatzumoto, it's game time, not practice time. Now is not the time to stay indoors and to try to set world records in memory sports; you can do that anywhere. Think about what you can do. This will vary depending on your interests and abilities, but you can surely find something interesting. Here are some ideas: 1. Go someplace and try to make friends. Smile a lot, be super-friendly, look like you're having fun, play the clown. As Benny Lewis points out, if you look like you're enjoying yourself, people will let you get away with awful language skills. 2. Go to a bookstore and shop for cool Spanish books, comics and DVDs. You're never going to get a better selection or better prices—or better recommendations, if you can figure out how to ask the clerks. 3. If your level is really basic, get a phrasebook and memorize a bunch of useful phrases, and then go look for opportunities to use them. You can even say, "I'm going to go to the bookstore; what words will I need to buy a book?" and then learn them. 4. Escape from the tourist centers (where everybody will probably try to speak English to you), and go have an adventure: Eat something. Buy something. Talk to a stranger. Rely on pantomime. Try to read the street signs. Muddle through. Make a fool of yourself. Memorizing vocabulary is certainly useful. But you can know thousands of words and still be unable to carry on a conversation, understand a TV show or read a book. And honestly, if you can't find any better way to use your Spanish than to sit in Spain doing Anki reviews? Step back and really think about that for a moment. Memorization's a useful tool, but surely you had other reasons for learning Spanish. Can you rediscover those reasons and go act on them now, even if you're not "ready"? Oh, if you do try to learn 625 words per day in Anki, please feel free to write up how that worked, and how you did it. Lots of people around here try various crazy experiments, and we love it when one of them works out. 8 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| sctroyenne Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5186 days ago 739 posts - 1312 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Irish | Message 10 of 23 07 February 2014 at 5:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think you can take some time to study vocabulary but seeking out 625 words a day from
native materials and then adding them to Anki and studying them would take a ridiculous amount of time. Even during my vocabulary sweeping phases I couldn't get more than 20-30 without just going through the dictionary/wordlists. Also, if you've used Anki already I'm sure you've experienced the effect of adding a greater number of new words compounds the number of repetitions you get down the line. Adding words and reviewing them will become a full time job. Go ahead and enter vocabulary you encounter into Anki but think about a much smaller target number. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5327 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 11 of 23 07 February 2014 at 5:30pm | IP Logged | ||
If you can, try to bring some books and newspapers home with you, preferably really interesting ones. ("Interesting" is personal, of course: Serpent loves football, Iversen likes science magazines, I like science fiction.) That will give you something fun to do when you get home. As for unknown words, it's up to you. If you can remember them (or write them down discretely), go for it. Or if you can't be bothered to write them down, don't worry about them. If you make friends / buy books / discover TV series, you'll run into any important words again soon enough. Also, if you fry your brain and want to veg after a long day of immersion, try turning on the local TV and channel surfing until you find something interesting. If you haven't watched much Spanish TV, this will probably make you really sleepy after a while. But I've discovered amazing stuff just flipping through French channels—and it's much more productive than retreating to English when I want to veg. Edited by emk on 07 February 2014 at 5:32pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| lingoleng Senior Member Germany Joined 5093 days ago 605 posts - 1290 votes | Message 12 of 23 07 February 2014 at 5:54pm | IP Logged | ||
That's great. Just do it. 500 words a day x 100 days, that's about, let me think, 50 000 words. By all means, go ahead, what a fantastic project! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4502 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 13 of 23 07 February 2014 at 5:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think it's Khatz time - don't ask, experiment, try, and see what works. We are an
internet forum full of people who all have opinions. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Mooby Senior Member Scotland Joined 5900 days ago 707 posts - 1219 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Polish | Message 14 of 23 07 February 2014 at 6:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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There is the quantity v quality dynamic to consider.*
Given that many words have several meanings and nuances, 'learning' them is more than simple binary (x=y) memory. One approach is to cram in as many words as possible, and figure out their varied and subtle meanings through subsequent exposure. Another approach is to reduce the volume, but spend more time researching their meanings (along with irregular declensions and conjugations) prior to significant exposure. I'm more of a 'tortoise' than a 'hare'; I find researching words and hunting for example sentences enjoyable, so I like to take my time. But if you don't have the luxury of time, perhaps intense memory techniques may be appropriate. After a few days, you'll have some vocabulary to play with and, as others have said, that's the chance to 'get out there' and let them take root. *I'm not saying they are mutually exclusive; we can have a blend of both. Edited by Mooby on 07 February 2014 at 6:32pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| theoanderson3 Diglot Newbie United States Joined 3747 days ago 13 posts - 15 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish | Message 15 of 23 07 February 2014 at 7:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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So thanks for all the advice but to answer my initial question, in all of your opinions, would it be wise to keep a
giant word document when i'm reading something look up the word put it in there and then from time to time look back over the document? i understand some words can be guessed from the context, but others are very ambiguous and hard to decipher. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6498 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 16 of 23 07 February 2014 at 7:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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I totally agree with emk's information above. If I know a language fairly well, I can get through a wordlist faster than if it is a new language, where I have problems with something as fundamental as the pronunciation and where I have few other words in the language to associate to, but 3 minutes with a repetition or two is quite realistic. And a couple of hours with wordlists in one language is OK, but not something I would normally do several evenings in a row.
However there are exceptions: On Cuba last year I had brought a Spanish dictionary, but also some printputs in different languages and - more or less on a whim - one tiny little Greek dictionary. And as a diversion from the otherwise total Spanish domination I spent a couple of hours every evening to study Greek vocabulary, and I got through roughly 3000 words in a fortnight (see my lame excuses lined up here). However Greek was not a new language for me even back then so looking putting 2-300 words on a wordlist every evening wasn't nearly as hard as if I had tried to do the same thing with Hungarian or another new and incomprehensible language. And in the daytime I stuck 100% to Spanish - even when I just thought about the things I saw. One point more: the tortoise and hare parable isn't quite realistic. The problem is that you can add more meanings fast when you already know a word, so it is probably more efficient to learn any given word with its core meanings first and then fill more meanings and associations on it later. Trying to learn all the meanings and uses of a complicated word in one session will just bog you down.
No. Anki uses a formula to present your stack of words to you again, one at a time, so there you'll never run the risk of burying yourself under tons of old words, and with wordlists I recommend that you do your repetition round the day after the first round while you still remember that you have seen the words - and maybe even some of your associations. If you go back to an old wordlist it isn't better than looking through a random page in your dictionary. Edited by Iversen on 07 February 2014 at 8:11pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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