Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6390 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish
| Message 185 of 350 19 May 2015 at 5:41am | IP Logged |
I don't go to matches actually ;D
And the concerns are all related. But since you're not interested in determining the target audience, I'm doing that by elimination. Now we are excluding those who want to read more, not less.
Edited by Serpent on 19 May 2015 at 5:44am
1 person has voted this message useful
|
AlexTG Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 4431 days ago 178 posts - 354 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Latin, German, Spanish, Japanese
| Message 186 of 350 19 May 2015 at 7:24am | IP Logged |
Quote:
it doesn't take time away from reading, it lets me read sooner! |
|
|
I like this statement. I suppose to be absolutely technically correct it would need to be
either "it lets me enjoy reading sooner" or at least "it lets me not hate reading sooner".
For me, I enjoy reading with 3,000 words about as much as I enjoy reading with 20,000.
So for me SRS does take away from reading, because I'm already at a stage where I love reading.
For smallwhite it's only after 10,000 words that SRS could take time away from reading.
In terms of efficiency, you only need high learning efficiency (amount learnt per hour spent) if
your enjoyment efficiency (enjoyment per hour spent) is low or negative, or you have a practical
need for progress over a specific time-frame.
Edited by AlexTG on 19 May 2015 at 7:58am
2 persons have voted this message useful
|
patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4326 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German
| Message 187 of 350 19 May 2015 at 9:34am | IP Logged |
smallwhite wrote:
You're guesstimating the % one can absorb, which you say is 10% and I can say it's much less and we won't get anywhere. A more accurate estimation would probably be your actual experience - reaching B2 reading in 2 years. With all that massive input you did (were you already in Berlin?), you reached 8000 words in 2 years. (Just assume B2=8000 words, or read it as X and do the algebra if you like). Your massive input included a movie a day, and real-life conversations if you were already in Berlin, so maybe you only learned 2k a year through reading? |
|
|
My guess is that of the 8000 words +6000 at least come from reading. This is obvious to me as many of the words I read rarely appear in TV shows, and NEVER appear in conversations.
My point was simply that reading exposes you to lots of unknown words EVEN when you are at 98% understanding (i.e., when you ALREADY have a vocabulary of 8000). Presumably when you have a lower vocabulary you are being exposed to lots more.
I think it's pointless comparing our learning rates as our units of measurement are completely different. If we can find a common test for our vocabulary that would make sense, but otherwise we are just comparing apples and oranges.
Anyway if you can get to B2 in 500 days of study that's great. Then again I would be doubtful of any method that couldn't.
smallwhite wrote:
And most importantly, are we comparing reading 36 pages a day (100 minutes?) with 15 minutes a day of SRS??
Sometimes I even wonder if we are using the same definition of "efficiency". I am aware that many people take it to mean "effectiveness". "Efficiency" to me means (units of results)/(units of time) or "results per minute invested". So actual time spent is an important factor. |
|
|
Standard reading rates are around 300 words/minute. Given 250 words/page that means 36 pages should take 30 minutes. My own impression that I take about 45-60 minutes to read this much in German.
So yes 45-60 minutes is longer than 15 minutes. However my reading is also a grammar lesson so you need to include the time you spend on grammar etc in your estimate.
I might add that I read for pleasure. If I wasn't reading German I would be reading much the same books and watching much the same films in English. So in some sense I am spending NO EXTRA TIME on learning German as I am just doing what I would always have done. So a highly effective method indeed. :)
Edited by patrickwilken on 19 May 2015 at 9:52am
3 persons have voted this message useful
|
rdearman Senior Member United Kingdom rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5029 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin
| Message 188 of 350 19 May 2015 at 12:25pm | IP Logged |
patrickwilken wrote:
Standard reading rates are around 300 words/minute. Given 250 words/page that means 36 pages should take 30 minutes. My own impression that I take about 45-60 minutes to read this much in German.
|
|
|
I'm going to take exception to this particular point based on my own experience in the Super Challenge in French. I started at ~B1 and I'm now about ~C1 after ~650,000 words. I tested myself when I started (about 9 books in) for reading speed. So quoting myself in my log I was "running about 5 minutes per page". So in reality your 36 pages would have taken me 180 minutes or 3 hours. I read much quicker now, because I know more words! Reading one page every 5 minutes is a pain, you've forgotten what you read at the start.
I think the situation here is different between beginners (below B2) and above. After you've managed to get above B2 then your vocabulary range is much bigger and you can get to the point of reading and understanding without it being a struggle. But for beginners, I think that accumulation of a mass of words by rote memorisation would help them immensely and would get them to the point of reading quicker.
1 person has voted this message useful
|
Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4702 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German
| Message 189 of 350 19 May 2015 at 12:35pm | IP Logged |
patrickwilken wrote:
I might add that I read for pleasure. If I wasn't reading German I would be reading much the same books and watching much the same films in English. So in some sense I am spending NO EXTRA TIME on learning German as I am just doing what I would always have done. So a highly effective method indeed. :) |
|
|
This is an important point for some of us. For most of my language learning time, I'm just replacing activities I would do every day in English (read, listen to music, listen to the news) with the same things in my target languages.
Of course, this is where different goals come into play. Smallwhite wants to learn as many languages as possible up to B2 and then move on to the next. Most of my language choices are languages I want to use for my whole life, and a major part of that usage will be doing things like reading and watching films in those languages. For some of us, you learn up to a point and then you are done with the language, for others a language is more like a life-long commitment. Naturally, these differences will produce different learning strategies.
There's another vocabulary-related benefit that reading brings which you wouldn't get from SRS or other methods of memorizing vocabulary: the subtle shades meaning as a word is used in different contexts. If I want to be able to have a conversation about a topic, say history of the French revolution, I might first learn the vocabulary used in the topic. But just learning the vocabulary doesn't mean I can use the words properly in context. At the very least I should read a few articles on the topic so I can get a feel for the nuances of how those words are used in that area. From a vocabulary list I many have learnt that "andouille" is a kind of sausage, but only from reading did I learn that it's an insult. A dictionary tells you this, but it doesn't give you a good feel for the ways and contexts the insult is applied. Only experience with the language itself can do this.
Edited by Jeffers on 19 May 2015 at 12:36pm
6 persons have voted this message useful
|
rdearman Senior Member United Kingdom rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5029 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin
| Message 190 of 350 19 May 2015 at 1:35pm | IP Logged |
@Jeffers - How is that Sanskrit radio working out for you?
:D
2 persons have voted this message useful
|
smallwhite Pentaglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5101 days ago 537 posts - 1045 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin, French, Spanish
| Message 191 of 350 19 May 2015 at 2:06pm | IP Logged |
Wordlists are compilations of words.
Some of us dislike using wordlists.
Grammars are compilations of grammar points.
Do the same people dislike using grammars?
1 person has voted this message useful
|
Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4702 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German
| Message 192 of 350 19 May 2015 at 2:37pm | IP Logged |
rdearman wrote:
@Jeffers - How is that Sanskrit radio working out for you?
:D
|
|
|
I know, it doesn't exactly work for dead languages. I do know they made a Spiderman comic in Sanskrit. And for Ancient Greek there's The Cambridge Greek Play.
Edited by Jeffers on 19 May 2015 at 2:38pm
1 person has voted this message useful
|