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How much time studying vocabulary?

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Iversen
Super Polyglot
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berejst.dk
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 Message 49 of 350
29 April 2015 at 6:08pm | IP Logged 
I don't use Anki, but the issue about having or not having a context is also relevant for my wordlists.

With my weaker languages most of the new words come from texts I study intensively, so in that case there is definitely a context. Sometimes I just write the new words (and some expressions and constructions) down on a sheet of paper, but mostly I copy a passage from a bilingual text by hand and write the new words in the right margin. Let's assume that this results in fifty new words. Soon after I transfer those to a wordlist, and at that point I can add or drop some and look the dubious ones in a dictionary.

So far this would function just as feeding the words into Anki. The difference is that I then learn them in groups and back and forth and up and down until I KNOW them. And a day or so after that I do a repetition round, which traditionally has been the only one I did. I have done tests that showed that my retention rate hovers around 80% after one day. At that stage I don't need to include any context with those words because I still have the original text lying around and I still remember which passages I got which words from. One of my repetition methods is actually to go meticulously through the original text again and check that I now know the words I culled from it. But mostly I just do a simplified wordlist with the same words and read something else for fun.

With SRS systems you might review the words a few times while you still remember the original context, but words live on and on inside Anki for months, and sooner or later you might forget where they came from if you didn't include some context in your cards.

What then after several moths, when I have forgotten the text? Well, I probably still remember that I have used a text about some specific topic (after all I have studied it intensively), but at that point I don't go back to my old wordlist - it has become irrelevant. To me it seems more fruitful to make a new list and learn those words in that list. And then extensive reading and (maybe) listening will take care of keeping some of the words on the first list alive.

The funny thing is that when I have become accostumed to a language then it becomes less important to have a context for a new word. I have probably seen it several times without remembering it, and then it becomes easier to memorize it when I actually decide to do it. And it will probably remind me of other words in the language or in other ones so it becomes easier and easier to form the necessary associations.

And that's the crux of the matter: at that point I find it easier and faster just to get the words from a dictionary. And what then about about the idiomatics? Well, at that stage I'll also read and listen alot more than I did during the first phase, and if I then meet the words again in idiomatic expressions then I already know the words. Which, as I had mentioned earlier, contributes to making those constructions and expressions memorable in the true sense of this word.

Making them active is mostly a matter of knowing some basic vocabulary, some basic grammar and enough idiomatic formulae to make up simple sentences, and when that is running smoothly you can add the rare and precious words (on that point I think I'm fairly in tune with s_allard). This process has to run in parallel with the vocabulary training, but it is much easier to add new words to your active vocabulary when they already are firmly lodged in your passive stash, and it is much easier to keep an inner dialog about hamsters or medieval arms or whatever running when you already know the words for those things.   




Edited by Iversen on 29 April 2015 at 6:30pm

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Jeffers
Senior Member
United Kingdom
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 Message 50 of 350
29 April 2015 at 7:31pm | IP Logged 
smallwhite wrote:
Jeffers wrote:
When I look at an Anki card I pronounce the word carefully, usually in my head. That alone takes me 2-3 seconds in most cases. I look carefully at the word's spelling, I recall cases where I've recently come across it, I try an example sentence or two in my head, picture the object referred to, or just think about how the word is used.


I know that's the most intuitive thing to do. But is it productive? Let's think about it.

Will doing that IMPROVE MY LANGUAGE LEVEL, taking me from, say, B1 to B2? No, because I don't learn anything new from it.

Will doing that IMPROVE MY MEMORY OF THE WORD? I believe so. But it's taking ~3 times more time, thus 66 minutes per day instead of 22 minutes. I'd rather do 3 more reps of the word, or use the extra 44 minutes per day to read, or learn 3 times more words, or learn 3 more languages, or sleep.

Is it NECESSARY for you? Did you compare doing it and not doing it? What are your goals and does doing that let you meet your goals faster?


Will it IMPROVE MY LANGUAGE LEVEL? I think it will do so more than a 2-4 second rep of the card, during which time I can only confirm if I know or don't know the word.

Will it IMPROVE MY MEMORY OF THE WORD? Of course it will, and isn't that the point of using flashcards?


There's something fundamentally different about the way you learn, Smallwhite, compared to the rest of us. You write about learning around 8000 words per year, totalling about one minute spent on each word. The fact is that there are very few people who are capable of cramming and remembering 7-8000 words in a year, especially devoting that little time to each word, let alone what you did with German. Some people have a special gift for memorizing and retaining a large amount of facts in a short time. For the average language learner, learning 1-2000 words in a year is a very good pace. Somewhere I remember Iversen and Emk calculating how much time they spent total on each word before they learnt it, and although I think they are good learners, I'm pretty sure it was more than 60 seconds per word. What you've done is amazing. Celebrate it, but don't expect everyone else to be able to do it.

Edited by Jeffers on 29 April 2015 at 7:36pm

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Serpent
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 Message 51 of 350
29 April 2015 at 7:45pm | IP Logged 
daegga wrote:
smallwhite wrote:
Serpent wrote:
About universal numbers, I think the thing is that
few of us can routinely do 1 card in 2 seconds.


So I used 4 seconds, double my time, to arrive at the 22 minute figure. Double; that's
a lot of leeway. And also, to be efficient in your learning (or in anything), you need
to use efficient tools, need to train your auxiliary skills like typing and computer
skills, even need to place your books nearer your desk, etc. Like I said, I'm obsessed
with efficiency :D


4 seconds seem ok for an easy deck, not sure about writing with Anki, I don't do it.
The other part is that your calculations assume you never fail/reset a card. The usual
Anki user will have an error rate of 10 - 20 % per day, it's per design. This will add
up if you let Anki reset the card as in the default preferences. So in these (few I
guess) cases you do fail a card, what do you do?


Erm, I actually type pretty fast when I know what I'm typing. But if I want to type a word in Anki, it means I don't know it well yet, otherwise I'd not bother training my ability to type it.

Difficult and time-consuming cards are not the same either. I mostly do sentence cards, with or without gaps. A sentence may well be easy, but it still takes more than 2 sec to read it and think of the 1-2 unknown words or whatever peculiarity made me add it.

My problem with single-word cards is that they're boring. I do have some context in my mind but it's much more fun to be reminded properly and see the original sentence again (if it was a nice sentence).

I think the key difference is that you SRS the words you already come across a lot, I SRS the things I don't pay enough attention to, whether it's grammar or some strange usage or a word in a weak language that I currently can't read much in (Swedish for example). I'm in no hurry and in general I'd rather get more input than SRS the kind of words that you do. If I SRS at all, I do the cards that I like to savour. The ones that let me feel the emotions of the original context again, and smile, giggle, sigh or whatever. Apart from my toki pona cards, I can't imagine taking less than 10 sec per card, and 20 sec are more likely. Spending a whole minute per card is also not that impossible, and occasionally it's even longer. Though mostly I suspend the cards that are consistently outside the 10-60 sec range.

Also, C1-C2 comprehension requires knowing not only the words that were used, but the (relatively common) synonyms that weren't used by the author. That's how you appreciate the style. Sprachgefühl and related languages can help a lot, of course. And while I'm generally sceptical of comprehension tests, they can show you some blind spots that you didn't think you have. Words that you seemed to understand but didn't. (general you)

As for vocabulary and CEFR levels, I like to use the cat metaphor. When a cat starts climbing upstairs, its paws will be on the steps but the tail will remain on the ground. As it continues, the tail is always behind. and it will be behind even after reaching the landing initially.

Throughout the process of learning you always understand more than you can say. At B1 you need to understand what you'll need to produce at B2, etc. Vocabulary acquisition never stops, and I wouldn't say that the requirements for grammatical accuracy actually change. The scope just widens - you won't pass A1 if you still stumble over the forms of the verb "to be", whereas for C2 you need to be able to say advanced things with minimal errors. In between, at B1 you need to deal with concrete information accurately, at B2 with the more abstract basic topics. And the requirements don't go anywhere - at C2 you're also expected to be able to handle the practical aspects of staying/living in the L2 country (apart from some highly culture-specific stuff), even if you won't have to prove that at an exam.

My fundamental, long-term disagreement with s_allard is what exactly it takes to be C2 (or any level, really). He focuses on passing an exam, I focus on the spirit and ideas behind CEFR. Although to be fair, if you learn through classes you'll need to take B1 and B2 before continuing to C1-C2, so you won't go through all these with only 2000 words. Of course you can forget the relevant words when you're done with the class, but then you're the one who loses.

Edited by Serpent on 29 April 2015 at 7:51pm

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Jeffers
Senior Member
United Kingdom
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Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German

 
 Message 52 of 350
29 April 2015 at 8:33pm | IP Logged 
I'm curious about the range of words that different learners learn on average over a year, so I've started a poll about it which you can find here if you want to participate.

Edited by Jeffers on 29 April 2015 at 8:33pm

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s_allard
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 Message 53 of 350
30 April 2015 at 12:08am | IP Logged 
smallwhite wrote:
chaotic_thought wrote:
penning / badge
hufter / bastard
forsch / powerful
gebouwd / built
goedheid / an act of mercy

This list is efficient, but glancing at the list, the problem I have is that it doesn't bring to my mind any of the
situations where those words were used in the texts.


I don't know why the difference, but my SRS cards look like that yet most of them do remind me of the
storyline/context. Prepositions and adverbs maybe not always, but nouns and verbs certainly do.

I wonder what you prefer:
* that single word cards don't remind you of their original context, and you do sentence cards instead
or
* that single word cards do remind you of their context, and you do single word cards
? Which would you prefer in an ideal world?

Finally, after some prodding, we are starting to get an idea of what some SRS lists actually look like. The issue
here seems to be whether a single-word card is preferable to sentence-type entry. The former seems void of the
context in which it is used but, as other posters have suggested, the context can be guessed or remembered.

This actually makes me think that the utility of the SRS is not so much in learning as in remembering. In other
words, it functions as a sort of tickler file that will prompt your memory. This I can agree with. As for actually
learning how to use productively, I don't see how single-word systems can work.

Let me give an example from a list of the 1063 most common words in French. Here are numbers 1-10 and
1053 - 1063.
1. être
2. avoir
3. de
4. je
5. ils
6. ce (pronoun)
7. la (article)
8. pas (negation)
9. à (preposition)
10. et

1053: chaleur
1054. éducation
1055. garage
1056. période
1057. pointe
1058. tableau
1059. programme
1060. château
1061. excursion
1062. guide
1063. inventeur


I haven't bothered to put in the translations but most people should get the gist of this. One notices that the very
high-frequency words are more function or grammar oriented whereas the last words are more content-oriented.   
Some people will also remark that most of the words in the last group are cognates with English. So, many people
think that they automatically know the French words.

As I have mentioned, a list like this can be of some use as a mnemonic system in order to remember the words.
But as for learning how to use the words in actual context, I think this list is useless, especially for the functional
words. For example, to say that être is "to be" says nothing about how this word is used. Even for those content
words where there are cognates with English, I would suggest great caution before assuming that the French
word is used just like the English word. A perfect example of this is the word éducation where there is a major
nuance between the French and English usage.

Edited by s_allard on 30 April 2015 at 12:11am

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smallwhite
Pentaglot
Senior Member
Australia
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Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin, French, Spanish

 
 Message 54 of 350
30 April 2015 at 12:38am | IP Logged 
Jeffers wrote:
Will it IMPROVE MY LANGUAGE LEVEL? I think it will do so more than a 2-4 second rep of the card, during which time I can only confirm if I know or don't know the word.


How will it improve your language level? With 2-second reps, I remember that "noir" means black when I see it. With 30-second reps, I remember that "noir" means black when I see it. I don't see how the latter makes me more advanced?

Jeffers wrote:
You write about learning around 8000 words per year, totalling about one minute spent on each word.


I'm not sure if that's what I wrote about. I felt that I wrote If you SRS 8000 words over 1 year, the reps take 22 minutes per day at 4 seconds each. And if you prefer a slower pace of 2 years, 13 minutes per day.

Jeffers wrote:
The fact is that there are very few people who are capable of cramming and remembering 7-8000 words in a year, especially devoting that little time to each word


But SRS is not my sole tool, I read and listen to things when I'm not SRSing. I meet my words for 22 minutes inside SRS, and let's say 60 minutes outside SRS. Many or most people just read and don't even use SRS, and they still learn:
READ + 0 SRS

I do brief SRS:
READ + 2 seconds SRS

You do deep SRS:
READ + 30 seconds SRS

0 < 2 < 30. If I am more gifted than you are, then those people who don't use SRS are more gifted that I am. They learn words by reading alone; I need to read and revise.

Jeffers wrote:
Somewhere I remember Iversen and Emk calculating how much time they spent total on each word before they learnt it, and although I think they are good learners, I'm pretty sure it was more than 60 seconds per word.


I spend time on the words, too, BEFORE THE SRS PROCESS. I mentioned reading to extract words which takes me 2 mins each. I mentioned going through my 2000-4000 word list repetitively trying to extract 10 easiest words to learn, and that often they're easy because I had encountered them beforehand in textbooks and whatnot.

Jeffers wrote:
Some people have a special gift for memorizing and retaining a large amount of facts in a short time.


I have significantly worse memory than my friends and colleagues, but I know you won't believe it and will say I have poor memory in everything except vocabulary-memorisation.

WhereasI often have the impression that learners spend a lot of time doing things that they think - but don't really know for sure - are productive.

My mother boils eggs at maximum heat for 20 to 30 minutes, and doesn't believe me when I say people recommend ~10 minutes on the internet. She didn't mention people having better eggs. Maybe she thinks people have better stoves. I use medium heat that's just enough to keep the water boiling. I know mother thinks her boiling water at max heat is hotter than my boiling water at medium heat.

Edited by smallwhite on 30 April 2015 at 1:09am

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smallwhite
Pentaglot
Senior Member
Australia
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537 posts - 1045 votes 
Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin, French, Spanish

 
 Message 55 of 350
30 April 2015 at 1:03am | IP Logged 
Serpent wrote:
I mostly do sentence cards...
My problem with single-word cards is that they're boring...
The ones that let me feel the emotions of the original context again, and smile, giggle, sigh or whatever...


Maybe your sentence cards are more efficient, maybe my single-word cards are more efficient; we don't know until we test it.

Single-word cards are boring for me, too, but not knowing a language after one year of work, being forced to read kid's books, having the radio on but it's noise more than news, etc, is even more so.

I like to smile and giggle, too, but would prefer to smile about the next book in the next language, rather than keep smiling about the same sentence in the same language on the same card.

edit: What do we do when our bosses give us insane deadlines? We meet them somehow!
--

This sounds similar to the other thread where they compare doing a lesson to perfection before moving on to the next lesson, to zipping through them. I think there, most people zip through a course and then go back (and back and back if necessary). Which is how I do my cards, really. Just do the bare minumum. If the bare minumum doesn't work THEN think of something else. I don't know why people zip through lessons but not vocab cards.

Edited by smallwhite on 30 April 2015 at 1:51am

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luke
Diglot
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United States
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 Message 56 of 350
30 April 2015 at 1:48am | IP Logged 
smallwhite, you're trending on HTLAL. I appreciate your thoughtful and playful posts. You're helping me re-
evaluate my methods to improve efficiency. The rest of you are too, but smallwhite's trending.


1 person has voted this message useful



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