|
 |
Sick and tired of SRS part 2 | ||
Tags: Spaced Repetition (SRS) | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| PeterMollenburg Senior Member AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5256 days ago 821 posts - 1273 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: FrenchB1 | Message 1 of 41 16 June 2015 at 3:01am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
|
Cod2 was the original person to create the thread "Sick and tired of SRS". I'm
continuing on with my own saga. For those who have the pleasure/disdain of coming across many of my rediculous posts... well here I am again, being, well, rediculous, umm, again, and raising another topic (i mean the same topic). I thought this would be ok to be popped into the advice section, but it also fits here- like a snake between a hare and a rabbit- know what I'm sayin? (rhetorical of course) I've had an on and off saga with FC's. And to borrow from cod2's/my subject title many ppl are prob sick and tired of it. But without trying to 'prep people' to be negative from the outset, please be patient- I'm a perfectionist, I have my own ways and I like to do a method to death even if it's somewhat tedious if it means I get to my goals in the manner I desire (thorough language acquisition- whatever that means, don't get caught up in that please). Recently I solved an issue somewhat with some insights gained from smallwhite's approach to vocab acquisition and flashcard use. Prob anyone could've told me this- I was taking far to long to review my cards- problem resolved - I no longer translate a rediculous number of example sentences... NOw I'm taking far too long to create cards (a prob I had in the past as well for different and similar reasons)- here's some background from my own log (posted last night). I guess I was thinking I would resolve this relatively easily, but I thought wrong- and I am wanting some input from others now if anyone feels up to the task.
So today I started making a new deck. I thought right, that does it, new deck, fresh start, move on, and to go with that a new layout and test with some basic cards i'll delete once I get the format rolling smoothly... Here's an example card: Direction 1: (French to English) side 1: personne. There's _____ there (ex sentence) (i type the answer "no-one" - it's short, I use the language, I have a sentence in there- just one). I get it right, reveal side 2 side 2: nf (fem noun), okay i'm cool, move on. Direction 2 (English to French): side 1: no-one. il n'y a ______ (i type in 'personne'), get it right side 2 nf (fem noun)... moving on I go to create this card: à peine (adverb meaning 'hardly') on side 1, fine side 2 I enter 'hardly' (but notice there are more shades of meaning like 'barely, scarcely' I try to enter those as well realising then my answer will require 3 words- doesn't suit for the sentence with a gap: J'arrive _____ à soulever mon sac. (answer à peine) Translation: I can _____ lift my bag. (answer hardly) okay so what do I do with the other shades of meaning? Create more cards with more example sentences. I"m pissed off with SRS. No matter which way I look at it I ALWAYS have to enter some kind of clarification, or create multiple cards or too many example sentences... YET they are fantastic if used correctly (going on mainly other ppls experience, not drawing from mine as i'm likely to be judged for good reason). I don't want to ditch them altogether, but even trying to simplify it's fraught with danger- shades of meaning, examples/no examples- actual different meanings of the same word, why translate when not going to become a translator and so on and so forth... it's all a big turd really. Many will say ditch them. But they are definitely useful, it's just they're bloody cumbersome in creation to say the least!!!! PM 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| PeterMollenburg Senior Member AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5256 days ago 821 posts - 1273 votes Speaks: English* Studies: FrenchB1 | Message 2 of 41 16 June 2015 at 10:44am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
|
I know these posts are a bit much... well I've found a solution (i hope) so no need to
read on if you've got better things to do) Okay, so replying to my own post. I'm going to try this for a little while: * Duplicate old deck and during reviews delete like mad anything that I have half an idea of it's meaning. * Create a new deck with an aim not to enter every word ----------- * In the new deck (already experimented) the entering of information when creating a card will proceed as follows: Side 1 - French word eg "à peine" Side 2 - English word or words (includes subtle variations to provide clarity) eg hardly, barely, scarcely Side 3 - French example with the key word/phrase missing eg. J'arrive ______ à soulever mon sac Side 4 - English translation of the French example eg. I can "hardly" lift my bag Side 5 - word/phrase clasification eg. loc adv (ie locution adverbiale) --------------------- How the reviews will go won't be in the same order as above but like this: Direction 1: Side 1: J'arrive ______ à soulever mon sac (side 3 when card was created) I can [hardly] lift my bag (side 4 when card was created) ie i'm able to make it so two card sides (or more) can be viewed when reviewing cards on one side of my choice. (type written answer expected giving me more practice with the language- which corresponds to the original French 'side 1' from when card was created -see above- ie in this case it is "à peine") Side 2 = side 1 (top) side 5 (middle) side 2 (bottom) So the the actual side 2 will look like this: à peine loc adv hardly, barely, scarcely *with all the nuances in meaning included plus an example, but only writing the French term as my answer I avoid being concerned with requiring the English multiple translations as the answer... I'm hoping this works out well. Sounds complicated but entering is pretty simple really and a lot better than all of my examples and their translations being entered often going back and forth between sides while entering and then adding a French definition from yet another dictionary... Anyway fingers crossed Direction 2 will be like this: Side 1: hardly, barely, scarcely (these are side 2 when card was created) J'arrive ______ à soulever mon sac (side 3 when card created) With an expected typed answer being the same as above "à peine". By sticking to the same original French term from the original side 1 when the card was created as my answer for both 'directions' or layouts of cards I avoid the issues with multiple translations into English, and focus more on the French in two different ways (directions/layouts whatever) but still see (not answer with) English translations. So I answer and then the next side... Side 2: à peine (original side 1) loc adv (original side 5) I can [hardly] (or: "hardly"- not decided on that) lift my bag (original side 4) Essentially I'll be typing short answers and reviewing/learning every card in two different formats (that i've referred to as directions as it's usually used for L1-L2/ L2-L1). ------------------------------ In summary the first layout/direction is French example sentence with a missing word + English example sentence with the translation of the missing highlighted somehow in the English sentence. The answer will be the French term. Other details show up on side 2 The second direction instead of the two sentences is the English translation plus any nuances of meaning along with the French sentence with the gap. Again the answer is the French term like above. Side 2 again has some other details slightly differing from the above layout Sounds like a lot of jargon, fluff or whatever- In short fingers crossed this streamlines my FC process and that in creating a new deck I also become more efficient in my choice of words/terms to enter. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| chaotic_thought Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 3322 days ago 129 posts - 274 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Dutch, French | Message 3 of 41 16 June 2015 at 10:58am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
The way I handle this is to just have one answer, and to make the explanation as simple as possible. For example, your goal with this card is to train the expression "à peine" used in THIS sentence. It doesn't mean that you couldn't rightly substitute something else to make another sentence which means the same thing. It also definitely doesn't mean that your proposed English translation "I can hardly lift my bag" is the only valid one with the same meaning. For example, one could replace your "_____" in that sentence with any number of things: I can barely lift my bag I can almost not lift by bag I can safely say that I am not feeling fit enough to lift my bag ... The same principle is true in either direction. In general it is possible to replace any "____" appearing in any sentence with an indetermine number of other items which will cause the sentence to mean the same thing. One solution to this if you're working with translated words is not to think in terms of "translations" but think in terms of "keywords". A keyword is just a magic word that you use as your own personal device to remember the target word. As an example, when studying Kanji characters I often come across two or three different characters whose meanings are pretty similar to each other, say: 暖 vs 温 Now, in this example it may be possible to formulate some kind of explanation as to the difference between these characters, or to list out concrete examples of words in which the first character is deemed most appropriate, and words in which the second character is deemed most appropriate, words in which both characters appear in a defined order, and words in which the writer has a choice of which character to write to convey a particular "shade of meaning". One might also point out in this particular character pairing that the two characters have different On-readings, while having similar Kun-readings. However, all of these details are way too complicated for the purpose of a flash-card. Instead, my solution is this: 暖 | warm 温 | warmth Simple. If I see "warm" on my flash-card then I just use that as a symbol to remind me to practice writing the first character; then I can flip it over and see if I did it all right. If I see "warmth" on my flash-card then I write the second character. The whole point is to practice what's on the target-language sides of the flash-cards. The words "warm" and "warmth" do not need to be practiced, and their appearance here is not really that important. What you use for the keyword is just a helpful way for you to recall it. It doesn't really even matter if those characters actually "mean" 'warm' or 'warmth' and it surely does not mean that my arbitrary choice of these two keywords is an appropriate way to describe the difference between the two Chinese characters. Nor does it need to be. Edited by chaotic_thought on 16 June 2015 at 11:01am 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| PeterMollenburg Senior Member AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5256 days ago 821 posts - 1273 votes Speaks: English* Studies: FrenchB1 | Message 4 of 41 16 June 2015 at 12:17pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
|
I appreciate your detailed description and analysis chaotic-thought. You've raised some pertinent points
indeed. I realised i needed more clues so to speak, which is in part why I revamped the layout explained in the 2nd post. In theory I feel like i'm not likely to have too much confusion now. I might try 2 example sentences too but it may make the cards too busy but it could bring further clarity to the exact term I'm supposed to answer with. Context will also help as I aim to take examples mainly from materials i'm using (courses, reading). Thus, I should recall many of these sentences increasing the likelihood of using the correct term among more than one potential answer. Finally if I incorrectly answer with a synonym on the odd occasion I'm not fussed- if I am for perfection I'll end up bogging myself/the cards down with too much detail again. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5312 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 41 16 June 2015 at 2:23pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
|
My personal rules for cards:
1. SRS cards should be made with as little effort as humanly possible. Copy and paste is your friend. 2. Cards should be easy to answer. It always amazes me how well easy cards actually work. 3. Cards should be deleted at the slightest provocation. Annoyed? Bored? It's gone. I use three major formats: Recognition cards. These have a sentence on the front, with one or two interesting words in boldface. The boldfaced words are defined on the back, generally using a copy-and-pasted definition from an online dictionary. If I understand the word in context, I pass the card. Cloze cards. These have a bunch of text on the front, and single word hidden. In fact, I often hide only half a word. If I can fill in the missing word or word fragment, I pass the card. Subs2srs cards. These have a picture and a short sound clip on the front, and L2 and L1 subtitles on the back. I pass the card if I understand the audio. These work ridiculously well if you make them in bulk using tools, and you choose a fun, easy TV series or movie. For more detailed examples of recognition and cloze cards, see the essay that I wrote for srscollector. Dealing with amibiguous or difficult cards One thing that's worth noting: Ambiguous cards are hell. If you can think of two good answers for the card, you should either (1) throw it away immediately, or (2) convert it a half-word cloze card that's totally unambiguous. So, for example, I might make two cards of your sentence, each of which is easy and unambiguous:
Dealing with multiple shades of meaning Just say no. If you know this meaning in this sentence, you're done. As for other meanings, you'll either pick them up from context or you can maybe make another card later. Once you know one reasonably accurate meaning for a word, your brain will usually do the rest—always assuming, of course, that you get lots of exposure. 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6483 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 6 of 41 16 June 2015 at 3:27pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
|
I just wonder why you make an English translation - except in those few cases where the meaning otherwise couldn't even be guessed. With "J'arrive à peine à soulever mon sac" you may want to learn `"à peine", and then it may be relevant to see it in a concrete French context, but that context isn't idiomatic in the sense that you have to learn it by heart. "À peine" is idiomatic, and it wouldn't be enough to learn just "peine", so on the English side of the card it would be relevant to write "hardly" as your memory aid to remember "à peine", but not the whole sentence.
But as I sometimes have stressed: you shouldn't learn expressions without also learning the elements. Learning "peine" as an isolated word is worth the trouble, because it will be easier to remember "à peine" if you know that it means something like "with trouble/punishment/difficulty". So in your case I would have one card with "peine" in a couple of French contexts and the words "trouble/punishment/difficulty" on the other side (or just one of them, because learning one translation will make it much easier to add the rest later". And then maybe one card more specifically with the expression "à peine" on one side (maybe in a context) and "hardly" on the other. And a third card with "je n'arrive pas à" --> "I don't succeed in.." - the sample sentence with "à peine" is just a variant of this, and keeping things apart makes it easier to see what each of them actually means. Edited by Iversen on 17 June 2015 at 1:05pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4987 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 7 of 41 16 June 2015 at 4:03pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
|
What emk describes is extremely similar to what I do, described in another recent flashcard thread. Recognition cards and half-word cloze cards. I've still never tried subs2srs but it's an interesting idea. As I said on the other thread, it's what I've settled on after some experimentation, I don't know if it's the best method but for me it works better than nothing and it's relatively painless.
I also use a two-month maximum interval time, because I find that Anki's intervals just get too long and version 2 makes it a lot harder to tweak the settings. This gives me more work, but it's mostly easy work, and if a card seems far too easy to be reviewing every two months I can just delete it. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| PeterMollenburg Senior Member AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5256 days ago 821 posts - 1273 votes Speaks: English* Studies: FrenchB1 | Message 8 of 41 17 June 2015 at 10:30am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Thanks emk, these are some Very sound rules. I"m going to do my best to apply them :)
I'm not likely to try anything like subs2srs anytime soon as such things that may take the average joe 20min or even an hour to set up will take me four times as long, but it's certainly something I'm curious about at some point in the distant future. Your recognition cards are also interesting and something I may propose much sooner than subs2srs. I'll likely visit this idea again down the track or even in the coming days as I decide whether I want to do recognition cards as well- i'm thinking no, as I want to keep this really simple and not create duplicate cards- I would have to put them in a 2nd deck as my first deck (new deck) has very specific routine of what's entered over 5 cards... although I could add 2 sides into one (in creating the cards) to utilize side 5 as a definition but this will slow me down- the exact thing i'm working against... no i think i'll skip recognition cards for now- I think i have more covered than you do in your cloze cards anyway and thus don't feel like I need to bog myself down with more... hmmm, will think it over. For the time being like you said yourself I'm going to keep my cards as easy- easy to make, uncomplicated and hopefully easy to answer. Chaotic thought was talking about ways to avoid ambiguous responses/answers. I think your idea of 'half cloze' is a good one. I'm going to make my cards even easier with at least an initial letter maybe more. Great idea emk! Cheers :) One question emk... Do you always create both a 'recognition card' and a 'cloze card' for each term/word/phrase that you add to your flashcards? (you create 2 cards every time?) Edit: when i mentioned nuances of meaning I meant literally nuances. For example " reconnaissance " In my larousse FR-EN dictionary the sixth definition out of nine in total goes like this: DROIT [d'un droit] recognition, acknoledgement eg reconnaissance de dette acknowledgement of a debt eg2 reconnaissance d'enfant legal recognition of a child This is what I meant by nuances of meaning. These two words seek to clarify the French term, to hone in on the correct translation via a two (sometimes more) closely related different words that point to essentially the same overall meaning or very close at least. My original gripe (now fixed by not answering with English) is that I couldn't be sure which word to answer with as with nuances all will be similar and likely interchangeable. Half cloze cards would help to eliminate this issue too. But I'm just not going to have English answers anymore. To further clarify. I think what you thought I meant was this. Definition 1 of reconnaissance in that same dictionary is an entirely different meaning = gratitude. That is not a nuance, but an entirely different translation altogether. Definition 2 of the French word 'reconnaissance' is the English word 'reconnaissance' (think reconnaissance mission/flight/patrol). These are clearly different meanings and not nuances/shades of meaning as in the first example. My problem wasn't distinguishing between entirely different meanings, but the nuances and how to deal with putting in the correct word... all in all I've solved this issue without English answers and for the French having half cloze cards, but I just wanted to clarify my point - context wouldn't have made it clearer as more than one word could mean exactly the same thing. PM Edited by PeterMollenburg on 17 June 2015 at 10:44am 1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
