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Word lists - how to make them work | ||
Tags: Word List | Vocabulary learning | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6488 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 1 of 14 01 January 2007 at 6:30am | IP Logged | ||
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Most language learners hate word lists, and in principle I don't like them either - it's much more satisfying to learn new words through reading or listening to radio or TV in the target language. But recently - mostly due to my recent battles with dhimotiki Greek - I have had to accept making lists of unknown words as the only way for me to rapidly getting the kind of vocabulary that would permit me to tackle authentic Greek utterances.
In an earlier thread I have described in fairly detailed form how to refresh half-forgotten words. But that presupposes that you already have a decent stock of half forgotten words to feast on. My next thought was to make long word lists which could be used instead of a dictionary, and then I thought that the very act of writing the lists would make the words half known so that I could use my usual methods for half forgotten words. But no, that didn't function. Instead I turned to making shorter, but very specific wordlists of maybe 30-60 words with each their own 'theme', - that could be the use of a certain affix, a certain declension or it could be a semantic defined group, - birds, fruits or whatever. Knowing that a certain word belongs in such a group may constitute in itself one of the 'memory tags' that makes it easier to recall the word in question. I use color codes for these lists: blue or black for the target language words and a 'weaker' color like green or grey for the translations. Next step was to subdivide the lists into even shorter segments in order to apply some well-known memory training tricks on them. I write out 5-7 words on a separate sheet of paper with a suitable translation added to the right of each word and look at these word pairs, trying to figure out how to remember the translation. Then I cover the column with translations and check that I really do remember them, before I cover the column with the original target words and proceed to repeating them to the right of their translations. With this amount of preparation for just 5-7 words it normally isn't a problem, but if I have problems with a word it just get on top of the next segment of 5-7 words. By now the whole thing looks somewhat like this (no need to switch colors here): δημοτική modern Greek δημοτική In an hour or so I can cover a whole sheet of paper and half learn all the words. I say half learn because there is one more step: a couple of days later I take my original word list and note down the words I remember well, leaving the few recalcitrant items for more study or for eternal oblivion. Or in other words, I treat the 'new' words as halfknown words, which they really should be by now. I have found that my Greek word stock only really began to grow significantly when I systematized the input of new words in the manner described, so now I have begun to use the method even on languages that I know fairly well, - maybe a little late, but better late then never. Apart from the use of flash cards, are there any other suggestions or alternative methods to survive word lists? Most language learners have to deal with them, and the things I have written above may just be trivial for you, but sometimes there is something to improve in even the most commonplace procedures. Edited by Iversen on 30 July 2007 at 4:53pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| lady_skywalker Triglot Senior Member Netherlands aspiringpolyglotblog Joined 6675 days ago 909 posts - 942 votes Speaks: Spanish, English*, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, French, Dutch, Italian | Message 2 of 14 01 January 2007 at 7:41am | IP Logged | ||
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I have to say that I don't bother much with word lists as I have a terrible memory! I do try and learn words according to a theme, though, and find it easier to remember new words if they're something visual (eg. an animal, a type of fruit, a piece of furniture). I also used to find that I spent so much time writing out these lists and never actually getting around to using them...though this is probably my fault more than anything.
One alternative to word lists that I find quite handy (and which I think I read about in Fanatic's book) was to write a certain word in the middle of a blank sheet/page of paper and then write all the words you associate with that central word. For example, if you write 'book' as your central word, you might want to learn the words for 'page', 'chapter', 'title', 'author' and 'publication'. This way, you can learn new words in context and, if you have a good visual memory, try and visualise those words when you think about a book. I've found this quite handy and prefer this system to flashcards or long lists. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6990 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 3 of 14 01 January 2007 at 9:21am | IP Logged | ||
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I've read your posts with interest looking for a key I can use. In fact I'd captured the text of what you said in the previous thread a few days ago and have been trying to turn it into a system I can use. I have tried two different techniques so far based upon inspiration from that thread.
1) Write out all of the variations of a word from a root dictionary. This depends on having the good fortune that the word is in the root dictionary. I have used it with some success. One root had four related words. Although I didn't write out any definitions, writing all the variations of the word has made its meaning stick. The word was: to reach, reach (noun), reachable, unreachable. The neat thing with that was I can remember the word, its definition, etc without even looking at the list. Another word had 20 variations. That one I'll have to revisit again to incorporate the variations in my repertoire. Now it strikes me that using the mind mappy idea lady skywalker referred to may come in handy for these megaroot words. The cool thing about word roots is that there is an almost inherent thematicism. 2) Using a frequency dictionary, write out unknown words and the example sentence given. Then create a variation of the example sentence. I've only used this technique a short time, so I'm not sure yet how effective it is, however I believe it will be more effective than creating 50 or so flashcards. I'd recently tried flashcarding a bunch of words from the frequency dictionary and it wasn't fun. I.E., the words didn't seem to stick. I believe the action of writing is important for me. That was a revelation. I had been writing very little before this. Edited by luke on 01 January 2007 at 10:16am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6553 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 4 of 14 01 January 2007 at 9:48am | IP Logged | ||
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Does "numerous stalled attempts at vocabulary lists scattered across a dozen notebooks" count as a system? :)
Actually, your system sounds pretty good. Lately, I've been trying to group things semantically, grouping words of various parts-of-speech that will be used together. For example, if you learn a noun, learn the actions that will be commonly performed on it, and adjectives that might be used to describe it. Edit: I didn't see Luke's post until after I'd finished writing mine. I too find that writing sentences with the vocabulary I'm learning helps to cement things in my brain. It also helps to look up, write down, and learn the sample sentences in dictionaries. Edited by Captain Haddock on 01 January 2007 at 9:50am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6488 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 5 of 14 02 January 2007 at 2:15am | IP Logged | ||
That doesn't sound good, - if list number 1 didn't give the results intended, then it is a waste of time to write list number 2, 3,.... I hope your description is a bit too pessimistic. I like Luke's idea about collecting all variants of a certain word (it is more relevant in some languages than in others), not just because it may constitute in itself a wordlist, but also because it helps your memory to look at an item from several angles. I understand the idea of using frequency lists, because it is tempting to think that you should at least know all the most common words in your target language. But in practice a pure frequence list will be pretty much useless as a word list because the words in it have nothing else in common, - it will be more efficient to have lists of words that either ressemble each other or have related meanings. Lady Skywalker proposes to make mindmaps (without using the word), and that's an interesting thought which I will have to try out soon. As an alternative to simple column-wise wordlists on semantic themes it may aid the memory to have a more detailed structure as the one provided by a map. After all, it is easier to remember citynames if you can see a map in front of you. It may be the same with semantic domains. Edited by Iversen on 03 January 2007 at 4:10pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| rafaelrbp Pentaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 6798 days ago 181 posts - 201 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Spanish, English, French, Italian Studies: German | Message 6 of 14 02 January 2007 at 8:40am | IP Logged | ||
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I've already created some multi-language word lists. For example: English, Spanish, Portuguese, French and Italian.
I don't know if this can be counter-productive, but I hate when I forget how to say something in one of them. For example: I know the word "clock" is "relógio" (pt) and "horloge" (fr), but I forgot how to say it in Spanish: "reloj". When the word is masculine, I put it in blue, and when it's feminine, I put in in red. So I don't need to write the "la", "el", "le" particles (depending on the language). I also group the wordlists by themes. Basic themes like the "Week", the "Months" and "Numbers", Easy ones like "Family" and "Kitchen objects" and Advances ones, like the ones discuted in another thread: "Computers", "Philosophy", etc. I'm plannning to create some illustrated .pdf files with those word lists, so I can put them on my web page. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6488 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 7 of 14 30 August 2009 at 5:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm not really happy about seeing this old thread again, since I have changed my methods concerning drastically since January 2007. Newer versions of my ideas about wordlists can be seen here or here.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| lancemanion Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5357 days ago 150 posts - 166 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Thai Studies: French, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 8 of 14 31 August 2009 at 1:23am | IP Logged | ||
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Wow, very impressive technique. I also like wordlists. I actually think learning the words in chunks like that is more
efficient than separating them out. I wish there was a better way to do long term reviews though. That's why I end up putting my words into an SRS. But now you have me thinking... Thanks Iversen. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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