Register  Login  Active Topics  Maps  

Super-fast vocabulary learning techniques

 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies Post Reply
255 messages over 32 pages: << Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ... 23 ... 31 32 Next >>
josht
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 6206 days ago

635 posts - 857 votes 
Speaks: English*, German
Studies: French, Spanish, Russian, Dutch

 
 Message 177 of 255
21 August 2008 at 7:22pm | IP Logged 
CobaltDragon wrote:


Can you recommend a good SRS program? Never used one before.


I've been using Anki for nearly a year, and quite like it. I'd certainly recommend it over SuperMemo, which is bogged down with so many features and options, I find it nearly unusable.

You can download Anki (for free) at http://ichi2.net/anki.
2 persons have voted this message useful



leosmith
Senior Member
United States
Joined 6310 days ago

2365 posts - 3804 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Tagalog

 
 Message 178 of 255
22 August 2008 at 5:16pm | IP Logged 
CobaltDragon wrote:
Can you recommend a good SRS program? Never used one before.

I've used supermemo and anki heavily. Both are good, but anki is free and easier to learn how to use.

CobaltDragon wrote:
Last year I adopted my son from Viet Nam (he was 4.5 months old - 19 months old now), and truly fell in love with the people and the country.

Very cool. Congratulations!
1 person has voted this message useful



tigernerve
Newbie
Suriname
Joined 5616 days ago

1 posts - 1 votes

 
 Message 179 of 255
12 November 2008 at 4:00pm | IP Logged 
Sure learning as many phrases as possible are important. And of course you need to learn a little grammar.

But I think one of the main things I used to waist too much time with was with random vocabulary of words I may never use. Instead I recommend vocabulary organized by how frequent it is used. Like frequent wordlists.

For example you can google "top 100" "top 1000" or "top 10000 words in Dutch" and you might find something much more useful. It's best to find out first how to type it in the language you want to learn. This may not be necessary in more popular languages.

In dutch for example you would write, "Top nederlands woorden" That's how they say "Dutch" in Dutch.   Also google "top Spanish Wordlists" or the like. By doing this I can read and understand so much more of what I am reading now. After all only around 2000 words are used on a daily basis in most languages.
1 person has voted this message useful



Cainntear
Pentaglot
Senior Member
Scotland
linguafrankly.blogsp
Joined 5771 days ago

4399 posts - 7687 votes 
Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic
Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh

 
 Message 180 of 255
14 November 2008 at 4:27am | IP Logged 
Before you go studying the top 10000, be sure to check out Zipf's law. Some of those words aren't going to get much use....
1 person has voted this message useful





Iversen
Super Polyglot
Moderator
Denmark
berejst.dk
Joined 6463 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 181 of 255
14 November 2008 at 7:09am | IP Logged 
I'm somewhat sceptical about the use of frequency tables. The first layer consists of words that you will find in almost any text: pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions and auxiliary verbs. You will learn those even without frequency lists precisely because they are found everywere.

The next layer consists of very common 'content words'. There is absolute no harm done in for instance learning all words up to no. 4000. But people read about different things, and chances are that the most important words in your preferred reading aren't covered. For instance I like to travel, so for me words like "embassy", "visa", "check in", "Lonely" and "Planet" and "reception" are important. OK, you will meet them in your reading and learn them there, you might say. My answer would be that the same per definition would hold for any words on the frequency list. Therefore my advice would be not to use the frequency lists to learn words from, but to use them as check lists when you feel that your vocabulary already is fairly large and you just have to fill out the holes.

If you have the kind of mentality that can accept learning words from frequency lists - and not all have that - then you will be much better served with ordinary dictionaries with translations and explanations and grammatical annotations and maybe even examples. You just have to recognize from the beginning that it is OK just to pick some of the words and not learn them all from A to Z. A good dictionary will warn you against obsolete words and things like that, and for the rest you should trust your own judgment.

For an earlier discussion about frequency lists see
this thread

Edited by Iversen on 14 November 2008 at 10:59am

1 person has voted this message useful



Cainntear
Pentaglot
Senior Member
Scotland
linguafrankly.blogsp
Joined 5771 days ago

4399 posts - 7687 votes 
Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic
Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh

 
 Message 182 of 255
14 November 2008 at 10:39am | IP Logged 
In fact, frequency lists are further limited by the fact that (for example) "brother" and "brothers" are considered different words. So if your chosen language has a lot of inflection on words, simple verbs like "be" and "go" might count for over a dozen "words".

As Iversen says, you're best picking and choosing your words.
For two reasons: 1) you know the sort of things you're likely to talk about. 2) vocabulary that has is important to you personally (in my case musical instruments and cameras) is easier to remember.
1 person has voted this message useful



Almond
Diglot
Newbie
Yugoslavia
Joined 5576 days ago

11 posts - 11 votes
Speaks: Serbian*, EnglishB2
Studies: Spanish, French

 
 Message 183 of 255
24 December 2008 at 12:48pm | IP Logged 
I make short lists, and than try to remember words. First I recall in my target language, than in my mother tongue.
I also make some flashcards.

But the most important thing for me is to revise those words after some time. If I don't do it, I forgot the word.
1 person has voted this message useful



irrationale
Tetraglot
Senior Member
China
Joined 5810 days ago

669 posts - 1023 votes 
2 sounds
Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog
Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese

 
 Message 184 of 255
25 December 2008 at 1:29am | IP Logged 
I simply dump words into Anki and memorize. This works for me. Learning strickly in context works, but is too slow in my opinion. Tons of words can wait until the moment they need to be used and brought into context.

I learn out of context first, then contextualize with feedback if necessary. If the context is clear (simple nouns, for example), I just memorize the word. If the context is unclear, I memorize it in a phrase (also that way I get both a new phrase and a new word). Later on, when I remember that word I know that it works in that phrase, but I will have to experiment with another context in the moment and ask "is this right"? I have asked "es correcto?" probably about 1 million times in the last 6 months.

All my unused words and phrases go in a waiting room in my mind until they are used in the situation and contextualized, but they ARE there, waiting until I bring them over. I have successfully amassed a decent Spanish vocab this way.


1 person has voted this message useful



This discussion contains 255 messages over 32 pages: << Prev 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32  Next >>


Post ReplyPost New Topic Printable version Printable version

You cannot post new topics in this forum - You cannot reply to topics in this forum - You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum - You cannot create polls in this forum - You cannot vote in polls in this forum


This page was generated in 0.6250 seconds.


DHTML Menu By Milonic JavaScript
Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved
No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization.