6 ms·

1. Flash cards are boring as hell 2. Memorizing a bunch of vocabulary does not help you learn the language. If anything, it might be a hinderance. Bear with m

by hasenj 12y ago

1. Flash cards are boring as hell 2. Memorizing a bunch of vocabulary does not help you learn the language. If anything, it might be a hinderance. Bear with me here. The main obstacle in learning a language is not the acquisition of vocabulary per se, but getting familiar and acquainted with how ideas are expressed in the language. The most common mistake that beginners make is they try to form the sentence in their native language, then translate it to the target language. This approach is guaranteed to make you form BAD sentences. You need to be exposed to not just vocabulary, but phrases, collocations[0], and idioms. You must train your mind to use the expressions of your target language from the start .. without starting from some expression in your native language. To get there, you need to be exposed to tons of natural speech/writings/dialogs in the target language. That's why a vocabulary list on its own is pretty useless. If you're going to use flashcards, let the entries be phrases and collocations, instead of single words. [0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collocation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collocation

claudius 12y ago
What you say is true if mastery of the foreign language is required or the aim of the exercise. However, if you just want to order breakfast abroad without looking like an uncultured insensitive dick, translating sentences formed in your native language works just fine. Nobody expects people to master five-or-so languages, but putting at least some effort into learning the local language is usually greatly appreciated. Furthermore, depending on the degree of similarity between your native language and the “target“ language, forming sentences first and then translating them will actually get you pretty far – surely it will be useless if you speak, say, Finnish natively and want to learn some East Asian language, but I imagine it to work decently between, say, English and Dutch or Spanish and Italian. Even English and German share enough history that most sentences can be translated one-to-one.
- hasenj 12y ago
  If you want to order breakfast, you can memorize things from a phrase book, or you can just carry the phrase book with you. And yes, of course, what I said was with "mastery of the language" as the goal in mind. You might have a point for "similar" languages, but even then you will be setting yourself to learning bad habits. My native language is Arabic. I learned English when I was in high school, and now I'm learning Japanese. All very different languages.
Evgeny 12y ago
2. Memorizing a bunch of vocabulary does not help you learn the language. If anything, it might be a hinderance. I wouldn't be so harsh on flashcards. I moved to Denmark last year and am now learning the language. Having better vocabulary totally helps you learn the language, but of course should not be the only or primary mean. I would say that flashcards is a powerful tool that assists my other studies. If I was able to spend hours per day on studying the language, maybe they would not be necessary. But my work environment is English speaking, I have a family and no native speaking friends yet, so my study time is limited. The way I maintain my deck is that after each lesson, or after reading any sort of text, or while reading, I add the words I did not know into the deck. And I also have a smaller deck for phrases and expressions. So, yes, I am getting exposed to natural writing, but it is not a trivial task to memorise words that you only saw or used a handful of times. My deck is now around 3500 words and growing steadily, I can read and understand newspaper articles on general subjects and express myself in writing. I have been commended on my vocabulary by teachers and I believe the usage of Anki is the advantage that gives me "the edge" compared to others in similar circumstances.
erikb 12y ago
As far as I understand your main assumption is that vocabulary acquisition is a smaller problem than grammar (i.e., how to express your idea). I have to disagree. While this might be a problem for some people, for others acquiring thousands of vocabs is a huge problem in itself. Beside personal problems and preferences there are also big differences depending on the language you are learning and the languages you already know. An English native speaker learning French has much less vocabs to learn than an English native learning Chinese. Additionally to memorizing huge amounts of vocabs I also find that learning phrases is very helpful, but more as a second step. At least for me it works like this. "Memorizing a bunch of vocabulary" is exactly what got me started to finally improve my Chinese.
- hasenj 12y ago
  No, I did not mean that the grammar is more important. What I was getting at is that it's not the individual words, but the context in which these words are often used. If you look up in the dictionary, there are about 6 different ways to refer to a woman/girl. Can you tell which ones are in common usage? Which ones sound formal and which ones sound casual? Which ones might seem offensive in certain contexts?
  - erikb 12y ago
    Yes, you are right. That's also a problem. I didn't think about that one.
stdbrouw 12y ago
My experience has been exactly the opposite. When speaking or reading Spanish, German or French, I never think "gee, if only I knew more grammar" but almost every day I think "well, it sure would be nice if I knew the word for ___." It seems your advice is directed towards language learners who think they might get away with just learning words and not bothering at all with grammar, collocations, expressions and all of the other things you need to truly grasp a foreign language, like practicing listening comprehension. For those people, your advice makes sense. But realistically, even among flash card aficionados, how many people do you figure think learning a language is as easy as just learning words? Do those people even exist?
- hasenj 12y ago
  Ah, but the word for X in this context is not necessarily the same word you should use in some other arbitrary context.
  - stdbrouw 12y ago
    And many people to add hints to their cards (e.g. to distinguish prevoir quelqu'un from prevoir quelque chose) as well as add example sentences – or, as you suggested, have sentence decks in addition to word decks. But even regardless of that, not using flash cards because sometimes contextless learning is not ideal would be throwing away the baby with the bathwater; the increase in speed at which you can learn vocabulary is just immense with SRS.
    - hasenj 12y ago
      > not using flash cards because sometimes contextless learning is not ideal would be throwing away the baby with the bathwater No, that would only be the case if one decided to stop learning the language all together because they think they'll never be fluent. I'm proposing to learn the language properly: by exposing yourself to as much material as you can, for prolonged periods of time.
      - stdbrouw 12y ago
freehunter 12y ago
I recently took a CEFR test in my second language, and the administrator of the test commented that I probably would be one level higher if I had a stronger vocabulary. She noticed that there were questions that I would have gotten right if I understood the words, but as it was I just had to guess. When I'm reading books in my second language, there are sometimes sentences I need to either look up or skip entirely because I don't know one or more of the words being used. So, while you're right that flashcards won't teach you grammar, vocabulary is incredibly important to move beyond any basic level. I can greet someone or buy a meal at McDonald's with a phrase book. I can't read a novel without vocabulary.

by hasenj 12y ago

claudius 12y ago

What you say is true if mastery of the foreign language is required or the aim of the exercise. However, if you just want to order breakfast abroad without looking like an uncultured insensitive dick, translating sentences formed in your native language works just fine. Nobody expects people to master five-or-so languages, but putting at least some effort into learning the local language is usually greatly appreciated. Furthermore, depending on the degree of similarity between your native language and the “target“ language, forming sentences first and then translating them will actually get you pretty far – surely it will be useless if you speak, say, Finnish natively and want to learn some East Asian language, but I imagine it to work decently between, say, English and Dutch or Spanish and Italian. Even English and German share enough history that most sentences can be translated one-to-one.

hasenj 12y ago
If you want to order breakfast, you can memorize things from a phrase book, or you can just carry the phrase book with you. And yes, of course, what I said was with "mastery of the language" as the goal in mind. You might have a point for "similar" languages, but even then you will be setting yourself to learning bad habits. My native language is Arabic. I learned English when I was in high school, and now I'm learning Japanese. All very different languages.

Evgeny 12y ago

2. Memorizing a bunch of vocabulary does not help you learn the language. If anything, it might be a hinderance. I wouldn't be so harsh on flashcards. I moved to Denmark last year and am now learning the language. Having better vocabulary totally helps you learn the language, but of course should not be the only or primary mean. I would say that flashcards is a powerful tool that assists my other studies. If I was able to spend hours per day on studying the language, maybe they would not be necessary. But my work environment is English speaking, I have a family and no native speaking friends yet, so my study time is limited. The way I maintain my deck is that after each lesson, or after reading any sort of text, or while reading, I add the words I did not know into the deck. And I also have a smaller deck for phrases and expressions. So, yes, I am getting exposed to natural writing, but it is not a trivial task to memorise words that you only saw or used a handful of times. My deck is now around 3500 words and growing steadily, I can read and understand newspaper articles on general subjects and express myself in writing. I have been commended on my vocabulary by teachers and I believe the usage of Anki is the advantage that gives me "the edge" compared to others in similar circumstances.

erikb 12y ago

As far as I understand your main assumption is that vocabulary acquisition is a smaller problem than grammar (i.e., how to express your idea). I have to disagree. While this might be a problem for some people, for others acquiring thousands of vocabs is a huge problem in itself. Beside personal problems and preferences there are also big differences depending on the language you are learning and the languages you already know. An English native speaker learning French has much less vocabs to learn than an English native learning Chinese. Additionally to memorizing huge amounts of vocabs I also find that learning phrases is very helpful, but more as a second step. At least for me it works like this. "Memorizing a bunch of vocabulary" is exactly what got me started to finally improve my Chinese.

hasenj 12y ago
No, I did not mean that the grammar is more important. What I was getting at is that it's not the individual words, but the context in which these words are often used. If you look up in the dictionary, there are about 6 different ways to refer to a woman/girl. Can you tell which ones are in common usage? Which ones sound formal and which ones sound casual? Which ones might seem offensive in certain contexts?
- erikb 12y ago
  Yes, you are right. That's also a problem. I didn't think about that one.

stdbrouw 12y ago

My experience has been exactly the opposite. When speaking or reading Spanish, German or French, I never think "gee, if only I knew more grammar" but almost every day I think "well, it sure would be nice if I knew the word for ___." It seems your advice is directed towards language learners who think they might get away with just learning words and not bothering at all with grammar, collocations, expressions and all of the other things you need to truly grasp a foreign language, like practicing listening comprehension. For those people, your advice makes sense. But realistically, even among flash card aficionados, how many people do you figure think learning a language is as easy as just learning words? Do those people even exist?

hasenj 12y ago
Ah, but the word for X in this context is not necessarily the same word you should use in some other arbitrary context.
- stdbrouw 12y ago
  And many people to add hints to their cards (e.g. to distinguish prevoir quelqu'un from prevoir quelque chose) as well as add example sentences – or, as you suggested, have sentence decks in addition to word decks. But even regardless of that, not using flash cards because sometimes contextless learning is not ideal would be throwing away the baby with the bathwater; the increase in speed at which you can learn vocabulary is just immense with SRS.
  - hasenj 12y ago
    > not using flash cards because sometimes contextless learning is not ideal would be throwing away the baby with the bathwater No, that would only be the case if one decided to stop learning the language all together because they think they'll never be fluent. I'm proposing to learn the language properly: by exposing yourself to as much material as you can, for prolonged periods of time.
    - stdbrouw 12y ago

freehunter 12y ago

I recently took a CEFR test in my second language, and the administrator of the test commented that I probably would be one level higher if I had a stronger vocabulary. She noticed that there were questions that I would have gotten right if I understood the words, but as it was I just had to guess. When I'm reading books in my second language, there are sometimes sentences I need to either look up or skip entirely because I don't know one or more of the words being used. So, while you're right that flashcards won't teach you grammar, vocabulary is incredibly important to move beyond any basic level. I can greet someone or buy a meal at McDonald's with a phrase book. I can't read a novel without vocabulary.