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There's two major parts to learning a language: recognition and production. SRS can be quite good as a tool to aid in recognition, but I've found it to be lousy

by bane 11y ago

There's two major parts to learning a language: recognition and production. SRS can be quite good as a tool to aid in recognition, but I've found it to be lousy for production. This is a classic problem in language pedagogy. Some old comment of mine from almost a year ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8510165 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8510165 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8251569 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8251569 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8253351 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8253351 I think "completing the circuit" is among the most important aspect of educational theory. Recognize and produce needs to happen in any subject, and a good student recognizes that SRS is but one tool for recognition, but others are needed to complete that, and production is an entirely different side of the coin.

sxyuan 11y ago
> Where my bright students might have been used to high Bs and low As on tests, they were now breaking my scales. You could see it in the multiple choice, but it was most obvious in their writing: they were skillfully working in terminology at an unprecedented rate, and making way more attempts to use new vocabulary—attempts that were, for the most part, successful. > Given the seemingly objective nature of Anki it might seem counterintuitive that the benefits would be more obvious in writing than in multiple choice, but it actually makes sense when I consider that even without SRS these students probably would have known the terms and the vocab well enough to get multiple choice questions right, but might have lacked the confidence to use them on their own initiative. Anki gave them that extra confidence. Not that you're wrong, but the author also points out here that SRS can help production by reinforcing the student's knowledge and boosting their confidence in what they've learned when it comes to using it.

by bane 11y ago

sxyuan 11y ago

> Where my bright students might have been used to high Bs and low As on tests, they were now breaking my scales. You could see it in the multiple choice, but it was most obvious in their writing: they were skillfully working in terminology at an unprecedented rate, and making way more attempts to use new vocabulary—attempts that were, for the most part, successful. > Given the seemingly objective nature of Anki it might seem counterintuitive that the benefits would be more obvious in writing than in multiple choice, but it actually makes sense when I consider that even without SRS these students probably would have known the terms and the vocab well enough to get multiple choice questions right, but might have lacked the confidence to use them on their own initiative. Anki gave them that extra confidence. Not that you're wrong, but the author also points out here that SRS can help production by reinforcing the student's knowledge and boosting their confidence in what they've learned when it comes to using it.