From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Sun Jun 25 22:44:24 2006 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-list); Sun, 25 Jun 2006 22:44:25 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.62) (envelope-from ) id 1FujtF-0003aV-Uh for lojban-list-real@lojban.org; Sun, 25 Jun 2006 22:44:06 -0700 Received: from nz-out-0102.google.com ([64.233.162.207]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.62) (envelope-from ) id 1FujtD-0003aN-0r for lojban-list@lojban.org; Sun, 25 Jun 2006 22:44:05 -0700 Received: by nz-out-0102.google.com with SMTP id q3so1344420nzb for ; Sun, 25 Jun 2006 22:44:01 -0700 (PDT) DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=beta; d=gmail.com; h=received:message-id:date:from:user-agent:x-accept-language:mime-version:to:subject:references:in-reply-to:content-type:content-transfer-encoding; b=qY/HozZs/WJuDn6dNx3UwGRIfgrXeKVF04mGGeh4QZDEb7Om+aX2i2rDh5dXDD64BzasgmWgfO2E4O5IM77YZAM1UkKqZhvJp5q2xcl/w0i+mxEg+tJMnBuSeLgK41DgELJxyLRdelFuz26LDGRBUHJtVL1Fjq9rZLfflgcaglA= Received: by 10.37.22.3 with SMTP id z3mr6073240nzi; Sun, 25 Jun 2006 22:44:01 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ?192.168.0.102? ( [203.191.164.14]) by mx.gmail.com with ESMTP id 38sm8225659nzk.2006.06.25.22.43.59; Sun, 25 Jun 2006 22:44:01 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <449F7383.1070209@gmail.com> Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2006 15:41:23 +1000 From: Paul Vigo User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.7 (Windows/20050923) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: lojban-list@lojban.org Subject: [lojban] Re: flashcards? References: <737b61f30606202030p74723a2dtbfbeb20fb5904002@mail.gmail.com> <737b61f30606202131m29311ab9md30f37ca320ae52c@mail.gmail.com> <737b61f30606211550i24387f0fv7dfca878dfd8e630@mail.gmail.com> <96B70796-7396-494B-B1F6-0ED1E22E3A09@umich.edu> <737b61f30606221159t50b40646r5314bdd97f933ec@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <737b61f30606221159t50b40646r5314bdd97f933ec@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Spam-Score: -2.5 (--) X-archive-position: 11827 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: paulvigo@gmail.com Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-list@lojban.org X-list: lojban-list Chris Capel wrote: > > That's debatable. As I said earlier, a good flashcard program will > earn you only about 15% additional retention on top of the 80% > retention you have for new words introduced amidst a full context. > (I.e. only about 1 of every 200-400 words is unfamiliar. Retention > probably starts dropping when there are more unfamiliar words than > that.) And it does take a lot of time to use. Is the 15% you gain more > valuable than more time doing additional reading? Or grammar > exercises? Or only reviewing trouble words? Or something else? This is the whole point, if you are only getting 15% retention then you have overcommitted with your flashcard program. You should only be entering words you have encountered or wish to learn _right_now_ which means that after a couple of drills they'll get dropped into the long term repeat pile. Anything in your flashcard system should be something you are trying to learn outside of the system. If you are truly picking it up from external context it will disappear from that system soon enough. Maybe a month down the track when you see it pop up again and REALLY look at it you might decide you don't know it as well as you would like to think you do - do you really know the full place structure of that gismu or do you just use the most obvious places and forget about the rest. The benefit of systems like this (contrary to the advertising of supermemo and the like) is not that you could use them in isolation, which is a rediculous way to try and learn anything, but that they offer a different focus. Many beginners with these systems (and some old hands) make the mistake of overcommitting cards to the system in the hope that they'll learn them through endlessly drilling the cards. This is not a good way to learn. Flashcard systems should be viewed more like an informal dynamic quiz that you set yourself. You quickly find out how well you know things you have been trying to learn and what needs more work. This is something which happens naturally as well, but it's hard to know if you're simply avoiding or just not encountering them - for some reason i can never remember gismu catra, because i just don't think about killing in the course of a standard day, but i notice this because i get drilled on it. > No doubt, if you want to learn a big list of words, and you don't want > to read a text that introduces them naturally and in context, a flash > card method is great. But if you need to be reading that text anyway, > then is the flash card a waste of time? Reading text works a charm, and the only things that should be in your flashcard system are the words you keep encountering that you have to look up. A big list of words in your flashcard system (unless they are mostly words you have committed previously and know well) is a really bad way of learning. Never go above about 20 new words at a time, and wait till most of them have disappeared before committing many more. When reading the larger the number of words you don't know or are unfamiliar with, the more likely you are to lose comprehension. I used to teach remedial english (particularly to dyslexics) and learned a few things about language acquisition. When doing comprehension and reading excercises and someone misreads a word, often the problem is residual confusion from a previous unfamiliar word in the sentence (or previous sentence). Vocabulary confusion seems to compound with the number of novel words encountered, and retention of novel words is reduced in proportion to this confusion. The brain sticks to things it doesn't know, waiting for the clarity of understanding so that it can imprint new knowledge - when several unknowns pop up at once this process loses clarity and learning is reduced. It is becuase of this property of learning that overcommitting with a flashcard program is counterproductive, but it is also because of this property that flashcards make a useful contribution to context based language learning. The familiarity with vocab they provide reduces reduces the confusion one encounters due to the use of novel vocab and allows reading retention to be more effective. With lojban I think this may be particularly useful as many of the gismu are complex (place structure variations can make a familiar seeming word suddenly novel again) and many look pretty much the same (cvccv / ccvcv) so are easy to confuse with other gismu when unfamiliar. Anyway I've probably ranted too much about this subject. It's starting to feel off topic. pavig To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to lojban-list-request@lojban.org with the subject unsubscribe, or go to http://www.lojban.org/lsg2/, or if you're really stuck, send mail to secretary@lojban.org for help.