Language Learning

I read about Dr. Arguelles’ shadowing method long ago on the forums at howtolearnanylanguage.com, but I recently “rediscovered” the method when Geoff linked to Dr. Arguelles’ relatively new site.

Here’s a description of shadowing from Dr. Arguelles’ language study page:

This video [on the page linked above] demonstrates the proper form for using my technique of shadowing or listening to and simultaneously echoing a recording of a foreign language.

In order to shadow most effectively, it is important to observe three points:

1. Walk outdoors as swiftly as possible.
2. Maintain perfectly upright posture.
3. Articulate thoroughly in a loud, clear voice.

I’ve tried doing this with a few Assimil French lessons, and I was surprised by what I found. I did it with lessons I did quite some time ago, lessons which I felt I knew quite well. Simply reading the lessons out loud without shadowing, it felt easy. However, when I tried shadowing them, I discovered that it was far more difficult. I’d practically trip over my own tongue trying to keep up with the native speakers, struggling to say things that I thought I could say quite well.

I like the idea behind shadowing, which, if I understand Dr. Arguelles correctly, works a bit like learning to sing a song. As you listen to the audio and echo it, as long as you’re not tone deaf, you’ll automatically correct your pronunciation to match your speech with what you’re hearing. I’m well acquainted with this idea when it comes to music, as when I sing along with a song in which the singer has an accent, I copy that accent without really meaning to. Trying to force myself to sing without their accent actually feels rather weird, and I can’t do it for very long.

I’m going to keep trying the technique and see if it helps me any. Have you tried shadowing before, and if so, what were your experiences with it?

If you’re interested in the method, you might want to also check out a couple of threads at howtolearnanylanguage.com, in which Dr. Arguelles answers many questions about the method:

• How does shadowing help improve fluency?
• The original thread with the shadowing demonstration video, along with questions and answers

I’m been thinking about exposure to language versus studying language, and I’m curious as to how you all balance it out. In reflecting, I realize that I’ve a tendency to use the vast majority of my language time on studying the language in some way or another, with little time spent on simple exposure.

An example of this is that I’ve spent relatively little time in just listening to German, with no further agenda. I’ve rarely tuned in to German radio stations or listened to podcasts without the intent to make it into a lesson or study session of some sort. If I have the transcript available, as is the case with podcasts from Deutsche Welle, I’ll print it out and read it as I listen, marking words and structures I don’t recognize. If I don’t have such a transcript, I’ll listen with pen and paper in hand, ready to jot down unknown words.

I’ve done the same thing with written material. I’ve never really just read German news articles, I’ve made them into assignments: usually, I’d go through the article, underlining words I don’t know, with a sheet of paper at my side (or a document open on my computer) to put the definitions and notes on.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with doing this. It’s obviously beneficial to “work” with articles or other materials in your target language. But I think I’ve gone way too far with it, and need to incorporate more simple exposure - just reading and listening to the languages I want to learn, without placing any burden on myself to go further with the activity.

How do you all balance this out? Do you do a lot of listening and reading without actually “studying” the material? No vocabulary lists, no notes? If you do, how beneficial have you found it?

I received an newsletter today from the university I attend, and they’re (finally!) offering a German course. It’s offered this fall, and I’ve gone ahead and signed up for it. It’s just an “elementary” German course, so I’m not really sure how much I’ll learn, but I’m still looking forward to it. At least it’ll put me in a position where I have to use the language some; while corresponding with people online in German is quite helpful (not to mention enjoyable), it’s not quite the same as talking directly to someone, face to face.

I just hope the class moves fairly quickly. If it’s really slow, I may go mad. 15 weeks of reciting basic verb conjugations does not sound fun.

I’ve not updated this blog for a while now, but I suppose I at least had good reason: it was the end of the semester at school, and for a while, I didn’t have time to study any new language material, let alone update the blog. The semester is now over and I’m getting back into the language groove, and so new posts should be forthcoming again.

Due to my “pause” on language learning, I haven’t made much progress with French Assimil, and I’ve certainly not accomplished the recommended one lesson per day; I’m now closing in on lesson 70 of the program. Despite my break, though, I’m not having any trouble on understanding the lessons in the second wave, so I suppose the break didn’t hurt me much. I did at least pick up the book every few days and read over a few lessons; I also listened to some lessons, but never actually sat down and studied any of it.

For German, I’ve been reading different things and nabbing vocabulary, along with entering vocabulary from Using German Vocabulary. There’s not much to say about that, other than that I’ve definitely noticed that as I now have German-English and English-German cards, my retention of the words is far better than it was when all I used was German-English. Right after the end of the break, I also requested a German language partner via eTandem, a language exchange site I’ve used in the past. If you’ve never done a language exchange, do check it out; it’s a great way to work on your language(s), as well as make some new friends.

I’ve written in the past about my attempt at using word lists, and if you’ve kept up with those posts, after reading this one, you’ll probably think I suffer from split personality syndrome. But, I can at least say I’m being honest here.

I’ve gone back to Using German Vocabulary and am adding words - lots of them - to Anki. No sentences; indeed, I’ve added no extra context unless it was needed with a particularly ambiguous word. The result? It’s working extremely well. I’ve added nearly the whole first chapter, which, while I can’t give an exact number, probably hovers around a total of 500-600 words. The vast majority of them are sticking in my memory quite well. Some words, particularly those that have a few siblings which are similar in form and nearly identical in meaning, have given me some headaches (Bettbezug, Bettzeug, I’m looking at you!). Overall, though, most of the words I’ve been able to memorize after a few appearances in Anki.

So, what’s different? I said before that I kept forgetting word pairs that I added to Anki, right?

Well, the difference is, I did something I should have been doing from the start: I enabled Recognition and Production cards in Anki. Previously, with all of the material I added to Anki, I was doing Recognition only - see the foreign word, think of the (often rough) equivalent in English. I’m not sure where I got the idea of leaving out production cards - I think it might have been All Japanese All The Time (but don’t quote me on that).

I’ve found this time around though, that the production stage is where you really get to prove your mettle. It’s far easier to look at a foreign word and say “yeah, I understand that perfectly!” than it is to be given a word in your native tongue and to produce a foreign equivalent.

But Why?

I used to think that learning vocabulary in context was the way to go - that is, the only way to go. I still view it in a good light, and it still makes up a large part of my language learning regimen. However, as I’ve used Using German Vocabulary, even just adding all of the words from the first chapter - out of 20! - I’ve realized just how many words in English I take for granted. You can see what I mean by skimming through the English-to-Whatever-Language-You’re-Learning section of your dictionary. I never realized how many English words I knew until I looked at how many German equivalents I needed to learn to have a decent command of the language. And by decent, I mean knowing simple words like broom and kitchen sink, words which I didn’t know until I started going through the vocabulary book.

It’s words like those that lead me to be hesitant to vouching solely for contextual vocabulary learning. I’ve read a lot of articles in German, but unless I’m reading about housecleaning or home renovation, how often am I going to see der Besen or das Spülbecken? Probably not that often at all. And yet these are words that we all pretty much take for granted - every native speaker of English knows broom and kitchen sink.

So, for me, the reason to go through the (at times boring, I’ll admit!) process of adding huge numbers of word pairs to Anki is simple efficiency. I can learn more words in an hour with this method than I’d learn in three or more hours with reading articles or books. Taking the “brute force” approach lets me cover a lot of different ground, covering all sorts of everyday words that I need to know. With most of them, with a few key words added, I can make sure I don’t get things confused due to a lack of context. For example, I recently added die Umgehungsstraße - bypass to Anki. While the Recognition portion would be easy, simply seeing bypass could be troublesome - what kind of bypass? Are we talking about heart surgery here? By simply changing it to bypass (think cars!), I avoid any stupid word confusion.

Furthermore, by using large thematic lists from a book, I avoid the issue I mentioned above: if you rely solely on articles and other reading for vocabulary, if the word doesn’t show up in something you read, you don’t know it. Period.

While I’m not going to set anything in stone at this point, if my luck with this process using the above-mentioned book continues, I may make “word hoarding” one of the first steps in approaching a new language. Inadequate vocabulary has been my number one problem with German, and I think a systematic approach like this may be the solution to said problem.

I’m now up to lesson 56 in Assimil’s French with Ease, and, having done about a week’s worth of the “active wave”, I wanted to comment on it.

As I’ve mentioned before, Assimil’s approach consists of a passive wave and an active wave. The passive wave consists of listening to the dialogue, reading over the transcripts and the translations, as well as the notes. The active wave, which starts when you reach lesson 50 in the passive wave, has you go back to lesson 1 and translate from English to French. Before doing so you’re supposed to listen to the lesson.

I’ve had no trouble at all in doing these, but I must say - I think the second wave needs to consist of more than just translating from English to French, and doing a few exercises like filling in the genders of nouns or putting the right ending on adjectives. For an “active wave”, it seems too cursory, a mere add-on to the passive wave rather than a stand-alone part of the course.

That’s not to say that Assimil is bad; on the contrary, I still love the course, and intend to keep using it as my primary material for French. However, I think I may end up altering their prescribed approach rather drastically. I may add all of the sentences to Anki to strengthen my vocabulary, as well as write them all out by hand (which I’m finding helps me remember things much easier). I may also start working through The Ultimate French Review and Practice, a book I received recently. In short, now that I’m in the “active phase” of Assimil, I think I need to dig into things a little more; my passive understanding of the French lessons I’ve done is excellent, but my production skills are more-or-less nonexistent, and I’m not sure Assimil’s official “active phase” approach is going to change that much.

Has anyone worked through an Assimil course exactly as they recommend? If you have, could you comment on the end results?

There’s a company called Champs-Elysées, which makes four different audio magazines for language learners: Champs-Elysées, Puerta del Sol, Acquerello italiano, and Schau ins Land. Each issue of the audio magazines comes with a CD or cassette tape (around an hour long), along with a small magazine. In the magazine, there is a complete transcript of the audio on the left page, with vocabulary words in bold; on the right page are the vocabulary words and definitions. Throughout the text there are endnote numbers, which refer to the back of the magazine, where lots of cultural / news information is given in English.

Sounds great, doesn’t it? They are pretty nice, I’ll admit. I had a subscription to Schau ins Land at one point (which, at the time, amounted to 5 issues per year), and quite enjoyed them.

The problem, however, is the price. For 6 issues of Schau ins Land, you’ll be paying a hefty $129. If you want the study supplements for each issue, add on another $30. Assuming you don’t want the latter, you’re still paying $129 for 6 hours of audio, along with the transcripts, the select translations, and the cultural information in the back. Considering the aim of the magazines - to help learners improve their German - while the cultural stuff in the back can be interesting, it doesn’t really add much language learning value to the package. So, one could argue that, at least in regards to language learning, you’re paying $129 for 6 hours of audio, transcripts, and translations of the trickier words.

This may have been a decent deal years ago, but in my opinion, it’s rather steep now, considering how many free, high-quality resources are online. I’ve mentioned it before, but I’d argue that Deutsche Welle’s offerings trump Schau ins Land, and Deutsche Welle is all free. They have four podcasts which all have studio-quality audio (they are, after all, made in a studio ), complete with transcripts and, in the case of one, vocabulary lists:

• Top Thema mit Vokabeln (main page; archive) - This is the one that has vocabulary lists for each article (as anyone could probably guess from the name of it ). Note: the definitions are given in German.
• Sprachbar (main page; archive)
• Alltagsdeutsch (main page; archive)
• Stichwort (main page; archive)

The Top Thema mit Vokabeln podcasts usually come out a couple times a week; they’re 2-3 minutes long each, and the archive for them goes back to April 2004. With some very rough math - an average 2.5 minutes per episode, with episodes coming out twice a week - it comes out to about 21 hours of audio. I can’t give the rough amount of time that the others total up to, as the archive pages for them are done alphabetically instead of based on date. Sprachbar and Stichwort episodes all hover around 4 minutes each; Alltagsdeutsch comes in at around 15 minutes apiece. Suffice to say, add it all up, and there is a lot of material here.

It’s really hard for me to recommend Schau ins Land to anyone when such a comparison is done. To be fair, I do think that the translations in Schau ins Land are a little better than provided with Top Thema, because they’re in English, and generally speaking, Schau ins Land provides a higher number of word translations per paragraph of text. But, I’m no stranger to looking up words in a dictionary, just as anyone else who’s understanding of German is good enough to use Schau ins Land. So for me, I suppose it comes down to: is having the transcript in a pretty little magazine with copious endnotes in the back worth $129 per year for 6 episodes?

I’m afraid I’ll have to say Nein, danke to that.

I’ve recently throttled back on studying Russian, largely because I feel that I just don’t have enough time to continue enlarging my German vocabulary, learn the basics of French with my Assimil course, and learn the basics of Russian. I’ve not ran into any troubles in continuing with German and starting with French, probably because when I started French, I was quite familiar with most, if not all, of the grammar of German, and had a decent sized vocabulary. My German learning now consists of just learning more (and more) vocabulary; there aren’t any new concepts being added.

Trying to learn the basics of two drastically different languages has proven a bit more difficult. For French, I’ve been usually spending 30-45 minutes a day, doing one Assimil lesson a day. I don’t really have enough time in the day to spend a similar amount of time on Russian as well, and doing anything less, I feel like I’m making little to no progress. There’s so much to cover when starting a new language, and with the Russian declension system, it seems even worse. With the limited amount of time I’ve been able to give it, I feel as if I’ve done little more than learn enough to get things mixed up.

I think my attack plan at this point is going to be to finish the Assimil course, which, if reports from folks online are trustworthy, will give me a very good base in French on which to build. Perhaps at that point I’ll be able to continue with German and French, and start over with Russian. I’m going to continue peeking at my Russian texts, but I’m not going to try and set any real goals for myself with it right now, because I think I’d just be setting myself up for failure.

In short, I believe that, in jumping in with both French and Russian, I bit off more than I could chew.

As an aside (I’ll blog more about this soon), I’m nearing lesson 50 in the Assimil course, at which point I’ll start the second, or “active” wave. I’m looking forward to seeing how my understanding of the language progresses from that point on; thus far I’ve had a blast using the course, and I’m at least passively understanding everything. Most importantly, it’s been fairly painless work - the Assimil course is fun, which is not something I can say of cramming grammar tables.

I wanted to add a little bit more to my previous post about words in context vs. word lists. I said in my last post that going through and adding word lists to your SRS application, like Anki, could be effective, if only you could bring yourself to do it. At this point, however, I’m thinking words without context are perhaps more trouble than they’re worth, even if you can bring yourself to adding them to your SRS program.

Before I became dreadfully bored with the process, I had added 40 or 50 German words from Using German Vocabulary to my Anki deck. They’ve been in my deck for a few weeks now, and I’ve noticed a rather blatant trend: I keep outright forgetting these words, or getting them completely wrong, whereas with words that are in context, I rarely forget them completely, and only very occasionally will I make a mistake in remembering them. Some of the words that I’ve added without context, I’ve forgotten completely 3 or 4 times.

Die Kommode is one example of one of the words I’ve “lost” repeatedly. It means “chest of drawers”, something rather simple, but everytime die Kommode would pop up in Anki, I’d blank on it, or think of something similar - a coatrack, a closet, etc.

A couple of days ago I added some context to the card, changing it to die Schubladen der Kommode aufziehen (essentially “to open the drawers of the chest [of drawers]“), and the word seems to be sticking well now. It hasn’t been long enough to see if the context makes a long-term change, but I expect it will.

So, I have to reiterate something that I’ve seen elsewhere many times: while it may take a bit more time to find example sentences / phrases for the words you’re trying to learn, they really do seem to make a difference.

I wrote previously about word lists vs. words in context, and said that I thought for a lot of words, context just wasn’t needed much. This is especially true of concrete nouns. A bakery is a bakery, whether you say “bakery” or “die Bäckerei,” a library is a library, whether you say “library” or “die Bibliothek.”

But…

One aspect I didn’t really think about when I was writing that post was the issue of enjoyment during study. I checked out Using German Vocabulary, which consists almost entirely of thematic word lists, with some exercises / authentic German material after each unit, from the university library. I had the intent of systematically adding all of the words in it to my SRS application, Anki. The book has a huge number of everyday words, and so I figured learning all of them would be a good thing.

Except… I’m not doing it. The book has sat on the shelf for a while now, while I’ve continued yanking whole sentences from news articles and from my monolingual German dictionary. Why? Mostly because sitting and typing in word after word into Anki isn’t a great deal of fun, whereas reading articles and slowly increasing my understanding via learning new words, is.

Maybe a dual approach is needed - use the word lists in the book as a guide as to what to learn, but look up sentences for each word via Google or my dictionary. I’m hesitant to just toss out the book (or return it to the library, more specifically), because I’ve found that if I just read news articles and what not, I end up with large holes in my vocabulary, particularly words for everyday things. I’ve not read many articles which have dealt with bookshelves, shelves, sets of shelves, etc., which are all things I recently learned the German for, via the above-mentioned book.

Certainly, though, I don’t think just cramming word lists into Anki isn’t going to work for me, at least not as a long term learning practice. It’s effective - I could learn a lot of words in a short amount of time - but only if I can bring myself to do it, which I’ve failed at. Live and learn.

I read a post from Geoff today, The Language Habit, and I thought his point was worth repeating:

… [T]here is one old and earthshaking secret too often forgotten about all aspects of our lives: If you work at doing something as well as you can and consistently, you are on the way to excellence. So whatever your method or technique for learning language these days, stick to it. If it fits with what you’re trying to achieve, you’ll soon be on your way.

This is great advice. I’ve found that with language learning, often, what is lacking is not the “perfect” method, but simply enough time invested. With regular study, even if it’s 10 or 15 minutes, you can see improvement in your understanding. I’ve been extremely busy with college classwork, and so my language learning time has been pretty slim. However, I’ve been able to squeeze in 10-15 minutes a day for both French and Russian; German, as my primary language target, usually gets half an hour to an hour. While I certainly won’t win any language learning races by studying an hour and a half a day, luckily, I’m not in a race; I just want to continue learning, which I’ve been doing successfully. A drop here and there will eventually fill a glass, then a bath tub, and then an ocean. I suppose language learning is similar.

So, as Geoff said: stick to it. Even if it may feel like you’re not making much progress, you probably are. Just keep adding drops to the container.

I was rereading through the introduction to New French with Ease earlier this evening, and came across this gem of a quote from Rivarol:

Grammar is the art of lifting the difficulties out of a language; the lever must not be heavier than the burden.

Something to definitely keep in mind when studying a language; I know from experience how easy it is to get bogged down in the grammar, losing sight of what you’re really after: understanding, and the ability to communicate. Grammar is needed, but it’s a piece of the pie, not the whole thing.

By the way, if you’re curious, here’s the original French quote:

La grammaire est l’art de lever les difficultés d’une langue; mais il ne faut pas que le levier soit plus lourd que le fardeau.

I forgot to write a quick post on this at the time of it happening, so here’s that post a bit late:

Damien, the maker of Anki, has put out a number of updates over the past weeks. I wrote back in November of ‘07 that I had abandoned SuperMemo for Anki, due to its simplicity and cleanness of design (unlike the monumentally cluttered SuperMemo).

One of the updates that Damien released fairly recently added something that I was actually missing from SuperMemo: the ability to change the color of text in the cards. You could do this before for a whole side of a card, like making an entire sentence green or blue, but you couldn’t select individual words or other parts of the card and change their color. I prefer to emphasize what I’m learning in a sentence with a color rather than with bold or underlining; no real reason, just a preference I have.

Now I can do that.

If you’ve not checked out Anki yet, do so - it’s a great app. And, if you end up liking it, consider donating to the developer - he’s put a lot of time into the app, as well as helping users in the support forum. If you want to donate, there are PayPal buttons on the main Anki page as well as the download page.

A little over a week ago, I went into the university library to pick up the copy of Using German Vocabulary that was waiting for me. As I work at the library as a reference assistant, the lady at the counter knows me. Seeing what book I was checking out, she asked: “Oh, do you speak German?”

Umm. Good question. One which, alas, I’m not really sure how to answer. I paused briefly, and then said, “Well, yeah, some - but.. well.. yeah.”

German is the foreign language I’ve been learning the longest, and I’d be lying if I said I haven’t been learning it in a from-here-to-there way - quite haphazard. And so when someone asks me, “Oh, do you speak German?”, the best I can say is “Yes, some” - which is truthful, but it certainly sounds rather lackluster, considering how many years I’ve been at it! I have an extremely difficult time gauging where exactly on the spectrum of “knowing German” I’m currently at. How far along do you have to be to be “allowed” to simply answer “Yes!” to “Do you speak [X]?”

Does anyone else have trouble with this, or am I just a peculiar one?

In poking around at the How to Learn Any Language forums, I’ve come across many good discussions on vocabulary acquisition. One of the things that the discussions usually revolve around is whether one should avoid using word lists, relying solely on items in context. For a long time, I had stuck strictly to context items, basing my usage of SuperMemo and Anki on the strategies given at antimoon.com. However, based on one of the forum member’s (Iversen) posts, I’ve been giving word-to-word cards in Anki a try, and they’re working well, depending on the type of word.

Iversen views wordlists (or simply learning L1-to-L2 and vice versa translations without context) as a stepping stone, not the end of the road. He figures (rightly, I think) that by exposing himself to the translations of words, when he encounters the words in context, he’ll either A) understand it correctly or B) have something to work with in regards to figuring out what the word does mean, if the translation he learned doesn’t work.

Furthermore, while I see the value in learning words in context, particularly verbs, with many words, the context just isn’t needed, because the usage in L2 corresponds so closely to the usage of its translation in L1. For example, do I really need context to understand der Hund (dog), die Stadt (city), der Korb (basket)? Certainly, by simply learning that der Korb means basket, I won’t be learning any idioms, but I wouldn’t be doing that anyway, even if I had a sentence with Korb in context. To learn the idiom I’d have to see it in context or look it up in a dictionary, and then add that to my SRS program.

I’m coming to see that it’s not really a matter of “words in context vs. wordlists.” Instead, I see them both as things which have their purposes along the way toward proficiency in a language. For many words, context is vital, and trying to learn the words without it is a waste of one’s time. An easy way to see this is to pull up the English-German translation of “to go.” Here’s the page for the translation at Reverso. For the vast majority of those words, you really need some context to figure out what exactly is going on.

On the other hand, for many words, context isn’t really needed. I think by obsessing over “words in context only!“, people have made it sound as if languages have no correspondences whatsoever, that if you learn the word der Hund, you better learn how it’s used. To that, I say: unless I’m missing something, dogs in German-speaking areas behave essentially like dogs everywhere else in the world. And, again, learning anything about a word in your target language, even if its a simplified idea about it which will be refined through reading and use, is better than learning nothing at all. (As can probably be gleaned from that last remark, I don’t go for the idea that making mistakes in your target language is devastating; if that were the case, no one would ever learn any foreign language decently - let alone their native tongue.)

I wanted to post and let those of you who are subscribed (a surprising number, considering my recent silence!) that things around here should be returning to normal. For those that don’t read my other blog, System 13, I’ve recently been busy studying for final exams and writing a term paper for one of my classes. The semester is now over, so I’ll have more time to do language stuff and post here.

I’ve been using Anki diligently, and am still enjoying the program far more than I ever enjoyed SuperMemo. However, I think I need to rethink my usage of it. I’ve mostly been putting in sentence items, based on the ideas presented at antimoon.com and All Japanese All The Time. However, I just came across this page on learning at the Anki website, which makes a fine case for more active recall items, rather than passive stuff. While I don’t have 10,000 items in Anki (AJATT puts forth the “10,000 sentences method”), I think I’ve made enough sentence items in SuperMemo and now Anki to see that they’re not making my production skills advance very much. When I abandoned SuperMemo I had about 600 items; I have about 300 in Anki. In both pieces of software, I was (or am) up to date on all of my reviews - in other words, I should “know” the words or whatever is of interest in each card. Did I in SuperMemo? Do I in Anki? No. I can understand the material, which is better than nothing, but I don’t think I could come close to producing even half of it if I needed to.

I’ve finally given up on SuperMemo, the beefed up flashcard program I’ve been using for vocabulary acquisition. After having used it for a few months, I had become accustomed to its idiosyncrasies, if not having fallen in love with them. However, I was poking around in the forums at How To Learn Any Language, and came across a thread about SuperMemo alternatives. In it, there was a link to Anki - and there, I found true love (at least in regards to a piece of spaced repetition software).

Anki does everything that I used in SuperMemo. What it doesn’t do is cause me to pull out what little hair I have. Whereas SuperMemo was bloated beyond belief, with menus, sub-menus, and sub-sub-menus (I’m serious), Anki is pure simplicity. You add cards; you repeat them, grading how you did on remembering the answers; and Anki does the rest. There’s some basic customization available in the cards, such as bold, italics, and underlining, but there aren’t complex template registries; there are no branches; there are no leeches; in short, most of the “extra” stuff that’s in SuperMemo isn’t in Anki, and the program is better because of it.

Anki also has a quite useful feature that SuperMemo doesn’t have: you can sync up your data with an online version of the program. This will solve a problem I’ve had for a while now: how do I handle vocabulary that I want to put into SuperMemo when I can’t access SuperMemo? Between classes at the university, I often read foreign language articles. When I see vocabulary that I don’t know, I typically want to record it and learn it. However, not being able to access SuperMemo from home, I’ve been, up until now, saving the sentences and vocabulary into a Google Docs file, and then transferring them into SuperMemo at home. In essence, I’ve been doubling my work. Being able to add stuff into the online version and have it all sync up at home solves this problem wonderfully. By the way, even the online aspect of the program is free; it isn’t subscription based or anything like that.

My experiences with SuperMemo (and now Anki) highlight an important aspect of language learning: the tools you use. If you don’t like the tools you’re using, your language learning will suffer from it, guaranteed. I know that I’ve slacked on entering vocabulary lately, specifically because I’ve grown to dislike the clunky SuperMemo so much.

A new age has arrived. The age of Anki. Bye, SuperMemo. I won’t miss you.

I’ve not posted about how my language learning is going for a while now, so here’s the obligatory update.

My German is going extremely well. It’s mostly just an activity of vocabulary acquisition at this point. I’m familiar with all of the grammar, and can read most things with a bit of help from a dictionary. I’m still working on my listening comprehension, by regularly listening to German podcasts and audiobooks. I’m slowly chipping away at the German version of Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone, Harry Potter und der Stein der Weisen.

I’ve shuffled my learning plan around some in regards to Russian. I was initially just working with the texts I have, Russian for Beginners (Duff) and New Penguin Russian Course (Brown). While I was making so-so progress with them, I felt like I wasn’t really learning how to say anything. So, I’ve added in a final element, which comes with a huge amount of audio: the Princeton Russian course. I posted about this previously, and sadly, it appears Princeton has taken the course material down. However, I downloaded it all when it was available. I’m listening to one dialogue a day, repeatedly, until I understand it in full. I’ve already found that I was overpronouncing a lot of things, in particular, the y soft sound on е, ё, etc. Despite my efforts, I’m still finding that my progress with Russian is much, much slower than my progress was when I started learning German. However, I think from listening to the dialogues regularly from the Princeton course, I’m starting to get a better feel for the language.

Finally, I’ve decided to throw another language onto my list: French. I’m using the Assimil course, New French with Ease, and am loving every minute of it. For those not familiar with Assimil, the setup of the course is thus:

You have the audio portion, and the book. The audio is all in the target language. In the book, you have a transcript of each lesson on one side of the page, and the translation on the opposite page. There are also grammar and vocabulary notes for each lesson, but these are generally kept relatively short. You go at the material in two waves: the first passive, the second active. You do the first 50 or so lessons passively, simply listening and repeateding the audio, and making sure you understand all of it. Once you’ve reached lesson 50 or thereabouts, you go back to the beginning of the book, and go through the lessons “actively”, doing the exercises and translating from English to French. While doing this, you obviously continue on with the passive phase until you reach the end of the course. I’m about 10 lessons into the course now, and I really like it. I wish I’d started learning German with the Assimil course. I’d nab the Russian course, but they don’t offer a new version, at least not with English as the base version. I guess there’s not much market right now for English-speaking people wanting to learn Russian.

I’ve been studying German for 4 years or so now, and since I began, I’ve been pounding away with alt-code keys. Alt+0220 for Ü, alt+0246 for ö, etc. I just discovered something which will save me quite a bit of time: DeKey.

It’s a custom German keymap for Windows Vista or Windows XP, which allows you to easily type letters commonly used in German, e.g.:

ü, ö, ä, ß, «, », etc.

Instead of using the alt-codes, all you have to do is hold down the Alt key and hit the corresponding letter, so:

R-alt + u = ü
R-alt + a = ä
R-alt + shift + o = Ö

You can download the installer here; instructions on how to enable the keyboard are included in the zip file.

I recently started slowly reading through the first Harry Potter book in German. Last night, I ran into this sentence:

Mr. Dursley summte vor sich hin und suchte sich für die Arbeit seine langweiligste Krawatte aus, und Mrs. Dursley schwatzte munter vor sich hin, während sie mit dem schreienden Dudley rangelte und ihn in seinen Hochstuhl zwängte.

When I first read the sentence, I wasn’t sure what the verbs hinsummen and hinschwatzen meant. I knew what summen and schwatzen both meant, but I wasn’t sure what the prefix hin- transformed them to.  I looked around in my dictionaries, but saw nothing of any use.

I then decided to ask a native German speaker, and posted the sentence, along with my questions about it, to a German language forum I frequent. Within half an hour, I had my answer: the verbs aren’t hinsummen and hinschwatzen. Instead, the hin in both parts of the sentence belongs with the phrase vor sich hin, which means something like “to one’s self” or “by myself.”

The point, then? Often, it’s easier and quicker to simply ask a native about something than it is to dig through dictionaries, grammars, and notes. Certainly, I’m not saying you should constantly badger your native speaking friends with questions, but they are a wonderful help in learning a language. They often instinctively know how something should be said, even if they’re not sure of the grammatical reasoning behind it. They can also quickly dissect a sentence for you, whereas if you were doing it by yourself, you could spend quite a while figuring out which “bits” of the sentence go together, like in my example above.

I was wondering about something: why have I never seen the equivalent of a German Merriam Webster online?

For English, many commercial or professionally made dictionaries provide a free online version to anyone who wants to use it. The one that quickly jumps to my mind is the Merriam Webster online dictionary. For German, I’ve yet to see one - at least for native German speakers. Off the top of my head, the only German<->English dictionary that I can think of that is professionally created, available for free online, is PONS. However, there is no Langenscheidt Online, no Duden Online.
All of the other German<->English dictionaries that are online are user-created, dict.cc and dict.leo.org being the two major ones that I know of.

Are there dictionaries online for German speakers provided by German dictionary companies, or is the field a mere void? If so, I find that pretty odd.

I just noticed that I have a new incoming link to this blog, coming from Frodo Lives!. Frodo Lives! appears to be a very new language learning blog (the first post is from the 28th of July!) It looks like it’s going to be a nice language blog, so do check it out. If for no other reason, the fellow deserves a visit solely for using such a wonderful title. Anyone who is a Tolkien lover is okay in my book.

As for myself, no, I’ve not fallen off the planet. I’m still studying my languages, but I’ve just had not much to really say about that study these past few days. Most of my studying has been relatively uneventful (but fulfilling) vocabulary grunt work. I learned the genitive endings for singular nouns in Russian a day or two ago, but I still can’t really make up my own sentences yet. Patience, patience, patience. That’s what I keep telling myself.

No, I’ve not been resting on my laurels!

I’ve been chipping away at my Russian, and truly, I think chipping is the right word. I never make huge leaps with Russian, and I’d be lying if I said the beginning steps have been easy. They haven’t. I knew Russian was considered a difficult language, but I wasn’t quite expecting this difficult. But - by chipping away slowly at the mountain, hopefully, I’ll conquer it some day. And, I dare say, I am making progress. Slow, certainly, but it’s progress nonetheless.

Recently, I’ve gone back to the very beginning of my New Penguin Russian Course, and started reviewing everything very closely. While much of it I “know”, with a lot of it, I’d say I’m “familiar” with it, but I’ve not learned it by heart. Instead of plowing on through the book when my foundation is weak, I’m going back and pouring in more concrete to strengthen things up. I’m finding that things that I found totally baffling on the first go through are easier to grasp now.

Before I dropped back to the beginning to do a full review, I was working on chapter 7, which includes adjectives and the basic declensions of them. I at first found all of the explanations about the declensions to be confusing, but I found some clarity when, ironically, I turned to the back of the book and looked at the table of all of the possible declensions of an adjective. I found this to be rather humorous, as well as a sign that my skills at learning a language have become better (or perhaps just changed). When I started learning German years ago, I hated tables of endings, conjugations, etc. I found them to be too much. I preferred to be introduced to bits of grammar slowly. Now, at least when it comes to declensions, I prefer to look at tables so I can have a bird’s eye view of what’s going on. I will, of course, have to study each declension on its own and learn to use it properly, but I still find it helpful to see the full picture before digging in with the pieces of it.

I’ve also recently added a few more Russian language books to my repertoire. Not because the books I had (the New Penguin Russian Course and Kenneth Katzner’s Dictionary) were bad or not thorough enough, but because I’d like to be able to tackle the language from different viewpoints. As the language addict recently remarked:

Most language textbooks take similar but not identical approaches to language learning, and teach similar but not identical vocabulary.

The two books I bought are:

• Russian for Beginners by Charles Duff - Similar, but far from identical, to Nicholas J. Brown’s Penguin course. I’m finding that some of the grammar explanations in Duff’s book are more thorough and exact than Brown’s book, but Brown’s book has its bonsues as well. I think these two books will play off of each other nicely.
• Dictionary of Spoken Russian by the U.S. War Department - The big lure of this book for me was that all of the words have multiple example sentences, showing the word in real use. It is indeed a bit dated, but I’d say it will still prove extremely helpful, particularly when I start entering the words and example sentences into one of my vocabulary programs. As an aside, Katzner’s dictionary also has example phrases and sentences for almost all of the words in it. Context, context, context - so important for learning new words!

Ah, if I were only a toddler again!

Lately, my toddler has been picking up new vocabulary at an amazing rate (as, I understand it, all toddlers do). While I don’t “catch” this learning all of the time, I’ve seen something he does occasionally when learning a new word, and it brings some interesting images to my mind. I thought I’d share:

Yesterday we were at a local state park. We were going to a lake so he and his mother could play in the lake (I’m not a big play-in-the-lake fan). As we were driving along the road looping around the lake, he pointed at it and said “it’s water!” I said, “Yes, that’s right - it is water. That’s actually called a lake.”

He looked at me in the rear view mirror, all seriousness, and said “lake“, then nodded his head once. I repeated it, then he did it again. He then pointed again and said “It’s a lake”; he continued to call it that the rest of the evening.

When he gets that serious expression on his face, it makes me think of some vast, fast-moving machinery in his head, quickly sorting new words right where they need to go in his long term memory. No real effort is needed on his part; he hears a word, the gears crank (quietly!), and the word is his.

This is in stark contrast to how I often feel when learning new words. I’ll read or hear the word; repeat it; think about it; try to use it in a sentence. If I don’t then put it in one of my vocabulary programs to review later, usually, the word is gone within a day or two (sometimes less). Furthermore, often it feels as if my gears are rather creaky, with a few pieces of broke metal thrown in for good measure. Sometimes my brain machinery gets hung up completely on a word or phrase, and doesn’t want to move anymore at all.

Sigh. If only I could be a toddler again, or at least have their language learning abilities. I suppose I’d be up for passing Barney, diapers, etc.

During the past few months, I’ve really been trying to bring some balance to the amount of time I spend on my two current languages, German and Russian. My German is coming along nicely, as I add more and more vocabulary to my memory. I have, however, been a bit frustrated with the advances I’ve made with my Russian.

I first started learning Russian earlier this year, in January, when I received a copy of the New Penguin Russian Course book. It is now July of this year, and where am I? Chapter 7, 50 or so pages into the book. Not a whole lot of progress, when you look at it like that.

However, when I look at it in a different way, I feel a bit better:

I know a smattering of Russian words; the present tense conjugations of a few different types of verbs; and the basics of adjectives. I also know a bit about the nominative case, the prepositional case, and the accusative case. Furthermore, I can write in Russian script, and pronounce Russian with few problems (some of the big consonant clusters still make my English-speaking tongue wrap around itself).

I skimmed through my book earlier, looking far, far ahead, and at first felt rather daunted. A lot of the grammar looks very complicated, and for a brief moment, I even considered throwing in the towel. But then I thought back to how I felt when I first started working on learning Russian.

When I first started with the book, the Cyrillic alphabet looked like something from a different planet. Me? I’d never be able to make sense of that. Well, I can now make sense of it just fine. Later, I started trying to learn the words at the end of each chapter, in the vocabulary lists. When I first started, I felt that I’d never remember those slippery Russian words. Well, now I remember about 95% of them. I had similar feelings when I first ran into the prepositional cases of personal pronouns, but those have since been locked into my memory.

In other words, if I try to worry about learning all the grammar of Russian all at once, of course it’s going to appear daunting. Of course I’ll be overwhelmed. Anyone would be. But if I just keep chipping away at it, like someone chipping away at a large boulder with a small chisel, eventually, they will chisel the boulder down to nothing. It may take them quite a long time, and they’re certainly not going to pull it off in a day or two, but it’s possible.

It just takes a lot of steady, slow work. I need to keep that in mind as I chisel away at my Russian.

I honestly don’t recall how I came upon this site yesterday evening, but I did: Old English at UVA. The site links to an online version of this book, Introduction to Old English, by Peter S. Baker. Here’s a description of the book:

Introduction to Old English is a new textbook published by Blackwell Publishers. The book is aimed at students whose interests are primarily literary or historical rather than linguistic; it assumes no expertise in traditional grammar or other languages, but it provides everything the student needs to read Old English well. The book includes an anthology of prose and poetry. The entire grammar is available on-line, and the anthology is also available as part of the Old English Aerobics web application.

You can find the online version of the book here.

The Old English Aerobics Anthology can be found here. All of the words in each piece are clickable, and clicking on them brings up a glossary entry for the word. On many of the selections of literature, you can also choose to select idioms or clauses. And, on a few of the selections, you can select audio, and hear the Old English spoken aloud.

Other useful pages:

• Old English Aerobics Glossary
• Pronunciation Practice (with audio files for all of it)
• The Magic Sheet - a one page summary Old English inflections, color coded to aid the learner. In PDF format.

While studying Russian today, in the New Penguin Russian course, I found one of the EXTRA sections to be really interesting. From page 63:

Russians are conservative when naming children, keeping to a relatively small number of old, safe names such as Елена, Николай, Владимир, Наталья. You will probably find that all the Russian men you meet share about a dozen names, while the women have about two dozen. There was a fashion in the thirties for more ‘international’ names such as Роберт, Эдурд, and immediately after the revolution for new, revolutionary names, but now people prefer to play safe. In the case of boys, parents always bear in mind that an ‘unfortunate’ choice of name (Спутник, ‘Sputnik’, Трактор ‘Tractor’), which seemed all right at the time, will be inflicted on the grandchildren too through the patronymic.

The emphases are mine.

I was initially surprised to read that most males share roughly a dozen recycled names, but after thinking about it some more, my surprise has lessened somewhat. In America, there are certainly a lot more than a dozen typical names for males, but some names are used a lot more often than others. In one of my high school classes, there were 5 males named Josh, myself included.

I chuckled a bit when I saw the names Спутник and Трактор. I’m not sure if the author meant that he had stumbled into those names specifically, or just names that are similarly silly-sounding. Either way, reading about those two names reminded me of a story that my mom told me. She went to school with a pair of twins, one male and one female. Their last name was Ball. Her parents had decided to name the girl Crystal, and the boy Cannon.

Why would you do that to your children? “Hi, I’m Cannon Ball. This is my sister Crystal Ball.”

Wow.

In the set of Russian language learning videos I linked to a few days ago, there were two that dealt with the “Gold List” method of learning vocabulary, created by “Uncle Davey“. After watching the videos, I checked out his page on the system. While I’m not sure if the system is for me, it’s still a very interesting one.

What he does is this:

• Writes out 25 head words in the top left of a page, along with their translations and any other pertinent information (gender, special constructions, etc.)
• Waits at least 2 weeks (but no more than 2 months). He then selects 70% of the words that he remembers the least, thus “distilling” the words. In his words: “You are looking to distil out the “hard to learn” expressions and obtain a concentrated, whisky-like list of distilled words that are an absolute bugger for you to learn (by which time you will, of course, actally have learned them, because they will have gone through this distilation process ten times with two weeks’ break in between each time).”
• With that smaller list, he simply repeats the process: he waits at least 2 weeks, and then distils the list again, selecting 70% of the words that he remembered the least (or removing 30% of the words that he remembered best; same thing).
• After you’ve done this process down to the third distillation, for a number of different head word lists, you combine the third distillation lists into a new head word list. This further “concentrates” the list of words that you’ve had trouble remembering.

That is, of course, a very short overview of the process. If you’re interested in it, check out his full explanation as well as the videos.

One thing that I thought was intriguing about his process is that he says that it works best if you don’t really worry about remembering the words. When you’re writing out the words, you shouldn’t be cramming them; instead, you should just write them out slowly and neatly, enjoying the process. His explanation for this is the following:

The long-term memory is not a conscious function. Its samples are taken automatically and subconsciously out of the material which is run through the conscious. What we decide to memorise or forget only relates to short term memory. You cannot decide to learn to the long term memory any more than you can decide to forget to the long-term memory. … We banish unpleasant experience from the long-term memory and garnish pleasant experince to the long term memory.

Following that train of thought, he believes it makes little sense to suffer during vocabulary learning, because suffering won’t help you remember it; in fact, it might make it less likely to be remembered. I’m not an expert on how memory works by any means, but it’s an interesting idea. Can anyone vouch for the validity of his claim?

I do have some aversion to the system, mostly because it sounds rather clunky. I’m particularly against the idea of having multiple books to continue lists in; I can’t really say why that turns me off, but it does. Perhaps I’m thinking too far into the future with the system, and envisioning stacks and stacks of A4 notebooks all over my desk. (Not that that would be much different than the state of my desk now, but I digress.) Perhaps that is the reason I’m hesitant about the system: I’m a terribly disorganized person, and the idea of dating all of my lists, and keeping track of when a list is due to be distilled, sounds like a nightmare for me. There’s a reason I like computer programs to keep track of when a word needs to be reviewed.

The other concern I have is that using this method, I don’t think a lot of contextual information can be given easily. If you were to put a sentence with each word you want to learn, you’d need far more space than he’s allowing. Furthermore, when you distilled your list, would you copy over the example sentence again? How does one deal with words that have multiple meanings? Do you put all of the meanings under one head word and hope you know when to use which word, or do you make a separate head word for each meaning?

How does one deal with various expressions that one can build with one word? There are some words in my German dictionaries that have dozens (literally) of different expressions. Do you make a new head word for each expression, or include all of the expressions you care about under the pertinent head word?

At any rate, as I said, it’s an interesting system. I especially like how he stresses that one shouldn’t “cram” while writing the words out. Just write them out and enjoy the process; it’ll probably help you remember them.

While exploring the forums at MasterRussian.com, I came across a post pointing to a set of Russian language learning videos on YouTube.

To make it a bit easier on Language Geek readers, here’s all of the links to the individual videos, along with what they go over:

RL101 - 1 :Some Enchanted Evening to learn Russian!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlJw08uMvE4

RL101 - 2 : The Six Letters That Are The Same
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qj9B-d7iDkw

RL101 - 3: Six Letters that look the same but are different!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnq0LrVauTQ

RL101 - 4 The next five letters
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eoN46jprhU

RL101 - 5 Revision of the first 17 letters
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ly_XZFHFYPs

RL101 - 6 The Next Five - 2/3 of the way.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiSzIXXkl3U

RL101 - 7 The Sibilants
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuyP2×8vRDU

RL101 - 8: The Missing Vowels - part one
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbdzd-BNC-U

RL101 - 8: The Missing Vowels - part two
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3OidoFoo2A

RL101 - 9 Soft sign, hard sign
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wbyiBKeFKI

RL101 - 10 Russkaya Azbuka
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDEYGwDEahc

RL102 - 1 Basic Russian grammar lesson 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUVNA_loG_o

RL102 - 2 Basic Russian grammar lesson 2 part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kS6ksHAT4sY

RL102 - 2 Basic Russian grammar lesson 2 part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6F0eH5paKW4

RL102 - 3 Basic Russian grammar lesson 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnp–PtRajc

RL102 - 4/1 Basic Russian grammar lesson 4 part one
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQKfQIZRFVY

RL102 - 4/2 Basic Russian grammar lesson 4 part two
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtXb19sMu7g

Roll your “r”s now, baybee!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPIpTERosZY

RL102 - 5/1 Basic Russian grammar lesson 5 part one
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSLtHXrwm30

RL102 - 5/2 Basic Russian grammar lesson 5 part two
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87o6TS3rUaw

RL102 - 6/1 Basic Russian grammar lesson 6 part one
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJ_RYKpYfg0

RL102 - 6/2 Basic Russian grammar lesson 6 part two (corr)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJW-IamMaCs

Gold List Method for learning to L/T memory part one
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rH6FERpM5fQ

Gold List Method for learning to L/T memory part two
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTyJiGVJ0LM

RL102 - 7 Basic Russian grammar lesson 7
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaPCFWLN5uI

By the way, despite him speaking English with a thick Russian accent, he’s not actually Russian; it’s just part of his skit. He’s actually English.

After studying German off and on for a number of years, along with a variety of other languages, I feel it’s my duty to let everyone who wants to learn a foreign language in on a little secret: learning a foreign language isn’t easy. Despite what dozens of programs would have you think - “Learn [X] in 10 Minutes a Day”, “Learn [X] the Fast and Fun Way”, etc. - slogging through a foreign language is hard work. Sometimes it’s infuriating, painful even, depending on what language you’re studying and what problems you’re facing. I’m not saying that studying a foreign language is hopeless or pointless or anything like that - I think studying a foreign language (or many!) is a rewarding endeavor, one which can often be enjoyable. But do I think that learning a foreign language is a piece of cake, like many language learning programs try to make it appear? Not in the least.

I think programs that try to make learning a foreign language sound like learning to tie your shoes are actually harmful to learners, because they often give beginners a false idea of what will be required of them. “Oh, I’ll be able to learn [X] in a month, studying only 10 minutes a day!” Not exactly. You might be able to get down some basic greetings, farewells - the very basics - but that’s about it.

Let’s be honest, though. We all know why the programs are marketed that way - because we all wish we could learn a language in a month, particularly us Americans. We’re spoiled. We want to know how to do “it”, whatever “it” is, and we want to know how to do it a week ago. I’d say if a program were marketed with “Learn [X] in 3 years, with 1-3 hours of study per day, every day”, they wouldn’t sell many copies…

But if you’re going to really study a language, really try to master a language, you might as well settle down with a similar timeframe. You can become proficient in many language in less time; some languages might take much longer. But with any foreign language, you’re looking at some multiple of years - not months - to become proficient in the language. The sooner you accept that and plan accordingly, the sooner you won’t be let down by having your hopes in the clouds. Don’t be fooled by the “learn a language in a month!” programs.

I’m curious as to how other language learners tackle their vocabulary learning. Do you just read lists? Do you not write any vocabulary down, in any form, and simply rely on your memory and exposure? Do you use flashcards? If you do, do you use the index-card kind, or a flashcard program? Do you do something that’s a relatively unique approach?

I use a variety of things to tackle vocabulary. More often than not, I use software to learn words with. In the past, I’ve used Pauker a great deal, a free, open source flashcard based on the Leitner system.

More recently, however, I’ve switched to using a duo of programs: VTrain and Interlex. VTrain is a flashcard application like Pauker, but it’s a lot more robust (and, admittedly, a lot more complicated to use, at least until you figure out the cluttered interface). One of the things I really like about VTrain is that you can set the default language / keyboard setup you want for each side of a flashcard. What this means is that if you’re making, say, Russian-English cards, you don’t have to manually switch your keyboard back and forth between the keyboard setups. When you’re on the Russian side of the card, your keyboard will automatically be in Russian mode; when you move to the English side of the card, it will switch over as to be expected. VTrain has another thing that Pauker doesn’t, and that’s a slideshow mode. In this mode, one side of a card is shown, and then the other; you can customize the time delays involved. If you’re wanting to review but not in the mood for an all out flashcard test, it’s a nice alternative.
Interlex is different from both VTrain and Pauker. Interlex doesn’t use the Leitner system at all; when you create a collection, when test yourself on the words and get the words right, they’re considered “learned.” They don’t move to the next flashcard box or any such thing, because there aren’t any boxes in Interlex. Instead, to go through the words again, you have to reset the statistics of the file, i.e. make all of the words “unlearned” again.

So, why is Interlex in my repertoire? Because it offers something unique: a multiple choice test. I’ve found that using a multiple choice test is a good way to get myself familiar with new words; after that, I can move on to the more difficult types of learning.

Interlex also produces a nicely formatted printed list of the words in your file, much nicer than VTrain (and Pauker doesn’t do it at all). This has been my solution for when I want to “study on the go”; not having a laptop or a high tech cellphone, I can’t bring my software along with me when I’m out and about. So instead, I’ll print out a list of words, say 50-100, fold up the list, and stick it in a pocket. When I’ve got a minute or two I’ll get the list out and go over it.

I’ve found one other good thing about using VTrain and Interlex: they play nicely together, with a little bit of effort on the user’s part. After figuring out how to setup the export options in VTrain, I was able to import words and translations into Interlex, without any bizarre characters thrown into the mix. This is something that would probably hold true for many applications, at least if you’re using VTrain, because you can customize what it exports, and how the words / translations are separate (comma separated, tab separated, whatever you want).

Anyway - when I started writing this post, I certainly didn’t intend on it being so long! Back to my initial question: how do you learn vocabulary?

There are many different ways to go about learning a language, and many of those ways are diametrically opposed. One argument in particular revolves around the studying of grammar - or lack thereof.

Some people think that to learn a foreign language, you need to study the grammar of it specifically. For example, in regards to German, you would learn that the dative version of the masculine “der” definite article is “dem”, the dative version of the feminine “die” definite article is der, so on and so forth. You would learn the circumstances in which the preposition “auf” requires the dative case, and when it requires the accusative. In other words, you would learn the language sort of like a machine: you would learn what this piece does, then that, then something else, and then try to put it all together.

The opposite of this learning approach is one in which you don’t study grammar at all. Instead, you simply consume, for lack of a better word, huge amounts of your target language. You listen to audio and take notes; you read books and write down words, structures, etc. that seem important or that you’d like to use at a later time; you study example sentences that display the usage of a certain word, construction, or expression. You essentially take in large amounts of the language until you simply “know” what’s right or wrong, without necessarily knowing the grammar rules that make it that way. The fellows at Antimoon.com: How to learn English effectively use this method of learning almost exclusively, and it would appear to work fairly well, because I’ve yet to find any English mistakes on their site.

I personally use a mixture of the methods. I try to take in a lot of my target language, to get lots of exposure to it, but I also study grammar. While I can see how their method could be effective (and like I said, it appears that it is), the problem I have with it is that to me, not studying grammar is not harnessing my knowledge of my own language, it’s not making use of what I already know about the world and language.

As an example, consider the preposition “auf” in German. It can mean a variety of things: on, in, at, to. Sometimes “auf” needs to be coupled with the accusative case; other times, it requires a dative case. Generally, when what is happening in a sentence involves motion of some sort, “auf” takes the accusative; when motion isn’t involved, the dative is taken. Two short example sentences will show what I mean.

Example 1.
Er legt das Buch auf den [accusative form of "der", the masculine definite article] Tisch.
He puts the book on the table.

Example 2.
Das Buch ist auf dem [dative form of "der", the masculine definite article] Tisch.

For me, I’d rather know the rule for when “auf” takes the accusative, and when it takes the dative. It would take me just a few minutes to learn the rule, and then be done with it. Sure, I’ll have to think about it briefly, at least for a while, when I go to write something with “auf” in it. But I’ll still know the rule, and with a little bit of effort, I should be able to work it out.

How long would it take me to “know” that, if I didn’t study the grammar, and instead just read German content? I don’t know. Perhaps I’d pick it up quickly; perhaps I’d continue to use the wrong case for months.

Certainly just studying grammar and word lists is not a good way to learn a language; you have to listen to and read content in your target language as well. Exposure to the language is extremely important in advancing in your studies. But I’m still not convinced that ignoring grammar completely is the best way to go about things.