Over the years I've spent studying languages (mostly Japanese), I think I've learned more about how not to study than the languages themselves, lol.
Anyway, here's something I do that may or may not help some of you out there, especially if you find you burn out quick and/or have problems with the Anki avalanche.
First of all, slow and steady wins the race. Don't ever feel like you HAVE to study like 50 new words/phrases per day. If you don't have the time or work ethic, that's just a recipe for disaster. Better to only study 5-10 phrases per day, but stick with it for years. You might be less skilled than you "could" have been, but the most important part is you actually stuck with it. If you're really strapped for time (need the language for a trip or something), I recommend the FSI courses or some other crash course designed to give you raw, brute force proficiency with zero finesse (stuff like the equivalent of "where find bank" type of sentences, designed purely to help you survive, not sound great or make many new friends).
Aside from that, what I used to do with my new cards in Anki is, what I imagine many of you do/did, which is hit 'good' if the word seems easy, wait 10 mins or so for the review, then hit 'good' or 'easy' again, sending the card to the review deck. Seems common sensical, right? Wrong, it sucks (imo).
Even if you get the word right after the 10 min interval, don't trust that you ACTUALLY know the word. Your short term memory probably kicks the ass of your long term memory, so of course you'll remember the word after 10 mins. But, if you studied the word at 7 am, will you remember it at 7 or 8 am the next day? Maybe not. If you're me, definitely not.
So, instead what I do is I actually hit 'hard' on all of my new words, even if I get them right. I keep the new cards in the 'learning' side of the deck throughout most of the entire day, and I review them several times throughout the day. Only at some point in the evening, after having confidently and accurately reviewed the new words several times (often with several hours between reviews), do I finally 'pass' the card and send it to the review deck.
Doing this, I find that on subsequent days, the words/phrases are far more likely to be firmly locked into my long term memory.
There are downsides of this, namely you probably can't study 50 new words/phrases per day doing this method, but, that goes back to what I said initially: slow and steady wins the race. If you have a herculean work ethic and really can learn 50 new things a day, great. If you're like me, you can't. Try learning 5-20 new things like this every day and see if it benefits you. I bet you you'll find the workload more manageable, and you'll be less likely to get smoked by the Anki avalance (which in my experience always happened because I'd fail reviews of recent cards and they'd start piling up on top of old reviews that were coming due, which I'd then often fail as well).
Maybe this is all common sense and something you've all been doing as it is, but, for anyone just starting off, hope this can help you avoid a few pitfalls that I wish I had have avoided when I started learning.
[link] [comments]
from Ẹ káàbọ̀ https://ift.tt/3udcA23
via Learn Online English Speaking
Comments
Post a Comment