The "I just deleted my Anki deck" celebration thread

Discussion in 'Learning Techniques and Advice' started by Big_Dog, Oct 18, 2014.

  1. hrhenry

    hrhenry Member VIP member

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    Utter nonsense.

    I got to a solid C2 in Spanish (from a B2-ish) simply by watching TV/movies/news and reading newspapers and novels in about a year while living in Mexico. Not a single flashcard was used (anki wasn't even a glimmer in the developer's eye - it was the early 80s).
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  2. Peregrinus

    Peregrinus Active Member

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    That is why I said in another sentence "except for Spanish". But let's take Spanish anyway. You gave the time period over which you acquired C2 competence. Now tell us how many hours per day on average over that period you spent on your extensive reading and listening activities. You also mention immersion, and it is impossible to factor out of your personal equation, so I am not sure we can compare well.

    Let's take one of your intermediate languages where you didn't get a discount from a previously learned and closely related language. How many hours per day in whatever activities have you spent learning (ball park) how many words in Norwegian or Turkish?

    You are obviously an accomplished language learner and I do seem to remember your saying on HTLAL that you don't use flash cards or word lists. The question here though is one of time efficiency and not in an immersive environment. So what methods do you use for languages not related to ones you already know, and how time intensive are they?
  3. hrhenry

    hrhenry Member VIP member

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    This is what I quoted you saying and was responding to:

    "Not if they are interested in going further with what is required for such full understanding, which is acquisition of far more vocabulary than necessary for conversation, which requires lots of Anki/word list study with ER or truly massive ER alone."

    My point was that Anki and ER aren't the only choices. You can't really discount other forms of exposure, whether via immersion or not. To not mention any of these other forms of exposure, then later back pedal and say "Oh, but those don't count!" doesn't really cut it.
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  4. Peregrinus

    Peregrinus Active Member

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    OK sorry, I see what you are saying. I should have said massive ER and/or massive exposure, however one came by that exposure.
  5. Nobody

    Nobody Member

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    In your opinion, could one just as easily do this with a more distant foreign language? I completely believe that you were able to acquire vocabulary in Spanish through television watching, etc, in a reasonably effective fashion. I haven't learnt Spanish, but I did spend some time on Latin, and what I remember keenly was just how many words were instantly transparent (or at least guessable) for a native English speaker, albeit with the occasional risk of being tricked by a false friend. With Korean by contrast, new vocabulary often seems opaque to me, especially in a rapidly-spoken context like a television show or movie. The context will often allow me to understand the meaning of the sentence, but I don't walk away feeling I've acquired the word, and may not even be able to repeat it, so while exposure in such contexts has helped me to reinforce and strengthen what I already know, it's very rare for me to actually aquire new vocabulary through such a medium (conversation is different, I've found I can acquire new vocabulary through it moderately well). But then with Chinese, because the language shares a lot of vocabulary with Korean that I already know in Korean, I've noticed that same "Latin effect," where acquisition is again somewhat easier, allowing me to acquire words without necessarily have to drill them as hard. So do you think that you could make this marginal B2 to solid C2 leap through such exposure with any language? Or is it more a feature of languages which are close to those in which you are already strong?
  6. hrhenry

    hrhenry Member VIP member

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    I've been able to do so to a B2 level for Turkish (tested and passed the TELC B2). I watched a hell of a lot of TV online, averaging about 3 hours a day for a couple of years.

    Here's the thing, though: while I believe a B2 or even C1 level is attainable without setting foot in the target language's country, I don't believe a true C2 level is reachable without spending a decent amount of time in-country, even with so-called easy romance languages. There's just too much cultural and idiomatic stuff that you're not exposed to, at least consistently, unless you're there living it (and making a point of living it). A lot of people on HTLAL have disagreed with me on that, but that's been my experience.

    Circling back to Anki and SRS in general, I'll add that even if I were an ardent user of Anki, I don't think it would lend itself very well to a heavily agglutinating language such as Turkish. Decks would have to be built from sentences and not individual words, due to the aforementioned agglutination as well as cases.
  7. Nobody

    Nobody Member

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    That's interesting. Korean is also an agglutinating language in a mode similar (though slightly less extreme, I think) to Turkish, and I haven't had a problem reconciling that with Anki usage despite using individual words. I've treated morphological particles as words in their own right terms of drilling them, and it's worked pretty well, even when one particle or verb ending can have multiple meanings based on context. It's the "touch for definition" style programs (e.g. Lingq) that seem hard/annoying to reconcile to such languages to me. I've been thinking about whether or not to tackle Turkish as my next language, and I had assumed the same strategy would work. Is there some way in which Turkish morphology would prove a uniquely greater challenge than Korean morphology in this regard?
  8. Peregrinus

    Peregrinus Active Member

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    Deutsche Welle's offerings for German in the C levels would possibly give one a reasonable shot at C2, along with a lot of exposure to popular media. But I have not seen for any other language the depth of material they offer, which speaks to their ongoing commitment to teaching German. Still, unless one had already sat and passed the C1, I imagine sitting the C2 would be akin to swinging for the fences. Perhaps one's chances are also increased by sitting a C2 outside of of the native-speaking countries.


    One could make cards with conjugated and declined forms and then also example sentences, but obviously it would expand the size of the deck greatly. Probably the only benefit of a non-lemmatized frequency list is discovering those forms that are most common. One of the things that has always put me off of LingQ is the way they count words, which is non-lemmatized, probably due to the cost of doing otherwise in so many languages. Their counts are essentially meaningless both for any given language let alone for purposes of comparison between languages, simply because there is no multiplier to roughly translate into lemma forms, and which would vary by language. However perhaps the way they consider all inflected and derived forms as individuals words lends itself well to agglutinative languages with their implementation of SRS.
  9. hrhenry

    hrhenry Member VIP member

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    I honestly wouldn't know how to or want to compare the two languages. I really know nothing about Korean, although I get the feeling that Turkish is much more agglutinating than Korean. I could be very wrong on that - as I said, I know nothing of Korean.

    I do know that, at least for me, treating particles as separate cards in a deck wouldn't work. That's just too disconnected and wouldn't carry enough information in itself to be useful for me, particularly when it comes to cases.

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