![]() I thought I’d try the Quickly and Poorly method with Chinese. ![]() In his book Fast, Easy Way to Learn a Language Bill Handley states that in his opinion it is more effective to learn lots of words quickly and poorly rather a small amount of words slowly but surely. I call this problem The Wrath of Anki, and I’ve posted about it before here and here. The problem with learning a lot of words or phrases quickly with Anki is that the number of cards to review also adds up very quickly, and before you know it you have to revise two or three hundred cards per day, with occasional spikes of five hundred cards in one day. This seemed to work well for me for the first three months, then I took a month or so off, then learnt 50-100 words per day for two weeks, before spending a week and a half revising my deck without learning any new words. This seemed achievable to me, with the added benefit of being able to quickly calculate and track my progress. When I started memorizing my Spanish phrasebook, I picked an arbitrary number of phrases to learn each day – 10. I’ve finished memorising my Chinese phrasebook (more about that in another post), and have moved on to the FSI Standard Chinese course – I’ve almost completed four units. It’s more fun when you’re getting most of the answers right, and by taking it one day at a time, I don’t get overwhelmed by the enormity of the task.įurthermore, in the last 10 weeks I’ve learnt more vocabulary than I did last year. Last year, when I tried learning 100 new words at a time, I had a 60% success rate. When I was trying to average 70 new words per week, and not studying on weekends, I was averaging about 80%. It works out at about 150 cards per day, and I’m consistently getting 90% of the answers right. I’m learning 15 new phrases each day, as well as revising the phrases that I have already learnt. Since my last post, inspired by Nick in Denmark and a colleague of mine who is on a 155-day Duolingo streak and is acing her Spanish class as a result, I have tried to establish what Duolingo calls a streak – that is, I have tried to study my Anki flash cards every single day. ‘Remember to pace yourself!’ Studying every. I will report on our progress as we make our way through the course. And the best way I can think of doing that is to teach him an effective way of learning another language now. ![]() When that time comes, I want him to believe that he is capable of learning another language. I am doing this because he is interested in mythology, history, religions, art and science, and I can easily envisage him having to learn another language in the future in order to further his career. There are 45 chapters in all, so we should well and truly finish it by the end of the school year here in the southern hemisphere. We have been going through it for five weeks now and are almost at the end of Chapter 7. So, together we are studying, with the assistance of Anki, Madrigal’s Magic Key to Spanish. My 13-year-old son is learning Spanish in high school, and for various reasons that I will explore in another post, I think that the way his studies have been arranged, he is almost guaranteed to have the typical secondary high school language experience of at a least a year of study, followed by failure to be able to communicate, and the conclusion that learning a language is just too hard. I have lots to report, but first up I wanted to let you know that I am attempting to memorise a textbook. ![]() Hola hipsteros, it’s been a while but I’m back.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |