A language learners’ forum

mouse wrote:

aaleks wrote:People are different.

I think it's probably more that languages are different, as has been said. Learning a new script requires drills — unless you want to progress at a snail's pace — which are more efficient with SRS.

Then I'd say the both are different - languages and people. I've never tried to learn Japanese or Mandarin so I can say nothing here. To be honest I believe that learning such a different and difficult language is something beyond my ability. At the same time technically English was a new script for me. My native language use Cyrillic alphabet. Of course, I knew Latin alphabet since I was like 10, I think, but English is known for its crazy spelling, and at first I had to memorize a word like a picture, i.e. I needed to memorize the meaning and the transcription. Then I decided to learn the reading rules, even though it wasn't recommended by many more experienced learners . After that it was just a word and its meaning, although I kept checking transcription for a while (now I read by analogy usually).

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aaleks wrote:People are different. Why would I waste my time on making SRS cards or word lists when I can memorize words just by looking them up while reading or listening to native materials? I don't have any numbers, I didn't think I would ever need them, but as far as I remember after the first year of learning English according to testyourvocab.com the size of my vocabulary was something like 10.000 or so words, i.e. I might've had those 3000 headwords by then. And no, I don't think I might have done better with SRS.

Over what period of time did you learn those words? What if you had needed to learn them in 6, 9 or 12 months?

What if all the fancy stuff, the comics, the amazing rock tunes, the David Lynch or Francis Ford Coppola movies, the endless amounts of YouTube videos about anything remotely interesting, the quality comedy series did not exist in English, like they don't exist (or at least not as much and to everyone's taste) in many other languages that hardly have any interesting content but you might still have to learn at some point in your life for whatever reason?

It's easy to learn English without having to try too hard. I got my CPE (C2) with minimal effort, before I lived in an English speaking country.
Try with a language spoken by 5 million people or less, with no significant footprint in cinema, recent literature, modern music and the like and without living in the country.

Uncle Roger wrote:What if all the fancy stuff, the comics, the amazing rock tunes, the David Lynch or Francis Ford Coppola movies, the endless amounts of YouTube videos about anything remotely interesting, the quality comedy series did not exist in English, like they don't exist (or at least not as much and to everyone's taste) in many other languages that hardly have any interesting content but you might still have to learn at some point in your life for whatever reason?... Try with a language spoken by 5 million people or less, with no significant footprint in cinema, recent literature, modern music and the like and without living in the country.

I guess I can answer this one having learned three languages (two of them minority languages) with few resources available. I managed to learn Haitian Creole which has no significant footprint in cinema and recent literature. It has more than 5 million speakers at about 10 million, but it is the language of the poorest country in the Americas and one of the poorest in the world. I also learned Lesser Antilles French Creole- 1 million people and Ladino/Djudeo-espanyol with about 70,000 people (including being able to read it in three Hebrew scripts). Neither of these languages has any cinema to speak of, no television series, and in the case of Ladino/Djudeo-espanyol- no modern literature... and... I didn't use srs. The three Hebrew scripts count as different scripts and they're read from right to left (albeit, still an alphabet). I learned how to read in them without srs too. Does that make me an inefficient learner?

A large part of my vocabulary in both languages came about through reading- the Bible, folktales, whatever literature I could get my hands on, native-speakers, the news, government pamphlets, Bible study and commentary, etc. I don't/didn't live in-country. I learned a long time ago never to state anything about language-learning categorically. Your statement may be generally true to a large extent, especially for monolingual beginners who have never learned a second language on their own, but there are always exceptions. Where there's a will, there's a way. If a learner is motivated enough, a language can be learned with surprisingly few resources. I know.

I don't see what the big deal is. It's ok to learn a language without srs. It's ok to learn a language with srs. I think you may be overlooking that reading is a natural srs. Lots of people learn vocabulary in this way in their native languages too. Learn and let learn.

smallwhite wrote:How are grammar drills different from vocab drills? Should we start a thread for grammar drill unbelievers?

Haven't there been several?

Iversen wrote:I know that some learners hate grammar and pin their faith on discovering the rules along the way - like small children allegedly do. But hey, do small children do that? I guess their parents teach them the basics by repeating sentences endlessly and weeding out errors - and that's also a kind of grammar course.

Yes, children do do that. There are societies where parents literally don't talk to kids. Not even a little bit. Those kids still acquire language just fine. There are societies with no notion whatsoever of grammar, and yet, that all perform grammar. Explicit grammar instruction (in a native language) does not in fact teach grammar, as it occurs after children have already acquired grammar. Rather it teaches children how to jump through various sociolinguistic hoops in order to be accepted by a linguistically prejudicial society ("prejudicial" here meaning believing "some dialects are better then others" and the like). This may very well be fascinating to a anthropologist or sociologist but has basically no relevance to the study of first language acquisition in children.

Iversen wrote:Actually I can't see the point in inventing the rules from scratch when you can cheat and look in a key.

I believe you are confusing competence with knowledge of competence (as the Rumsfeld quote goes, "There are known knowns...") and also confusing declarative knowledge with performative knowledge. Native speakers are perfectly competent and yet, without linguistic training, not familiar with how or why they are competent. They have little to no declarative knowledge and thus would fail a test where they were asked to explain WHY they speak the way they do, but their performative knowledge is literally the answer key if the test were to simply speak their native language. Declarative knowledge allows you to know all about the ATP cycle and how neurons compel muscle fibers to contract so you can pedal your bicycle, etc..; procedural knowledge, however, is what actually allows you to bike. You can have one without the other, and they have different utilities.

With regards to, for example, mathematics or computer science, I'm very interested in acquiring declarative knowledge. With regards to language learning, I couldn't care less about it*, honestly. Ultimately what I want is the unconscious competence of native speakers.

*minor caveat, I'm also interested in linguistics beyond or on top of language learning, and in that field declarative knowledge of how a language works is of relevance and in that sense I do care about it.

Now, acquiring declarative knowledge may very well help me get to the procedural knowledge, sort of like training wheels. But even if this were true, we should not think people who learn languages without much or any explicit grammar instruction are "inventing the rules from scratch" any more then a kid learning to ride a bike is inventing the laws of nature. Rather, both the language learner and the kid are building, mostly unconsciously, models of how the world works in their head based on the input they receive which naturally manifests as performance.

Anyways it's clear your method works well for you. Personally I would find it soul crushingly boring to sift through a dictionary making word lists, but all that means is we learn differently.

Uncle Roger wrote:

aaleks wrote:People are different. Why would I waste my time on making SRS cards or word lists when I can memorize words just by looking them up while reading or listening to native materials? I don't have any numbers, I didn't think I would ever need them, but as far as I remember after the first year of learning English according to testyourvocab.com the size of my vocabulary was something like 10.000 or so words, i.e. I might've had those 3000 headwords by then. And no, I don't think I might have done better with SRS.

Over what period of time did you learn those words? What if you had needed to learn them in 6, 9 or 12 months?

A year, I guess. As I said, back then it didn't occur to me to write down the numbers somewhere.

What if you had needed to learn them in 6, 9 or 12 months?

The same words as a list? Then I think I would try to memorize them somehow. That might be SRS or just a word list.

Uncle Roger wrote:What if all the fancy stuff, the comics, the amazing rock tunes, the David Lynch or Francis Ford Coppola movies, the endless amounts of YouTube videos about anything remotely interesting, the quality comedy series did not exist in English, like they don't exist (or at least not as much and to everyone's taste) in many other languages that hardly have any interesting content but you might still have to learn at some point in your life for whatever reason?

It's easy to learn English without having to try too hard. I got my CPE (C2) with minimal effort, before I lived in an English speaking country.
Try with a language spoken by 5 million people or less, with no significant footprint in cinema, recent literature, modern music and the like and without living in the country.

Well, Anki is a modern invention as well. And speaking of flash cards, I was trying to recall if there's a Russian word for it and I couldn't recall one. So it's not so widely used, or wasn't used until recently. When in the early 2000's I was studying German I had only a textbook, a dictionary, and a book to read.

Yes, it might happen that there would be no alternative to Anki etc. but when there's one why don't use it if I like that tool more and feel that it is more efficient for me?

Uncle Roger wrote:It's easy to learn English without having to try too hard. I got my CPE (C2) with minimal effort, before I lived in an English speaking country.

That's less easy when your native language doesn't have many cognates with the language you are trying to learn Of course, English is English and it's impossible not to know at least something so I didn't start from zero even though I had not had English in school. And of course there's no other language with so many learning and native materials availble but my brain is the same. I'd had the experience of learning German words trough reading which is why I used the same approach for learning English.

mouse wrote:I think it's probably more that languages are different, as has been said. Learning a new script requires drills — unless you want to progress at a snail's pace — which are more efficient with SRS. Whether you do it with SRS or not, repetition has to be part of your language learning process, so why not (partially) automate it? Personally I think people use the rather dubious concept of 'learning styles' to justify giving up.

Apart from that, as Saim says, SRS is useful for general recognition drills, especially for sentences. I can understand why some might find this boring, though.

You can easily still advance faster than "a snail's" pace without SRS. Yes, repetition has to be part of your learning process, but it can come through natural sources that people might find much more interesting. That's how I learn, and I achieved a B2 level in a language with very little in the way of resources in under 4 years. Now, I was lucky enough to get to study there some, but most my learning came outside of the country and on my own, by reading, listening, etc. Not with SRS.

It's also not that 'languages are different'. People were learning languages well before SRS was a thing, and will continue to do so when the Next Big Thing arrives. It's all down to what the learner finds useful when it comes to learning; it has nothing to do with the language, though, yes, there are some that SRS might make it easier for, if you can stomach doing flashcards. I really don't like the way you seem to be categorically dismissing people who don't like SRS.

Uncle Roger wrote:


What if all the fancy stuff, the comics, the amazing rock tunes, the David Lynch or Francis Ford Coppola movies, the endless amounts of YouTube videos about anything remotely interesting, the quality comedy series did not exist in English, like they don't exist (or at least not as much and to everyone's taste) in many other languages that hardly have any interesting content but you might still have to learn at some point in your life for whatever reason?

Welcome to Irish. I've done it without SRS. Yes, I am interested in folk tales and stuff like that, but that's still not the majority of the stuff in the language. If you're truly committed to a language, you'll listen and read whatever you have to to learn it. And all of this can still be done with SRS. In fact, I'd wager that I would learn any language better without SRS.

Uncle Roger wrote:Lunatics.
Each and every one of them.


Wanting to learn a language without SRS is like wanting to become Schwarzy without pumping iron at the gym. It's possible, but it's inefficient.

PART of the challenge is very clear. (At least) 3000 headwords for basic fluency (solid B2?) for a European language. Ten words a day for 6 days a week for 50 weeks in one year.
How are you going to tackle that astounding amount of learning/memorisation in that time period and assuming a normally busy life (i.e. fulltime studies or work, daily and weekly chores, friends, a partner, staying fit) but with SRS?

Uncle Roger wrote:
Try with a language spoken by 5 million people or less, with no significant footprint in cinema, recent literature, modern music and the like and without living in the country.

You mean the country that gave us Henrik Ibsen, Knut Hamsun and Jo Nesbø?

Weights and resistance training are pretty much obligatory in body building.

If you're trying to build a successful analogy, I believe that high-brow fiction is more comparable to the iron bench press than the act of memorizing words.

I hated anki until I switched tocloze deletion format and changed the ease interval (I increased it a lot because I just don't need to see the word that soon), steps (Steps is the biggest waste of time imo. I make it one step of 2400 or bigger), max interval, and some other settings which make it possible for me send cards out far in a few reviews. The discussion is proceeding with a generalization of anki-ing and srs-sing but anki is very customizable and doing cloze deletion cards is so much more fun and easier than sentence cards in my experience. There are many possible formats for srs-ing. I used to do sentence on the front and the definition of the word in the back which was painful and it didn't work that well ( It was boring so I wouldn't read the sentence even if that was my intention). here are examples of the cloze deletion format that I like using. I do find that I learn more anking and reading vs. just reading from reading 150+ books in Japanese. I've never compared anking and reading vs. reading and looking stuff up because if I go out of my way to look it up and it's worth anki-ing i'm going to add it to my anki deck.. Actually I have been doing that lately because I use the kindle pop-up dictionary for Japanese and it satisfies my curiosity in that moment and I have zero desire to add look-ups to anki.

I can't get myself to stop anki-ing because there are so many tools that make anki-ing more convenient and efficient like wordquery anki plugin (covers any language with the compatible dictionary format), hanseido plugin (korean), sanseido plugin (japanese), rikai-sama (it saves look-ups in a specific format plus you can use EPWING dictionaries), excel (i like cloze deletion so excel makes making the cards more efficient so I use it with rikai-sama or readlang.com), readlang.com (for korean), etc!

Maybe mass-reading on a kindle is more effective/efficient than srs-ing if you're intermediate/advanced?? (provided your language is supported on kindle and you have interesting content to read on the kindle)

galaxyrocker wrote:You can easily still advance faster than "a snail's" pace without SRS. Yes, repetition has to be part of your learning process, but it can come through natural sources that people might find much more interesting. That's how I learn, and I achieved a B2 level in a language with very little in the way of resources in under 4 years. Now, I was lucky enough to get to study there some, but most my learning came outside of the country and on my own, by reading, listening, etc. Not with SRS.

It's also not that 'languages are different'. People were learning languages well before SRS was a thing, and will continue to do so when the Next Big Thing arrives. It's all down to what the learner finds useful when it comes to learning; it has nothing to do with the language, though, yes, there are some that SRS might make it easier for, if you can stomach doing flashcards. I really don't like the way you seem to be categorically dismissing people who don't like SRS.

I don't feel like I am "categorically dismissing people who don't like SRS". I never said you had to use SRS, I said repetition and drills were necessary (which you apparently agree with) and SRS can help with that. My point about languages being different is that some are written in very different scripts, and some might be linguistically unrelated to languages one already knows. As a native English speaker who learned Irish, these of course weren't issues for you, but it doesn't mean they aren't issues for others.

Your post reminds me why I usually avoid these debates, as people tend to be overly defensive about their study methods.