Matt Neilsen's Hebrew Log

[MattNeilsen]

That giant hedgehog is terrifying though.

Hahaha - that was the FIRST thing that I thought when I started watching the show. I think it's the black, soulless eyes that make it so creepy...

[MattNeilsen]

Yesterday's activity:

Pimsleur (Level 1, Lesson 22) - 30 minutes
Clozemaster - 120 minutes
Duolingo - 10 minutes
Anki - 10 minutes
YouTube (Rechov SumSum) - 15 minutes

Total study to date: ~93 hours

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I reached the first Pimsleur lesson that starts to give most of the instructions in Hebrew rather than English. While I felt like I still did pretty well, I think I'm going to re-listen to this lesson to help the new vocab sink in a bit more. I was also struggling a little bit with word order/gender choice for possessives (i.e. I have, you have, we have, etc.), so it'd be worthwhile to do this one again.

One other thought concerning Anki:

I need to come up with a better system. Between finding pictures, switching my keyboard layout to Hebrew, copying the IPA/diacritics, adding audio, etc., it takes me an average of almost 3 minutes to create a new card. Creating 20 new cards per hour seems horribly inefficient, and while the process itself may help me memorize that particular card, I don't feel like it's a great use of my time.

I see Anki/SRS simply as a tool, so if it's not serving me then I don't mind changing and/or removing it. Perhaps I'll try removing pictures from the cards in my next batch and see how that affects memory. Given the nature of Hebrew (i.e. no vowels indicated in normal text), I need to have audio with every card to ensure I'm pronouncing words right. I guess that's part of what makes Hebrew a Cat IV language for English learners...

[arthaey]

I put some effort into preparing templates for Anki. … Similarly, I prepared a template for drills from FSI basic course.

Can you describe in more detail (maybe with screenshots) how you've set up your Anki FSI still cards? I'm thinking about doing something similar, so I'd love to see what others have already tried!

[cjareck]

Can you describe in more detail (maybe with screenshots) how you've set up your Anki FSI still cards?

I allowed myself to answer you in my language log. It is a lot of writing, so I do not want to spam this log, but I want to promote my own also Hope you do not mind.

[MattNeilsen]

Yesterday's activity:

Clozemaster - 75 minutes
Duolingo - 10 minutes
YouTube - 15 minutes

Total study to date: ~94.5 hours

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The day got busier than expected. Still found time for Clozemaster (because I'm a crack-addict and love that stupid app), but Pimsleur and Anki fell by the wayside.

I promised a couple pages back that I would give a review of Clozemaster PRO after I'd used it for a bit. Here are some of my thoughts:

1. Sentence search - This is a great feature. I find it extraordinarily useful to use when I'm unclear why/how a certain word is used. By doing a sentence search, I can pull up dozens (or often hundreds) of instances where the word is used in context, ranging from simple sentences to small paragraphs.

2. Translation of word - It's nice to not have to click on Wiktionary/Google Translate to pull up the translation; instead, the translation immediately pops up when I click on any word in the sentence. Not a must-have, but quite convenient.

3. Favorite sentences - I just started using this feature, and I actually like it quite a bit. You can favorite any sentence you come across, and then there is a separate review option that allows you to just go through your favorited sentences. The way I'm using this is by selecting sentences that seem particularly useful to basic communication (e.g. "Can you say that again?", "I can't hear you", "What does he want to do?"), or sentences that introduce some basic grammar constructions (e.g. "You have to go there, even if you don't want to.") As I mentioned, this is still a work in progress, but it seems like a good way to really drill a select few sentences into your head that YOU have control over, rather than random sentences that are decided for you.

4. Additional Statistics - I haven't used these at all. It's not that they're bad, I just don't care about them. The statistics I care about are already included in the free version.

5. Customization of Review Times - Initially, I thought this was a really cool feature. After all, the default settings seem insanely long (1, 10, 30, 180 days), so I thought it would make sense to shorten the reviews so I was getting more exposure. However, my thinking has changed as I've used the app more. My current strategy is to simply play as many new sentences as possible via Multiple Choice so I inundate myself with new vocabulary. In the process, I tend to come across words that I did yesterday/two days ago/last week, etc., so it sort of has an SRS built in. Then, once I finish a section, I go back and play it using Text Input so I can practice spelling and really sink the words into my memory. Consequently, I find myself rarely using the Review button anymore.

6. Offline Mode - I haven't had to use this yet, but I imagine it would be really useful for people in certain contexts.

7. Grammar Challenges/Cloze Reading/Cloze-Collections/Pro Groupings - Unfortunately, none of these are available in Hebrew so I haven't had a chance to try them. However, the concept seems really cool. Want to target your understanding of specific grammar constructions (prepositions, subjunctive/indicative/imperative, 'essere' vs. 'asere' in Italian, etc.)? Then you can choose to only study those sentence and super-charge your study. If you are studying a more mainstream language, then this would probably be a big selling point for Clozemaster PRO. I would be really interested to try this out if it was developed for Hebrew.

If I think of anything else I'll come back and edit this post for completeness.

So, will I stick with PRO? I think I will for the next month or so since it's quite affordable. I also feel good about supporting this project because it really is amazing how much is available in the free version. If there is a Black Friday sale, I'll probably end up buying a year's membership just to support the great work the team is doing. And hopefully, more resources will be developed for Hebrew!

[MattNeilsen]

Yesterday's activity:

Pimsleur (Level 1, Lesson 22) - 30 minutes
Clozemaster - 75 minutes
Duolingo - 10 minutes
YouTube - 30 minutes
Anki - 10 minutes

Total study to date: ~97 hours

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I divide my Clozemaster time into two sections in the morning: Text Input for consolidating the 1-100 Words, and Multiple Choice for the 101-500 Words. My goal is to do ~10 rounds of each (i.e. 100 sentences each), and any additional sentences I get throughout the day are a bonus.

Now I'm starting to see how users can get so many points in Clozemaster. I can rack up 3000+ points in 25-30 minutes while reviewing the 1-100 Words because I'm getting +32 points per answer. This is the first week that I've managed to stay on top of the leaderboard 3 days into the week...we'll see if I can maintain it.

I watched most of the first episode (Season 1) of Srugim yesterday just to see how my comprehension was. I feel like ~5% would be a fair assessment It's quite a shock to see how much faster speaking occurs in the wild, not to mention all the other comprehension-reducing elements (mumbling, elisions, etc.).

!זה מה שזה (It is what it is!)

[Expugnator]

You have my respect for managing to stay on Clozemaster for over one hour, and only one language! I struggle to go through much shorter rounds for each of my languages.

Looking forward to hearing more about your experience with the series. It will probably take me a couple of years more before I can start native materials for Hebrew - I want to remove frustration as much as possible, and since there's not much there for improving comprehension, like subtitles and translations (there aren't even vowels!), I'll be collecting recommendations in the meantime.

[MattNeilsen]

You have my respect for managing to stay on Clozemaster for over one hour, and only one language! I struggle to go through much shorter rounds for each of my languages.

Looking forward to hearing more about your experience with the series. It will probably take me a couple of years more before I can start native materials for Hebrew - I want to remove frustration as much as possible, and since there's not much there for improving comprehension, like subtitles and translations (there aren't even vowels!), I'll be collecting recommendations in the meantime.

That's high praise coming from the guy who - despite my efforts today - is still 2,000 points ahead of me for the week I will die a happy person if I can beat you one week in points.

The temptation to wanderlust on Clozemaster is strong. I've briefly looked at Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Polish, Esperanto, and German, but so far have managed to keep them at bay. I really want to be able to read/listen to audiobooks in Hebrew, and that desire is driving me to focus exclusively on one language....for now.

The lack of (notated) vowels in Hebrew is a real challenge and has made things far trickier than I initially expected. I've spoken to several Israeli friends and all of them have given the same advice: I just need to spend a lot of time internalizing the patterns. I think that's part of the beauty of Clozemaster - the user can expose their brain to hundreds and thousands of sentences, thereby supercharging pattern-acquisition. In a language like Hebrew (and I would imagine Arabic/other abjad alphabets), this seems indispensable.

If I can keep up my current pace, then I can probably make it through the first 1,000 Words in ~4 months. At that point, I should have a fairly strong foundation to tackle an audiobook like Lord of the Rings (which I'm not actually sure exists, but here's to hoping!). My hope is that after reading-listening to an audiobook I will also have a good foundation for listening to native TV/audio.

I guess we'll see! Maybe then I'll learn Portuguese and come hang out with you and we can speak Hebrew to each other

[MattNeilsen]

Hi geoffw - I was going through an old thread and noticed that you've spent some time on Hebrew, particularly Assimil. How did you like the course? Are you still studying Hebrew? If you don't mind me asking, were there any other resources that you felt were particularly helpful?

Our Team Middle East thread is pretty quiet, so I figured I'd try to wrangle as many Hebrew learners into my log as I can

Thanks,
Matt

[cjareck]

Our Team Middle East thread is pretty quiet, so I figured I'd try to wrangle as many Hebrew learners into my log as I can

Very good idea! We may start writing Hebrew in that thread as a practice. Maybe someone will join or even someone will start correcting us.

I am impressed that you can use Clozemaster for Hebrew. This tool isn't bad, but there is no sound and I just couldn't use it not knowing how to pronounce the practised phrases. I could copy them and paste into doitinhebrew (in Pro version there is TTS) but it is simply too much work and there is no guarantee that TTS is correct.