leosmith wrote:I think you have misunderstood what is meant by "recall" here. It means actually putting an effort into recalling something. Passive reading, listening and Anki do not require enough effort to optimize your learning. This is the main flaw in Kaufmann’s method. I believe recall has been shown to be the single most important factor for acquiring and retaining vocabulary, even trumping exposure.
That might actually be very important information for me, like a revelation, I heard it before somewhere but it didn't get my attention - maybe because you formulated it in such a strong way. Do you know where I could read more about the roll of recalling?
When I think about it, it totally matches my experiences. (Because I mainly learned with languages exchanges while taking walks in the city and parks before Covid - no dictionary or something else close by, just talking and recalling). In comparison, I study a bit more traditionally now - but my progress is slower.
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On topic: Kaufmann's approach of mass reading, reading like hours everyday, getting his vocabulary and grammar from mass exposure in the context of his texts. I tried it. I think I rather need to hear or speak, maybe if I would read the texts out loud, but they are not that interesting to me - especially at the beginner level and I die of boredom from reading.
It probably works well for certain types of learners, maybe a curious type who quickly skips over interesting texts and is content with not getting everything, and also has good pattern recognition.
He build his system into the language platform LingQ. I used it a bit for translating Japanese songs 2-3 years ago, also I added my university course texts. It was helpful for that. You can import and annotate texts, the problem is that the platform will delete all of that data after you cancel your subscription, and I feel that is like blackmail to me and I'm still angry for losing all my data from that time. That is just a shameful concept.