Steve Kaufmann: Don't Try To Memorize Vocabulary

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Re: Steve Kaufmann: Don't Try To Memorize Vocabulary

Postby german2k01 » Mon Jun 27, 2022 7:09 pm

But you could have arrived at that stage after just an hour or two if you had had a peek into a grammar book (even one of the small language guides would suffice for the purpose), and then you would have been better equipped to decode the formulations of the natives and learn from your observations.


Agreed. That has been my experience with understanding German grammar. It took me 7 days to study it completely. A couple of hours spent each day. It feels like someone has turned on my light bulb like a magic wand. Now it feels like I can close each grammar sentence in a curly bracket. :D I found a very good grammar book and that really made a huge difference.

Hopefully, I will be deriving more value from my reading and listening activities.
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Re: Steve Kaufmann: Don't Try To Memorize Vocabulary

Postby zenmonkey » Mon Jun 27, 2022 10:09 pm

I don't disagree with him (which is far from saying I agree with him) -

"don't do things that only frustrate you"
"keep going and eventually it will stick"
"the bulk of my words I learn through listening and reading"
"exposing words to my brains in different ways, eventually I will learn them"
"deliberate attempts, especially if you are literally focused on 10 words a day, I haven't found effective"

isolated words with flashcards from L1 to L2 meaning are less than ideal.

"Don't rely on [semantic] memory."

"trust the process"

"accumulating words is the fundamental task of language learning" (I actually don't agree with this at all, but I understand what he's trying to say).

Etc.

Sure, all that mostly makes sense to me.

Learn in a contextual manner, focus on chunks and phrase groups, trust the process, don't be frustrated, and move away from L2 words to L1 definitions as much as you can, these are all part of my own process.

"Language learning is not about [rote/semantic] memorization" although true, it belittles the role memory and memorization do have in (early) acquisition. It's clear to me, as I see my father (who was a polyglot with 7 languages) begin to lose his executive function, memory, and languages that most certainly language acquisition is about memory.

So .. IMHO not wrong, but not right either.
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Re: Steve Kaufmann: Don't Try To Memorize Vocabulary

Postby Le Baron » Mon Jun 27, 2022 10:24 pm

zenmonkey wrote:"accumulating words is the fundamental task of language learning" (I actually don't agree with this at all, but I understand what he's trying to say).

Could you expand on this?
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Re: Steve Kaufmann: Don't Try To Memorize Vocabulary

Postby SpanishInput » Mon Jun 27, 2022 10:29 pm

As Confucius said, we won't go anywhere without first defining terminology.

He says language learning is not about memorization.

But At 2:18 Steve says, "I sometimes do review words in lists".
And at 2:42 he mentions he does flashcards, but with all the info on the front.

Both reviewing words in lists and doing flashcards are deliberate attempts to reinforce your memory.

I guess what he really means is that he's against both rote memorization and memorization techniques, like mnemonics, and prefers to spend time with actual content.

However, me and others have seen the biggest leaps in language abilities after spending a few months memorizing word lists like crazy. Of course, the more context your flashcards have, the better.
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Re: Steve Kaufmann: Don't Try To Memorize Vocabulary

Postby zenmonkey » Mon Jun 27, 2022 11:03 pm

Le Baron wrote:
zenmonkey wrote:"accumulating words is the fundamental task of language learning" (I actually don't agree with this at all, but I understand what he's trying to say).

Could you expand on this?


Sure.

For me, the fundamental task of language learning is to expand our ability to interact with the people or the cultural artifacts of a nation (in the anthropological sense). Some people here do that mostly to read, others do that mostly to listen/watch media, and others focus on personal private, or public interactions.

Each of us has certain overlapping uses for learning words or "accumulating words" - if, as an example, Iversen primarily wants to read in a variety of languages his strategy may be more strictly word accumulating drills. My daughter, at a very different level and scope is learning k-pop songs with a very passive strategy of sound chunking and general meaning. She doesn't care to accumulate words per se. She is very interested in how these grammatic structures are repeated or not, and where musical rhythms affect language. The woman I spoke with recently was working on her acquisition of Spanish and her focus was certainly not further "accumulating words" but she was interested in intonation, registers, and non-vocal communication. Her love of language learning was more around the differences in language and her own ability to merge with the culture.

So while the tactical task of word accumulation is essential, and I don't think you can learn a language without accumulating words, you just can't learn a language [well] without interiorizing a bunch of other things like grammar, culture etc.

TL:DR version: So if I may, I'd say that the fundamental task of language learning is to gronk language.
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Re: Steve Kaufmann: Don't Try To Memorize Vocabulary

Postby Le Baron » Mon Jun 27, 2022 11:09 pm

I pretty much agree with all that. Thanks.
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Re: Steve Kaufmann: Don't Try To Memorize Vocabulary

Postby leosmith » Tue Jun 28, 2022 3:47 am

desafiar wrote:vocabulary being committed to memory through exposure and recall

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. Obviously, a mixture is preferable. For example, doing those three passive activities plus conversing and writing would probably give you good results. Or do Anki actively – really trying to recall the reps that you don’t instantly know the answers to. There are infinite combinations, but if you are hoping to learn efficiently, you should be spending at least some time trying to recall stuff. If I’m wrong about you doing Anki passively/only trying to increase your exposure, then please just ignore this post.
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Re: Steve Kaufmann: Don't Try To Memorize Vocabulary

Postby alaart » Tue Jun 28, 2022 10:45 am

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.

----

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.
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Re: Steve Kaufmann: Don't Try To Memorize Vocabulary

Postby Beli Tsar » Tue Jun 28, 2022 10:53 am

leosmith wrote:
desafiar wrote:vocabulary being committed to memory through exposure and recall

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. Obviously, a mixture is preferable. For example, doing those three passive activities plus conversing and writing would probably give you good results. Or do Anki actively – really trying to recall the reps that you don’t instantly know the answers to. There are infinite combinations, but if you are hoping to learn efficiently, you should be spending at least some time trying to recall stuff. If I’m wrong about you doing Anki passively/only trying to increase your exposure, then please just ignore this post.

This is a helpful summary. And isn't this true of all learning in general? Isn't it among the most-certain, most-replicable findings of educational psychology? Active recall has been shown to trump passive input in every domain it has bee tested in. Passive study is always less efficient than active recall: reading the textbook again is less effective than quizzing yourself on it or writing an essay; doing problem sets is better than listening to lectures; and forcing yourself to recall vocab is more effective than just encountering it?

Isn't the real issue with recall that it is hard and tiring, not that it is ineffective? So that, at some point, you are going to want to switch to passive study, because otherwise your brain will hurt too much? Or that you might not enjoy using your leisure time for it?

If, though, we want to learn as efficiently as possible, then some kind of active recall is necessary, though this comes in many different forms, not just flashcards.
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Re: Steve Kaufmann: Don't Try To Memorize Vocabulary

Postby Kraut » Tue Jun 28, 2022 1:34 pm

active recall = RETRIEVAL PRACTICE; we have some forum threads on it, take into account that language learning needs different practices than f.ex. history

https://blog.innerdrive.co.uk/why-you-n ... l-practice
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