Making a vocab list for one language while listening to another

[Iversen]

For me the moot point is what "list-making" implies - apart from taking words from a source and writing them into a list - but is that list digital or analog? Do you list the words with or without translations, and if there are translations where do they come from? And do you do some active memorizing while you make the list og later or not at all?

For me the stumbling-block would be to do active memorizing while some external source pushed other words into my ears - and the actual language of those words would not be the most important factor there, but rather the timing. Actually I think it would be easier if I didn't understand a word of the external input. Then it would be reduced to the nuisance level of street noise.

[leosmith]

Re: lack of tech: what do you mean, exactly? Like, why circle words and go back and look them up when I could just look them up on the spot if I were reading on a device?

Yes. I gave up on my beloved paper long ago for many reasons, the biggest one being speed. But I still miss it.

[Khayyam]

I did however notice that Khayyam didn't explicitely refer to memorisation, but to just writing lists - which is supposed to be less taxing and therefore less likely to be disturbed by external speech. So maybe it's another activity with other rules.

Correct--there's no memorization at this stage, or at least I make no effort to memorize. All I'm doing is using Google Translate to look up all the words from a given chapter that I've circled because I don't know them and writing out a list of English translations of those words. It's possible to a large extent to make this an automatic activity--no thinking, just copying what I read.

[Khayyam]

Re: lack of tech: what do you mean, exactly? Like, why circle words and go back and look them up when I could just look them up on the spot if I were reading on a device?

Yes. I gave up on my beloved paper long ago for many reasons, the biggest one being speed. But I still miss it.

One reason is that I like to read in the bath, or outside in most any kind of weather, and using cheap printer paper enables me to be as rough and careless as I like and never worry.

Another is that the paper allows me to draw or write in anything at all to assist with comprehension, or just to have more fun with the project. (I use large font with wide spacing for my TL.) If a word means love, I might draw a bunch of hearts around it (I know, what am I, a second-grade girl?), or if it means testicles (actual example from the bible today), out comes the Bart Simpson. Sometimes I come up with wild things that would make no sense to anyone else (and hardly even make sense to me), but I know they'll jog my memory so good enough.

Doing all this graffiti doesn't really take much time, and it assists me with my rereading so much that I suspect it saves time in the long run.

I feel that making the process tactile to some degree--treating the words as physical entities that I capture with my pen--facilitates assimilation.

But who knows--maybe one day I'll cave and try reading with one of these apps, and I'll look back and roll my eyes at all this.

[Khayyam]

For me the moot point is what "list-making" implies - apart from taking words from a source and writing them into a list - but is that list digital or analog? Do you list the words with or without translations, and if there are translations where do they come from? And do you do some active memorizing while you make the list og later or not at all?

For me the stumbling-block would be to do active memorizing while some external source pushed other words into my ears - and the actual language of those words would not be the most important factor there, but rather the timing. Actually I think it would be easier if I didn't understand a word of the external input. Then it would be reduced to the nuisance level of street noise.

Digital first, then analog (after printing). I don't include the new words I'm trying to learn in the list, only their translations. So if it's a Persian word that means something like fixed-established-firm, then I don't include the Persian word in my list; I just type in fixed, established, firm. The point is to end up with a printed list that I can refer to freely as I reread whatever section I just went through.

I do virtually no active memorization; I just refer to the list as I reread a section, and I keep rereading it until I don't need the list. If a word requires active memorization, that becomes obvious because the word will pop up over and over again as an unfamiliar word. I'll eventually get so sick of having to look it up that I'll come up with some trick to jog my memory so I won't have to look it up anymore. For instance, with the Persian word for pursuit, I decided that one letter looked like a cat and another letter looked like a mouse hole.

I use Google Translate exclusively and so far, it seems to be good enough.