Best approach to learning more words

[neofight78]

Let's say you have two paths to learn Russian:

1. Anki. It will take you exactly 2000 hours to reach C1.

2. Reading in Russian and watching TV in Russian. It will take you exactly 3000 hours to reach C1.

Also basing your argument on made up numbers doesn't make it very persuasive.

[Xmmm]

Let's say you have two paths to learn Russian:

1. Anki. It will take you exactly 2000 hours to reach C1.

2. Reading in Russian and watching TV in Russian. It will take you exactly 3000 hours to reach C1.

Also basing your argument on made up numbers doesn't make it very persuasive.

I am only a B1- in Russian, so I cannot provide the real numbers. You are a B2+ and have used Anki.

So, why not take a stab at providing the real numbers?

1. Roughly how many hours did you spent on Anki and roughly what percentage of total study hours was it?
2. How much time do you think Anki saved you versus just using LingQ or TV viewing etc. ?

I can understand that your numbers won't be very precise, but you can certainly give very rough ballpark figures and everyone would be very appreciative.

If you provide a "real" (as real as it's going to get) set of numbers which contradicts my argument, I'll concede. How's that for fair?

[neofight78]

So, why not take a stab at providing the real numbers?

Because there's no reasonable way for me to do that. I don't know how many hours I've actually spent, and much less how many hours it would take using a different approach - that would merely be speculation. Coming up with imaginary numbers doesn't prove anything useful, it doesn't matter who comes up with them.

To get to real numbers you need a large randomly selected group with half taking each approach and meticulously recording time spent. But even then you would only be showing what worked best on average and not necessarily which approach is best for a particular person.

1. Roughly how many hours did you spent on Anki and roughly what percentage of total study hours was it?
2. How much time do you think Anki saved you versus just using LingQ or TV viewing etc. ?

Despite my arguments above, here are my best guesses:

For me:

1. With Anki => C1 - A long time.
2. With extensive reading => C1 - I would never get there, because I'd lose the will to live first.

For you:

1. With Anki => C1 - You would never get there, because you'd lose the will to live first.
2. With extensive reading => C1 - A long time.

One needs to study as one can and not as one can't.

If you provide a "real" (as real as it's going to get) set of numbers which contradicts my argument, I'll concede. How's that for fair?

Not fair at all, or more accurately, not meaningful at all. Comparing made up numbers doesn't really prove anything.

Total hours is only relevant if the person in question is equally capable of studying a language with either approach. I suspect for most people that is not the case. For most people the important principle is:

You need to learn words in a way that is both effective and tolerable/enjoyable for you as you have a lot of work ahead of you.

I was chatting with a fellow student yesterday. He said that the only way for him to make progress was to move to Russia for a year and take regular classes at the University. A rather expensive and extreme way to get to A2/B1 one might say, but for him it's the only way. It's maybe hard to comprehend for a motivated independent learner like myself, but guess what, people are all very different.

[Xmmm]

Despite my arguments above, here are my best guesses:

For me:

1. With Anki => C1 - A long time.
2. With extensive reading => C1 - I would never get there, because I'd lose the will to live first.

For you:

1. With Anki => C1 - You would never get there, because you'd lose the will to live first.
2. With extensive reading => C1 - A long time.

One needs to study as one can and not as one can't.

Well, I more than most people fully appreciate the difficulties of extensive reading in Russian starting from a low base.

OP's original point was that his Anki method wasn't working for him. I was just trying to encourage use of native materials because I think they're intrinsically worthwhile. I don't own any put options on the Anki Corporation, lol ...

[smallwhite]

This is something I've never understood. Let's say you have two paths to learn Russian:

1. Anki. It will take you exactly 2000 hours to reach C1.

2. Reading in Russian and watching TV in Russian. It will take you exactly 3000 hours to reach C1.

Why would anyone who is learning a language as a hobby choose to go with Anki?

With the first approach, you are chained to a machine. With the second approach, you are reading Bulgakov in the original one day, and the next day you are watching Брат or Ленинград 46.

Because in my experience, the difference is actually:

1. 1000 hours with reading+flashcards (maybe ~600h reading + ~400h flashcards)
2. 4000 hours with reading alone.

So I become C1 in 1 year, and you in 4 years. When I have already become C1, you are still B1. I read The Three Musketeers and you read The Three Little Pigs. With the 3 years savings, I can do anything:

* I can spend time with family
* I can learn another language
* I can read what you read but I will enjoy it more than you will because I am already C1 if not C2 during hours 1001 to 4000
* I can read books that you can't read because I can understand more than you do

Why would anyone give up family and other beautiful things in life in order to read The Three Little Pigs? That is something I've never understood.

If reading is important to you, then the 2 paths can be stated as:

1. Spending 3600 hours reading and 400 SRS'ing, fully understanding and enjoying from the 1000th hour onwards
2. Spending 4000 hours reading, not fully understanding or enjoying until the 4000th hour

Why would anyone who treasures reading choose a path that delays their ability to read by 4 times? That is something I've never understood. Though I would understand if the SRS must be Anki - I can't stand Anki either; I would lose the will to live, too, using Anki.

[Teango]

Doing even 1 hour of Anki would make me want to stab my own eyeballs out.

And I imagine this would seriously compromise one's extensive reading abilities.

[neofight78]

This is only in your case though.

Doing even 1 hour of Anki would make me want to stab my own eyeballs out. So put another way: why would i torture myself by doing something i hated in order to be able to read, when i could just read in the first place ?

Indeed. As I said, horses for courses. What works great for one person might be totally soul destroying for another.

And your hours are not typical.

I'm reading French without a dictionary and understanding most of what i read, after less than 500 hours of reading.

With respect French is not Russian. I too would start reading much quicker if studying French because there are some many cognates and the language is much closer to English. Also you cannot compare your results with someone else, because that's not a comparison between approaches it's a comparison between people (actually there are so many variables it's not a meaningful comparison at all).

I would wager that the best readers and writers in any language are people who read and write a lot. Not people who do tonnes of SRS.

We are not talking about becoming the best. I'm a mediocre learner and I need something for mediocre learners and not for genius polyglots. Besides, flashcards does not exclude lots of reading and writing. It provides a leg up to help a person get to a level where they can enjoyably engage with those activities.

If someone can read straight off the bat, great. But others can't, they need to build up their vocabulary first.

Unfortunately this seems to be turning into a Flashcard vs Extensive input debate. I'm not advocating one method to rule them all and neither should you. If I'd used reading as my main approach I would have given up literally years ago. At the same time I recognise that approach does work for other people.

It's the dogmatism that fails to recognise different people need different things which gets my goat.

[blaurebell]

Personally I have vowed never to look at a single flashcard beyond pronunciation cards ever again. I also won't ever drill grammar up front again. It simply isn't for me. But then, whatever works for everyone else! Grammar translation + flashcards works for many people, Assimil + intensive reading works for me, other people like interaction heavy immersion approaches. I don't think it makes sense to compare these approaches, because they all have different strengths, weaknesses and goals. Just pick the one that fits your preferences and goals and let everyone else be happy with their choices!

Why would anyone who treasures reading choose a path that delays their ability to read by 4 times? That is something I've never understood.

Personally I would prefer 4000h of extensive reading at any kind of level of precision to 600h extensive reading + 400h flashcards with increased precision, and it's a totally logical choice. Why? Very simple: For me flashcards are pure torture and reading is fun even if I don't understand everything. Trading 3000h of fun for 400h torture seems like a pretty fair deal to me But then I don't only read extensively and get a real boost from intensive reading similar to the flashcard boost you experience. In French 5000 pages intensively took me 320h, further 5000 pages extensively another 155h, that's 475h for 10,000 pages. And this is where your numbers seem somewhat exaggerated to me: 4000h of reading would amount to ~123,700 pages for me, assuming that my reading speed stays the same as right now. That's quite a high estimate for how much extensive reading would be necessary to get to C1 reading comprehension. And judging from my own reading speed your 600h reading vs 4000h comparison would equate to ~15,000 pages vs ~120,000 pages. I'm not sure whether the difference is really that pronounced. Did you actually try the extensive reading method out for one of your languages? Actual numbers would be very interesting! I think in my case with English I got beyond C1 comprehension on 50,000 pages extensive reading at the very most, probably less actually. In any case, I totally agree that there is a marked difference between intensive vs extensive activities, although in my experience it wasn't quite as extreme as your numbers suggest.

[smallwhite]

And this is where your numbers seem somewhat exaggerated to me:

Great to see someone interested in actual numbers. (Have I said this to you before?) I'm a bean-counter, btw, and I think it shows

I started with the figure "1000" only because Xmmm said 2000 and 3000. My experience or impression is actually "1:4".

Before I was tested C1 in French reading, I read textbooks, I read aloud word lists as they came up in textbooks and maybe wrote them out a bit, read some news articles, read Read & Think French which contains around 95 short articles about France, read 1 reader (fiction) of about 120 pages, and studied word lists in a sort of SRS fashion during the last 2 months. Ignoring the textbook and news bits that probably everyone does, the amount of time I spent reading was around:
( 95 articles + 120 pages ) x 5 mins = 17.9 hours
and the time I spent sort of SRS'ing was maybe 1 or 2 hours (one can't study vocabulary for more than 2 hours a day, right?), let's say 1.5 hours a day:
1.5 hour x 60 days = 90 hours

So 17.9 hours of reading + 90 hours of SRS and I got C1 in reading, full marks.

Compare this to LesRonces who wrote recently and today:
> my levels are probably a mid-high B1 at the moment everything considered
> I'm reading French without a dictionary and understanding most of what i read, after less than 500 hours of reading. No SRS, ever.

That's not even 1:4. More like 1:10?

[smallwhite]

Then maybe I didn't SRS for 90 hours either. Who knows.