What do you do when you see a 'New Word'

[drp9341]

Hello everyone!

I'm not sure if I have a bad memory, or if I am underestimating myself, but I come into contact with probably 50-100 new words and expressions in my target language every day. A lot of these are words that I am not going to hear very often, but they are still intermediate level words / expressions, like "trigger" / "pull the trigger" for example.

Usually, my response can be generalized as the following
85% of the time, I simply open a page in safari and search the word in Diki.pl, and leave it for later. Or I put the word / expression into Anki immediately. 85% of the time I make no attempts to memorize it, and I don't keep it in my working memory for more than between 10-30 seconds. There are obviously exceptions, but this is the general rule, (85% of the time, like I said.)

I should say, that I am living in Poland, and although I have to use English at work, I am in constant contact with the language - so I am somewhat overwhelmed. When I am, lets say, in America and I learn a new word in Italian / Spanish etc. I will think about that word later on in the day. Usually with Polish, this will happen with maybe 3-5 of the words / expressions that I learned that day.

The only way I've been able to consistently learn all the words I come across successfully, is by making sure to use Anki everyday, for at least an hour or more, (not counting time making cards. I am getting back into Anki, but I cannot do more than 30 minutes a day. I also am too unorganized for Goldlists, (even though it works!.)

What do you guys do?

My idea has been: write everything down in a small notebook after I put it into Anki, (sometimes I'm in a rush, and Anki is more important.) Look at the notebook throughout the day, and when I learn a new word / expression that I feel is not going to stick for whatever reason, I should re-write the word 2/3 more times. It will make the notebook messy, but I think it might be my only choice.

If anyone has any tips, tricks etc. please share! Even if you think your idea is bad and only works for you, I would love to just know how other people, in a similar situation to me, deal with the huge amounts of USEFUL knowledge that slips through my fingertips everyday.

Thanks everyone!

[Ani]

Hmm.. I don't do anything. Maybe that's why you've got a lot of languages and I don't I make no attempt whatsoever to remember words. I just look it up and go on with whatever I was doing.

I am literally surrounded by useful knowledge just sitting in my house (books, dictionaries, YouTube), but I'd drive myself crazy if I tried to put it all in Anki and keep going until it was memorized.

Is just letting it go an option? Or putting it in Anki but capping your new cards at whatever results in 30 minutes a day? You can catch up in off periods when you're not in contact with the language as much or when you realize you've accumulated more vocab than the average native speaking college professor.

[lingua]

Sometimes I add stuff to my personal/private Memrise courses if it seems like something I might come across in the future but mostly I do nothing. When reading books there is often a particular preferred vocabulary by the author and I end up coming across the word multiple times in the book until I remember it.

So if it were me, I'd do nothing until I realized I was coming across the same word multiple times and then perhaps put it in Anki if I were you or Memrise for myself.

[drp9341]

Hmm.. I don't do anything. Maybe that's why you've got a lot of languages and I don't I make no attempt whatsoever to remember words. I just look it up and go on with whatever I was doing.

I am literally surrounded by useful knowledge just sitting in my house (books, dictionaries, YouTube), but I'd drive myself crazy if I tried to put it all in Anki and keep going until it was memorized.

Is just letting it go an option? Or putting it in Anki but capping your new cards at whatever results in 30 minutes a day? You can catch up in off periods when you're not in contact with the language as much or when you realize you've accumulated more vocab than the average native speaking college professor.

So for example, if you stumble across a video on Youtube in the language you're learning, and there's an unknown word in the title, you just look it up, and move on? You won't make an attempt to write it down somewhere, or put it in an app, so that you can review that word later?

I guess it would depend on the language though. When I was learning French, I didn't use Anki at all. After seeing the words twice, I would know them well enough to understand them, and sometimes even use them. However, at that time I knew two romance languages, and I'm a native English speaker.

However, I could never employ that strategy effectively with Polish, (in your case, Russian.) Most words are not visibly, (to me at least,) similar to any other words in languages I know. Also, I have a much harder time remembering a word if it's "obviously not English / Romance." For example, "gwóść" (pronounced: "gvoo-shch") could never be a word in English. I don't know if I'm explaining this right. What I'm trying to say is if the new word I am trying to learn breaks the phono-syntactic rules of English an any of my other fluent languages, it's much harder for me to memorize than words that do not break those rules.

Sometimes I add stuff to my personal/private Memrise courses if it seems like something I might come across in the future but mostly I do nothing. When reading books there is often a particular preferred vocabulary by the author and I end up coming across the word multiple times in the book until I remember it.

So if it were me, I'd do nothing until I realized I was coming across the same word multiple times and then perhaps put it in Anki if I were you or Memrise for myself.

I guess you have a better memory than me lol. I've been curious regarding whether or not most people have as much difficulty as I do when it comes to memorizing words. Often times, I'm watching / reading stuff that I could be talking about in real life. So if I see something that might help me better understand someone the next time I speak Polish, I do not want to let that knowledge slip through my fingers.

[白田龍]

I was able to cut down my SRS time by adding words strictily from narrow reading. This allows me to find less new words, as the vocabulary of the author I'm using becomes familiar, and also allows me to delete words from the decks much earlier, after I can remember it after just a few days, as there is an increased chance I will encounter it again in the same text or in another one of similar genre, and if it does not come again, it is probably not worth the effort of learning it at this time. My schedule is erractic, but it probably equivalent to read about 1h a day, which gives me 10-15 new words, My SRS is done in 20-30min no more. If I try to get books from genra I'm no used to, the number of new words would be too much.

[zKing]

I've actually been thinking a lot about this topic lately and have recently changed my usage of Anki because of it.

Where I'm coming from:
My main target language is Cantonese and my primary focus is speech, not text. I can read Standard Written Chinese moderately well from previous studies, which helps as I can use Chinese subtitles. I'm roughly low B1 at the moment, i.e. I can have fairly long conversations about various topics but it takes a lot of effort, there is plenty I don't understand, I ask my tutor to repeat himself often, I generate a lot of word salad and make tons of mistakes, etc. I can kind-of follow native content, but I use the Chinese subtitles as a crutch most of the time.

Note that I think that what you do will change depending on if you are beginner, intermediate, or advanced.

As an intermediate, my thoughts on vocabulary is that there are basically four types of words I encounter:
1. Words I know
2. Words I don't know (or don't know well) and really want in my Active vocabulary in the near future (i.e. within a year)
3. Words I don't know (or don't know well) and would like in my Passive vocabulary in the near future (i.e. within a year)
4. The rest: place names that I don't have a personal connection to ('Kansas'), technical or field specific vocab I don't care about ('stock options'), general stuff that I will learn someday when I'm more advanced, etc. etc.

Here's what I do now:
For vocabulary I don't know, 95% of the time I'm looking up words in an online dictionary (CantoDict in my case). I won't always look up everything, it depends on how intensive/extensive I'm working. I'm usually doing a half-intensive thing where I look up maybe 1/2 to 2/3 of the unknowns, depending on how much it slows me down, the level of the content and how lazy I'm being. When I look up a word, if it is category #4 I just do the lookup and move on. If it is either category #2 or #3, I'll quickly copy/paste it into a Google sheet I always have open. If it is a duplicate, I have the sheet setup to highlight the line in red, and I'll delete it. This process is very fast, it only takes a few seconds per item.

At some point, when I've got a batch of say 500 new items in my Google sheet, I'll bulk import them into my Anki deck.
This also only takes like 5 minutes and I do it very rarely. I think I've got a little more than 3k total words in my sheet right now, so I've only done this like 5 times.

My love/hate (mostly hate) relationship with Anki means that I try hard to keep my Anki time to 20 mins per day or less. So I have my Anki deck set to only 15 new cards per day. I now only do cards L1->L2, i.e. production cards. When a new card appears for the first time, if it is category #3 or category #4 that slipped through, I will immediately suspend it. (saved for later) I will also sometimes edit new cards and add info into a "disambiguation" field for cards that are too similar to each other... or just suspend them, because who cares... it's just one item, you don't have to capture them all right now. If I'm doing reps and I encounter a card that annoys me, I suspend it. I just don't sweat any particular word, there are always 1000 more behind it. And for output, many words often have 2-3 other synonyms to choose from.

What this means is that I DON'T Anki stuff that I don't want to output in the near future. For comprehension only, I figure as long as I keep my use of semi-comprehensible input high, I will get the natural spaced repetition that native content provides. If I look up a word 10 times, that's ok, I find that WAY more enjoyable than 10 Anki reps and it probably takes about the same amount of time. Note that many language learners don't do any SRS at all and only use natural input.

I know there are folks who import giant piles of sentences into Anki and spend multiple hours per day getting their input almost completely through flashcards. One could argue that Anki'ing everything is likely scientifically more efficient, but I'd rather stab hot forks in my eyes. And you won't become C2 if you burn out and quit at A2.

OUTPUT is another story. I simply don't do enough output to get enough natural repetition going. And for a language like Cantonese, there are other factors. Producing the correct tones is a big deal and I don't see any other efficient way of making this happen, so I feel I must use an SRS for correct production. As a side note, I noticed that I can see a word in input many times and kind of 'get it' but it isn't until I drill output for it, where I'm really required to produce the full correct pronunciation with tones, that I really 'see' the full form of the word.

All that said, for someone at advanced levels, the natural input spaced repetition thing may not be effective as the new words may be too rare to get enough repetition. So that might require another plan.

TLDR version, What I do/suggest:
SRS for Output, only keep words you would likely need in the somewhat near future. Suspend with wild abandon.
Intensive Reading/Listening for Input comprehension. Yes, look it up and let it go.

[NoManches]

I used to use Anki but ditched it. I will admit, when I was using it I was a word learning machine! However, Anki had some negative side effects for me that I won't get into now, as I've written about it in other posts.

I've noticed that I will often look up a word very quickly while reading using the pop-up dictionary on my Kindle, only to forget it seconds later. Heck,I've looked up a word before, glanced at the definition, and by the time I close the pop-up I forget what the word meant

When I look up a word and take a few seconds to think about that word, it tends to stick in my memory for a longer time. Eventually, I will come across that word again and after enough encounters, it will become part of my passive vocabulary. For me, words only become active if I really like a particular word for whatever reason, or if I make a conscious effort to use it in speech or written form. Sure, there are exceptions, but for me bringing a word from passive to activate usually involves some effort on my part.

When I refer to thinking about a word, I'm talking about taking the time to really think about the definition and how it relates to the sentence. Sometimes using the word in a made up sentence on the fly helps me remember it.

I think I got into the habit of quickly and mindlessly looking up a word, only to forget it seconds later, because constantly looking up words is a drag. Now, I try to look up words only if the meaning makes a huge difference or if it seems really interesting to me. If it's just some random word that doesn't make a huge difference (usually an adjective), I just try to understand the meaning and hope I'll see it again soon.

A good example: the other day I was reading something (I forget what) and come across the Spanish word "acertar". I looked it up and saw that it meant "to get right" (based on the sentence it was used in). I also saw that it meant to "hit a target". I thought to myself, "I really like that word! It seems like something I'd read in one of the police/detective books I like reading by Raul Garbantes". I then made up an example sentence using that word, and moved on with my reading.

I then moved on and haven't seen the word since. However, for this example I had no problem remembering the word and the two meanings it could have (although I double checked so I didn't "hacer el oso" (make a fool of myself). Because I looked the word up, figured it would come in handy, and used it in an example sentence I made up in my head, it stuck with me.

I guess you just need to play with things until you find what works for you. Looking up a word and being mindless about it, hoping it will just "stick" to your memory will probably not be an efficient way to go about things.

[Ani]

However, I could never employ that strategy effectively with Polish, (in your case, Russian.) Most words are not visibly, (to me at least,) similar to any other words in languages I know. Also, I have a much harder time remembering a word if it's "obviously not English / Romance." For example, "gwóść" (pronounced: "gvoo-shch") could never be a word in English. I don't know if I'm explaining this right. What I'm trying to say is if the new word I am trying to learn breaks the phono-syntactic rules of English an any of my other fluent languages, it's much harder for me to memorize than words that do not break those rules.

Well, I've only succeeded in learning Russian words by audio repetition because of the phonological thing. I still do the same thing -- look it up (maybe listen a few times if that's an option) and then move on. I just count on life/tv/course books to be my "SRS". Are you listening enough?

Really you just have to find a way to not make yourself crazy.. you can learn it all* eventually, but you can't grab every last detail that comes your way. Accept that some situations are "extensive" and some more limited set (that works with your Anki time) are "intensive".

I like zking"'s idea though.

*Just kidding, no one can learn it all

[lingua]

I guess you have a better memory than me lol. I've been curious regarding whether or not most people have as much difficulty as I do when it comes to memorizing words. Often times, I'm watching / reading stuff that I could be talking about in real life.

When I was much younger I had a great memory. In my middle years it's not that great but I have been studying Italian for a long time and my other languages are Latin based so a lot of times I already have a good idea of the meaning.

When I spent about a year learning Thai I had to spend quite a bit of time writing to get things to stick in my mind and even when I took two years of Italian (back as a beginner) I wrote a lot and never used SRS. In fact, I've started doing a bit more of that in the last month or so and will continue to. I think writing helps retain faster at least for me.

[Arnaud]

For russian, I have the same problem as you: a lot of new words, only a few of them that I can retain everyday, I think I forget 95% of the new words that I write in my notebook.
What has helped me, I think, is studying the roots : now when I see a new word, I can recognize the stem, prefixes, suffixes and can have an idea of what it means in the context, or I can understand the path from the prime meaning to the figurative meaning. When it's a loaned word, I try to find which language it comes from, etc. For russian there are several books on the subject, but for polish I'm afraid the choice is more restricted (but still, a lot of polish words are close to russian ones, once you know one slavic language, life is easier: there are a lot of cognates).
Also, now I read several times the same articles (not the books) at a few weeks interval, a kind of space repetition of texts, and I read several texts on the same subject: from an article to the other, the new words are coming back. Repetition, mother of learning...