Moving on with French

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eido
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Re: Moving on with French

Postby eido » Sun Nov 11, 2018 1:33 am

Skynet wrote:Girls, any takers? ;)

Unfortunately I've seen the Terminator movies one too many times ;)
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SGP
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Re: Moving on with French

Postby SGP » Sun Nov 11, 2018 11:53 am

Lawyer&Mom wrote:I was able to jump (akwardly) into native materials after Assimil French, and you are a native speaker of a Romance language! This is very, very doable! I also did the first 1500 words on Memrise, then 20,000 sentences on Clozemaster, with simultaneous immersive reading...


Two questions of Purely Interrogative Nature (as someone who used both of Memrise and Clozemaster in the past):

How exactly could one find reliable courses on Memrise?

This is because there is a lot of content generated by a multitude of users.
And some of these courses were reported to contain a rather large amount of errors.

(Didn't verify it myself, thus saying "were reported to contain", as in "this is what some people mentioned when reviewing it").

And how exactly can Clozemaster be useful for those who already have got a Way Beyond Zero Understanding of a certain language? That one I am asking because I did sense some advancements when I was using it for Spanish, while at the same time I also realized that a not-so-small number of sentences weren't Comprehensible Input to me at that time.

Because back then, while I already had that "Way Beyond Zero Understanding" of Spanish, there were quite many Gaps of Knowledge too. And these gaps caused myself to also being somehow puzzled and micro-confused because of all of these words I didn't know, even if I did know what the "fill in the blank" word that Clozemaster asked me for was.
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Cavesa
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Re: Moving on with French

Postby Cavesa » Sun Nov 11, 2018 3:24 pm

SGP wrote:How exactly could one find reliable courses on Memrise?

This is because there is a lot of content generated by a multitude of users.
And some of these courses were reported to contain a rather large amount of errors.

(Didn't verify it myself, thus saying "were reported to contain", as in "this is what some people mentioned when reviewing it").


Easily. You ask around, see whether the course looks reliable in general, and you simply accept the fact that the user generated courses are usually still better than the official ones so there is no need to judge the creators so harshly and generalise like "most user made courses are full of mistakes". The Memrise company would love that, sure, they are trying to make the whole platform mostly about their courses (which I personally dislike as they are mostly phrasebook memorisation), but I don't think it is a useful or respectful attitude.

The longer courses tend to be of better quality, as they tend to be made by more experienced people putting a lot of time into this anyways, while making a tiny course requires little attention. You can look over a few levels and see for yourself.

And you need to never turn your brain off, just like with any other resource (there are sometimes mistakes even in courses or native books, learning a typo accidentally is possible). Memrise or any other SRS is not meant to be one's only or main contact with the language.


And how exactly can Clozemaster be useful for those who already have got a Way Beyond Zero Understanding of a certain language? That one I am asking because I did sense some advancements when I was using it for Spanish, while at the same time I also realized that a not-so-small number of sentences weren't Comprehensible Input to me at that time.

Because back then, while I already had that "Way Beyond Zero Understanding" of Spanish, there were quite many Gaps of Knowledge too. And these gaps caused myself to also being somehow puzzled and micro-confused because of all of these words I didn't know, even if I did know what the "fill in the blank" word that Clozemaster asked me for was.


Hey, stop pointing that lamp in my face! :-D (Really, that is a bit too strong way to ask questions IMHO) but still:

This is normal. We always have some overlaps and some gaps, especially when we switch from one learning tool to another. It requires rushing through the known stuff or using an ignore button (I think there is such a tool in Clozemaster but I am not sure now), and focusing more on the harder stuf.

The whole "Comprehensible Input" theory is beautiful but very artificial and we need to adapt that approach to the real life, or stick to buying prechewed stuff for learners only (which is not always bad, just sometimes expensive and boring and slow paced). Most things you'll encounter will be too easy or too hard, and dealing with that is the language learner's bread and butter.

To make your own Clozemaster cards based on books, for example, you can use Memcode, Readlang, Anki, Memrise, and other's. I think Memcode is the simplest, as you can put there the card with a gap and the hint, such as translation.
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Re: Moving on with French

Postby SGP » Sun Nov 11, 2018 4:12 pm

Cavesa wrote:
SGP wrote:How exactly could one find reliable courses on Memrise?

This is because there is a lot of content generated by a multitude of users.
And some of these courses were reported to contain a rather large amount of errors.

(Didn't verify it myself, thus saying "were reported to contain", as in "this is what some people mentioned when reviewing it").


Easily. You ask around, see whether the course looks reliable in general, and you simply accept the fact that the user generated courses are usually still better than the official ones so there is no need to judge the creators so harshly and generalise like "most user made courses are full of mistakes".
Just for the purpose of making something double-clear, even if I already made it clear one time in the post you quoted :): I didn't say something like "most user made courses are full of mistakes" myself, instead, I only mentioned what I read in some reviews. (And even there, it was about "some of these courses" only.)

And as for the remaining part, like "and you simply accept the fact that...", I took notice of what you wrote, but maybe not commenting it further right now :).

Cavesa wrote:The longer courses tend to be of better quality, as they tend to be made by more experienced people putting a lot of time into this anyways, while making a tiny course requires little attention. You can look over a few levels and see for yourself.

This one is a rather useful reminder at least, I'd say.

And how exactly can Clozemaster be useful for those who already have got a Way Beyond Zero Understanding of a certain language? That one I am asking because I did sense some advancements when I was using it for Spanish, while at the same time I also realized that a not-so-small number of sentences weren't Comprehensible Input to me at that time.

Because back then, while I already had that "Way Beyond Zero Understanding" of Spanish, there were quite many Gaps of Knowledge too. And these gaps caused myself to also being somehow puzzled and micro-confused because of all of these words I didn't know, even if I did know what the "fill in the blank" word that Clozemaster asked me for was.
Cavesa wrote:Hey, stop pointing that lamp in my face! :-D (Really, that is a bit too strong way to ask questions IMHO) but still:

I think I just might re-quote that one again rather soon, but not within this thread. Even if I don't always necessarily agree to all what others are saying (but even then, there can be rather many aspects of it that I still agree upon), I do want to hear what is on your mind especially about matters like this one. You know, pointing the lamp and so on :).

[EDIT: I just re-quoted it somewhere else. So Cavesa, and also any other person who would have experienced a similar Pointing The Lamp In One's Face Effect could simply comment on it:
https://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?f=15&p=122431#p122431 ]


Cavesa wrote:This is normal. We always have some overlaps and some gaps, especially when we switch from one learning tool to another. It requires rushing through the known stuff or using an ignore button (I think there is such a tool in Clozemaster but I am not sure now), and focusing more on the harder stuf.

"Focusing on the harder stuff", this can be an additional clue, yes.

Cavesa wrote:The whole "Comprehensible Input" theory is beautiful but very artificial and we need to adapt that approach to the real life, or stick to buying prechewed stuff for learners only (which is not always bad, just sometimes expensive and boring and slow paced). Most things you'll encounter will be too easy or too hard, and dealing with that is the language learner's bread and butter.

Maybe some others would have a "middle course" stance on that Comprehensible Input Thing :). And as for "will be too easy or too hard", I'd say that many people have been experiencing it more than once, yes.
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