Goldlist Challenge

Ongoing language-learning challenges, and team challenge logs (but not individual logs)
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smallwhite
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Re: Goldlist Challenge

Postby smallwhite » Tue Jan 23, 2018 10:14 am

zenmonkey wrote:... 8, 4, 2K words... after the fact.

Good point.

zenmonkey wrote:4) 60 days in, do a recall test on a sample from the original list.

You need to learn vocabulary anyway - can you make the experiment 180 days? Though having interim results every 60 days would be nice, too, maybe with a smaller sample size so as not to interfere the forgetting curves too much.

I wouldn't fix the number at 40 words a day. A limit may have you doing suboptimal things at times. Maybe some guideline like "to add new words at least 3 times a week" just to maintain regularity. And a realistic number of words close to what people usually do would probably make the experiment more relevant to people.

But my biggest question mark is: how do you decide how much time to spend when you goldlist or iversenlist? When I tried them, I found that it was totally up to me whether I wanted to chew my batch of words for 20 or 30 minutes, and that's a 50% difference already.
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Re: Goldlist Challenge

Postby zenmonkey » Tue Jan 23, 2018 10:23 am

smallwhite wrote:But my biggest question mark is: how do you decide how much time to spend when you goldlist or iversenlist? When I tried them, I found that it was totally up to me whether I wanted to chew my batch of words for 20 or 30 minutes, and that's a 50% difference already.


It's my understanding you aren't supposed to particularly spend time with the GM. The idea is to write them out only.
I understand it is:
"You just write out words, regularly. That's all. No memorizing!",

and

"it works best if you don’t really worry about remembering the words. When you’re writing out the words, you shouldn’t be cramming them; instead, you should just write them out slowly and neatly, enjoying the process."


Thanks for the other points!
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Re: Goldlist Challenge

Postby CarlyD » Tue Jan 23, 2018 3:25 pm

It's my understanding that a new word will be reviewed/distilled every two weeks for 8 weeks while on the Bronze list, another 8 weeks on the Silver list and a final 8 weeks on the Gold list. So I'm thinking it would take the full 24 weeks before you could say if it really did or didn't work.

I'm happy with it so far--but I'm not going over the basic 25 words a day.
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Re: Goldlist Challenge

Postby smallwhite » Tue Jan 23, 2018 3:38 pm

zenmonkey wrote:
smallwhite wrote:But my biggest question mark is: how do you decide how much time to spend when you goldlist or iversenlist? When I tried them, I found that it was totally up to me whether I wanted to chew my batch of words for 20 or 30 minutes, and that's a 50% difference already.


... you should just write them out slowly...

How slowly? You're trying to compare time spent so How Slowly is critical.
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Re: Goldlist Challenge

Postby Brun Ugle » Tue Jan 23, 2018 4:08 pm

CarlyD wrote:It's my understanding that a new word will be reviewed/distilled every two weeks for 8 weeks while on the Bronze list, another 8 weeks on the Silver list and a final 8 weeks on the Gold list. So I'm thinking it would take the full 24 weeks before you could say if it really did or didn't work.

I'm happy with it so far--but I'm not going over the basic 25 words a day.

I’m not sure if you are unclear on the procedure, or if I’ve misunderstood you, but the new words don’t stay on the list forever. You start with 25 words in your headlist. Two weeks later, you look at that list and cross off 8 of the words (the ones you know best) and only rewrite the remaining 17. Two weeks later, you cross off 5 of those 17 words, rewriting the remaining 12. Two weeks later, you cross off 3 of those 12 and rewrite the remaining 9. Two weeks later, you start the silver book. You take four of the lists of 9 (a total of 36 words), cross off 11 words and rewrite the remaining 25 as the headlist in your silver book. So, every two weeks, your list shrinks by 30 %.

So, it shouldn’t be a problem to see if it works after 60 days. He should be able to go back at that time and see if he remembers the words he crossed off the original lists. Assuming he follows the procedure and doesn’t look back at the lists in the meantime, he won’t have seen the oldest of those words for 46 days or about 6.5 weeks. You can’t really tell much before then though. I think I was about 50 days in before I began to feel that it really did work. I was very skeptical in the beginning.
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Re: Goldlist Challenge

Postby rdearman » Tue Jan 23, 2018 4:12 pm

What is the difference between silver and gold books?
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Re: Goldlist Challenge

Postby zenmonkey » Tue Jan 23, 2018 5:04 pm

smallwhite wrote:
zenmonkey wrote:
smallwhite wrote:But my biggest question mark is: how do you decide how much time to spend when you goldlist or iversenlist? When I tried them, I found that it was totally up to me whether I wanted to chew my batch of words for 20 or 30 minutes, and that's a 50% difference already.


... you should just write them out slowly...

How slowly? You're trying to compare time spent so How Slowly is critical.


I have no ideas, but slow enough to pay attention to your handwriting and be mindful of the moment. Not slow enough that you look like an Ok Go video.

That's probably a personal parameter one would need to figure out.
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Re: Goldlist Challenge

Postby zenmonkey » Tue Jan 23, 2018 5:06 pm

rdearman wrote:What is the difference between silver and gold books?


Gold is just the next series of distillations. Go check out the youtube videos that describe the process, I think that explains it best, er... in the shortest time.

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Re: Goldlist Challenge

Postby Brun Ugle » Tue Jan 23, 2018 7:07 pm

zenmonkey wrote:
smallwhite wrote:
zenmonkey wrote:
smallwhite wrote:But my biggest question mark is: how do you decide how much time to spend when you goldlist or iversenlist? When I tried them, I found that it was totally up to me whether I wanted to chew my batch of words for 20 or 30 minutes, and that's a 50% difference already.


... you should just write them out slowly...

How slowly? You're trying to compare time spent so How Slowly is critical.


I have no ideas, but slow enough to pay attention to your handwriting and be mindful of the moment. Not slow enough that you look like an Ok Go video.

That's probably a personal parameter one would need to figure out.

The author suggests that you can do a headlist of 25 words in 20 minutes with time to read through the list once after writing it. I find it take me a bit longer sometimes because I am looking up all the words as I go and sometimes I end up checking more than one dictionary if I feel uncertain. Also, my definitions are a bit more detailed than some people's.
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smallwhite
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Re: Goldlist Challenge

Postby smallwhite » Wed Jan 24, 2018 2:47 am

zenmonkey wrote:I think I'm going to try a test using both Anki and GM.

Cross-referencing the test:
Experiments: Gold List vs Anki vs ....
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