Goldlist Challenge

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

Postby zatris » Tue Jan 16, 2018 2:35 pm

I'm in as well, unofficially though, because I've deactivated my Facebook account. The method seems worth a try (but yeah, long explanation is long), and might be an answer to my inability to retain Ancient Greek vocabulary. I'll start today.
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Re: Goldlist Challenge

Postby CarlyD » Mon Jan 22, 2018 8:38 pm

How's everyone doing with their challenge?

I'm seeing craziness on the Facebook posts--75, 100 or more new words a day. One person said their most was 300 new words in a day.

I already figured that by 8 weeks, doing 25 new words a day would mean reviewing 63 words--plenty for me.
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Re: Goldlist Challenge

Postby Brun Ugle » Mon Jan 22, 2018 9:41 pm

CarlyD wrote:How's everyone doing with their challenge?

I'm seeing craziness on the Facebook posts--75, 100 or more new words a day. One person said their most was 300 new words in a day.

I already figured that by 8 weeks, doing 25 new words a day would mean reviewing 63 words--plenty for me.

I ended up with a total of 8875 last time and it got a little hectic. I’m taking it easier this time. And at the moment, I’m also a bit sick, and there’s not much point in doing it when you’re sick, tired or anxious because you won’t be in the right state of mind to remember the words. So, I’ve hardly done anything these past few days.

Actually, it’s much easy when you have been doing it for a while. Distilling takes me less time than writing a headlist, not just because the list is shorter, but also because I don’t have to look up the words. Though if you’re just Goldlisting a dictionary or a glossary, I guess you wouldn’t waste much time looking up definitions. I have been writing lists of words on scrap paper while reading and then I look them up and write them in my bronze book afterwards.
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Re: Goldlist Challenge

Postby zenmonkey » Tue Jan 23, 2018 12:10 am

8875 words? That's pretty amazing consistency. Bravo.
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Re: Goldlist Challenge

Postby smallwhite » Tue Jan 23, 2018 1:06 am

Brun Ugle wrote:I ended up with a total of 8875 last time...

How times have changed. Some 6 years ago you'd be grilled for attempting 8k words in a short time, and you'd have to include a warning to tell kids not to try it at home. Now you get "bravo".
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Brun Ugle
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Re: Goldlist Challenge

Postby Brun Ugle » Tue Jan 23, 2018 7:39 am

smallwhite wrote:
Brun Ugle wrote:I ended up with a total of 8875 last time...

How times have changed. Some 6 years ago you'd be grilled for attempting 8k words in a short time, and you'd have to include a warning to tell kids not to try it at home. Now you get "bravo".

In the Goldlist Challenge, you don’t count words, but lines. It’s only some 4000 new items, and some aren’t words, but rather idiomatic expressions I wanted to remember. In goldlisting, you write a headlist of 25 (or in my case 20) items and after two weeks you remove the 30% that you naturally remember and rewrite the rest. After two weeks you cross off 30% of those and rewrite the rest, and on and on. So that means I’m not done with learning even the 4000+ that were in my headlists. If I count up what I’ve crossed off, which should be equal to words learned, I think the number is something over 2000 since I started around the end of October. Most of that was before Christmas. I’ve slowed down a lot since then. I had posted in the Facebook group at the end of the last challenge that I’d learned (ie crossed off) 1995 words. I don’t know my current number because I don’t feel like turning on my computer to check just yet, but I think you’d agree that 1995 words in 70 days isn’t so unreasonable. But for me, it’s a pretty good number, so I was pleased.
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smallwhite
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Re: Goldlist Challenge

Postby smallwhite » Tue Jan 23, 2018 8:01 am

Brun Ugle wrote:
smallwhite wrote:
Brun Ugle wrote:I ended up with a total of 8875 last time...

How times have changed. Some 6 years ago you'd be grilled for attempting 8k words in a short time, and you'd have to include a warning to tell kids not to try it at home. Now you get "bravo".

In the Goldlist Challenge, you don’t count words, but lines. It’s only some 4000 new items... So that means I’m not done with learning even the 4000+ that were in my headlists...

OK. Then my 8k corresponds to your 4k. New words started. 8k in 120 days vs 4k in 70 days.

Btw, you asked when you first started Goldlisting how efficient Goldlisting was as compared to flashcards. FYR, using Memrise takes 6 seconds x 15 reps over 1 year, so 1.5 minutes per word. (The 15 reps happen on days 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 2, 8, 20, 44, 92, 182, 362). With Anki I also average 6 seconds per rep.
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zenmonkey
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Re: Goldlist Challenge

Postby zenmonkey » Tue Jan 23, 2018 8:48 am

smallwhite wrote:
Brun Ugle wrote:I ended up with a total of 8875 last time...

How times have changed. Some 6 years ago you'd be grilled for attempting 8k words in a short time, and you'd have to include a warning to tell kids not to try it at home. Now you get "bravo".


Not from me, 6 years ago both of you would have gotten a bravo for any method completing 8, 4, 2K words in 2 months, after the fact.

Now someone telling me they are going to cover 8K new words in 2 months? I'd probably have a bit of disbelief - it isn't impossible but it's highly unlikely to enter and learn 150 words a day every day for that period (for the average newby). I know I'd hate language learning by then.

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

1) Generate a list
2) 40 words a day - every other word goes into Anki or Goldlist (but only one at a time)
3) Count time to write out or enter words into Anki and rep time.
4) 60 days in, do a recall test on a sample from the original list.

Total words learn?
Words learnt vs time spent?

thoughts?
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Brun Ugle
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Re: Goldlist Challenge

Postby Brun Ugle » Tue Jan 23, 2018 9:16 am

zenmonkey wrote:
smallwhite wrote:
Brun Ugle wrote:I ended up with a total of 8875 last time...

How times have changed. Some 6 years ago you'd be grilled for attempting 8k words in a short time, and you'd have to include a warning to tell kids not to try it at home. Now you get "bravo".


Not from me, 6 years ago both of you would have gotten a bravo for any method completing 8, 4, 2K words in 2 months, after the fact.

Now someone telling me they are going to cover 8K new words in 2 months? I'd probably have a bit of disbelief - it isn't impossible but it's highly unlikely to enter and learn 150 words a day every day for that period (for the average newby). I know I'd hate language learning by then.

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

1) Generate a list
2) 40 words a day - every other word goes into Anki or Goldlist (but only one at a time)
3) Count time to write out or enter words into Anki and rep time.
4) 60 days in, do a recall test on a sample from the original list.

Total words learn?
Words learnt vs time spent?

thoughts?

Seems like a good idea. As I’ve said, I’m now convinced that goldlist works for learning words long term, but I’m not convinced that it is more efficient than other methods. I was thinking of doing something similar myself, but I haven’t felt like doing all the work of keeping track of the time and being all scientific.

One area I’ve decided that I do need Anki rather than goldlist is for things like conjunctions, adverbial expressions, connectors, etc. I think I need sentence cards for those and probably at least five cards for each expression. It isn’t enough for me to remember that these three different expressions all mean something like “therefore.” I need to see multiple examples to see exactly how they are used and when to use which.
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zenmonkey
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Re: Goldlist Challenge

Postby zenmonkey » Tue Jan 23, 2018 9:57 am

Brun Ugle wrote:
zenmonkey wrote:
smallwhite wrote:
Brun Ugle wrote:I ended up with a total of 8875 last time...

How times have changed. Some 6 years ago you'd be grilled for attempting 8k words in a short time, and you'd have to include a warning to tell kids not to try it at home. Now you get "bravo".


Not from me, 6 years ago both of you would have gotten a bravo for any method completing 8, 4, 2K words in 2 months, after the fact.

Now someone telling me they are going to cover 8K new words in 2 months? I'd probably have a bit of disbelief - it isn't impossible but it's highly unlikely to enter and learn 150 words a day every day for that period (for the average newby). I know I'd hate language learning by then.

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

1) Generate a list
2) 40 words a day - every other word goes into Anki or Goldlist (but only one at a time)
3) Count time to write out or enter words into Anki and rep time.
4) 60 days in, do a recall test on a sample from the original list.

Total words learn?
Words learnt vs time spent?

thoughts?

Seems like a good idea. As I’ve said, I’m now convinced that goldlist works for learning words long term, but I’m not convinced that it is more efficient than other methods. I was thinking of doing something similar myself, but I haven’t felt like doing all the work of keeping track of the time and being all scientific.

One area I’ve decided that I do need Anki rather than goldlist is for things like conjunctions, adverbial expressions, connectors, etc. I think I need sentence cards for those and probably at least five cards for each expression. It isn’t enough for me to remember that these three different expressions all mean something like “therefore.” I need to see multiple examples to see exactly how they are used and when to use which.


Oh, man! Don't get me started on those. In German there are like 99 thousand dahin, daher, deshalb, damit, etc... and Lingvist just pisses me off with those.
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