Goldlist Challenge

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

Postby Tristano » Wed Jan 24, 2018 2:15 pm

Which sources do you choose to write down words and definitions from? Which are the best ones? And what do you do when you instead of Spanish you're learning a language spoken by 1000 people, 3 cats and 12 chickens when you're lucky and there is not even a dictionary or the Bible to learn it from?
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Re: Goldlist Challenge

Postby Brun Ugle » Wed Jan 24, 2018 3:25 pm

Tristano wrote:Which sources do you choose to write down words and definitions from? Which are the best ones? And what do you do when you instead of Spanish you're learning a language spoken by 1000 people, 3 cats and 12 chickens when you're lucky and there is not even a dictionary or the Bible to learn it from?

I don’t see how the problem relates specifically to the Goldlist Method. Whether you are using Anki, Memrise, paper flashcards, goldlists or something else, if you are learning a rare language with no materials, it’s going to be difficult. I usually get my words from TV and books. Some people use frequency lists or even take their words straight from the dictionary. I find words I’ve found in some kind of context better than random lists, but I find the method works either way for me.
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Re: Goldlist Challenge

Postby smallwhite » Wed Jan 24, 2018 3:58 pm

Tristano wrote:And what do you do when you instead of Spanish you're learning a language spoken by 1000 people, 3 cats and 12 chickens when you're lucky and there is not even a dictionary or the Bible to learn it from?

Buy the 3 cats and 12 chickens, make a business out of them (zoo, farm, restaurant), hire 200 of those people to work with the cats and chickens, sell to the remaining 800 people, so you get to interact with all 1000?
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Re: Goldlist Challenge

Postby Brun Ugle » Thu Jan 25, 2018 7:35 am

There was something that came up on the Facebook group yesterday that I thought it might be useful to some of you. A Goldlist isn’t just a wordlist, it’s a system for remembering basically anything. When I’ve been doing it for Spanish, I’ve written a word or expression and it’s meaning on each line because my Spanish is advanced enough that I don’t need extra information like conjugations. When I briefly tried it with German, I struggled because I was apparently trying to cram too much in each line by putting conjugations, plurals and suchlike. I should have put those on another line.

David posted a picture of how he would suggest doing Goldlist for a beginner learning Japanese.

9BBE212E-4804-44EA-AD1D-BE4ACCD0A7D5.jpeg


When doing the distillation, you can cross off the parts you remember, for example if you remember the meaning, but not the pronunciation, you cross off the line with the meaning, and if necessary combine some of the other lines. The principle is that a line in the original headlist, should only contain one piece of information to be remembered.

Another user had a slightly simpler version that he used:

I do it like this:
1. 火 —— ひꜜ
2. 火 —— fire
3. 火山 —— クヮꜜザン
4. 火山 —— volcano
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Tristano
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Re: Goldlist Challenge

Postby Tristano » Fri Jan 26, 2018 8:43 am

Brun Ugle wrote:
Tristano wrote:Which sources do you choose to write down words and definitions from? Which are the best ones? And what do you do when you instead of Spanish you're learning a language spoken by 1000 people, 3 cats and 12 chickens when you're lucky and there is not even a dictionary or the Bible to learn it from?

I don’t see how the problem relates specifically to the Goldlist Method. Whether you are using Anki, Memrise, paper flashcards, goldlists or something else, if you are learning a rare language with no materials, it’s going to be difficult. I usually get my words from TV and books. Some people use frequency lists or even take their words straight from the dictionary. I find words I’ve found in some kind of context better than random lists, but I find the method works either way for me.


I actually ask because the goldlist method is sow low-tech that removes many of the excuses like "there is no memrise course".
To me how you take the words and put them in your workbook matters.

I always had less problems with random lists than categorized lists or alphabetical lists. The temptation of buying a cheap dictionary with 10.000 words is high but the idea of having to memorize words in alphabetic order and "sorry, I don't know this word yet. It starts with "M" and I arrived only to the "L"" really freaks me out.

I really want to master this method. I love its simplicity and portability. I'm curious what do you think guys, if you find it more useful to start a new language or to master an advanced one.
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Re: Goldlist Challenge

Postby zenmonkey » Fri Jan 26, 2018 9:23 am

Tristano wrote:I really want to master this method. I love its simplicity and portability. I'm curious what do you think guys, if you find it more useful to start a new language or to master an advanced one.


This is part of the questions I'm asking myself - that's why I'm running my test using 3 different languages.

I have to say, in general, memorising tends to be easier for me with an intermediate language because I already have more cognitive anchors. For example, with words like "Aufgabe" and "Ausgabe", (purpose and output, what I give of myself and what I put out) - their meaning and difference just settle easier later than in the earlier stages of brute memorisation.
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Re: Goldlist Challenge

Postby Tristano » Fri Jan 26, 2018 9:35 am

zenmonkey wrote:This is part of the questions I'm asking myself - that's why I'm running my test using 3 different languages.

I have to say, in general, memorising tends to be easier for me with an intermediate language because I already have more cognitive anchors. For example, with words like "Aufgabe" and "Ausgabe", (purpose and output, what I give of myself and what I put out) - their meaning and difference just settle easier later than in the earlier stages of brute memorisation.


I can relate to this. Especially given context, memorisation in the intermediate stage is much more effective. But we still do need to start from somewhere. The question becomes then if there is one method that is more efficient at which particular stage. At around A2 or with a transparent language Clozemaster makes me take the fly for example. The same can't be said with an opaque language. It is just too much. There brute memorisation is better. I'm really curious about your results!
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Re: Goldlist Challenge

Postby smallwhite » Fri Jan 26, 2018 11:21 am

I did some math. Please tell me if I'm right or wrong:

Assume a page goes 25 words -> 17 words -> 11 words -> 7 words.

5 pages from the Bronze Book becomes 1 page in the Silver Book, and
5 pages from the Silver Book becomes 1 page in the Gold Book.

That's 11 distillations.

625 words get distilled to 7 words after these 11 distillations.

You will have written 1860 words by then.

You spend around 20 minutes to write each 25 words, so you will have spent 1488 minutes / 24.8 hours writing 1860 words by then.

If you remember all the 625 words except the last 7, that is, if you remember 618 of the 625 words,
you will have spent 2.4 minutes per word remembered.

Is that correct?
Last edited by smallwhite on Fri Jan 26, 2018 12:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Brun Ugle
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Re: Goldlist Challenge

Postby Brun Ugle » Fri Jan 26, 2018 11:28 am

There's no rule saying that if you use a dictionary you have to go in order. Even if you want to learn all the words in the dictionary, start with the words you feel are most important to you. You can put a little dot next to the word so you know you've already listed it.

Also remember that you should only have one item to memorize per line. So you can put the grammatical information related to the word on another line. Right now, I'm using it for Spanish, which I have a high intermediate level in. I don't have trouble with conjugations or anything, so I don't need to put extra information in a second line. When I start Goldlisting German again. I will make sure to put the word and definition on one line and things like plurals and conjugations on the line under. I made the mistake of putting in too much per line before.

I think the method can be used at any level, but it takes time to learn to use it properly. I only just understood the part about splitting things up into more lines a few days ago. So I think that will make a big difference in how I use it in the future.
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Re: Goldlist Challenge

Postby smallwhite » Fri Jan 26, 2018 12:14 pm

Brun Ugle wrote:I only just understood the part about splitting things up into more lines a few days ago.

Effective learning: Twenty rules of formulating knowledge
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