A language learners’ forum

I must say that the more I re-read the method, and the least I understand the distillation process
Let's try again.
- I write the words a first time.
- After a time of at least two weeks, I write down the 70% of the words I don't remember on the bronze book.
- After other at least two weeks, I write down the 70% of the words I don't remember from the bronze book to the silver book.
- After other at least two weeks, I write down the 70% of the words I don't remember from the silver book to the golden book.

so these are three distillations. Why do you talk about 11 distillations? Am I keeping reviewing the golden book rewriting words from it to itself? I am going to use the other books only to write new lists, right?

If not: let's say that I work with 100 words. I write 100 words. In the bronze book, these become 70. In the silver book, these become 50. In the golden book, these become 35. After two weeks I should then remember 10 words. What is going to happen with the remaining 25? New list in the golden book? Or just f*ck that sh*t at least I tried?

Tristano wrote:so these are three distillations. Why do you talk about 11 distillations? Am I keeping reviewing the golden book rewriting words from it to itself? I am going to use the other books only to write new lists, right?

Let's see if this image makes sense to you - this is why there are 11 distillations.



The idea is that after two weeks you should have retention of at least 30% (you drop those). So your example of 100 words is:

100 words 4 headlists of 25 words in Bronze book
After 2 weeks, four 1st distillations to 17 words each: 68 words.
After 2 weeks, four 2nd distillations to 12 words each: 48 words.
After 2 weeks, four 3rd distillations to 9 words each: 36 words.
After 2 weeks these 4 lists are distilled into 6 or 7 words (this 4th distillation) and written into a single new list of 25 words in your Silver book.

and so forth ... 400 words => one 25 wordlist in the Gold book at distillation 8. This then results in 6-7 very difficult words at the end of distillation 11. If you have 6-7 words your really can't get out of 400, personally I would drop these. They'll come later, if needed.

Of course, this assumes you are keeping that 30% retention going over the period... Which is why I'm curious to try this.

zenmonkey wrote:

Tristano wrote:so these are three distillations. Why do you talk about 11 distillations? Am I keeping reviewing the golden book rewriting words from it to itself? I am going to use the other books only to write new lists, right?

Let's see if this image makes sense to you - this is why there are 11 distillations.

Screen Shot 2018-01-26 at 16.05.23.png

The idea is that after two weeks you should have retention of at least 30% (you drop those). So your example of 100 words is:

100 words 4 headlists of 25 words in Bronze book
After 2 weeks, four 1st distillations to 17 words each: 68 words.
After 2 weeks, four 2nd distillations to 12 words each: 48 words.
After 2 weeks, four 3rd distillations to 9 words each: 36 words.
After 2 weeks these 4 lists are distilled into 6 or 7 words (this 4th distillation) and written into a single new list of 25 words in your Silver book.

and so forth ... 400 words => one 25 wordlist in the Gold book at distillation 8. This then results in 6-7 very difficult words at the end of distillation 11. If you have 6-7 words your really can't get out of 400, personally I would drop these. They'll come later, if needed.

Of course, this assumes you are keeping that 30% retention going over the period... Which is why I'm curious to try this.

Ok, this makes more sense. What do you do for the distillations in the middle? You rewrite it in the same book?
Edit: yes indeed. Same page.

@Zenmonnkey,

I wish I had seen your drawing beforehand
A picture worth a 1000 words

smallwhite wrote: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?

My check - pretty close to that.

If you spend 20 min for 25 words that about 0.8 min per word.
After the 11 distillations you have 5 words 'not known' since you'd still get the effect from writing down the 11th.
Assuming the 25->17->11->7 breakdown you'd have:

start 5 x 5 x 25 = 625 words,
then 17 x 5 x 5 = 425 words,

then 275, 175, 125, 85, 55, 35, 25, 18, 17, 7 words written. Sum of these is 1867 written words or 1493.6 minutes.

or 1493,6 minutes for 625 word - 5 words not learned = 2,41 minutes per word remembered.

Which is the same result you got.

In theory you should learn 30% with each distillation, but I’m finding that it’s usually more than that, especially after the first distillation. And I seem to get better over time as well. So there is a possibility that you might learn everything after only a few distillations. Several people have said that they never make it as far as the gold book because they already know all the words by then. I think it will be interesting to see how it works with different languages and different levels. I’m doing Spanish and am already fairly advanced, so that probably makes it easier to remember.

Brun Ugle wrote:In theory you should learn 30% with each distillation, but I’m finding that it’s usually more than that, especially after the first distillation. And I seem to get better over time as well. So there is a possibility that you might learn everything after only a few distillations. Several people have said that they never make it as far as the gold book because they already know all the words by then. I think it will be interesting to see how it works with different languages and different levels. I’m doing Spanish and am already fairly advanced, so that probably makes it easier to remember.

I started the challenge and my first two lists distilled at 68% and 80%.

I started the challenge and my first two lists distilled at 68% and 80%.

Learned or left?

Sorry. I knew 68% and 80% of the words. So I distilled the ones I got wrong and then filled in with words I maybe didn't think of fast enough. I know some later pages are going to be more difficult--phrases instead of words--but this is a nice start.

The newest Goldlist Challenge starts today and runs through Dec. 30, 2018--70 days. If you want to officially join, the sign up is through their Facebook page.