How To Learn Vocabulary With and Without Flashcards (1)

Everything I do is directed towards getting more meaning out of the content.

Are there Steve Kaufmann here.

Today I want to talk about flashcards and learning vocabulary.

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So I'm often asked to sort of show how I learn, what do I do?

How do I study?

And I've often said that learning vocabulary is, is the key.

It's my number one goal: increase my known words total.

So how do I go about doing it?

What is the role of flashcards in my program of study?

What is the role of, uh, you know, spaced repetition systems?

So I'm going to demonstrate.

I do most of my studying on my iPad.

Some people do it on the, uh, you know, on their computers.

Some people use LingQ on their iPhone or Android.

I do it on a tablet.

I do it on my iPad.

So I'm going to show you that a little later, but first a couple of principles.

First of all, I believe that when we learn words, we learn them within a holistic

sort of the whole language, it's part of our becoming familiar with the language.

The individual vocabulary items are connected to the language.

In a way they are not discreet.

Now here's a word for those of you who are non-native speakers, as

you know discreet D I S C R E E T means to be, uh, you know, not to

be too obvious in what you're doing.

Uh, that's discreet, you know, not to embarrass people or whatever, that's

discreet in that sense, but discrete, D I S C R E T E means that it's not connected.

It's separate.

So vocabulary items are not discrete.

They are connected.

It's part of that holistic getting used to the language.

Until you are comfortable and familiar with the language the

vocabulary items are not gonna stick.

Or they'll stick for awhile and then you'll forget them.

So that's the second point about vocabulary items.

You're going to learn them and forget them.

And if you leave the language for awhile, you're going to forget more of them, but

that's not a problem because once you have learned them and then you go back in

there and you relearn them and rediscover them or find them again, you do strengthen

your hold on those, because you see them in more and more in different contexts.

So it's important to learn vocabulary in a meaningful content.

So, uh, that's the third thing about how I learned vocabulary.

I, to the extent that I review vocabulary items and I'll show you

that I do this more in lists than in flashcards, I do it connected to content.

So you'll see when I demonstrate that, uh, every lesson that I'm in at LingQ,

every content item, I will review the vocabulary that's connected to that

content item, because basically what I want to do is get through the content

item, get through that item that I'm studying and I'm looking at words and

listening to it's to, and where I listen several times and still don't understand

the same parts or I look up words.

And when I hear them, I can't remember what they mean.

And, and so it's all, uh, everything I do is directed towards getting more meaning

out of the content without having to think about it without having to translate.

And so my review of vocabulary is specific most of the time is

specific to the content that I'm studying, but there are exceptions.

I like to feel good about my language learning.

And so I like to see more known words.

And so, because typically I have created a lot of LingQs, some of

them I moved to status two, in other words, I'm a little more familiar

or status three, even more familiar.

And I like to move them to known.

So I will, and I'll demonstrate this as well, I will go into my vocabulary section

and then isolate the status three words that I'm close to feeling I know, and I'll

go in there and I'll move them to known.

I move them to known, but I realize that many of the words that I

moved to known will slide to status three or even status too.

It doesn't bother me.

I accept the fact that I'm going to learn and forget and relearn.

And the final thing I would say about my approach to vocabulary acquisition,

and use of flashcards and lists.

And you'll see that I use lists more than flashcards is that

to me, reviewing vocabulary is just another form of exposure.

Uh, I don't believe that if I review uh, you know, a bunch of items in an SRS

system, spaced repetition system that I'll get some kind of a permanent hold on them.

I still need them within a lot of meaningful content.

Uh, also, I don't believe...

I'm not a fan of flashcards because I don't believe the time that I spend at

racking my brain trying to remember uh, you know, if I see a word in, in either

in my language or in the target language, and I have to remember what that means,

racking my brain to try and do that.

I don't find that useful.

I've never found that useful.

So I go through the list as another form of exposure.

Uh, ultimately the language has got to come in to your brain through

exposure, reading content, listening to content or reviewing lists are

all different forms of exposure.

Uh, so I don't like to rack my brain using flashcards.

So with that as an introduction, let me demonstrate how I do this on my iPad.

And I'll come back and talk to you again.

So, um, I'm going to try to show you how I deal with vocabulary.

I'm going to look at Turkish because I studied Turkish a few years ago now, and

I've forgotten a lot of it, but I always feel whatever effort I've put into it.

When I go back in and relearn it, I know it better.

So that doesn't bother me.

So there's a number of different items in our, in our, um, you know, library here.

But I'm gonna to go to this one here, Baja Stories, very good series in Turkish.

And if you'll see the green line in some of these stories, that indicates that

I've been through it once when I was working hard on my Turkish and the gray

line here indicates I haven't started on.

Um, so we could look at it doesn't really matter, but if we look at

this, uh, uh, ... I must admit, I don't understand what that is anymore.

I haven't done this before.

It has 74 unknown words, 93, uh, words that I've looked up 24% unknown words.

Let's Open it up and see what happens.

... by region.

Okay ... I don't know, use of, ah, ... use of, so, um, okay.

I need that.

So I convert my, because that phrase doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

Usage of Turkish by region.

Oh ...usage of Turkish by region.

So I'll also save that as a phrase.

...is roughly, I remember that.

...so

... country.

Big country.

So normally if I were to go back into my Turkish, I would go through this whole

lesson and I would look up ... naturally.

Okay.

Even if I kind of think maybe I know what ... they speak spoken.

Okay.

I look them all up anyway, ... from the region.

Okay.

... changes.

So a lot of these things, I would be refreshing things that I had once learned

and have now forgotten and going through this reading and again, and going, looking

up the yellow words again, it's all helping me re uh, Uh, remember ... the

Turkish different in different in areas.

Okay.

And, uh, so normally if I were doing this, I would go through and I would look up

all the yellow words and I would read it.

I'm now in a review stage, but of course it's a new lesson so there's

also words I haven't seen before.

... I don't know.

I guess that's the...

okay.

So just for the sake of this video, I'll just go and hit the blue words.

... talking that, I actually knew that.

... in the Southeast.

accent.

All right.

So normally then having gone through this page, it's now review time.

So the options for me are I can review the page.

There's 56 flashcards.

Okay.

So I could learn them.

Uh, okay.

So this is like hearing...

making sure I understand what I hear.

Uh, but I don't do flashcards.

I could, it's sometimes fun to do them, but I tend not to do them.

I also have 110, ... is that?

... yeah, incorrect.

First of all.

So, but I, then I don't do flashcards because I just don't

find racking my brain that useful, but there's different exercises in

the flashcards there's cloze tests.

Uh, but I'm not going to try and attempt this.

Cause what I do is I simply go to my list typically now, because I've been

away from this for so long, there's a huge list of words just from this lesson,

because it was quite a long lesson.

So I'm not going to go through this list.

It's too much.

It's too much.

If I'm going to review these words, I'll review them page by page, in the actual

text, in the actual text, reading it a second time, looking up a second time.

However, one thing that can be useful to do, which I often do as

a nother it's a sort of variety.

I go to my vocabulary section and familiar over here means that I have chosen

to only look at status three words.

Those are words that I've seen several times and therefore

I've moved them to status three.

And you'll notice here in the "sort by" I tend to work with the alphabetical order.

And there's a reason for that.

And that is that typically you'll have common prefix so

words that begin A B A R T

... there are exaggerators.

... all means something to do with, um, exagerate.

... open air ... frankly ... open ... So ... means open.

So you start to see relationships between words.

So again, for me, vocabulary review is a form of exposure.

I'm not testing myself the way flashcards tend to test you.

I also wanted to show you something.

Uh, since we have added new languages, if I go to say, because it's too

difficult to do, and in Armenian, I can't even read Armenian, but in Icelandic,

I had a quick look there and, um,

...so I have already listened to these first two sentences and I've sort of, some

of the words are so similar to Swedish that I don't even need to save them.

Uh, but there'll be a lot of blue words.

... is he same as Swedish.

... lives, but that doesn't mean it might mean lives, but ... means makes so very

often the phrase has a different meaning.

... is going to be breakfast.

That's very easy.

... is and.

... drinks, coffee, coffee.

So as I come across words, ...drives.

Okay.

... well, whatever ... okay.

That's a word that's completely different from Swedish.

And so I would typically go through here converting the blue words to yellow.

And then I, as I did before I would go, if I click on this, I

can see my vocabulary lists here.

They won't be as many because it's a much shorter lesson here.

It would be helpful to go through this.

I could also, sorry, look up all the new words ahead of time if I wanted