Learn a New Language from Content You Love

xxdb

Royaume-Uni

Best Combo of Anki and LingQ: ChatGPT

March 25 à 23:51

So if you just read random material you will not get enough repetitions to get past the intermediate gap without reading millions upon millions of words.

The old way around this was to read graded readers with a focus on specific vocabulary levels.

An alternative old way was to memorize isolated frequency words with anki.

There is an argument to be made (I believe this myself) that an ideal combination is to do anki plus lingQ because you're getting enough repetitions specifically targeted to those you need more work on plus you get lingQ exposure to language in it's whole form.

Unfortunately the two are not strongly correlated: you don't get lingQ focus on the words that you're having a hard time with in anki. Some suggest using sentences. I personally disagree with sentences for a couple reasons but I won't get into them. Regardless, even the sentences won't correlate with lingQ.

Others have suggested (likely correctly) that a stronger memory trace would be formed if you were able to learn the words you are targeting specifically if you encounter them in their natural form. i.e. in written or spoken material.

So what occurred to me a couple days ago is to specifically get chatGPT to write you some short stories with the words you are practising each day. So you therefore get not only the anki practice but you also get to see the words you're currently working on, in their native form.

So anyhow, I'm now doing that in addition to reading on lingQ. It's costing me about half an hour extra a day to generate some stories containing my today words and read them in lingQ.

Double whammy. If I'm right about this, I expect to level up solidly over the remaining three months of my current six month challenge.

Stay tuned...

EDIT: For pedants like my friend Peter (and I say that in the best possible way, not as a dig - Peter will keep you straight and coherent) - I'm talking about comprehension ONLY, not output. So intermediate -> advanced comprehension (reading/listening) shortcuts.

AlwaysSarang

United States

April 03 à 00:39

Honestly I would love Lingq as a background app. to be used on the Switch directly, that would be great for me and quite slick. Playing "Triangle Strategy" in Japanese with Lingq would be awesome. Same with many visual novels on there.

PeterBormann

Allemagne

April 02 à 21:11

@xxdb:

That's for tomorrow because it's getting late in Germany...

You mentioned that "reading while listening" doesn't work for you,

It should work for "any" language that has a writing system, but it might not work for all learners (for example, when the bi-modal switching is experienced as "overwhelming").

On the other hand, you can start with silent reading first (including the marking of LingQs) and then choose the audio speed you like. So you have total control reg. the pace...

Therefore my question is: What exactly did you do?

xxdb

Royaume-Uni

April 02 à 20:38

@ejackson:

You mentioned earlier that that entails a lot of reading maybe millions of words. Yeah...it actually does, but, again, I don't think there are any shortcuts.

There are two ways I agree with you. One is there is no way around just putting in the work. There is no shortcut to putting in the work. Also that reading the millions of words *up till now* was necessary. The reason why you need millions of words isn't that you need millions of words per se. It's because of something called Zipf's law. Zipf's law essentially means that you get diminishing returns in terms of how often words appear in a text, so the gap of the number of words you need to read to encounter a particular word increases with how infrequent it is. But unfortunately you need to learn a certain minimum for adequate comprehension (see Paul Nation's studies for the exact numbers).

I'll quibble with you about no shortucts, but let's say that what we really mean is "assistance". We're definitely able to get assisted by technology. Consider: in the old days you would have had to painfully look up each words you didn't know in a dictionary. Obviously with lingQ you can just click on it.

There are a variety of smaller "shortcuts" (or crutches if you will). Anki is also one to aid with memorization because it carefully optimizes just the minimum amount of time you need to see a word according to "the forgetting curve". Reading in and of itself doesn't do that.

Anki and vanilla LingQ should do that. And I think it does do it very well.

In the case of similar languages that is.

Where you get gaps is in languages that are distant: with a lot of non-cognate words.

Those non-cognate words seem to be much harder to remember even with the aid of anki. And trying to combine it with lingQ only works in the early stages because of zipf's law. It appears to be that as you go higher up the frequency ladder for words, anki and reading vanilla texts becomed decoupled so you lose the benefit. Whereas in the earlier stages the low-mid frequency words are coming up often enough that you're getting a double whammy: individual words and context.

BUT... and where I'm really excited about this.... AI generated content based on the words you're currently learning ON THE DAY is REcoupling anki back to lingQ.

What this means is that in theory you should get the same amount of progress as in the earlier stages by using AI generated content.

Anyhow, TLDR... you have to put the effort in or no method will work.

ejackson

United States

April 02 à 22:50

I don't think the only purpose of reading lots of words is to learn new words. I think a lot of reading is training our subconscious mind to take on the task instead of our conscious mind. Getting into that flow where you no longer are really aware of individual words at all. I alluded to that in my story about learning Morse Code.

We all do that in our native language. We read without being aware of the words until there is an unfamiliar world or a confusing construction. We get there through years of reading all kinds of materials, some of us more than others if we go onto university or other advanced training.

I suspect that's what's going on when we keep reading the same paragraph over and over again. Maybe the subconscious is reading, maybe even filing away what it's reading, but the conscious mind has lost the thread and is not in the loop, so to speak. So it keeps forcing a rereading. I've gone on for an entire page at times when suddenly I realize I have not understood what I'm reading. Probably the same thing we experience when we are driving and suddenly don't remember any of the last 10 miles of driving.

I'll take your meaning of short-cuts. Certainly, new technologies have made it easier to gain materials that make reading and language learning more interesting and efficient. One reason I'm learning Norwegian (my roots) is that trying to learn Spanish in high school and college was such an unmitigated disaster. I took responsibility for my failure. Learning Norwegian on my own has been my salvation. It wasn't me alone. I was set up for failure by the existing school system. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

SherryTeach

United States

April 02 à 17:54

I just had a conversation with Stephen Krashen last week, who told me he would never recommend flashcards or SRS systems or any activities that isolate words and require memorization. This was prompted by a member of my FB group who posted a ChatGPT response that incorrectly quoted from a Krashen book The Power of Reading.

mostafa19

Égypte

April 02 à 19:31

I read this before in a podcast for AJ Hoge also

xxdb

Royaume-Uni

April 02 à 15:19

I have the shortcut you're looking for. Ain't giving it tho.

I know what the shortcut is: get a Russian girlfriend and hang with (patient) Russians for a year.

Steve K took 5 years to get to where he is at with Russian. It could turn out quite simply that two years of lingQ and anki by themselves aren't enough. It might be that you need the Russian girlfriend or tutor or whatever.

The question is: can you do it (get to "advanced" without that)?

Maybe not is a possibility.

But at the end of the day it's not about the destination. It's about the journey.

hellion

Royaume-Uni

March 30 à 03:04

I think it's a good idea during the A1-early A2 stage. That said, I do tend to believe that outside of the beginner stage, any form of deliberately trying to learn words is just to make yourself feel like you're progressing. In other words, you'll learn those words anyway, eventually. Reading millions of words is what we'll all end up doing if we aspire to reach a high level, so whatever deliberate targeting we do is mostly just to get a sense of 'learning', IMO. That may not even be a waste of time if it keeps us coming back.

ejackson

United States

March 30 à 16:37

Yea, I think so, hellion, You need to memorize a few simple words in the beginning. But eventually, you need to learn words in context which is far more powerful than memorization. You can't do that until you memorize some core words and see how they begin to connect to other words.

xxdb

Royaume-Uni

April 02 à 15:53

In other words, you'll learn those words anyway, eventually. Reading millions of words is what we'll all end up doing if we aspire to reach a high level...

So there's a couple of points there packed together... Unpacking them is that word you used "eventually".

My hypothesis is that you can do it faster than "eventually".

The real question is: is words by itself enough? I think the answer to that is clearly no. Which is where lingQ comes into the picture.

But even lingQ by itself isn't helping *at all* with speaking or writing. I can't for example write at all and I can speak like a two year old.

In terms of reading millions of words. I'd like to think that we read the millions of words because we *want to*. I believe it'll be easier to read those millions of words faster *if* we already know enough words.

It does seem (to me) after having spent nearly two years that vanilla lingQ plus vanilla anki words *work* but you don't get there in two years (i.e. to advanced).

What I will say is that lingQ does provide some kind of progress (and so does anki).

I think what can be definitively said at this point is that the FSI are way closer to being right than Benny Lewis. Also it's not just number of hours. There is definitely a minimum number of hours per day you need to do it if you want it as fast as possible. And it's likely quite a lot more than an hour a day.

Anyhow. I have the balls to wash my dirty laundry in public talking about my successes and my failures.

Maria2

Royaume-Uni

April 02 à 19:19

xxdb,

You write: "But even lingQ by itself isn't helping *at all* with speaking or writing. I can't for example write at all and I can speak like a two year old."

LingQ is helping you with reading and listening because you are engaging in reading and listening on LingQ.

LingQ is not helping you with speaking or writing because you are not engaging in speaking or writing on LingQ.

LingQ's writing exchange function is used by language learners of various languages, particularly in English and French, and there are a couple of very active native speakers who give excellent corrections for free.

Likewise, there are tutors on LingQ offering conversations in languages such as Russian, Czech, Japanese, German, Spanish and English among others.

PeterBormann

Allemagne

April 02 à 20:17

Maria nailed it:

You'll become good at what you train for.

And if you don't train for it...

xxdb

Royaume-Uni

April 02 à 20:43

This is obvious. It's other folks (not me) who seem to be suggesting that you will get speaking and writing for free just by doing lingQ reading.

I expect only to get reading from lingQ and listening comprehension from listening/watching videos with audio.

PeterBormann

Allemagne

April 02 à 20:56

"will get speaking and writing for free" (@xxdb)

I'd say the consensus in this forum (starting with Steve) is that listening facilitates speaking and reading facilitates writing, but

- good speakers speak - a lot.

- good writers write - a lot.

The rest is the illusion of effortlessness...

xxdb

Royaume-Uni

April 02 à 20:21

@Maria2:

LingQ is helping you with reading and listening because you are engaging in reading and listening on LingQ.

Correct and agreed.

LingQ is not helping you with speaking or writing because you are not engaging in speaking or writing on LingQ.

Correct and agreed.

There seem to be some folks (not me) who think that you can magically get speaking or writing just by doing lingQ and listening.

It doesn't work. Speaking and Writing are different (but overlapping) skills from listening and reading (which are also overlapping).

p0wcr

United States

March 29 à 19:58

Chat GPT is a great tool but you can tell you don't know how to use it properly. You won't get very far with you method.

xxdb

Royaume-Uni

March 29 à 22:08

Are you five years old? Thanks for your comment.

p0wcr

United States

March 29 à 22:27

Seriously, ChatGPT is known to make many mistakes.

xxdb

Royaume-Uni

March 29 à 22:35

Haha ok gotcha.

Well yes sure it isn't factually correct and it says things that are a little bit less than common sense but it's grammatically correct and uses the words I ask it to so it is fit for purpose.

In fact, the fact that it comes up with stupidity such as a priest giving a young man a painkiller for pain in his soul is so ridiculous that the image burned in my brain. Which is exactly what you want.

So on the contrary, while you are correct about it making mistakes - in this case the mistakes are helpful.

p0wcr

United States

March 30 à 02:26

Not those kinds of mistakes. Many people say it makes grammatical mistakes, especially in Russian. I have also seen it say things that are gramatically correct but are not idiomatic so it ends up sounding unnatural.

ejackson

United States

April 03 à 00:42

I've heard that argument against google Translate from my partner, a high school Spanish teacher. I tell her google speaks Norwegian a lot better than I do so I can still learn from it. Native speakers make mistakes, tell lies, repeat crap, make up other crap...it goes to show how well ChatGPT actually does mimic us!!

Mistakes are inherent in everything human. We survive them (mostly). So I have no problem learning from imperfect sources. They give me a good start that I can work on as I gain experience from other sources.

xxdb

Royaume-Uni

March 26 à 20:42

@Peter:

And I've no idea why xxdb reads "Treasure Island" in Russian at this stage.

I've already read 4 books of the Narnia series so I already know the words for shit like "scabbard", "sword", "horse", "galleon", "bow and arrow".

They are children's books that I read when I was a kid. The other choice is Harry Potter or the Spiderwick chronicles for the level I'm at. Harry Potter just bores me to tears and the Spiderwick chronicles is somehow just too hard.

Narnia is barely above my level and Treasure Island is just slightly more above my level but it's more "adult" in nature in the sense that it's pretty raw so it's entertaining.

nfera

Australie

March 26 à 21:27

@xxdb

How would the two compare: reading a book that is known but with not-always-useful vocabulary vs. reading new material with more useful vocabulary? What would you choose and why?

My guess would be it would depend on your level and your goals. For me I have chosen new material with more useful vocabulary. The reason is simply I don't need to know the word 'galleon'. I could be very comfortable at C1, understand very complex topics, and still not know the word 'galleon'. I can't remember the last time I've read/used that word in English. And 'scabbard' is definitely years.

I understand that you could consider knowing the story as almost a 'mode', but the word 'scabbard' is still not useful for me. Honestly, I just looked up the definition in English and I got it wrong. I knew it had something to do with a sword, but I couldn't pinpoint the exact definition. For me, this is not useful vocabulary to learn. But, for you, perhaps these words are useful vocabulary, because of your work/interests, etc.

EDIT: Obviously, it's not about the single one word of 'scabbard', but rather the collection of low- and very-low-frequency words.

xxdb

Royaume-Uni

March 26 à 21:36

No, you and Peter are both right here. These books suck bones for vocabulary acquisition. That's not why I'm reading them though. They are at my level and don't put me to sleep.

My vocabulary acquisition isn't done through word mining or sentence mining at all. I'm plowing through the frequency list in anki. I'm at 9,000 head words in audio.

Right now I think my problem isn't words per se, although I definitely have a retention problem compared with Spanish or French (both of which I hit over 90% compared to Russian's 50-55%). To get from intermediate (which I know with 100% certainty you can get to with just pure word memorization), you need more exposure to the whole language. It's exposure to word *forms*, collocations and set phrases. The holding onto the vocabulary words isn't the whole deal, though having them burned in will definitely not hurt. It's a measure more than anything else but not a perfect measure.

That said, I'm no longer focusing on reading novels. I'm now doing chatGPT stories from my anki daily word list. I'm two days in to my new method and I *feel* like it's working. Yeah *feel* hahahaha.

I don't have any hard stats yet, though I seem to have edged up slightly already in conversions for "young" words. I'm also recognizing many, many, many more full phrases than before. As you would expect. Because they are constructed from my words of the day. But it's anecdotal and early days yet. I won't be able to tell for a while.

nfera

Australie

March 26 à 21:47

@xxdb

I guess the difference is you separate your vocabulary acquisition and your reading (and listening?) comprehension. Personally, for me, I do all of them at the same time with reading while listening. I know that if I encounter a word and click on its definition enough times, I will learn that word. For this reason, I don't separate the activities. I just read while listening and click on words to see the definition (and then relisten to the episode many times to drill it in). I wouldn't have believed it the other year, but it works. I mean, now I can literally watch TV series in Italian and, surprisingly, have a long but broken conversation in Italian.

xxdb

Royaume-Uni

April 02 à 16:01

I don't know if I'm ADD or what but I am unable to get anything from reading while listening. The only version of that I can kind of do is watch netflix with subtitles. But netflix is, as yet, too advanced. But if it works for you go for it. It definitely seems to work for Peter as he keeps on banging his drum about it.

My "method" does work for me about as slowly as expected. I was just hoping Benny Lewis was right and the FSI were wrong.

nfera

Australie

April 02 à 18:24

@xxdb And the fact that the FSI figures quoted by most people are class hours only and not including the huge amount of homework they do. Really, the class hours need to be doubled to take this into account.

xxdb

Royaume-Uni

March 26 à 20:27

@nfera:

You are reading a book?

Yes. My method is the opposite of yours it seems. I start with spoken material and don't even try to read at all. I kept that up until the very last minute when I did French two and a half years ago. This time around I decided to give lingQ a full hog try and have been doing a combo of lingQ reading plus anki words (audio) for the last 8 months or so.

My experience has been that I'm improving. It feels very slow but there is definite progress. Also, wierdly, my spoken comprehension is improving also even though I am *barely* watching any videos. I feel like, however, that there is merit to what you say: that my spoken comprehension might have levelled up even faster if I had stuck with watching videos. Reason being that video was right at the edge of my comprehensible input window whereas reading was essentially a bit above. So maybe reading plus anki in hindsight might have been less efficient than continuing with my standard practice of anki audio plus watching videos. That said, I can read now, whereas 8 months ago I definitely could not. So there's that. I guess I can count that as a massive win which I have not really been considering so yeah.

Anyhow yeah I love these chats with other enthusiasts to see what we can come up with as we riff on each other's methods. Thanks for your input.

nfera

Australie

March 26 à 20:55

@xxdb

Just to be clear, I'm not recommending focusing solely on oral comprehension. I mean acquiring the vocabulary and grammar used in oral conversation or spoken YouTube monologues. My main studying is importing YouTube videos or podcasts into LingQ and doing reading while listening. I just mean that vocabulary used in these podcasts and YouTube videos are more likely to be high/mid-frequency words unlike those words used in books, where you can encounter very rare words.

I have actually been trying just watching TV series in Italian with Italian subtitles and, I gotta say, I'm not convinced. It's fun and easy to do, but I don't think it's a very efficient technique for increasing my vocabulary (one of my weak points) because I just can't look up the words I don't know on the Netflix app on my phone. I really need something like Language Reactor to have double subtitles or the ability to click to look up a word. Reading while listening on LingQ has the ability to look up unknown words instead of randomly guessing or having no idea what it means. I understand the whole story and what everyone is talking about generally, but there are many individual words, which I simply don't know. So as a language learning technique, I would not call it efficient. If it was possible to use Language Reactor for showing dual subtitles and the ability to look up words, it would be great. Unfortunately, it's not possible inside the Netflix app. Maybe I'll try to play Netflix through my browser on my phone and see if it works.

As per the article @PeterBormann sent about a multi-modal approach, watching TV series or YouTube videos with subtitles and the ability to look up words has three or four modes: listening, reading Italian subtitles, scanning English subtitles sometimes, and visual cues.

PeterBormann

Allemagne

March 26 à 21:10

"My main studying is importing YouTube videos or podcasts into LingQ and doing reading while listening."

I've come to the identical conclusion.

That's also my primary focus after the A1 / A2 phase.

nfera

Australie

March 26 à 21:32

@PeterBormann

I couldn't start reading while listening until A2+/B1 simply because my vocabulary wasn't high enough for the available material.

But speaking of modes, perhaps the Language Reactor with YouTube/Netflix is more efficient because of the three or four modes instead of just the two of reading while listening. What do you think? You can't just use Language Reactor with YouTube/Netflix from A0, but during an intermediate phase, perhaps. Once you start bordering on the advanced phase, you have to go to books to acquire the new vocabulary. But in the late intermediate phase?

PeterBormann

Allemagne

March 28 à 05:50

"because of the three or four modes instead of just the two of reading while listening"

The problem I see is that "multi-tasking", or rather in this context: " multi-switching between modes" (reading, listening, visual cues, etc.), is usually considered detrimental to our precious focused attention.

The benefits of reading while listening (especially at a faster pace from a B1/B1-B2 level upwards) outweigh the possible disadvantages of multitasking (we discussed this a few months ago in another LingQ thread about why there is no such thing as "passive" listening). However, I'm not sure if adding more and more modes really has a positive effect, or rather when the disadvantages start to outweigh the advantages.

Common sense from all sorts of fields (diets, sports, etc.) tells us that it's a matter of "dosage" and that it's wise to avoid extremes, but, in this particular SLA context, it would be nice to have access to more scientific literature, especially from neuroscience and cognitive psychology.

Definitely an interesting topic...

xxdb

Royaume-Uni

April 02 à 18:46

Youtube videos is the core of the listening part of what I do at the beginning. What I found though (in both French and Russian) is that you can get to classroom speak fairly quickly from doing TPRS then slowly spoken then classroom speak, but the gap from classroom speak to naturally spoken vloggers is big and the gap from naturally spoken vloggers to TV shows is even bigger. Importing them into lingQ is as you both say very good for acquiring spoken vocab and e.g. I can understand the common classroom speak vloggers in lingQ 100% and spoken better than 90%. Where it's hit and miss is naturally spoken vloggers. There is more to them somehow. And TV shows there is also slurring or something else that makes it even more difficult.

But the key learning for me I have picked up with a distant language like Russian that is very clear compared with Spanish is there is are two conflicting memory paths happening at the same time: learning and forgetting. Every day you learn some and every day you forget some.

With Spanish the vocabulary is way closer to English so it's easier to remember and not forget. With Russian almost none of it is close to English so it's harder to pin onto something already learned. All of it is learned from scratch.

End result in terms of learning vs forgetting:

An hour a day (for me at least) seems to be slightly in favor of learning but only barely. I think that for a distant language a minimum of two hours a day is required or you're going to barely progress at all.

The first six months when I was doing at least 2-3 hours a day I made pretty good progress. Now that I have slowed down to an hour a day roughly, progress has been much smaller. It's there, but nowhere near as rapid.

Bear in mind: that is with vanilla methods. AI material targeted to what you are short on a daily basis is IMO a massive breakthrough.

But the proof will be in the pudding as they say. I suspect/hope there will be stories sometime later this year of folks who have signficantly reduced the time going from intermediate to advanced (in understanding) by means of using AI.

nfera

Australie

April 02 à 20:05

@xxdb

I find the gaps you are talking about only exist if you don't have relevant material to fill them. I only really followed one language learning vlogger/podcaster (Podcast Italiano, as in the recent video with Steve). He had content at varying levels. This content allowed me to move to natural speaking vloggers (monologues), which allowed me to move to TV series, (then the next step is movies, then books). There are still hard vloggers for me and some TV series, which I find quite hard, but if you try multiple channels, you find some are easier than others, which allows you to gradually increase in difficulty. There are obvoiusly topics, which I still have issues with (eg. food, because I have watched any food vloggers or cooking shows), but if you find the right material, the gap isn't too large.

Interesting about your Russian experience with the learning and forgetting.

PeterBormann

Allemagne

March 26 à 17:10

@xxdb

Re the "Minimum Effective Dose" for learning and maintaining an L2 (see your other recent thread)

I think your idea reg MED applied to SLA is excellent!

Unfortunately, I only found the usual "stuff" in yesterday's Google search (i.e., Tim Ferriss and his "apple sentences" to deconstruct any L2, the forgetting curve, spaced repetition and active recall, etc.).

What would be more interesting is something like this applied to the brain / mind:

https://www.trainerroad.com/blog/minimum-effective-dose-how-much-should-you-train-to-get-faster/

So we're left with our own language learning experiences and intuition...

xxdb

Royaume-Uni

March 26 à 20:28

Yeah it would be good if some linguistics faculty picks this up and figures it out.

xxdb

Royaume-Uni

March 26 à 14:21

@Peter:

Grrrr. Your other comment I couldn't find anything to argue with. That sucks.

And the focus on an IM level should be "collocations", but definitely not "single words"...

Of course. LingQ *should* give you that. And it is. Progress at intermediate isn't zero. It just feels slow. And that might be expected because it's diminishing returns. So in essence I'm not really doing 1-2 hours. Comparatively speaking I'm actually doing 1/2-1 hour because each hour only covers half the volume of new words than below intermediate.

The ideal SW-based SLA solution would be based on such L2 collections and collocation-specific

Maybe. That said, something I have *noticed* as an analogue to this suggestion is the chatGPT generated stories around the words. The words come with very specific collocations. As you would expect... So essentially by generating stories for consumption in lingQ (and the corresponding audio), you are getting the collocation exposure for those precise words that you don't know. Further locking it in.

Anyhow, like I've said a couple times now, the proof will be in the stats. If my retention stats improve then I can definitely say my hypothesis worked. If they remain the same or get worse then the hypothesis failed. Since it is a single change and I'm doing everything else the same it is a 100% valid scientific experiment.

On a sample of one.

Ha.

PeterBormann

Allemagne

March 26 à 15:23

"Progress at intermediate isn't zero. It just feels slow."

I'd say all this IM grinding is both an "expectation game" and a matter of the "distance / closeness of the L2".

Besides, I think progress at an IM level isn't so slow if we use all the L2 levers at our disposal:

1) Using a collection of > 1000 everyday dialogues (in my case: in English/Spanish), which I wanted to translate in bulk into other L2s I'm studying (in my case: Br Port, Dutch, and maybe Japanese). I've been collecting such dialogues since Aug. 2022.

2) Using my go to SLA books that I know inside and out.

a) non fiction: the Harari trilogy

b) fiction: beststellers such King's "It" (with ca. 500k words), etc.

3) Using an ultra-listening-while-reading approach (speed ca. 1.5x or higher) with 2 Pomodoro blocks à 25 min a day of focused attention at an IM level

5) Using LingQ-to-Anki for testing my retention from 3) or interacting with generative AIs, ca. 5-10 min.

6) Optional: free listening when running in the morning or watching Netflix, etc. = ca. 0.5 h

So, the "Minimum Effective SLA Dose" would be:

Goals:

- 2 Pomodoro blocks = 50 min with ca. 10k words read and listen to

- Overall words digested for closer languages from the Romance or Germanic language families: ca. 2 millions (in addition to the words already acquired on A1-A2/B1 levels).

-> 200 days à 50 min + 10 min with 5) + 6) -> 200 h to reach a B2-C1 level in listening + reading comprehension (that's my hypothesis for my Dutch challenge 2023 at the moment) + 0.5 h * 200 = 100 h of free listening (point 6) -> altogether: ca. 300 h for Dutch = ca. 1 h and 1.5 h per day, respectively as a "Minimum Effective SLA dose".

My thesis:

This could work for all Romance and Germanic languages (based on my native tongue German and the L2s I already know).

My guesses for reaching a B2-C1 level being at A2-B1 level(based on my experience with Japanese):

distant Indo-European languages: 300 * 2.5 =750 h
distant Non-Indo-European languages: 300 * 4 or 5 =1200 - 1500 h

In sum:

The Minimum Effective SLA dose for closer L2s should be feasible for the vast majority of L2 learners. If 2 Pomodoro blocks are too much per day, just choose 1 block and double the number of days (2 *200 days = 400 days)
The middle category (i.e., distant Indo-European languages) should still be feasible for many L2 learners: ca. 2 years with 2 Pomodoro blocks per day.
The distant Non-Indo-European languages - well, they're simply "beasts" where the Minimum Effective SLA Dose per day is probably 2 - 3 h. And that matches roughly Florian's (bamboozled) daily learning time in Chinese.

@xxdb

If you find something more efficient (or interesting), I'd love to hear about it - as always :-)

xxdb

Royaume-Uni

March 26 à 16:19

Awesome. Thanks for the stats.

I guess what you're saying is I'm too impatient.

PeterBormann

Allemagne

March 26 à 16:46

I understand your possible "impatience" all too well (at least, when it's a question of temperament :-) ).

However,"Russian" is not Dutch, for example.

Dutch feels like a German "dialect" to me because there are so many words I can easily guess. Therefore, it's a pure pleasure to surf the Dutch text waves.

In Japanese, in contrast, it feels like I have to wade through an SLA swamp - with no end in sight. There is progress, of course, but often it doesn't feel like it...

In short, there are simply L2s that are intrinsically more difficult than others. And Russian is definitely one of them - at least for us coming from the Germanic language family.

But that's hardly any news to you so I'll stop preaching to the choir :-)

Re ChatGPT:

I think I need to figure out good use cases for it:

I'm already drowning in dialogues, so I don't need more AI-generated dialogues.

However, chatting with generative AIs could be a nice addition to my study routines...

xxdb

Royaume-Uni

March 26 à 20:36

Thanks. Yeah.

I'm actually really excited to see if my experiment will work. It's only been two days but my gut is telling me that not only is it working (because I've now had a similar experience to what I've had with Spanish) but also it seems logically sound to my analytical mind. I can't pick holes in it because it just makes sense.

So the real question, is exactly how much extra lift will I get?

The efficiency of anki is ridiculously good for cognate type L2: you can hit 90% retention. With Russian I'm struggling hard to get 55% meaning that I'm barely progressing. It's there but it's taking a long time.

But if I can get it up to just 65% I should be hitting 1950 burned in words each month after two months so I should be "done done" after four months.

I'm optimistic because there are two clear examples of "hard" words thatI can remember "burning in" and are now associated with some kind of picture/story in my brain which is exactly what I remember happening with Spanish. I *think* I also increased my hit rate by about another 10 words as it was *much easier* to do my misremembered reviews that it was on other days. If that is all it is then my new retention rate will be at least 60% which means I will be "done done" by the end of the year.

xxdb

Royaume-Uni

March 26 à 20:45

@Peter:

I'm already drowning in dialogues, so I don't need more AI-generated dialogues.

However, chatting with generative AIs could be a nice addition to my study routines...

Obviously I can't speak for your method but for me, the generative AI is creating lingQ material *every day* that corresponds to my hard to remember words. I'm therefore in my head simulating what the English guy did when he was chatting with the Chinese friends. He would write down those words he had difficulty with when trying to speak Chinese and add those to his anki stack. I'm doing the opposite that: I'm finding written material with those words in it to practice when I have a hard time with them in anki. I'm hoping it will work.

PeterBormann

Allemagne

March 26 à 15:33

"you are getting the collocation exposure for those precise words that you don't know."

In my opinion, collocation exposure is good, but not enough.

That's what I like, for ex., about ESLPod.com or Mercedes' Spanish Podcast from Barcelona. They provide background information about the collocations (including idioms):

What's the language register: formal -neutral - informal - slang?
Are they outdated or not?
Are they used in oral or written forms?
Are they only used in certain contexts (sociolects)?
Are they only used in jest?

etc.

I've even specialized literature with tens of thousands of such collocations - unfortunately, as books. And that's no longer state of the SLA art.

However, even SEs specialized in collocations are not the right tools for language learners...

xxdb

Royaume-Uni

March 26 à 16:21

Slow clap my friend.

ejackson

United States

March 26 à 00:46

I don't disagree with your thoughts here, It's inefficient to read random materials as you don't get the exposure where you need it. However, do you really need 100% comprehension of words you already have been exposed to? You may not be mastering every word with random text, but you are still being exposed to new words and many of those are sticking, Put another way, you have less exposure with random materials, but if those words are not appearing in random materials, maybe you're wasting your time trying t memorize them with ANKI.

I have another theory about this and a different approach. I've found that sticking with a particular author or a particular genre increases the repetition of words. Most authors keep the same style, expressions and word choices in all their writing. So I see the same words and phrases coming up all the time. Same within a genre. Each has certain elements that fans of the genre expect, so the same words, situations, etc. keep appearing.

There just are no shortcuts. You learn when your brain is ready to learn. Keep it fun, interesting, intense enough and regular and just about any method words in the end.

xxdb

Royaume-Uni

March 26 à 01:25

"There just are no shortcuts."

Thanks for your opinion. But there actually are. I already know what the shortcut is to get to intermediate. I haven't (yet) found the shortcut to get to advanced. I'm betting, however, if there is, that this is it.

EDIT: You are in fact, correct about sticking to the same authors/same genre though. Reading everything in Harry Potter or some other series will give you the words you need for that series. Also... if you think about it a bit more, your method is in fact a shortcut.

My belief is that shortcuts to get to intermediate are more abundant than shortcuts to go from intermediate to advanced. The former can be done in a variety of ways (Benny Lewis, Steve Kaufmann, Luca Lampariello, IKenna etc are some examples). As far as I know, though, the only "shortcut" up till the creation of AI to go from intermediate to advanced is the English guy who learned Mandarin in a single year. And his method won't work for me.

asad100101

Pakistan

March 26 à 06:32

Yes, I follow the same strategy. For example, when I am reading a physical book I write down all the unknown words in a notebook. I create short stories, minimally, I use 10 new words per story. If some words repeat a lot during the course of reading the book (whether they are the favorites of the author or important ones in explaining thoughts). I also create dialogues plus stories with these important words and import them into LingQ. This way I will get more repetition in context and keep the content interesting. I have gradually moved away from Anki, though.

It was a great feeling for me to learn a new word that ChatGPT used. I came across it in a short story the first time around, then I came across it again while reading a physical book. In a real conversation with a German native, my subconscious mind came up with it and the German native also used it to express her thoughts. I really liked this chain reaction that was started by ChatGPT.

I can dedicate only limited time to this extra activity so I have to choose between adding sentences to Anki or creating stories by ChatGPT. I opted for a latter option.

xxdb

Royaume-Uni

March 26 à 14:39

A riff on your "all the unknown words in a book"...

Before I read the book what I do is this:

I export all the words into a frequency list, find those with at least two repetitions. I then remove the names (e.g. countries, cities, first names, last names).

My reasoning is that those with at least 2 repetitions are more likely to be useful than those with a single instance. Single instance words could be words that you'll never see again in your lifetime. No way to tell.

Anyhow. Next step is I take this list back into LingQ, have lingQ identify just those words which I don't know already. That's usually down to less than a hundred, more often than not it's about 50 words. Then I skim read to see if they are versions of a word I already know but with a different declension or conjugation. I remove those. Then I'm left with the honest-to-goodness words I have never seen before that are repeated at least two times.

Then... I add those to my anki stack before I start to read the book.

nfera

Australie

March 26 à 20:02

@xxdb

"Before I read the book"

You are reading a book?

At an intermediate stage, my focus is very clearly on spoken language. Spoken language uses much less vocabulary, so I choose to learn this vocabulary first before that of books. I see it essentially as an intermediary goal. The Paul Nation paper said in English you need about 6-7k word families for a 98% coverage of the vocabulary in a wide range of spoken language topics compared to 8-9k for a wide range of written texts. The exact numbers obviously aren't transferable to Italian or Russian, but it gives you an idea that maybe there's a 50% increase in vocabulary needed to understand written language after you've learnt the vocabulary for spoken language. In other words, why learn the 9th 1,000 word family before the 7th 1,000 word family? That's the way I see it. For this reason, I am very selective in my material (no books yet). Though, maybe you have already acquired these more frequent word families already, so that's why you're reading books. If so, you are at the upper intermediate already. Or maybe in Russian this spoken-written vocabulary divide doesn't exist? I don't know.

EDIT: I think we talked about this before and you called it 'laddering up'? I consider understanding podcasts and YouTube videos to be a lower rung than understanding books. 'Laddering up' in difficulty of material really does increase 'efficiency' and you will feel like you are making more progress because you actually are.

PeterBormann

Allemagne

March 26 à 20:33

@nfera

Good points.

And I've no idea why xxdb reads "Treasure Island" in Russian at this stage.

I love this novel, but for language learning at an IM level - with so much obsolete vocabulary (https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/t/treasure-island/study-help/full-glossary-for-treasure-island)?

Doesn't make sense...

PeterBormann

Allemagne

March 26 à 11:26

"I already know what the shortcut is to get to intermediate"

Hm, I'm not so sure. You seem to have struggled for more than 1 year to understand

how the case system in Russian works.

No offence, but that's not a "shortcut" in my SLA book (neither from a learner nor from a teacher perspective). That's rather the wrong "mix" of approaches...

xxdb

Royaume-Uni

March 26 à 11:46

Lol Peter's classic bluntness.

You're making a straw man argument bro: You don't need the case system to understand at an intermediate level. You only need the case system to be able to output at an intermediate level. Plus I've been doing way less hours than my initial burst and speculating that the number of hours isn't enough. Also nowhere have I said I'm intermediate at speaking, which has never really been my goal, so I haven't really placed a great deal of effort into trying to speak. Maybe a handful of hours at the most.

I also know fine well (and so should you if you've been paying attention) that if you immerse and force yourself to speak with natives for at least 5 hours a week you *will* get to advanced.

So back to the *actual* point: That's not the quest here (and perhaps I haven't framed it correctly). The quest here is how to get to advanced comprehension as a shortcut. LingQ just by reading novels isn't it (as a shortcut).

I have added an edit for others of your ilk my friend.

PeterBormann

Allemagne

March 26 à 12:10

"Lol Peter's classic bluntness"

Sure, xxdb: I mean I'm German and at the same time an IT guy. Both are known for not beating around the bush.

And then there's the "Peter genetics part"... :-)

BTW, this "mix" works extremely well for troubleshooting and problem-solving...

"You don't need the case system to understand at an intermediate level. You only need the case system to be able to output at an intermediate level."

My (wrong?) impression (see also your comment on how often you should repeat the "Mini Stories") is that you tend to avoid grammar altogether and just hope that you'll understand the grammar structures with enough exposure to your L2.

Yes, this works for native speakers because - from a learner's point of view - their L1 exposure time is insanely long. However, this is an inefficient strategy for language learners.

Grammar-oriented approaches can be a "shortcut", esp. for distant L2s, in this SLA context - provided they are "light" approaches...

That's all.

PeterBormann

Allemagne

March 26 à 12:29

"The quest here is how to get to advanced comprehension as a shortcut."

Sure.

The shortcut is, in my opinion a bi- or multi-modal approach à la fast-paced "reading while listening"

(see: https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/applirev-2017-0036/html) based on a collection of ca. 1000-2000 texts full of authentic everyday dialogues (YT, podcasts, Netflix, etc.) in the L2.

And the focus on an IM level should be "collocations", but definitely not "single words"...

The ideal SW-based SLA solution would be based on such L2 collections and collocation-specific (gamified?) training (which could involve generative AIs - but, probably, less for generating stories and more for using these collocations in interactions)...

p0wcr

United States

March 29 à 20:10

I have the shortcut you're looking for. Ain't giving it tho.

ejackson

United States

March 26 à 19:18

I'm glad you bring up the fact that there is a difference between input skills (reading/listening) and output skills (writing/speaking). They are very different skills and likely use different parts of the brain.

I'm going to bring up a different kind of learning that I think applies to language learning. Morse Code. I happen (after 66 years of ham radio) to be a very skilled Morse Code operator. I can receive (an input skill) at easily 40 wpm and with effort up to 55 wpm. During the telegraphy heyday, many professionals could handle those speeds and more, but the workaday telegraphers tended to stick around 20 wpm. There are reasons for this.

The way we learn Morse Code is to first memorize the pattern of dots and dashes for each letter of the alphabet. An A is dot dash (sounds like di-dah), a K is dah-di-dah and so forth. E, I, S and H are dit, didit, dididit, didididit respectively. Our pattern seeking brains pick up these repetitive patterns and use them to memorize them, but it's a trap.

When we listen to code, we look for these patterns, almost like a lookup table, but not really. We hear didah and think A. And we do that for each letter. But that takes a LOT of processing power which takes time. It's done by the conscious mind which is slow, lazy, easily bored, easily distracted and forgetful. So the speed at which you can receive Morse Code this way is limited to around 13 wpm. With lots of practice, some can get that to 20 wpm.

My point so far is that language learning is the same. We memorize words. We memorize word patterns (grammar), We memorize common phrases. We are depending on the slow, lazy, forgetful conscious brain to do all this. When a word comes at us, we have to consciously recall it. We have to remember what the previous word(s) were, and we have to construct a sentence of these words in our head. If we can't recall a word, we stumble and miss the next word and quickly get lost in word soup.

At this point memorization and recall are far too slow and we are very limited just like in Morse Code, because we are relying on an inherently slow processor.

In Morse Code, the break through comes when we stop listening. In order to learn to receive/input faster, we have to stop trying to decode the patterns. With hours and hours of input, at some point, the task gets handed over to the subconscious mind with is very fast and operates in the background. We can't conscioously pass it onto the subconsious. We have no real control over the subconscious. Soon the subconscious brain starts seeing patterns of entire words and simple phrases instead of individual letters or dits and dahs. We understand what is being sent without consciously trying to, and at higher and higher speeds. Once that ~20 wpm barrier is breached, it's only a matter of more and more practice to double that speed to 40 wpm.

Again, I think my language study in Norwegian follows a similar path. I don't try to memorize anything. I don't study grammar except to "break the code" about why some word order seems strange to me.

My reading has gone from word by word to largely sight reading where I often no longer see the individual words. The conscious mind isn't fast enough to reach that level of reading. The faster subconsious is coming into play just as it does with my Morse Code.

I'm completely "fluent" in Morse Code. I can converse with someone across the world at 40 wpm and at the same time answer questions from a visitor to my station. It used to drive my mom nuts when she would ask me to take out the trash or clean up my room while I continued my conversation via Morse with someone on another continent.

I'm not suggesting any shortcuts, nor am I suggesting any plan of study. I'm just offering a reason why just about everything seems to work. By engaging the conscious mind and overloading it, sooner or later it will pass on the tasks to the subconsious. I don't think there is anything the conscious mind can do (flash cards, LingQ, Duolingo, etc.) to speed this up. That breakthrough will happen when it happens. We can manipulate certain aspects of learning with "shortcuts", But overall, I question whether they are breakthroughs or just parallel paths.

Frankly, I don't believe there have been many breakthroughs in language learning since the Rosetta Stone, and I'm suspicious of any claims to the contrary. It's all being done with the same wetware we've had for a couple of hundred thousand years, and have yet to fully understand.

xxdb

Royaume-Uni

March 26 à 20:19

Thank you sir. That was a beautiful story, thanks for sharing: I really enjoyed it.

Substantially I think you're right. I've experienced the conscious->subconscious shift when I learned Spanish. I think what happens is that you build a secondary language center which is eventually accessible by the subconscious mind. What it feels like to me when I hear Spanish is it just "hits me" and I just know what it means. And I don't mean I know what it means in English. I know what the direct meaning of it is in Spanish without having to translate it.

With French and with Russian I'm not there yet. I have "glimpses" of it with Russian where there are e.g. 3-4 words "run" where I "just know it".

That said, I do want to quibble with your theory that there is nothing new under the sun with respect to language learning. SRS (the basis for anki) is new and *it works*. Now it doesn't work for everybody because it is BORING. But it definitely works.

That said, my experience so far has been that it works to take you to high-beginner/low intermediate ONLY. Then you need something else. With Spanish I went whole hog old-school and immersed myself in the latin community in Toronto and after a year or so (after the initial six months just drilling SRS) I would say I hit the early stage of fluency.

With French I never became fluent because I didn't really care. I was doing an experiment to see if I could learn another language other than Spanish. It worked. I got to intermediate. My mistake, though was I forgot that I didn't use anki for Spanish once I had gotten past the first six months. So I'm inventing or trying to invent something that will get me some kind of similar results to my Spanish experience but without having to hang out with Russians for 5-10 hours a week. Not that I have any issues with Russians in particular (except Vlad the evil, screw that guy) but I just don't have time to immerse. So I've been looking for a shortcut to go to advanced. anki is not it and anki plus lingQ is not it. At least in the basic form.

However, I think anki+chatgpt+lingQ *might* be it. We'll see.

Anyhow, good chat. And thanks again for sharing your story.

ejackson

United States

March 26 à 21:58

[xxdb] "I think what happens is that you build a secondary language center which is eventually accessible by the subconscious mind."

Yes, I think that's true, and implies that all the grunt work of acquiring some minimum vocabulary and structure first is absolutely necessary. Until you do that, the conscious mind is powerful enough and the subconscious has no interest in getting involved.

I did that with Duolingo. I think I finished the first 5 major sections, whatever they call them. The exercises were initially useful, but then became a chore.

One other point. Reading a particular author or genre is useful for increasing the repetition of words and phrases, but it's important to include other authors and genres. You mentioned earlier that that entails a lot of reading maybe millions of words. Yeah...it actually does, but, again, I don't think there are any shortcuts. I think I'm approaching 1 million words from just reading NRK news every day and three novels. Something I do in English routinely as well.

PeterBormann

Allemagne

March 26 à 20:49

"I don't believe there have been many breakthroughs in language learning" @ejackson

Yes, most "revolutions" in SLA are evolutions - at best.

That said, generative AIs like ChatGPT are a completely different ball game. They don't process language as humans do (neither as consciousness nor as communciation systems for coordinating behavior), but the text results based on mathematical / statistical models are pretty good (although often a bit generic).

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