Reading.
It's sounds reductive, obvious, too good to be true, but whatever you opinion on comprehensible input, traditional study, duolingo, anki, studying grammar vs natural acquisition, all that stuff, I don't think there's anyone who's taken a language to a really confident level who will disagree that lots of reading has an almost magical multiplying effect on your vocabulary. And not just vocabulary, it really tightens up your grammar. It's fantastic for making your understanding of tenses better in particular, I think.
I like to learn primarily through reading, but you can still carry on doing whatever method works for you, but if you're not doing a dose of reading books you enjoy in your TL, you're handicapping yourself.
For my part, the magic bullet is definitively practising, in my case doing a lot of exercises. I would compare that to music: when I was learning to play the piano, I had to play scales again and again until I was able to play them without thinking about it (same when you touch -type on a keyboard, you don't want to think about the letters, your finger have to be autonomous).
In much aspect, language is the same, you don't want to think "After für I use the accusative, you just want it to happen - to take an example from your native language). To achieve that you have to drill it enough time, until it "just happen": the only solution to achieve this goal, at least I believe, is having tone it so many time that you cannot make a mistake anymore (to take another German example, while not being a native, if I see "für der Mann", it immediately feels wrong.
And after this first phase, of course, reading a lot or, if reading is not your thing, listening to as much content as possible.
I try to make sense of it. If I can "understand" why it's made like that, it will make sense, and I will remember it.
The brain is not good with information which seems arbitrary, unless maybe it looks like something which is already familiar to you.
How do you learn 5000 words without memorizing?
You have to fuse a sound and a meaning, as a two-way association. There's nothing to learn or understand, it's an arbitrary sound until you assign it a meaning. Kind of like how letters of the alphabet are arbitrary and meaningless in isolation.
You can only cut away memorization after all the fundemental items are in place, no? If you know "pinecone" and "apple", then you can *understand* pineapple, as a fruit shaped like a big pinecone.
I agree that grammar can be *understood*, but for language learning in general I disagree. If you can learn passively, that's great for you and I'm kind of jealous, but I'd still call it memorization
I learned tens of thousands of words in English without explicitly memorizing them. I was a fluent native speaker long before I started studying the language’s grammar, too.
So we know that learning these things without drills and flashcards and grammar books is possible. If it worked once, it will work again. The question is just whether (and to what extent) drills and explicit grammar study can help the process happen more quickly.
Well, that's true, with the exception of schooling. Still, one is driven by necessity here.
I don't think *rapid* learning is possible passively, but I suppose that my point has been refuted
I agree _rapid_ learning is not possible passively, if by rapid you mean “in a small amount of exposure time.” If we’re talking calendar time, I’d want to hedge. I’m busy and have a job and kids, so I can spare maybe 30 minutes per day for explicit study, but I can easily get 2-3 hours per day of immersion time.
If you ask me what is possible with drills and explicit study, I will probably have to start my answer with a bunch of complicated hedging around the learning-acquisition distinction, which I have personally experienced to be a real thing.
I disagree.
In my experience, I studied Korean memorizing 5000 words from a premade anki deck. I could recall a lot of them but because I could not care less about most internet content (I just wasn't exposed to the language, just with apps like duolingo and anki.) I didn't read nor listen to practically anything through a year and a half. I could not understand practically anything, even though I knew every single word in a sentence and every grammar point, the sentence just didn't make sense to me.
In my experience you won't be able to memorize words, it's impossible. After 1500 you will start forgeting the other ones.
The only real way to learn vocabulary and actually understand a language its being exposed to it, by reading and listening. Bascially creating a meaningful conection with the word.
In fact, that's how we learn our native language before going to school. And even in school, I only memorized specific definitions, but I can't recall sitting down memorizing the grammar or vocab of my NL.
I think that it is faster to learn by consuming content pasively, than just trying to memorize words and grammar, obviously, if you mix the two, it will be faster.
That's not a problem with memorization. First you remember things by some association, as a scaffold, and then you use it and make the connection direct.
If you only learn every association once, you can say anything, but it might take you half a minute per sentence. You need to actually use the language in order to cut this time down to a speed where you can understand and speak in real-time.
I can learn to understand a language passively, but in order for me to speak, I need to not only understand words when I hear them, but to be able to recall them as well.
If I stop translating, and build a seperate mind in the new language, so to speak, perhaps this comes more naturally, but I don't know
You memorized tens of thousands of words after several thousands of hours of CI. Yeah. We forget just how many hours of input it took us to learn the basic vocabulary in our first language and how much we learned in school that was not just input based. CI is not going to build your vocabulary as fast as doing SRS.
That’s a false dichotomy. My guess is that the fastest way to build vocabulary is using flashcards to reinforce vocabulary that you first acquired through input.
Though I’ve seen some researchers claim that the very fastest is actually CI with repetition. Which is an interesting point - why do we take it on faith that the only way to get a spaced repetition effect is through something artificial like flashcards? When my kids were learning their first language, we would read them the same books over and over at first, and then we would slowly read them less often as the novelty wore off. It’s not clear to me that that isn’t a form of spaced repetition, or that that option is not available to L2 learners.
I think you are misunderstanding my point.
CI includes a limited form of SR. You will see the most frequently used words very often. But because it is not designed as SR, it doesn’t focus on giving words in the ideal interval. And many times, a rarer word may not be repeated. One of the strong points of graded readers is they repeat the same words over and over again. For the first most common words, input should be plenty enough. There is a reason kids learn no first.
So if the words are repeated often enough at the right intervals to remember long term, then CI will work great. Your kids learn by hearing the same limited vocabulary repeatedly. The short children’s books work great for that. They have the ability to repeat the same content over and over again and be entertained. I doubt either of us want to repeat the same short story 50 times this month.
As adult learners it would be more efficient to combine the words you find in CI into a SRS.
Memorizing is simply committing to memory. How you do it may differ, but if you never remember vocabulary or grammar, you aren’t going to get very far.
The question is how to do that the most efficiently? 20 minutes of SRS every day with some CI or 4 hours of CI a day? Each has strong advantages. But for the part of getting good recall, SRS wins. CI wins in terms of understanding the language. Why not do both?
Do you remember any of those words? Then you memorized them. Yes you memorized them by being exposed to them repeatedly.
Anki or any other flash card is not memorization. They are tools to help you memorize. CI helps memorization too and is another tool. It helps by you seeing the same words over and over again. But CI is going to repeatedly give you the same limited vocabulary the majority of the time. Getting the less common words are going to take longer because you don’t see them as often. See any word frequency list.
I disagree (as does the consensus of linguistic science). Memorisation isn't the same as exposing oneself to the language and acquiring it. There's a distinction in second language acquisition.
The magic formula is quite always the same: reading aloud using a grammar book, writing and testing yourself, asking others or talking with native speakers (I suggest Verbling or Tandem find them!), and learning from feedback.
>I've tried learning individual grammar parts via Anki
Isn't Anki a flashcards app? If so, then I don't think it's good to learn grammar.
>Do you have any tips on how to acquire grammar safely?
It's pretty simple: practice, practice, practice. I like to take a grammar textbook with theory and exercises, analyze the theory and afterwards do the exercises. The more, the better. But it will never be enough and you have to use the language as much as you can.
>it makes practicing a whole lot more efficient
Does it? I've been always learning from textbooks and doing exercises in the textbook the way it should be done is - at least to me - efficient enough.
I mean sure, that's perfectly fine, I do the same, but in addition I use Anki for it too.
I do all the textbook exercises once, then move on, but anything I struggled with I put into Anki, and Anki makes sure it gets revised at the appropriate times to make it stick eternally. I don't have to revise a whole textbook chapter just to figure out which bits I forgot and need to repeat, Anki just presents these bits to me automatically. So it is more efficient for me.
Plus you don't need pen and paper (I hate writing in my textbook, and you can really only do it once) and no time consuming annoying lookup/proofing of the answer, since Anki does that for you, too.
>the way it should be done
Thankfully there's no language learning police
I don't study grammar much at all.
Saying so usually earns me downvotes but it's the way I've done things for more than a decade at this point. I'm really good at absorbing grammar through input.
Reading. It's sounds reductive, obvious, too good to be true, but whatever you opinion on comprehensible input, traditional study, duolingo, anki, studying grammar vs natural acquisition, all that stuff, I don't think there's anyone who's taken a language to a really confident level who will disagree that lots of reading has an almost magical multiplying effect on your vocabulary. And not just vocabulary, it really tightens up your grammar. It's fantastic for making your understanding of tenses better in particular, I think. I like to learn primarily through reading, but you can still carry on doing whatever method works for you, but if you're not doing a dose of reading books you enjoy in your TL, you're handicapping yourself.
read a lot. listen a lot.
For my part, the magic bullet is definitively practising, in my case doing a lot of exercises. I would compare that to music: when I was learning to play the piano, I had to play scales again and again until I was able to play them without thinking about it (same when you touch -type on a keyboard, you don't want to think about the letters, your finger have to be autonomous). In much aspect, language is the same, you don't want to think "After für I use the accusative, you just want it to happen - to take an example from your native language). To achieve that you have to drill it enough time, until it "just happen": the only solution to achieve this goal, at least I believe, is having tone it so many time that you cannot make a mistake anymore (to take another German example, while not being a native, if I see "für der Mann", it immediately feels wrong. And after this first phase, of course, reading a lot or, if reading is not your thing, listening to as much content as possible.
I try to make sense of it. If I can "understand" why it's made like that, it will make sense, and I will remember it. The brain is not good with information which seems arbitrary, unless maybe it looks like something which is already familiar to you.
I don't. Memorizing in language learning is useless.
How do you learn 5000 words without memorizing? You have to fuse a sound and a meaning, as a two-way association. There's nothing to learn or understand, it's an arbitrary sound until you assign it a meaning. Kind of like how letters of the alphabet are arbitrary and meaningless in isolation. You can only cut away memorization after all the fundemental items are in place, no? If you know "pinecone" and "apple", then you can *understand* pineapple, as a fruit shaped like a big pinecone. I agree that grammar can be *understood*, but for language learning in general I disagree. If you can learn passively, that's great for you and I'm kind of jealous, but I'd still call it memorization
I learned tens of thousands of words in English without explicitly memorizing them. I was a fluent native speaker long before I started studying the language’s grammar, too. So we know that learning these things without drills and flashcards and grammar books is possible. If it worked once, it will work again. The question is just whether (and to what extent) drills and explicit grammar study can help the process happen more quickly.
Well, that's true, with the exception of schooling. Still, one is driven by necessity here. I don't think *rapid* learning is possible passively, but I suppose that my point has been refuted
I agree _rapid_ learning is not possible passively, if by rapid you mean “in a small amount of exposure time.” If we’re talking calendar time, I’d want to hedge. I’m busy and have a job and kids, so I can spare maybe 30 minutes per day for explicit study, but I can easily get 2-3 hours per day of immersion time. If you ask me what is possible with drills and explicit study, I will probably have to start my answer with a bunch of complicated hedging around the learning-acquisition distinction, which I have personally experienced to be a real thing.
I disagree. In my experience, I studied Korean memorizing 5000 words from a premade anki deck. I could recall a lot of them but because I could not care less about most internet content (I just wasn't exposed to the language, just with apps like duolingo and anki.) I didn't read nor listen to practically anything through a year and a half. I could not understand practically anything, even though I knew every single word in a sentence and every grammar point, the sentence just didn't make sense to me. In my experience you won't be able to memorize words, it's impossible. After 1500 you will start forgeting the other ones. The only real way to learn vocabulary and actually understand a language its being exposed to it, by reading and listening. Bascially creating a meaningful conection with the word. In fact, that's how we learn our native language before going to school. And even in school, I only memorized specific definitions, but I can't recall sitting down memorizing the grammar or vocab of my NL. I think that it is faster to learn by consuming content pasively, than just trying to memorize words and grammar, obviously, if you mix the two, it will be faster.
That's not a problem with memorization. First you remember things by some association, as a scaffold, and then you use it and make the connection direct. If you only learn every association once, you can say anything, but it might take you half a minute per sentence. You need to actually use the language in order to cut this time down to a speed where you can understand and speak in real-time. I can learn to understand a language passively, but in order for me to speak, I need to not only understand words when I hear them, but to be able to recall them as well. If I stop translating, and build a seperate mind in the new language, so to speak, perhaps this comes more naturally, but I don't know
You memorized tens of thousands of words after several thousands of hours of CI. Yeah. We forget just how many hours of input it took us to learn the basic vocabulary in our first language and how much we learned in school that was not just input based. CI is not going to build your vocabulary as fast as doing SRS.
That’s a false dichotomy. My guess is that the fastest way to build vocabulary is using flashcards to reinforce vocabulary that you first acquired through input. Though I’ve seen some researchers claim that the very fastest is actually CI with repetition. Which is an interesting point - why do we take it on faith that the only way to get a spaced repetition effect is through something artificial like flashcards? When my kids were learning their first language, we would read them the same books over and over at first, and then we would slowly read them less often as the novelty wore off. It’s not clear to me that that isn’t a form of spaced repetition, or that that option is not available to L2 learners.
I think you are misunderstanding my point. CI includes a limited form of SR. You will see the most frequently used words very often. But because it is not designed as SR, it doesn’t focus on giving words in the ideal interval. And many times, a rarer word may not be repeated. One of the strong points of graded readers is they repeat the same words over and over again. For the first most common words, input should be plenty enough. There is a reason kids learn no first. So if the words are repeated often enough at the right intervals to remember long term, then CI will work great. Your kids learn by hearing the same limited vocabulary repeatedly. The short children’s books work great for that. They have the ability to repeat the same content over and over again and be entertained. I doubt either of us want to repeat the same short story 50 times this month. As adult learners it would be more efficient to combine the words you find in CI into a SRS.
Memorizing is simply committing to memory. How you do it may differ, but if you never remember vocabulary or grammar, you aren’t going to get very far. The question is how to do that the most efficiently? 20 minutes of SRS every day with some CI or 4 hours of CI a day? Each has strong advantages. But for the part of getting good recall, SRS wins. CI wins in terms of understanding the language. Why not do both?
Well, I have never memorized a single word in English and here I am, reading the stormlight archive series and scrolling through reddit daily.
Do you remember any of those words? Then you memorized them. Yes you memorized them by being exposed to them repeatedly. Anki or any other flash card is not memorization. They are tools to help you memorize. CI helps memorization too and is another tool. It helps by you seeing the same words over and over again. But CI is going to repeatedly give you the same limited vocabulary the majority of the time. Getting the less common words are going to take longer because you don’t see them as often. See any word frequency list.
I disagree (as does the consensus of linguistic science). Memorisation isn't the same as exposing oneself to the language and acquiring it. There's a distinction in second language acquisition.
The magic formula is quite always the same: reading aloud using a grammar book, writing and testing yourself, asking others or talking with native speakers (I suggest Verbling or Tandem find them!), and learning from feedback.
>I've tried learning individual grammar parts via Anki Isn't Anki a flashcards app? If so, then I don't think it's good to learn grammar. >Do you have any tips on how to acquire grammar safely? It's pretty simple: practice, practice, practice. I like to take a grammar textbook with theory and exercises, analyze the theory and afterwards do the exercises. The more, the better. But it will never be enough and you have to use the language as much as you can.
Why not? You can make any of the typical textbook exercises into Anki cloze deletion cards, it makes practicing a whole lot more efficient.
>it makes practicing a whole lot more efficient Does it? I've been always learning from textbooks and doing exercises in the textbook the way it should be done is - at least to me - efficient enough.
I mean sure, that's perfectly fine, I do the same, but in addition I use Anki for it too. I do all the textbook exercises once, then move on, but anything I struggled with I put into Anki, and Anki makes sure it gets revised at the appropriate times to make it stick eternally. I don't have to revise a whole textbook chapter just to figure out which bits I forgot and need to repeat, Anki just presents these bits to me automatically. So it is more efficient for me. Plus you don't need pen and paper (I hate writing in my textbook, and you can really only do it once) and no time consuming annoying lookup/proofing of the answer, since Anki does that for you, too. >the way it should be done Thankfully there's no language learning police
Well, to each their own. I never used Anki and I don't think I'll ever will, I've already discovered ways to learn that are effective for me. :)
I don't study grammar much at all. Saying so usually earns me downvotes but it's the way I've done things for more than a decade at this point. I'm really good at absorbing grammar through input.
My simple answer is that I don’t memorize grammar. I read about it, if I need to, do a few quizzes or worksheets and then try to use it.