everything i do is directed towards
getting more meaning out of the content
hi there steve kaufman here today i want
to talk about
flash cards
and learning vocabulary remember if you
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appreciate it
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 flash cards
in my program of study what is the role
of uh you know spaced repetition systems
and so forth
so
i'm going to demonstrate i do most of my
studying on my ipad
some people do it on the
you know on the computer some people use
link on their iphone their 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 discrete now here's a a word for
those of you who are non-native speakers
as you know discrete 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 discrete you know not to
embarrass people or whatever that's
discrete 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
going to stick or they'll stick for a
while 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 a while 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
different contexts so it's important to
learn vocabulary in
meaningful you know content
so
that's the third thing about how i learn
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
every lesson that i'm in at link 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
up 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 uh remember what they mean and and
so it's all 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 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 links
some of them i've 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 move to known will slide back
to status 3 or even status 2. 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
i don't believe that if i review
you know a bunch of items in an srs
systems based repetition system that
i'll get some kind of a permanent hold
on them i still need them within
a lot of meaningful content
also i don't believe i'm not a fan of
flashcards because
i don't believe the time that i spend
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
lists as another form of exposure
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 a language
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 you know library here but i'm
going 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
it yet
um so
we could look at it doesn't really
matter but if we look at this
[Music]
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 percent
unknown words let's open it up and see
what happens
so
berlin
yusuf
so
um
okay i need that
so i convert my now because that phrase
doesn't make a lot of sense to me
usage of turkish by region oh
using of turkish by regions so i'll also
save that as a phrase
yaklashik is roughly
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 economy
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 it again and going
looking up the yellow words again it's
all helping me
remember turk chan in turken
the turkish frankly different
burglar indifference
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
pronouncing
okay
um
bbc's i don't t
oh i guess that's the t okay so just for
the sake of this video i'll just go
ahead and hit the blue words
man talking that actually knew that
gonados and uh
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 flash
cards
okay
so
kulanima
okay so this is like
i'm just hearing why 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 a hundred and
ten
uh what are they
olarak
is that olarak yeah incorrect first of
all
so but i don't i don't do flash cards
because
i just don't find racking my brain that
useful but there's different
exercises in the flash cards there's
closed tests
but i'm not going to try and attempt
this because 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's 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
in other words just 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 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
a barton
there are exaggerators
all means something to do with
um exaggerate
open air achieve frankly a chick open
it
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
flash cards 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 in in
armenia i can't even read armenian
but in uh icelandic i had a quick look
there
and um
for a fighter
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 would be a lot of blue
words han is he
same as swedish
lives
that doesn't might mean liz
but
burtil means makes
so very often the phrase
has a different meaning morgan mott is
going to be breakfast that's very easy
ok
and
drekker drinks coffee coffee so as i
come across words but han karen
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 list
here there won't be as many because it's
a much shorter lesson here it would be
helpful to go through this list i could
also
sorry look up all the new words ahead of
time if i wanted to review them before
starting but again i don't find that
quite as useful as reviewing them in the
actual lesson text
over time as the number of blue words
this as blue words disappear and there's
fewer and fewer yellow words i then find
it useful to look at my list
as a quick way of reviewing the lesson
that i've been away from for a while so
i hope that quick uh overview is useful
again i'm happy to do this again if you
let me know what you would like to see
me do on my ipad well i hope that was
useful
[Music]
maybe
i think some things are confusing i'd be
happy to clarify
if there are other aspects of how i
study and how i learn languages that you
would like me to demonstrate please let
me know at any rate
there you have a peek into how i study
vocabulary thank you for listening
bye for now