Week 1: 80/20 and most used words
In this first post, I am going to summarize the starting point for my language learning; in fact, what I believe is a fast track for language learning.
Many people try to get all the grammar right from the beginning. In my opinion, that just slows us down! We did not get the declensions right, so what? Maybe the message was transmitted anyway.
Can you understand what is meant in this sentence? Communicating is all that matters for now. From there, we will build up.
I’d like to mention “Aprende Aleman en 7 Dias” by Ramon Campayo (ISBN-10: 8408131672), one of the books that are going to be my reference in this journey. If you can read Spanish, I definitely recommend it to you.
The rule of 80/20 tells us to do the most important things, the ones that will get us 80% of the results, and develop the skill of not paying as much attention to the small details. It does not mean that we have to be careless; we just focus all our attention on what is going to give us the biggest outcome. Working on that line, we should be able to communicate if we use the highest used frequency words, which are around 700. This is nothing compared to the actual number of words in the language, and it should, theoretically, allow us to communicate.
This week, I have done so using “absurd associations” and spaced repetition. In this post, I'll cover the basics of associations and leave the spaced repetition for the next post.
The idea is that most of the memories we thought are not stored actually are stored. However, if we do not have the trigger to find them, they cannot be retrieved. We must consciously create a trigger to find them. This trigger will be an impossible, humorous or absurd story that will contain the word that we want to learn and its meaning. For example, imagine that you find a crocodile in your kitchen doing the dishes… I bet you never forget that!
Let’s get our hands dirty and release a bit our creativity,
Say that we want to remember the word Schnee (Snow in German). This is very close to the English word Knee. There, for example, we can imagine ourselves creating a SnowMan. We have to get to our knees to create it, so we have now frozen knees. How does that feel? You cannot even move. Ugh… so cold!!
Nice! We did the first association. Now, look away and try to recall what the word Schnee means. What happened there? Can you recall the story?
If you imagined the story vividly enough, you will be able to recall more than one week later! However, do not trust me. Test this technique out by yourself, see it by yourself and comment down below!
Say we take the verb Warten, which means to Wait. In this case, the main character of our story is going to be Bart Simpson. He will be the trigger that will remind us of Wart-en. Bart will be waiting for Homer, who forgot that his son is outside the house waiting for him. Bart gets more and more angry and you can see how his veins get bigger and bigger until BUM! His head exploded!
Now, let’s go with an adjective: Stark, which means Strong. Follow Game of Thrones? Ned Stark! He is quite strong, isn’t he? I picture him with a big sword, a huge one, one that I could not hold myself.
Fast-forwarding… This week, I memorized them all, taking me one week (1h a day during 7 days). However, I had done it 4 years ago, so some of the words were familiar, even though I could not recall the majority of them when I started the week. How much time you need will depend on how fast you come up with these associations, a task which gets better with time.
Not only memorizing them is important though, without repetition, we will not be able to really put those words in our toolbox. In the next post, I'll report my results using spaced repetition for language learning.
Feel free to try it out and comment the results below! How many could you get done in one hour? Could you recall them the next day?
Happy Fast-Learning! :)
Truly yours,
Marcel.
Many people try to get all the grammar right from the beginning. In my opinion, that just slows us down! We did not get the declensions right, so what? Maybe the message was transmitted anyway.
“Me want buy bread”
Can you understand what is meant in this sentence? Communicating is all that matters for now. From there, we will build up.
I’d like to mention “Aprende Aleman en 7 Dias” by Ramon Campayo (ISBN-10: 8408131672), one of the books that are going to be my reference in this journey. If you can read Spanish, I definitely recommend it to you.
Rule of 80/20: do the 20 percent of the work, that gets 80% of the results.
The rule of 80/20 tells us to do the most important things, the ones that will get us 80% of the results, and develop the skill of not paying as much attention to the small details. It does not mean that we have to be careless; we just focus all our attention on what is going to give us the biggest outcome. Working on that line, we should be able to communicate if we use the highest used frequency words, which are around 700. This is nothing compared to the actual number of words in the language, and it should, theoretically, allow us to communicate.
This week, I have done so using “absurd associations” and spaced repetition. In this post, I'll cover the basics of associations and leave the spaced repetition for the next post.
The idea is that most of the memories we thought are not stored actually are stored. However, if we do not have the trigger to find them, they cannot be retrieved. We must consciously create a trigger to find them. This trigger will be an impossible, humorous or absurd story that will contain the word that we want to learn and its meaning. For example, imagine that you find a crocodile in your kitchen doing the dishes… I bet you never forget that!
Let’s get our hands dirty and release a bit our creativity,
Say that we want to remember the word Schnee (Snow in German). This is very close to the English word Knee. There, for example, we can imagine ourselves creating a SnowMan. We have to get to our knees to create it, so we have now frozen knees. How does that feel? You cannot even move. Ugh… so cold!!
Nice! We did the first association. Now, look away and try to recall what the word Schnee means. What happened there? Can you recall the story?
If you imagined the story vividly enough, you will be able to recall more than one week later! However, do not trust me. Test this technique out by yourself, see it by yourself and comment down below!
Say we take the verb Warten, which means to Wait. In this case, the main character of our story is going to be Bart Simpson. He will be the trigger that will remind us of Wart-en. Bart will be waiting for Homer, who forgot that his son is outside the house waiting for him. Bart gets more and more angry and you can see how his veins get bigger and bigger until BUM! His head exploded!
Now, let’s go with an adjective: Stark, which means Strong. Follow Game of Thrones? Ned Stark! He is quite strong, isn’t he? I picture him with a big sword, a huge one, one that I could not hold myself.
Fast-forwarding… This week, I memorized them all, taking me one week (1h a day during 7 days). However, I had done it 4 years ago, so some of the words were familiar, even though I could not recall the majority of them when I started the week. How much time you need will depend on how fast you come up with these associations, a task which gets better with time.
Not only memorizing them is important though, without repetition, we will not be able to really put those words in our toolbox. In the next post, I'll report my results using spaced repetition for language learning.
Feel free to try it out and comment the results below! How many could you get done in one hour? Could you recall them the next day?
Happy Fast-Learning! :)
Truly yours,
Marcel.
Thanks for sharing your journey Marcel. All the best, Vicky.
ReplyDeleteIt has been really useful to me, I have used the thecnique of absourd memorising for remember, for example, that chear in icelandic is stoll: I imagine a doll seated on a chear. I do it also with the word "gluggi", that means window, imaginating that I can't open a window becouse is pasted with glue.
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