Week 2: Fast-Reviewing in Vienna
This week has been quite moved. After a flight cancellation, and a day later than expected, my partner and I are finally in Vienna, for at least four months. Yey!
Despite having studied a little German 4 years ago (5 months), the learning and review of the most frequent words as explained in the last post has proved to be very efficient. The sensations when speaking to people have been quite positive. Of course, there is still a tone of words, grammar, and connectors which are unknown to us, yet we have at least being able to communicate without problems. Well... There was one problem. We did not know how to express the word Spicy in a restaurant, and I personally hate spicy food! Spicy is Scharf, lesson learned!
In this post, however, I would like to talk about the importance of reviewing. In particular, one very powerful technique that I like to use: Spaced repetition
When we memorize anything, it makes no sense to repeat the word like a parrot. It is very inefficient. You have probably experienced that a tone of times when trying to memorize things, perhaps at school.
This does not mean that repetition is bad. It is just that repetition must be done in a strategic manner, this will decrease the number of times that we need to repeat it to send it to long-term memory.
But.. how does spaced repetition work?
It is very simple. Instead of wasting time by repeating a word over and over, space the repetition in increasing intervals, for example, repeating it tomorrow, five more days and so on. This is also known as the Pilseur Graduated-interval Recall. It is very easy to see how amazing this technique is. Test it by yourself, take a word and go through the cycle, setting alarms in the calendar if you need. You will see that at the end of the 3-4 review (For a word, you will spend less than 15 seconds for the review, and you will do it by trying to recall your association).
It might sound a bit tedious, especially if you have to set it on the calendar... However, it works very well. I do it for studying course subjects since I know that this would save me lots of time and add a solid block of knowledge to my toolbox.
For language learning, however, software like Anki does it for you, so you only have to create your deck and retrieve the words that you are asked to. In addition, Anki separates the cards in different buckets, and it will show you the words that you did not get right more insistently.
An additional tip here is to review fast. A review can be very fast, I am talking about something like 2 seconds per review, so I can review 100 words in 200 seconds. (3 Minutes!) Do you have 3 minutes to spare? It actually does not have to even be every day! Another tip for fast reviewing is to use the Anki shortcuts, place your fingers in 1, 2, 3 (Depending on the modality), and do not spend unnecessary time, when you know the word, go to the next one. If not, stop and recall it, or write it down for re-memorization. It might be that your association was not powerful enough and it did not stick in your mind.
Let me know down below how you did with this technique!
Happy Fast-Learning :)
Marcel.
Despite having studied a little German 4 years ago (5 months), the learning and review of the most frequent words as explained in the last post has proved to be very efficient. The sensations when speaking to people have been quite positive. Of course, there is still a tone of words, grammar, and connectors which are unknown to us, yet we have at least being able to communicate without problems. Well... There was one problem. We did not know how to express the word Spicy in a restaurant, and I personally hate spicy food! Spicy is Scharf, lesson learned!
In this post, however, I would like to talk about the importance of reviewing. In particular, one very powerful technique that I like to use: Spaced repetition
When we memorize anything, it makes no sense to repeat the word like a parrot. It is very inefficient. You have probably experienced that a tone of times when trying to memorize things, perhaps at school.
This does not mean that repetition is bad. It is just that repetition must be done in a strategic manner, this will decrease the number of times that we need to repeat it to send it to long-term memory.
But.. how does spaced repetition work?
It is very simple. Instead of wasting time by repeating a word over and over, space the repetition in increasing intervals, for example, repeating it tomorrow, five more days and so on. This is also known as the Pilseur Graduated-interval Recall. It is very easy to see how amazing this technique is. Test it by yourself, take a word and go through the cycle, setting alarms in the calendar if you need. You will see that at the end of the 3-4 review (For a word, you will spend less than 15 seconds for the review, and you will do it by trying to recall your association).
It might sound a bit tedious, especially if you have to set it on the calendar... However, it works very well. I do it for studying course subjects since I know that this would save me lots of time and add a solid block of knowledge to my toolbox.
For language learning, however, software like Anki does it for you, so you only have to create your deck and retrieve the words that you are asked to. In addition, Anki separates the cards in different buckets, and it will show you the words that you did not get right more insistently.
An additional tip here is to review fast. A review can be very fast, I am talking about something like 2 seconds per review, so I can review 100 words in 200 seconds. (3 Minutes!) Do you have 3 minutes to spare? It actually does not have to even be every day! Another tip for fast reviewing is to use the Anki shortcuts, place your fingers in 1, 2, 3 (Depending on the modality), and do not spend unnecessary time, when you know the word, go to the next one. If not, stop and recall it, or write it down for re-memorization. It might be that your association was not powerful enough and it did not stick in your mind.
Let me know down below how you did with this technique!
Happy Fast-Learning :)
Marcel.
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