Weeks 4 and 5: Thoughts on article learning
Hi!
In the last post, I talked about how to memorize articles. Now, I will explain to you what has happened, and what I think can be improved.
Essentially, I filled in the gender and associated each of the nouns that I had in my word list. This is not something that I find useful for people to understand you. If you get an article wrong, at least, I haven't had any problem. It is much more important that you actually know the vocabulary, which will allow to express yourself. However, we are already building more and more vocabulary as we go, so we are already covering the basics, and aim to not only be able to communicate in German.
The fact is that in German, the different declensions depend on the article; if you do not learn it, then you won't get it right.
To the point! Since my word list has now articles, I made an association of each of the three objects; a pitbull for masculine, a lipstick for feminine, and a baby for neutral.
Two weeks after, I have learned them all. It has not been difficult, and I have probably spent less than 4 hours in total, and most of it has been using Ankiweb in my way to work. Now, how good does that stick? Well, there is a nice point: Whenever you have a word to recall, there are only three options. Either a baby is doing something crazy with it, perhaps there is lipstick everywhere, or a dog is destroying it. To be honest, it is pretty simple to recall.
I have also tried to group similar words, with good results as well. For example, Der (masculine) Bahnhoff (Railway Station) with Das (neutral) Gleis (Track). I already knew both words without recalling any association, so I just had to do the association for the genders. The association goes something like this:
Imagine that a train is coming to the railway station, yet there are babies in the tracks! Tones of babies! Don't ask me where they came from, but they are there! There is also a tone of dogs trying to save them. They barking furiously to the train that is coming and is going to kill them all!
OK, that was not nice...
But the way how words stick the best is to give as many emotions to the story that you are making up. In this little story, there is fury, and a concern for the babies (even knowing that nothing is real).
Another option that a reader mentioned and I found very interesting was to try to draw them into different paper sheets. Make up a story with say 10 words. The words and their gender should then stick, if not by the word itself, it will stick because of their neighbours. Even though there is more artists than engineers in my family, I am from the latter, so don't expect amazing drawings but I will make the attempt to apply this and see if I could memorize all those new words.
I would like to emphasize that I keep building vocabulary. Which one? Not random one. The one that I mostly use. A good way to discover these new words is to actually speak as much as possible! This week, I started language exchange with my new language buddy, Bernadette! And yes, I tried to explain what my work is about to her 😅 (And she still talks to me 😐), something that took me a long time to even explain properly in English! It was a bit hard, but she had the patience to help me. Thanks Bernadette!! That was fun :)
If you are forced to say things, then you need to learn new words, which will be in your active vocabulary, the one that you can use, as opposite to passive, which is that that you know, but you can't/do not use. In fact, during these two last weeks, I have added more than 100 new words to my vocabulary list, and thus to Anki.
If you are working on learning the articles, I would love to know if these techniques are working for you, or what sort of crazy story did you make up to remember them!
Another option that I was considering was to upload an Anki deck with a collection of words with their articles. If you feel it would be a good idea, let me know if it would be useful to you!
Happy learning :)
Best,
Marcel.
In the last post, I talked about how to memorize articles. Now, I will explain to you what has happened, and what I think can be improved.
Essentially, I filled in the gender and associated each of the nouns that I had in my word list. This is not something that I find useful for people to understand you. If you get an article wrong, at least, I haven't had any problem. It is much more important that you actually know the vocabulary, which will allow to express yourself. However, we are already building more and more vocabulary as we go, so we are already covering the basics, and aim to not only be able to communicate in German.
The fact is that in German, the different declensions depend on the article; if you do not learn it, then you won't get it right.
To the point! Since my word list has now articles, I made an association of each of the three objects; a pitbull for masculine, a lipstick for feminine, and a baby for neutral.
Two weeks after, I have learned them all. It has not been difficult, and I have probably spent less than 4 hours in total, and most of it has been using Ankiweb in my way to work. Now, how good does that stick? Well, there is a nice point: Whenever you have a word to recall, there are only three options. Either a baby is doing something crazy with it, perhaps there is lipstick everywhere, or a dog is destroying it. To be honest, it is pretty simple to recall.
I have also tried to group similar words, with good results as well. For example, Der (masculine) Bahnhoff (Railway Station) with Das (neutral) Gleis (Track). I already knew both words without recalling any association, so I just had to do the association for the genders. The association goes something like this:
Imagine that a train is coming to the railway station, yet there are babies in the tracks! Tones of babies! Don't ask me where they came from, but they are there! There is also a tone of dogs trying to save them. They barking furiously to the train that is coming and is going to kill them all!
OK, that was not nice...
But the way how words stick the best is to give as many emotions to the story that you are making up. In this little story, there is fury, and a concern for the babies (even knowing that nothing is real).
Another option that a reader mentioned and I found very interesting was to try to draw them into different paper sheets. Make up a story with say 10 words. The words and their gender should then stick, if not by the word itself, it will stick because of their neighbours. Even though there is more artists than engineers in my family, I am from the latter, so don't expect amazing drawings but I will make the attempt to apply this and see if I could memorize all those new words.
I would like to emphasize that I keep building vocabulary. Which one? Not random one. The one that I mostly use. A good way to discover these new words is to actually speak as much as possible! This week, I started language exchange with my new language buddy, Bernadette! And yes, I tried to explain what my work is about to her 😅 (And she still talks to me 😐), something that took me a long time to even explain properly in English! It was a bit hard, but she had the patience to help me. Thanks Bernadette!! That was fun :)
If you are forced to say things, then you need to learn new words, which will be in your active vocabulary, the one that you can use, as opposite to passive, which is that that you know, but you can't/do not use. In fact, during these two last weeks, I have added more than 100 new words to my vocabulary list, and thus to Anki.
If you are working on learning the articles, I would love to know if these techniques are working for you, or what sort of crazy story did you make up to remember them!
Another option that I was considering was to upload an Anki deck with a collection of words with their articles. If you feel it would be a good idea, let me know if it would be useful to you!
Happy learning :)
Best,
Marcel.
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