Saim's log 2017-2019

[Saim]

How do you decide what material to add to Memrise vs Anki for the languages you're double dipping with, like Urdu, Turkish and Basque?

Urdu on Memrise is just for numbers.

With Turkish and Basque, Anki is for cloze deletion and Memrise is for individual words. A lot of the time if sentences I find for cloze deletion on Anki have new words in them I'll add them to Memrise too.

[dEhiN]

A lot of the time if sentences I find for cloze deletion on Anki have new words in them I'll add them to Memrise too.

Where do you look for sentences? Do you also make up your own? I haven't (yet) used cloze deletion with Anki, though I've thought about it. The big reason is that I rarely add sentences to Anki. I've shared this before, I think on my TAC, but most of my content consists of single words, compound nouns, and a few grammar cards (like the indicative preterite endings for -ar verbs in Spanish).

[Saim]

Where do you look for sentences?

For Turkish I've been using the Glossika pdfs, then I just google some of the words to get more. For Basque I've been using Google exclusively (although I only have like 5 sentences so far).

Do you also make up your own?

I would have to have someone check them first, I prefer to find sentences that I already know were (probably) uttered by a native and practice them. If I want to make my own sentences I'll do writing practice instead.

I haven't (yet) used cloze deletion with Anki, though I've thought about it.

This is the first time I've done it in my life, but I'm already seeing results. I really recommend it.

[Saim]

I've come to the conclusion that a lot of my procrastination comes from me simply being in denial about how much time I actually have in a given day and not planning properly. It's not realistic for me to be putting in 4 hours a day of intensive study, unless I have a very compelling reason, no other important projects and it's for a single language. In reality when I try and spend that much time on languages I only end up doing 1-2 hours anyway, but late in the evening rather than the morning (and I barely get any uni work or chores done).

I'm going to plan 1-2 hours a day of intensive/active study, and then less active study basically fits into my routine anyway without me procrastinating much so I don't really need to plan it so strongly.

Intensive activities (1-2 hours)
-transcription
-translation
-annotating transcriptions or song lyrics
-adding flashcards to Anki or Memrise
-looking through text books

Non-intensive activities (no specific limit)
-listening (whenever I'm shopping, cleaning, cooking, at the gym, etc.; I've realised that the amount of mobile data I have is huge so I've been listening to France24, RTS Dnevnik and Wiadomości TVP on a daily basis while walking around)
-reviewing flashcards (once in the morning, once in the evening)
-extensive reading

[dEhiN]

I don't know if this would help you, but I've started using an app/site called Todoist to help plan out my days so I procrastinate less. You can create different projects and then tasks under those projects. And you can assign due dates as well as times. So I basically structure my days using it. If you do want to check it out, I suggest start with this YouTube playlist. Just watch the first few videos to get an idea.

[vijayjohn]

I have always struggled with "not planning properly" and come to the conclusion that it's not that I'm bad at planning; it's that I plan differently. Even with languages, I don't say, "I will do x for language Y by the end of the day." I say, "I will try to do x for language Y today, but if it doesn't work, no big deal; I'll just try again tomorrow (or at the next opportunity)."

[księżycowy]

No wonder you never get anywhere.

[vijayjohn]

Oh, you mean like almost halfway through my current TAC?

[księżycowy]

I like how you call a cycle of your TAC your "current TAC". My brain automatically wants to say, "but it's not even half way through the year! How does that count as a TAC!?"

And just because there is movement, don't mean ground is being covered.

[vijayjohn]

Every cycle is a challenge...a challenge of total annihilation.

[dEhiN]

Every cycle is a challenge...a challenge of total annihilation.

I have wondered though if your approach of posting things either on here or Reddit in different languages is helping you improve? Or rather, are you getting enough feedback to be able to learn any mistakes you may have made? I assume for the bigger languages, yes, this is definitely the case. But what about your posts in Amharic on here? Or for languages like that, do you do other stuff?

[vijayjohn]

Amharic is a language I'm still learning, so I try to go through Colloquial Amharic for it each time. For ASL, I've been just going through the LifePrint lessons and trying to practice vocabulary. I'm not sure which other languages exactly you're thinking of, though.

[dEhiN]

Those might be it; although what about Thai or Indonesian or Tagalog? Do you post stuff on here for those languages? If so, do you tend to get responses; specifically do you get native speakers who are able to offer corrections or whatever to help you learn? I guess what I'm basically wondering is this: I can see how posting stuff in French or Spanish or Portuguese on here can be good to practice and improve your language, because there are native speakers who will correct you if you make a mistake. But what about for languages where there are no active native speakers on this forum?

[vijayjohn]

My rule of thumb at this point is basically: If there aren't very many people who speak it here, there's always Reddit. (Unfortunately, this does not work for Swahili. There are people who speak Swahili, but I haven't been finding it as easy to find people I can practice it with. Like, if I write posts on r/swahili, no one ever responds. For this reason, I've been considering joining yet another forum...but we'll have to see how that goes ).

For Indonesian, yes, there are people here who speak it (and on Reddit, of course). Thai is a bit trickier, but if nothing else, there's always a Thai lady who cuts my hair (like she did just yesterday!), and I try to talk to her in Thai, though we usually don't say much and I'm sure she's way better at small talk and such than I am. For Tagalog, at this point, I'm pretty much using Reddit to practice it (but also trying to learn it through SEAsite!).

[dEhiN]

Your talking about the your Thai hairdresser reminds me of a question I've wanted to ask: do you tend to concentrate more on reading/writing or listening/speaking, or both equally (as much as possible)? I've noticed that lately I've been focusing a lot on reading/writing, to the point where when I get opportunities IRL to speak French or Spanish or Portuguese, I'm afraid to take them. In 2011, when I first started my pursuit of languages, I was a lot more focused on speaking/listening. In fact, for the first 2-3 years, until I got active on here, I would regularly go to Meetups and try to speak French or Spanish, even though I barely knew any vocabulary or grammar. Since about 2014 I've been pretty active on here, and almost as a consequence (or at the least, simultaneous to it), I haven't been seeking out opportunities to practice speaking/listening. From practicing writing and reading stuff on here, plus using TAC to study in a structured way grammar, my vocabulary and grammar skills are a lot better. But I'm not sure how to now take those skills and apply them to speaking.

[vijayjohn]

Ideally everything, in practice more like reading > writing > listening > speaking, with reading being the thing I probably do most often and speaking being the thing I probably do least often. (Except for Thai, then it's more like the other way around. And for Malayalam, it's something like speaking > reading > listening > writing? And then for English, it's more like writing > reading > speaking > listening, if reading what people wrote on UniLang and Reddit counts as "reading" ).

[dEhiN]

Funnily enough, I think for me it's almost the same but my speaking skills are probably higher than my listening skills. This may not be exactly the case, but at least in terms of what I'm comfortable in, the order for French would be reading > writing > speaking > listening. For Spanish, it would probably be reading > writing/speaking > listening, because my comfort level in reproduction of Spanish in general isn't that high. For Portuguese, I would maybe say writing > speaking > reading > listening. For Tamil, it's definitely speaking > writing > listening > reading.

[vijayjohn]

Yeah, my hierarchy might actually vary by language more than I thought.

[Saim]

I think I'm going to drop Memrise and start using Anki exclusively. Memrise is good for cramming but it's too much to maintain on a daily basis while still adding new cards.

I'm also going to start putting Hebrew and Urdu vocabulary in spreadsheets before Anki so I don't have to constantly switch keyboards while looking words up (I'd use the Windows hotkeys but they're insanely unreliable; often they'll just randomly undo themselves, and they almost never work if I've just gotten my computer out of standby).

EDIT: I just realised that if I save a spreadsheet in .csv format I can import it into Anki and it'll make the cards automatically! All the more reason to just use Anki.

I'm going to use this function to get my old Memrise cards over to Anki. I've already copy-pasted my Arabic (70 cards), Turkish (109) and Basque (80) decks, but I'm not sure exactly how I should start reviewing them -- should I just set it to a high number of new cards per day so I get through them quickly, then start adding more decks (Finnish - 169, German - 70, Hebrew - 21, Slovak - 30, Russian - 16, Ukrainian - 34) once I'm done with them?

[dEhiN]

I think I'm going to drop Memrise and start using Anki exclusively. Memrise is good for cramming but it's too much to maintain on a daily basis while still adding new cards.

I adopted the same when I used to use Duolingo. I would still add whatever I learned to Anki. I guess it depends on each person, but for me, I prefer to funnel everything through Anki and just use one repo for vocab memorization.

I'm also going to start putting Hebrew and Urdu vocabulary in spreadsheets before Anki so I don't have to constantly switch keyboards while looking words up (I'd use the Windows hotkeys but they're insanely unreliable; often they'll just randomly undo themselves, and they almost never work if I've just gotten my computer out of standby).

Really? I find them fairly stable. Because I have several languages added in Windows, I don't use the switch languages hotkey; I just assign each language a hotkey: ctrl+[1-0] for the first ten, and then ctrl+shift+[1-0] for the next ten. (I actually only have 9 languages, though in actuality I really use English (since I have US-international), Tamil, Korean, Japanese, and sometimes Romanian (because I don't know how to do ă or ț easily on US-international)).

EDIT: I just realised that if I save a spreadsheet in .csv format I can import it into Anki and it'll make the cards automatically! All the more reason to just use Anki.

I totally forgot you could do that!

I'm going to use this function to get my old Memrise cards over to Anki. I've already copy-pasted my Arabic (70 cards), Turkish (109) and Basque (80) decks, but I'm not sure exactly how I should start reviewing them -- should I just set it to a high number of new cards per day so I get through them quickly, then start adding more decks (Finnish - 169, German - 70, Hebrew - 21, Slovak - 30, Russian - 16, Ukrainian - 34) once I'm done with them?

You can reschedule cards to be in the review queue with a specific interval. See here for more info. Basically you use the browser on the desktop program, and you can set a range of days between when the card should show up. So you should be able to go through and set all your Memrise cards to be in the review queue instead of being new.