aldebrn Wrote:But all that is boring technical preface to this: I like this deck! I fully appreciate the shortcomings of frequency-based approaches, thanks to erlog, who said back in 2009,That's nice. However, the fact remains (fact backed by some rather basic math) that, if one wishes to rely on immersion (comprehensible input, or even output) to some extent, rather than purely studying, the optimal way to study a language is to study the most frequent and mundane morphemes first. That is how one will ensure that increasingly complex native materials are comprehensible as quickly as possible.
erlog Wrote:A kanji's frequency of appearing has little do with how important it is for understanding. In fact, you could make the case that frequency and importance have an inverse relationship. The less frequent kanji are probably more important because they are only used when they are necessary. The same goes for words.
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How important is the word Monday in this sentence: Monday, my father died. -or- Yesterday, I started choking while eating an apple.
Those mundane words are the most common like Monday, my, father, apple, and eating. The less common words are where the true meaning of the sentence lies.
Furthermore, a person is most likely to achieve full understanding of a sentence like "Monday, my father died." (or any other sentence not involving a specialized field) by studying morphemes in order of frequency. Again, fairly basic math. Yes, that person will learn the word "died" last out of the four, but it will likely still be faster than a person studying in some other order.