mmhorii Wrote:We’re touching on something that has been bothering me for a long time. It’s my perception (possibly mistaken) that some language learners are memorizing full sentences (e.g., sentences from the iKnow Core series). To what end? Some sentences are too specific to a particular situation to be generally useful. If the ultimate goal of the novice is to be able to think like an expert, and if experts think, not in full sentences* and not word-by-word, but in collocations and phrases, then why not learn collocations and phrases instead? These are the components of speech that can be readily used, and are essential for natural output.

At the other extreme, constructing sentences word by word in real-time is impractical and difficult. I can imagine that listening to someone trying to speak using this approach would be excruciatingly painful.



*The exception to this is Warren Buffett, who thinks in complete paragraphs.

Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but the point of doing srs on sentences is not to learn "ready to use" sentences, like you would learn "where is the toilet?" in a travel guide.
The point is to get used to how native sentences sound like, look like, how words interact with each other.
It's like studying art so you can produce your own art afterwards, and not studying art so you can make replicas.

The sentence method (both from native media and from the anki server) is just having a sentence around the word as context helping the user review without name-dropping definitions or translations.

That's how I see it.
Native media is the way to go if you want to see how the words really are used.

Production cards are as easy to make as recognition cards.
You can make as many "siblings" as you want with one note.

for example
http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?p...#pid187044

^That's similar to learning words in iKnow. You learn the word in all possible ways.

Conversation in SRS, probably not worth it.

Putting words into SRS--possible. Using context in SRS--possible. And fairly simple.

Stian Wrote:The sentence method (both from native media and from the anki server) is just having a sentence around the word as context helping the user review without name-dropping definitions or translations.

That's how I see it.
Native media is the way to go if you want to see how the words really are used.

While I agree for the most part (can't learn correct sentence structure from drilling grammar points, because languages have a way of not giving a crap about their own grammar rules) I have used Anki to get acquainted with basic recurring patterns. In my case, thus far I drilled the example sentences in Tae Kim's guide. I'll probably stop here, but I might reconsider.

Anyway, while these drills are by no means enough to teach you to speak, they will help you to recognize these common patterns when you encounter them in native media. And the more you understand something, the easier it is to learn it.

But, yes, as far as Core sentences, and sentences one mines themselves, the purpose is exactly what you said, not grammar. For grammar, one should use carefully selected sentences put together by a professional.

Regarding the vocab+sentence method, it's meant to understand how a word is used.

It's not as simple as having a sentence on the side to help you understand a word's meaning. The sentence is there to make sure you know how the word is applied. As others have mentioned, sentences and context help you understand how words interact with one another.

That's probably a trivial and most likely unnoticeable difference, but, actual application of a word makes a huge difference. (In contrast to only focusing on the definition of the word).


EDIT: Edited original post.

from someone that knows a lot of vocab but neglected output for a long time... all you need to know is the Tae Kim cloze delete deck and you can speak. You will have to listen/read a lot of native material to know when to use the right words at the right time though.