I've noticed a strange thing lately... ...for some reason, when I look up words in a paper dictionary, I find that my retention is much better.

I have resorted to using an electronic dictionary only when I want a quick definition, but a paper dictionary when I'm tired of re-looking up the same word over and over again. Recently, まるで was annoying me over and over - so I looked it up in a paper dictionary and now it's sticking.

Maybe slower is better, but I haven't look at this closely to determine why this is happening, yet...

Anyone else having similar experiences?

My retention is directly proportionate to the amount of attention I give something, which only makes sense. So interesting things = better. Things I actively look up in an actual electronic dictionary instead of rikaichan = better. Things I take the effort to put inside of an SRS, purely from the act of actually writing them into the SRS itself = better.
If I just skim a word because I'm focusing on the meaning of a sentence and just want to move on, I don't remember anything about it.

If it works for you, then use it...the only paper dictionary I use now is my kenkyusha's furigana eiwa jiten, mostly because I haven't found a suitable electronic alternative. It's brutally time-consuming though. Looking up words has got to be the least fun aspect of language learning for me.

I avoid paper dictionaries all together. I'd rather not look it up at all, than spend all that time flipping through a book, only to find the it doesn't even have the word I'm looking for.

kmoeini Wrote:If it works for you, then use it...the only paper dictionary I use now is my kenkyusha's furigana eiwa jiten, mostly because I haven't found a suitable electronic alternative. It's brutally time-consuming though. Looking up words has got to be the least fun aspect of language learning for me.

I use an electronic version of this dictionary, as well as several others on a Dell PDA.

I got Edict, Conjugations, Enamdict, Kanjidic, Readings on a memory stick from http://www.japaneselanguagetools.com/docs/index.html (looking at his prices now, I can't recommend it anymore, I bought the above set with a 2gb stick for 40$)

I got Daijirin, Koujien, Kenkyusha(chuu), Tanaka Corpus from other sources. (I'd like to get Eijiro from him but he won't sell just the dictionary.)

I find electronic dictionaries much more convenient, but I do see your point with words sticking better with paper versions. However, to move between dictionaries, within seconds, and find examples or sentences is much better imo.

I don't like word tanks and traditional electronic dictionaries. So I bought a Dell x50v PDA on eBay, installed Windows Mobile 2003 Japanese for kana/kanji handwriting recognition support, installed a bunch of that are dictionaries designed for it.

You can buy the x50v for 150$ on eBay, however getting dictionaries is the bigger problem

OP - Could it be that all the times you spent looking it up added up to it finally clicking when you looked it up in the paper dictionary? That said, I think you're on to something. I know when I use rikaichan there's almost no hope of the word sticking in my head. But chances go up when I use the denshi jisho. I'm not sure about the difference between the electronic dictionary and a paper dictionary as I don't use the latter so much anymore.

I've also often heard of a study showing retention is higher when a student looks up a word or explanation themselves than when a teacher tells them. Something about doing the work on their own. Though I've heard this often mentioned, I've never actually seen the study.

Maybe the paper dictionary requires more work than the denshi jisho. Maybe it's that you can see the whole definition without having to scroll. Maybe it's just a personal thing. Do what you believe works for you.

Someone mentioned not liking looking things up in a dictionary. And, yes, it does get in the way of continuing whatever it was that you were reading or listening to. And paper dictionaries take longer than electronic ones, and electronic ones take longer than asking a nearby native speaker or using rikaichan. But if you can let looking things up in a dictionary be an enjoyable experience and allow yourself to get lost in definitions and example sentences, synonym/antonym relationships, etc., it might make your acquisition progress just a bit faster. This is most true with monolingual dictionaries, which make the looking up process take even longer, but more time in the language is more time in the language.

mattyjaddy Wrote:OP - Could it be that all the times you spent looking it up added up to it finally clicking when you looked it up in the paper dictionary? That said, I think you're on to something. I know when I use rikaichan there's almost no hope of the word sticking in my head. But chances go up when I use the denshi jisho. I'm not sure about the difference between the electronic dictionary and a paper dictionary as I don't use the latter so much anymore.

Yes, that could be it.

Because using a paper dictionary is a bother, I usually don't use it unless I >REALLY< want to know the meaning of a word - either because I've seen it several times before or I feel like it is a word I should know. More effort/desire to learn the word seems to make it stick more.

Like you, when I use a popjisyo to get a web-translation, there is almost no hope of remembering the meaning.

kfmfe04 Wrote:

mattyjaddy Wrote:OP - Could it be that all the times you spent looking it up added up to it finally clicking when you looked it up in the paper dictionary? That said, I think you're on to something. I know when I use rikaichan there's almost no hope of the word sticking in my head. But chances go up when I use the denshi jisho. I'm not sure about the difference between the electronic dictionary and a paper dictionary as I don't use the latter so much anymore.

Yes, that could be it.

More effort/desire to learn the word seems to make it stick more.

More like, the stronger the experience the stronger an imprint on your memory it makes.

When I have a difficult run of kanji (yo, "turkey", I'm lookin' at you), I take the time to look each one up in the KLD. If nothing else, the sample compounds often help cement the nuance of the keyword we're talking about. From time to time there will be a word I know from podcasts or whatever, and in those cases the writing of kanji almost always sticks with me.

Being an etymology freak, I have high respect for the radicals (as opposed to primitives, I mean), and am learning them in a sort of hit-or-miss way--but for quick lookup, SKIP rules.