yukamina Wrote:

mafried Wrote:Yeah, but not only that it's hardly original (and, in some circles, plain old common sense). It's stilly to be giving this forum guy credit... but we need to refer to it by some name. Any better ideas?

People often just call them word lists.

I'd want to include the fact that there's a specific repetition pattern - learning words in groups of 5~7. If we just generalize it to 'word lists' the best part of the method is lost in translation.

mafried Wrote:Those who dismiss Iversen's with "Just stick to Anki guys" are completely missing the point. Anki solves the problem of remembering things you have already learned. Iversen's method is a solution to the problem of how to learn things in the first place, before you put it into Anki.

I disagree! I think if you've fallen into the 'just use Anki to remember what you study' you're missing out on half the benefits of SRSing. I've gotten into too many arguments about this on the forum though, so I shan't bother again. Last time I ended up trying to outline my method for learning vocab called 'spontaneous momentum' but I think my brain imploded (I would link to it but it's changed so much it doesn't matter now). Anyway, I do agree that discussion of the 'Iversen method' has renewed focus on 'how to learn in the first place', but my point was that there's nothing in that method, including the clusters, that you can't do better with Anki. It's just taking the vocabulary aspect and clustering those in isolation, putting the focus on text rather than incorporating multiple senses, removing context, and overemphasizing word for word translation. I think that while you can say those have benefit if you're looking to learn in bulk (w/ a writing system you're already familiar with), you can do any of those better in Anki--by using systematized sentences for context, dictation, using sound and pictures, muscle memory, etc, w/o the pitfalls.

What I do think is good is this renewed emphasis on structuring 'non-SRS' study to complement Anki in new ways. In the past it seemed like all we had was 'I'll just do x by rote then pop into Anki' or 'I just use Anki to top off the Krashen reading approach', or ppl just used Anki in isolation. Maybe this will redirect folks to use Anki itself as a media ecology and learning environment rather than purely to remember what's already studied.

I also think the phased approach of one aspect of the language (vocab) needs to be better integrated into the language, hence leaving those separations for when you're designing/grading Anki cards, but that can be primed better w/ pre-Anki techniques, sure. Just needs to be designed to complement it.

What possible use I can see for Iversen's method is taking that palimpsest nature of covered columns, and the fuzziness that arises if you were to combine that with associated clusters of words, and try to find a way to go monolingual more quickly and then preserve that monolinguality in the SRS, rather than jumping into a monodict or just ignoring the English translations on the cards. Perhaps find a way to progressively move the columns of clustered words in such a way that by the time you get to a certain layer, you've moved from the direct translations to pictures/semantics and associate those with the new words, then add them to Anki in the form of sentences w/ no English translations. Okay I realize I'm confusing here. Multitasking and typing before I lose my train of thought.

Then there's the notion of pacing/breaking up initial cards, once I got to thinking about Anki's 'randomly shuffle new cards in with expired cards', blackmacros' thoughts, the various time hacks I'd been using, I decided to only add new cards in bunches, then switching to something else (http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?p...6#pid65466).

To summarize: Meh, stick w/ Anki, but yes I can see some benefits if you do it right.

vosmiura Wrote:

yukamina Wrote:

mafried Wrote:Yeah, but not only that it's hardly original (and, in some circles, plain old common sense). It's stilly to be giving this forum guy credit... but we need to refer to it by some name. Any better ideas?

People often just call them word lists.

I'd want to include the fact that there's a specific repetition pattern - learning words in groups of 5~7. If we just generalize it to 'word lists' the best part of the method is lost in translation.

For the record, what I meant about the 'science' behind it is the common myth that 'short term memory' can be accurately quantified as memorizing these precise units of information that might then correlate w/ that this forum guy Iversen came up with, the word clusters--also I dislike the whole rigid conception of memory divisions but I'll end up arguing with Tobberoth again so n/m.

Tobberoth Wrote:

Jarvik7 Wrote:Is "Danskjävlar!" the Swedish version of "KHAAAAAAN!"?

I guess you could say that, especially if KHAAAAAN means something like "***** VULCANS!!".

It's the post-modern inversal of Khaaan! It's the vindictive rallying cry made existentially empty by the amorality and selfishness of the character uttering it in his prejudiced way, yet strangely emotive and gleeful in its resonance with our more wicked selves. Also it's in Swedish.

So basically try to do old-fashioned memorization before SRSing it?
I find looking up the meaning in sanseido is enough to put it in my short-term memory. I use audio and images from stuff I've watched a ton, so perhaps that too helps my short-term memory somehow. I've only ever failed new cards when I've added 80+ cards in one sentence-picking session. I almost always SRS new cards within hours or a day or two of adding them. I feel a sort of rush bringing the new cards number down to zero

I read most of that long except from that book, and I must say... yeah, it probably works, and for smaller amounts of information it would be idea. But for instance when I was doing 100 kanji a day of RTK, my head was hurting pretty bad from all those stories.

Since then 80% or more of those stories are not really needed to recall any kanji as I easily remember them and can see them in my head. Yeah, mnemonics worked great for those Kanji, but since I've been on sentences I have found that SRSing gives me a decent rate of recall outside of the context of the sentence...with much less effort, the sentences themselves tend to become the stories and when thinking of a word to say I often will rummage through sentences in my head and make sure that it's correct.

I just want to say, using large amounts of mnemonics was really taxing on me, and after I finish the basic 5000(3000 Hanzi and 2000 Kanji, eventually 3000 kanji as well, I'm nearly finished though...phew) then I am going to put the mnemonics on hold until I need them for tests, or for more Hanzi as I encounter them. I just cant stand creating hundreds and hundreds of mnemonics a week anymore.

nest0r Wrote:For the record, what I meant about the 'science' behind it is the common myth that 'short term memory' can be accurately quantified as memorizing these precise units of information that might then correlate w/ that this forum guy Iversen came up with, the word clusters--also I dislike the whole rigid conception of memory divisions but I'll end up arguing with Tobberoth again so n/m.

I wasn't specifically thinking about memory divisions; I was looking at it from a simple point of view of what is a good method to quickly get a list of words in my memory that I can remember hours/days from that moment. Whatever you want to call that memory.

If I just repeat 1 or 2 items over & over it's quite ineffective at helping to remember the items for any extended period of time after. Extending to (in my own case) 7 words is just enough to help that happen within a short time. I think some micro-spacing effect is evident.

Note that since it's Japanese, I'm primarily learning Kanji->kana with this method. I don't use this method for non-kanji words since they are easy to read and get the meaning from sentencing.

Having done this little exercise, I can then read all the words in my new Anki sentences, and I focus mainly on sentence comprehension. Whereas with the way I was doing it before (repeat sentences until I can read all the words) it worked but I found that:

1) It took longer.
2) I was more likely to memorize the sentence instead of a) reading the sentence, and b) comprehending what I'm reading.

Quote:I disagree! I think if you've fallen into the 'just use Anki to remember what you study' you're missing out on half the benefits of SRSing.

I disagree! I think the one who's "fallen into" something is the one who's not willing to consider other things.

vosmiura Wrote:...

I don't know what to tell you, there's just so many things I think are backwards/wrong here. ;p Well, good luck, regardless.

nest0r Wrote:

vosmiura Wrote:...

I don't know what to tell you, there's just so many things I think are backwards/wrong here. ;p Well, good luck, regardless.

I would disagree. What vosmiura is stating is simply old-school craming of new vocabulary. For many of us, Anki is where we learn grammar, sentence structures, kanji compounds, etc. An SRS' primary purpose is to keep you from forgetting concepts, not facilitating the upfront learning effort.

brianobush Wrote:

nest0r Wrote:

vosmiura Wrote:...

I don't know what to tell you, there's just so many things I think are backwards/wrong here. ;p Well, good luck, regardless.

I would disagree. What vosmiura is stating is simply old-school craming of new vocabulary. For many of us, Anki is where we learn grammar, sentence structures, kanji compounds, etc. An SRS' primary purpose is to keep you from forgetting concepts, not facilitating the upfront learning effort.

You've just explained one aspect of why vosmiura's comment is backwards. Vosmiura is stating something you think of as 'old-school', and then you unequivocally state the party line about how to use SRS *only* for what Supermemo would call maintaining stability of memories. Now that is being rigid and not considering other things--yet somehow, despite multiple comments considering this Iversen method, comparing it to newer methods, even allowing for some interesting possibilities on how to combine them, I'm not considering new things? Ha. Double ha. I am chortling this very moment.

Here's the thing: the spacing of reviewed items is for stability of the memories. The actual SRS is a program, a representation of data that you design and respond to in a variety of ways. A key function one can use that is often overlooked is using the multimedia possibilities and an awareness of studying methods to ensure robust, flexible encoding and retrievability of memories before and while using the spacing algorithm to maintain their stability.

That's why I say, hey, look at what you like about the Iversen method, unbundle it into those attributes, and ask yourself if you can't use a piece of software and your own brain/body/computer to do it better and combine it with the SRS algorithm. The answer is yes, and it's already been done/being done with various methods of studying cards or sentences. So before you go back to the stone age w/ some half-cocked notions about 'micro-spacing' or whathaveyou and then shoehorning that onto Anki, you can actually integrate them smoothly and open your mind a bit while you're at it. Retrofit, evolve.

vosmiura Wrote:Note that since it's Japanese, I'm primarily learning Kanji->kana with this method

This is how I started out using this method to get things in my head initially, and study the readings of the compounds and whatnot. I didn't find it to be too particularly effective, as I'd end up usually seeing the compound, being able to decipher the reading of the compound, and then use the compound to figure out what the word was based on those two things, rather than actually "reading" the compound and getting a meaning. It's hard to explain but basically I found that studying kanji to kana and trying to get a meaning somewhere in there wasn't really working.

What I've been doing recently is simply learning kana -> english, and then once I have the vocab in my head, I go through and mentally assign what kanji to associate with what japanese word. Already having a word you're trying to learn the reading of the kanji for in your head makes it a whole lot less difficult to remember. Of course, this is just my personal experience, which is why I was wondering if you already had an extensive vocab before you started studying this way, or did you just not run into any of the problems I've had?

nest0r Wrote:You've just explained one aspect of why vosmiura's comment is backwards. Vosmiura is stating something you think of as 'old-school', and then you unequivocally state the party line about how to use SRS *only* for what Supermemo would call maintaining stability of memories. Now that is being rigid and not considering other things--yet somehow, despite multiple comments considering this Iversen method, comparing it to newer methods, even allowing for some interesting possibilities on how to combine them, I'm not considering new things? Ha. Double ha. I am chortling this very moment.

Sorry, I didn't see where you were seriously considering combining them. Could you point out, maybe I missed it. In this thread you are calling it "from the stonage", "backwards" etc. It seemed more like dismissing the idea because you think SRS can do everything and better.

I use the methods together, and I actually have a plan for a tighter integration within Anki when I have some time to code it up. In case you didn't know, I wrote and contributed iAnki - I have an interest in SRS software and sharing what I do.

However, by integrating I mean retaining the parts that I think are good about the Iversen method and using them along side SRS algorithm - and not replacing it entirely with just SRS.

Quote:Here's the thing: the spacing of reviewed items is for stability of the memories. The actual SRS is a program, a representation of data that you design and respond to in a variety of ways. A key function one can use that is often overlooked is using the multimedia possibilities and an awareness of studying methods to ensure robust, flexible encoding and retrievability of memories before and while using the spacing algorithm to maintain their stability.

Yes, Anki is a program with a lot of useful features. What I am not certain of is that the SRS algorithm is the best spacing algorithm to use for everything from start to finish. Yes, you can use Anki from start to finish - but just because you 'can' doesn't mean you absolutely 'should'. I'm open to trying other algorithms.

For example I found it quicker to learn new vocab by first using the iKnow software before importing iKnow sentences into Anki, than just directly importing iKnow sentences into Anki and repeating them in Anki. Further, I found using the Iversen method first to be faster than iKnow's software.

Quote:That's why I say, hey, look at what you like about the Iversen method, unbundle it into those attributes, and ask yourself if you can't use a piece of software and your own brain/body/computer to do it better and combine it with the SRS algorithm. The answer is yes, and it's already been done/being done with various methods of studying cards or sentences. So before you go back to the stone age w/ some half-cocked notions about 'micro-spacing' or whathaveyou and then shoehorning that onto Anki, you can actually integrate them smoothly and open your mind a bit while you're at it. Retrofit, evolve.

Why do you think that the SRS algorithm is the be all end all, and simply dismiss what you call "half-cooked notions about 'micro-spacing'" that you haven't tried and likely don't fully understand. Have you got some proof that 'micro-spacing' is baloney?

I've been using SRS for a long time - I was one of the first to start using Anki around here before it had any kind of popularity, and I used it for both learning and reviewing vocab in sentences and media up until two months ago - when (in my very closed minded primitive cave man like software engineer ways) I decided to give Iversen's method a try TOO before adding things to SRS, and I found it to be having very positive effects in a number of ways, whereupon I started suggesting it on the forum. If that's closed minded, then I think we have a different notion of the words.

Vosmiura, it feels like you're not able to read my comments and understand what I'm saying, or you're deliberately (but not maliciously) misreading them, who knows (examples: I'm not 'anti micro spacing', I was arguing the opposite of 'just using Anki', I have no particular attachment to a specific SRS algorithm, and--well, I just backspaced another three or four lines, it's not worth the effort ;p). Anyway, that's fine, it's partly my fault, I'm always at least a little vague on purpose, to make people work. It seems like you're still working out some things yourself, so good luck with that. I almost get the impression that in reading my posts w/ blinders on, you're actually taking my advice w/o realizing it! hehe. I'm not interested in winning arguments or indicating I have any kind of cred, I'm just an anonymous on the internet contributing to the ongoing process here--ie the ideas don't come back to me, I don't 'profit' by social currency or ego or otherwise. No 'nest0r's method' here. If we stimulated some thought in this thread, good enough for me. ^_-

nest0r Wrote:Vosmiura, it feels like you're not able to read my comments and understand what I'm saying, or you're deliberately (but not maliciously) misreading them, who knows (examples: I'm not 'anti micro spacing', I was arguing the opposite of 'just using Anki', I have no particular attachment to a specific SRS algorithm, and--well, I just backspaced another three or four lines, it's not worth the effort ;p). Anyway, that's fine, it's partly my fault, I'm always at least a little vague on purpose, to make people work.

In that case I'm sorry to say but your posts are not conveying what you are trying to say very well - I'm certainly not being intentionally malicious, nor have a problem comprehending normal English as far as I'm aware. If you're being deliberately cryptic then that might explain it, but then it's not my fault.

Quote:you're actually taking my advice w/o realizing it! hehe.

Wow, what an ego.

vosmiura Wrote:

nest0r Wrote:Vosmiura, it feels like you're not able to read my comments and understand what I'm saying, or you're deliberately (but not maliciously) misreading them, who knows (examples: I'm not 'anti micro spacing', I was arguing the opposite of 'just using Anki', I have no particular attachment to a specific SRS algorithm, and--well, I just backspaced another three or four lines, it's not worth the effort ;p). Anyway, that's fine, it's partly my fault, I'm always at least a little vague on purpose, to make people work.

In that case I'm sorry to say but your posts are not conveying what you are trying to say very well - I'm certainly not being intentionally malicious, nor have a problem comprehending normal English as far as I'm aware. If you're being deliberately cryptic then that might explain it, but then it's not my fault.

Quote:you're actually taking my advice w/o realizing it! hehe.

Wow, what an ego.

I'll let you have the last word. Selective quotes, deliberate misreadings, name-calling and all (well, ad hominem is more accurate). I think that w/o admitting it to anyone, you can come back and read this thread and learn something from me. This is good practice for me, I rarely engage this directly for so long and manage to keep the kid's gloves on. I guess in making that choice, I really am egotistical! Oops--was this the last word?

Wait! Let me get this strait...

You can use anki to learn materials faster than rote, as it's called?

You must give examples here nest0r. I'm not letting you off the hook so easily.

ropsta Wrote:Wait! Let me get this strait...

You can use anki to learn materials faster than rote, as it's called?

You must give examples here nest0r. I'm not letting you off the hook so easily.

I just wrote--checking--500 words on the topic, and then realized I mostly just repeated the comments I wrote above, plus tried to condense all my other comments on the forum. Meh, I left the clues, figure it out or ignore them, I don't care. Though I delete many of my comments, so I can't egotistically claim 'credit' for 'early adoption' either, like some people. ;p

@nestor

I work best with examples. 教えてください.

ropsta Wrote:@nestor

I work best with examples. 教えてください.

I gave an example above, re. going monolingual.

Woah, deja vu!

That's for that info. I noticed you mentioned rapidfire word association. What is this?

Edit: Dude stop doing that!!!

*past is future future is present head explodes*

ropsta Wrote:Woah, deja vu!

That's for that info. I noticed you mentioned rapidfire word association. What is this?

Edit: Dude stop doing that!!!

*past is future future is present head explodes*

lol

Well, I do a highly abbreviated version now, but: http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?p...3#pid41343

Ah, memories...

I think I'm just gonna hit myself over head with a japanese dictionary until everything is all hammered in.

nest0r Wrote:I'll let you have the last word. Selective quotes, deliberate misreadings, name-calling and all (well, ad hominem is more accurate). I think that w/o admitting it to anyone, you can come back and read this thread and learn something from me. This is good practice for me, I rarely engage this directly for so long and manage to keep the kid's gloves on. I guess in making that choice, I really am egotistical! Oops--was this the last word?

If we check back, the first with the ad-hominem is you, accusing me of not understanding or deliberately misreading what you write and reading "with blinders on".

I don't agree about selectively quoting or deliberately misreading what you wrote. If I misunderstood some point based on something you think you said here, or in another thread, or simply was implied (as you said you are a little vague on purpose) it certainly is not deliberate. If you're just not being serious and yanking my chain (I mean with posts like "No, but I am at ya mom's house, how about that?" I take it you like to post for a laugh, then haha.

Edit: I just read the post you linked http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?p...3#pid41343 for the first time, and I think that your ideas there were not that different from my own, so I don't really know why we're arguing anyway. I do a kind of rote memorization plus layers of SRSing to make it stick; and as I understand you do rote + rapidfire word association plus layers of SRSing to make it stick. What is backwards here?

vosmiura Wrote:

nest0r Wrote:I'll let you have the last word. Selective quotes, deliberate misreadings, name-calling and all (well, ad hominem is more accurate). I think that w/o admitting it to anyone, you can come back and read this thread and learn something from me. This is good practice for me, I rarely engage this directly for so long and manage to keep the kid's gloves on. I guess in making that choice, I really am egotistical! Oops--was this the last word?

If we check back, the first with the ad-hominem is you, accusing me of not understanding or deliberately misreading what you write and reading "with blinders on".

I don't agree about selectively quoting or deliberately misreading what you wrote. If I misunderstood some point based on something you think you said here, or in another thread, or simply was implied (as you said you are a little vague on purpose) it certainly is not deliberate. If you're just not being serious and yanking my chain (I mean with posts like "No, but I am at ya mom's house, how about that?" I take it you like to post for a laugh, then haha.

Edit: I just read the post you linked http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?p...3#pid41343 for the first time, and I think that your ideas there were not that different from my own, so I don't really know why we're arguing anyway. I do a kind of rote memorization plus layers of SRSing to make it stick; and as I understand you do rote + rapidfire word association plus layers of SRSing to make it stick. What is backwards here?

Ah, are we still talking about this. Well, as usual (remember our frequency thread?), I don't know why we're arguing either. I originally was just off-handedly commenting on the scientific myths operating in the background that were taken for granted--ie short term memory and the limited # of items. I wasn't even saying that you were making those claims, more like 'hey be aware that it might state these things in the 'word list' wiki, but not everyone (ie me) agrees...'

Anyway, then you took a comment I wrote to someone else where I tried to stress, w/o delving into argumentation, that people tend to look at Anki as a rigid isolated vessel (ie they only look at the 'maintenance' half), and you used it to say I was being 'closed minded' for not considering other techniques. I consider that to be personally insulting, and illogical since it went against everything I said before throughout the thread (where I examined traits I liked about the Iversen method but found that unless you were doing something specific you could do those things w/ the sentence method, and that even if you were doing something specific like 'bulk vocab' you could integrate it better with Anki than just thinking of Anki in the limited way I mentioned above, finding an old pre-SRS method, and cramming them together--the 'you' here being rhetorical) and on the forum, hence the ad hominem reference.

I also got the feeling that you were taking random self-deprecating things I was saying, quoting snippets of them (like my reference to you inadvertently agreeing with me) and calling me egotistical. As for deliberate misreading, I don't know, I just got the impression you were overly defensive from the start and looking to respond to the admittedly dense text I wrote as text, without considering the ideas and how they might mesh with your own. Thus, each comment you wrote in response was like saying "I disagree, here's my thoughts:" whereby you'd list a variation of something I also mentioned, which was funny and ironic to me. I don't normally consider that sort of thing to be an example of how brilliant and influential I am, I just consider it to be part of how the forum is like a hive mind and we often come to similar conclusions without realizing it--in fact, I shape my comments so they're more like anonymous fuzzy matrices for nurturing ideas than anything else, so that even if I wanted to play a 'me first' game of one-upsmanship, I wouldn't have anything specific I could claim as evidence--and that's for the comments I don't delete to ensure I don't get attached to this alias. ^_^ But I was annoyed by then so I made the half-serious joke which, as I mentioned just above, I felt you selectively quoted to make me look like an egotistical jerk. Which I am, but that's a different story. ;p

Oh, and I called your comment backwards, not your idea--backwards because I felt it flipped what I said completely.

To address what we said before about how I think you misread me: I also don't think it's good to pay attention to specific algorithms, btw, because I think as long as you keep the essential aspect of 'increasing spaces as you pass cards' you're fine. Hell, I even use that lack of attention to specific algorithms as a reason to be more flexible in how you think of cards, to instead realize that even if you have tonnes of 'fail points' on a card, it doesn't matter because you can fail in 'layers', only paying attention to the stuff you want to grade on the card each time it comes up.

Rather than 'just use Anki' I think 'it's just software, open it up and integrate it' is better and was what I was saying. As for 'microspacing', I don't think it's necessary except for special circumstances where you're really trying to learn a lot of a consistent type of information in a certain period of time, and even then why not automate it if you can so that you can take advantage of other tools to incorporate pictures, audio, or whatever (so many countless variations). Anyway................

Quote:Ah, are we still talking about this. Well, as usual (remember our frequency thread?), I don't know why we're arguing either. I originally was just off-handedly commenting on the scientific myths operating in the background that were taken for granted--ie short term memory and the limited # of items. I wasn't even saying that you were making those claims, more like 'hey be aware that it might state these things in the 'word list' wiki, but not everyone (ie me) agrees...'

I see what you mean, but the thing is I wasn't just saying things from the wiki. I was analyzing my own actual results, and I don't think the conclusion is outrageous.

Through experimentation I found that repeating words as AAAAAAABBBBBBBCCCCCCC... is much less effective than ABCDEFGABCDEFGABCDEFG... and thus I was saying that some kind of short spacing effect (micro spacing) was evident.

Quote:Oh, and I called your comment backwards, not your idea--backwards because I felt it flipped what I said completely.

Wakatta.

Quote:Rather than 'just use Anki' I think 'it's just software, open it up and integrate it' is better and was what I was saying. As for 'microspacing', I don't think it's necessary except for special circumstances where you're really trying to learn a lot of a consistent type of information in a certain period of time, and even then why not automate it if you can so that you can take advantage of other tools to incorporate pictures, audio, or whatever (so many countless variations).

Yes, I see what you're saying.

I was interested in having a way to tag facts or parts of facts that I forgot (during review), and having them move to a list that I could study with the grouped list method.

Slight tangent, but lately for my own SRSing, I try to be quite economical. Every item I add to SRS - audio, pictures, video, dictation, multi-way cards, adds something to the learning process, but it also adds time to set up and review. So, I'm still trying to determine what's the best balance - strengthening fewer facts, or just adding more facts in the same time. The SRS way is study more facts - don't try to get everything perfect. At the same time, language learning has multiple facets...