aphasiac Wrote:- Native dictionaries should in theory provide more accurate definitions and better example sentences than a learner one. Therefore it's desirable to switch to one if you're ready.

It depends on the dictionary, but I don't find this to be the case at all. I have the GENIUS and the Koujien on my electronic dictionary, and generally the Genius' example sentences are much better than the Koujien's. And in any case, if you're getting these words from something you're reading, you already have an example sentence.

Quote:- A Dictionary IS content. Time spent reading an English dictionary is just time spent NOT reading a Japanese one.

You don't have to "read" an English dictionary; it takes 10 seconds to type in the word into my electronic dictionary, see the English definition, and go back to reading.

Quote:- Being able to define a word in L2 after reading a dictionary definition will help describe and "talk your way around" words you DON'T know later on. This is an *incredibly* useful skill, and suddenly means you're no longer limited by your vocabulary (or lack of).

Nobody defines things in real life the way that a dictionary does. If you ask a native speaker what "hameru" means, you're not going to find one that will respond ある形に合うように中に入れておさめる。ぴったりと入れ込む。

jettyke Wrote:When you look it up from a monolingual dict you concentrate more on the meaning and understanding the meaning. Thus you will spend more time on a word and therefore remember it better later as compared to looking up an English definition and then forgetting what the word meant and what it all was about.

Damn I don't know what's wrong with me but I'm starting to make lots of mistakes that I know are mistakes when writing in English. Should proof-read before posting something :S

Tori-kun Wrote:@nest0r

I feel a bit confused which language to use to learn another language and I have to agree with nadiatims and yudantaiteki, too, that reading some entries f.e. from Kojien that are long and I might not understand takes time and could have no effect in fact. What to do?! Feels like I have a porridge of languages in my head >.<

@Tori-kun

I think unless the definition easily helps you to understand the target word, in a way that's accurate for feedback, you should avoid it. So whichever definitions and languages let you do that. You want to attach concepts to the words and/or comprehensively understand explicit metalinguistic information about constraints and usage, etc.; whether this aspect of your study leading into the internalizing of language features is monolingual so you're thinking in your target language while learning them is not important. Studying effectively so you can use the target language is. ;p

As for Anki, maybe there is no need to have monolingual definitions on a card to count as monolingual. The solution is to drop L2 / L3 when a word or concept is well known. When there is no English / French / Italian / Japanese definition on the card it is a Monolingual card. If the card only contains Kanji -> Kana, the only question is: what should be tested? Reading? Meaning of the word? Or just the word as word without translating?

A simple example. 託児所 hmm. 親が働いている間，子供を預かって世話をする施設．It is not hard to remember what 託児所 means. The definition is also easy but do you need it just to have Japanese on the card instead of English or German? The trouble seems to be not to translate it and <i>accept</i> the word in Japanese. Learn that 託児所 means day nursery and when the concept is clear, drop L2, and remember and use 託児所.

Think of RTK. The English keywords should fall away as well as the stories, leaving only Kana -> Kanji. So why not doing the same with vocabulary or sentences?

Children really have an advantage over adults ... They can accept a word once they learned it, no need to translate anything, for them something is something. I will link an article discussing this and other things once I get online with my PC.

yudantaiteki Wrote:Nobody defines things in real life the way that a dictionary does. If you ask a native speaker what "hameru" means, you're not going to find one that will respond ある形に合うように中に入れておさめる。ぴったりと入れ込む。

That depends on the dictionary, the term, and the ability of the speaker. For example, look at some examples of cards I have in one of my Anki decks:

Question: An abnormal and persistent fear of virgins or young girls
Answer: parthenophobia

Question: A device that measures the speed and force of wind
Answer: anemometer

So think about it: if a native English speaker asks to another, "Parthenophobia? What is it?", the other can define it very similarly to the dictionary version ("having a fear of virgin girls") if he knows what he's talking about or, if he doesn't, he can either be honest or just ramble on and answer it wrong. The reverse also works, as in "What do we call someone who is deathly afraid of young and virgin girls?", then the other native speaker can either answer something foolish and place a joke or give the correct term (parthenophobic). The same about "What is an anemometer?" ("Hmm... that's something you can use to measure the speed and force of wind" — notice that a definition like this would be needed especially if they're both looking to an anemometer), and so on.

That's it, a few examples in English of how native speakers can define words using dictionary, encyclopedia or book definitions (or use them to understand their own languages better), which can be transposed to any other human language, including Japanese. Foreign language students can make use of this too; it's one more tool to help them improve their understanding.

Tori-kun Wrote:I feel a bit confused which language to use to learn another language and I have to agree with nadiatims and yudantaiteki, too, that reading some entries f.e. from Kojien that are long and I might not understand takes time and could have no effect in fact. What to do?! Feels like I have a porridge of languages in my head >.<

I suggest you to use the language you normally use the least and are the weakest at, unless you don't like it, can't find good reference materials and dictionaries linking it to your L4, or want to improve another one. Just for the kicks. Use the other ones only if you deem necessary, perhaps to clear up things that are not being well understood.

And you can start using a monolingual dictionary whenever you want, or even sometimes use one and other times not; it's not an "either 0 or 100%" kind of thing. Don't be discouraged by opposite views about doing that, because there are also many favorable ones. About unilingual cards in in Anki, it's just a matter of using other languages less and less; as your knowledge of Japanese increases, that may be the natural consequence. Maybe you'll even reach a point where it gets boring and demotivating to keep relying on bilingual stuff, a point that can come either before or after you're fluent; this may be your cue to go all in... or to force yourself not to.

This is the article I was talking about in my last reply on this topic http://www.lingua.org.uk/voc.html#v42 If you know it ignore it, if not, take your time and read it.

Nagareboshi Wrote:This is the article I was talking about in my last reply on this topic http://www.lingua.org.uk/voc.html#v42 If you know it ignore it, if not, take your time and read it.

Eh. They have an okay conclusion for the relevant section, but for the wrong reasons. The adult learner is a tabula repleta rather than a blank slate (tabula rasa), as N.C. Ellis would say, but adults also learn well through contextual inference and suchlike. It's just much slower and thus requires deliberate learning to supplement it, as studies have shown.

The L1 isn't a barrier to the concepts, quite the opposite, it more effectively informs the learner of the concepts, as you incorporate the new word forms into your mental lexicon. There is no valid scientific reason to avoid the L1 when learning new lexical items or grammar points. It has only been shown to be more effective for the most part, and sometimes only equally effective (the latter for learners proficient in the L2).

Where the systemic issues adults have come in is with ensuring you get opportunities to use the internalized items (both output and exposure), so you can achieve what MacWhinney calls resonance as you build the network, so to speak, of your new language. (Another way I put it was here: http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?p...#pid144626) Another factor of importance here is making the deliberate learning as transfer-appropriate as possible (the cues, in retrieval terms), so these usage situations complement the way you memorized things. Thus things like multisensory integration, and recognition cards when your goal is recognition. (Also, on retrieval and mediators: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/330/6002/335.full)

It also gets the stuff on mnemonics wrong, also for bad reasons, suggesting that you want to avoid barriers and extra effort when learning words. We learn words and similar memory targets best when the effort in encoding them is deep, elaborate, and challenging and uses relational strategies to make them more meaningful to the learner, once again the adult having the benefit of plenty of prior knowledge to relate items to, as well as stronger metacognitive skills for deliberate learning. (Some stuff on mnemonics: http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?p...#pid140256)

Perhaps, since the article was written in 1996, they were referring to structured techniques like the keyword method for learning vocabulary words, but even then, most studies showed it to be superior for learning words to rote learning, from what I've read. Now the idea of mnemonics and relational strategies is much more subtle and nuanced and factors in both cognitive and affective concerns.

So I go back to my previous statement: I advocate a soft transition to monolinguality, one that comes about naturally but doesn't ever require avoiding the L1, which is fine since you'll always have that connection to the L1, no matter how many languages you learn.

If we're sharing dated articles, hehe... here's one about fostering L2 exposure and minimizing L1 exposure, but strategically using the L1 for deliberate learning: The role of the first language in foreign language learning

Edit: @Nagareboshi - By the way, I like what you said comparing the L1 to stories and letting them fade away. Except you should either keep them on cards or having the L2 explanations in addition so you can refer to them as you advance, since effective feedback is always useful, even with cards you pass. I think I recently made a comparison of grammar explanations to stories also, but perhaps I didn't post that. (In my notes I have something about the explanations for sentences [where sentences are cues, re: this thread] being transient bridges that help you piece constituent structures together as if they were wholes.) I think I was too lazy to post that because then I'd end up going on about recent work I've read about sentence repetition as an active reconstruction process.

Also, I posted a link to the .pdf before and made a note of this in the past, from a paper by MacWhinney (http://talkbank.org/pslc/UCMlogic.pdf):

“Positive and Negative Transfer

Entrenchment and connectivity have important consequences for L2 learning, because new forms must be entered into maps that are already heavily committed to L1 patterns. One way of solving this problem is by aligning L2 forms with analogous L1 forms. When the forms align well, mapping an L1 form to L2 will result in positive transfer. However, when there are mismatches, then the alignment produces at least some negative transfer. In the terms of the overall analysis of risk and support factors, we can think of negative transfer as a risk factor and positive transfer as a support factor.

The UCM holds that L2 learners will attempt transfer whenever they can perceive a match between an item in L1 and a corresponding item in L2. It is often easy to transfer the basic pragmatic functions that help structure conversations and the construction of mental models (Bardovi-Harlig, this volume). The transfer of lexical meaning from L1 to L2 is also largely positive, although there will be some mismatches in meaning (Dong, Gui, & MacWhinney, 2005) and translation ambiguities (Prior, MacWhinney, & Kroll, 2007). We also expect a great deal of both transfer from L1 to L2 in terms of patterns on auditory and articulatory maps. It is reasonable enough to map a Chinese /p/ to an English /p/, even though the Chinese sound has a different time of voicing onset and no aspiration. The result of this type of imperfect transfer is what leads to the establishment of a foreign accent in L2 learners. Transfer is also easy enough for the semantics of lexical items (Kroll & Tokowicz, 2005). In this area, transfer is often largely positive, particularly between languages with similar linguistic and cultural patterns. In the initial stages of L2 word learning, this type of transfer requires very little reorganization, because L2 forms are initially parasitic upon L1 forms.

Parasitism and Internalization

In her Revised Hierarchical Model, Kroll has emphasized the extent to which beginning second language learners depend on preexisting L1 pathways for mediating the activation of L2 lexical items (Kroll & Sholl, 1992). For example, when hearing the word perro “dog” in Spanish, the learner may first translate the word into English and then use the English word to access the meaning. At this point, the use of the Spanish word is parasitic on English-based knowledge. Later on, the word perro comes to activate the correct meaning directly. In order to move from this parasitic use of L2 to direct access of meaning, the learner needs to strengthen the direct pathways between the new forms and the preexisting functions. The process of internalization can serve to counteract the forces of parasitism. Internalization (Pavlenko & Lantolf, 2000) involves the use of L2 by learners in their inner speech (Vygotsky, 1934). When activate inner speech, we are using language to build up mental models to control our thinking and plans. Vygotsky (1934) observed that young children would often give themselves instructions overtly. For example, a two-year-old might say, “pick it up” while picking up a block. At this age, the verbalization tends to guide and control the action. By producing a verbalization that describes an action, the child sets up a resonant connection between vocalization and action (Asher, 1969). Later, as Vygotsky argues, these overt instructions become inner speech and continue to guide our cognition. L2 learners go through a process much like that of the child. At first, they use the language only with others. Then, they begin to talk to themselves in the new language and start to “think in the second language.” At this point, the second language begins to assume the same resonant status that the child attains for the first language.

Once a process of internalization is set into motion, it can also be used to process new input and relate new forms to other forms paradigmatically. For example, if I hear the phrase ins Mittelalter (in the Middle Ages) in German, I can think to myself that this means that the stem Alter must be das Alter. This means that the dative must take the form in welchem Alter (in which age) or in meinem Alter (in my age). These form-related exercises can be conducted in parallel with more expressive exercises in which I simply try to talk to myself about things around me in German, or whatever language I happen to be learning. Even young children engage in practice of this type (Berk, 1994; Nelson, 1998). Internalization also helps us understand the growth of the ability to engage in code switching. If a language is being repeatedly accessed, it will be in a highly resonant state. Although another language will be passively accessible, it may take a second or two before the resonant activation of that language can be triggered by a task (Grosjean, 1997). Thus, a speaker may not immediately recognize a sentence in a language that has not been spoken in the recent context. On the other hand, a simultaneous interpreter will maintain both languages in continual receptive activation, while trying to minimize resonant activations in the output system of the source language.”

See also the section on Resonance where he goes into spaced retrieval, orthography, and mnemonics to facilitate internalization/resonance when learning new words.

This also ties into the fluency development strand in Paul Nation's Four Strands model.