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.

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/viewtopic.php?p … 57#p198657

^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.

Last edited by Aspiring (2013 March 08, 1:40 pm)

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.

Last edited by Aspiring (2013 March 08, 7:40 pm)