A big trend in language studying is to put sentences in your flashcards instead of just individual words. This was popularized by the guys at Antimoon, a bunch of Polish dudes who taught themselves fluent English in like a year without even leaving Poland. (Of course paper flashcards are obsolete. Get a spaced repetition system like Mnemosyne or Anki...)
People wanna go beyond boring, stilty textbook sentences and put in sentences from dramas, action movies, novels, comics, cartoons, and video games in their flashcards. Makes studying a lot more fun (and when you have fun, you learn more- proven fact). Plus those are the sentences you really want to eventually sound like- noone wants to sound like a textbook!
The question people ask though, is how do you make a flashcard out of a sentence when you don't have an exact English translation available?
Here at GlowingFaceLabs, I figured out a great way to get past the "No English Translation" obstacle. I call it the contextual sentence flashcard. On the "question" side, you put the foreign language sentence you want to learn from. On the "answer" side, put any necessary pronunciation notes, then where you'd normally put an English translation, put a contextual description in parentheses.
EXAMPLE
You're reading a comic in the target language and the hero blows up a bunch of zombies and says something cool. You can basically understand what he says, but not well enough to make a perfect English translation. So instead, on your answer side, put something like: (Mr. Hero as he blows up a bunch of zombies attacking the city).
ANOTHER EXAMPLE
You're watching a movie in the target language and Mr. A says something to Mr. B while standing in the nuclear reactor core. For your translation on the "answer" side of the flashcard, just put something like, (Mr. A to Mr. B in the reactor core after the president gets kidnapped) or whatever. Not only does it describe who's saying the sentence, but who it's said to (cluing you into subtle issues like what's the relationship between the speaker and his audience) and what circumstances it's being said (if shit's going down, the language will be different than if everyone's sipping tea).
CONTEXT IS *BETTER* THAN TRANSLATION
If I have to choose between context or translation for a given sentence, give me the context any day. An English translation, however perfect it is, fails to convey a lot of subtle information. If the English translation is "Hello, good morning, hope you slept well", then you're missing a lot. Is the speaker the listener's boss? Is the speaker the listener's servant? Or maybe they're family? Is the exchange taking place in a downtown apartment, a remote starbase, an ancient village, or the office? These sorts of things can change the language.
Making a contextual card, you can throw in as much contextual detail as you want. It's a judgment call how much detail to put in. If the sentence is from something you're not likely to forget, a short note like "(Princess Peach when Mario saves her)" conveys an infinite amount of contextual information.
You want to get the meaning from the target language version of the sentence anyway. Reading a bunch of English translation sentences isn't gonna do shit to teach you Spanish or German or Chinese or Japanese or Russian or whatever.
Read this other stuff too. It's part of a nutritious breakfast.
What is Fluency Anyway?
How the Mind Learns
How to Learn a Language the Right Way
People wanna go beyond boring, stilty textbook sentences and put in sentences from dramas, action movies, novels, comics, cartoons, and video games in their flashcards. Makes studying a lot more fun (and when you have fun, you learn more- proven fact). Plus those are the sentences you really want to eventually sound like- noone wants to sound like a textbook!
The question people ask though, is how do you make a flashcard out of a sentence when you don't have an exact English translation available?
Here at GlowingFaceLabs, I figured out a great way to get past the "No English Translation" obstacle. I call it the contextual sentence flashcard. On the "question" side, you put the foreign language sentence you want to learn from. On the "answer" side, put any necessary pronunciation notes, then where you'd normally put an English translation, put a contextual description in parentheses.
EXAMPLE
You're reading a comic in the target language and the hero blows up a bunch of zombies and says something cool. You can basically understand what he says, but not well enough to make a perfect English translation. So instead, on your answer side, put something like: (Mr. Hero as he blows up a bunch of zombies attacking the city).
ANOTHER EXAMPLE
You're watching a movie in the target language and Mr. A says something to Mr. B while standing in the nuclear reactor core. For your translation on the "answer" side of the flashcard, just put something like, (Mr. A to Mr. B in the reactor core after the president gets kidnapped) or whatever. Not only does it describe who's saying the sentence, but who it's said to (cluing you into subtle issues like what's the relationship between the speaker and his audience) and what circumstances it's being said (if shit's going down, the language will be different than if everyone's sipping tea).
CONTEXT IS *BETTER* THAN TRANSLATION
If I have to choose between context or translation for a given sentence, give me the context any day. An English translation, however perfect it is, fails to convey a lot of subtle information. If the English translation is "Hello, good morning, hope you slept well", then you're missing a lot. Is the speaker the listener's boss? Is the speaker the listener's servant? Or maybe they're family? Is the exchange taking place in a downtown apartment, a remote starbase, an ancient village, or the office? These sorts of things can change the language.
Making a contextual card, you can throw in as much contextual detail as you want. It's a judgment call how much detail to put in. If the sentence is from something you're not likely to forget, a short note like "(Princess Peach when Mario saves her)" conveys an infinite amount of contextual information.
You want to get the meaning from the target language version of the sentence anyway. Reading a bunch of English translation sentences isn't gonna do shit to teach you Spanish or German or Chinese or Japanese or Russian or whatever.
Read this other stuff too. It's part of a nutritious breakfast.
What is Fluency Anyway?
How the Mind Learns
How to Learn a Language the Right Way
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1 comments:
Nice idea, avoids several problems!
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