As I begin the 12th day of the French Revolution, my personal quest to learn as much French as I can in several hours a day for 30 days, I draw some encouragement from the beautiful city lights outside the window. Today I'm very tired and the language study will be a struggle. Onward, Revolutionary Soldiers!
REVIEWING SCHEDULED CARDS
I started the day with sentence cards (249 scheduled for review), rather than the usual audio pronunciation cards. It's good to mix things up and keep the language study interesting and fresh.
Midway through reviewing the sentence cards (at the 23 minute mark, to be precise) I got a call from a good friend, and it really lifted my spirits. Suddenly, I had some motivation again. So, I put the sentences on hold, ran through the absolutely freezing Ohio air to the gym, and put my body on the chopping block like an unfortunate French aristocrat caught up in the Revolution. My body has been executed; and replaced with a new, stronger, more Revolutionary body. Long live the Revolution!
Then, I stuffed my face with salmon and tuna and resumed the sentence deck. It took 58 minutes total to review the sentence cards, of course that doesn't include going to the gym. I took a quick break for a shower, washing away the raw scent of Revolutionary Battle.
There were 21 pronunciation rule flashcards scheduled, and it took less than 2 minutes to review them all. I only made 2 mistakes during the review.
Before reviewing audio pronunciation cards, I added 45 new ones, from the about.com French pronunciation page. This includes a few sentence cards to illustrate French rhythm. Poking around the about.com French pronunciation page, really gives a person an appreciation for the complexity of French pronunciation. It's basically impossible to understand it all at a conscious level without studying it for a long, long time. Fortunately, I don't care about conscious understanding, this is language acquisition, which means I'm going for unconscious acquisition, and for that, I just need to throw lots of audio files into Anki :)
The audio pronunciation deck started with 123 cards for review. After 22 minutes, it was down to just 8 cards which were all pretty difficult and I kept failing them, so I decided to just leave those 8 unreviewed, and hope my subconscious mind can stitch something together while I sleep.
INTERESTING DISCUSSION ABOUT THE THEORY OF SPACED REPETITION
There's a very interesting discussion going on right now at the Reviewing-The-Kanji Forums. These forums are for people learning Kanji, but this discussion should be interesting to anyone, whether or not you're studying Japanese. The thread is called: SRS Theory. Apparently, psychologists have known about how freakin awesome spaced repetition is, for over a hundred years. But it wasn't until the invention of SRS's that it could actually be put to practical use. Since, calculating the right spacing by hand would be more effort than just brute-forcing the whole flashcard pile without optimization.
Previous Day in the French Revolution: Day 11
Next Day in the French Revolution: Day 13
You can also go to the French Revolution Table Of Contents...
...or to the French Revolution Introduction.
Here are some other articles I wrote.
Getting Motivated To Go Lift Weights
Autodidact: Be A Self-Teacher
30-Day Article-A-Day Challenge Completed!
Will The Languages Of The World Ever Merge?
Examples Of Japanese Onomatopoeia
REVIEWING SCHEDULED CARDS
I started the day with sentence cards (249 scheduled for review), rather than the usual audio pronunciation cards. It's good to mix things up and keep the language study interesting and fresh.
Midway through reviewing the sentence cards (at the 23 minute mark, to be precise) I got a call from a good friend, and it really lifted my spirits. Suddenly, I had some motivation again. So, I put the sentences on hold, ran through the absolutely freezing Ohio air to the gym, and put my body on the chopping block like an unfortunate French aristocrat caught up in the Revolution. My body has been executed; and replaced with a new, stronger, more Revolutionary body. Long live the Revolution!
Then, I stuffed my face with salmon and tuna and resumed the sentence deck. It took 58 minutes total to review the sentence cards, of course that doesn't include going to the gym. I took a quick break for a shower, washing away the raw scent of Revolutionary Battle.
There were 21 pronunciation rule flashcards scheduled, and it took less than 2 minutes to review them all. I only made 2 mistakes during the review.
Before reviewing audio pronunciation cards, I added 45 new ones, from the about.com French pronunciation page. This includes a few sentence cards to illustrate French rhythm. Poking around the about.com French pronunciation page, really gives a person an appreciation for the complexity of French pronunciation. It's basically impossible to understand it all at a conscious level without studying it for a long, long time. Fortunately, I don't care about conscious understanding, this is language acquisition, which means I'm going for unconscious acquisition, and for that, I just need to throw lots of audio files into Anki :)
The audio pronunciation deck started with 123 cards for review. After 22 minutes, it was down to just 8 cards which were all pretty difficult and I kept failing them, so I decided to just leave those 8 unreviewed, and hope my subconscious mind can stitch something together while I sleep.
INTERESTING DISCUSSION ABOUT THE THEORY OF SPACED REPETITION
There's a very interesting discussion going on right now at the Reviewing-The-Kanji Forums. These forums are for people learning Kanji, but this discussion should be interesting to anyone, whether or not you're studying Japanese. The thread is called: SRS Theory. Apparently, psychologists have known about how freakin awesome spaced repetition is, for over a hundred years. But it wasn't until the invention of SRS's that it could actually be put to practical use. Since, calculating the right spacing by hand would be more effort than just brute-forcing the whole flashcard pile without optimization.
Previous Day in the French Revolution: Day 11
Next Day in the French Revolution: Day 13
You can also go to the French Revolution Table Of Contents...
...or to the French Revolution Introduction.
Here are some other articles I wrote.
Getting Motivated To Go Lift Weights
Autodidact: Be A Self-Teacher
30-Day Article-A-Day Challenge Completed!
Will The Languages Of The World Ever Merge?
Examples Of Japanese Onomatopoeia
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