This is Day 27 of the French Revolution, my personal quest to learn as much French as I can in thirty days. For the first 25 days, I was spending an hour or two a day doing the studies-- in fact, for the first ten days or so, I was spending significantly more, as many as four or five hours a day. But these last few days, I'm really toning it down. In fact, I decided to reduce my flashcard time to just 10 minutes a day. Let me discuss this decision for a moment.
With the hectic rate that I've been adding new cards to my sentence deck and audio pronunciation deck in the last 25 days, ten minutes is nowhere near enough time to clear all the cards the flashcard program schedules for me to review. (By the way, I'm using the sophisticated spaced repetition software called Anki, which optimizes the hell out of flashcards-- check it out, it's free, but is higher quality than most commercial products you'll find anywhere) From the viewpoint of improving my French, the ten minute switch is a horrible idea. However, from the viewpoint of learning more about language learning and autodidactism in general, it's a great idea. I've experimented and even written before about restricting time-per-day on flashcards, when you're too busy or just want to do other things with your life. The underlying thesis I've presented is that any fixed amount of time per day devoted to reviews will give the full benefits, however, if the time is small, the benefits will be more delayed. I've tested that thesis with moderate time limits, but now I'm testing it with some extremely small time limits.
My hand is also kind of forced on this. Two things happened recently: my quarter started back up (in case you don't know, I'm a math PhD student and also teaching two business calculus classes); and my girlfriend returned from holidays in Japan. When I was first planning this 30 day challenge, I was doing it under the assumption that my girlfriend and I basically spend nights and evenings together and days apart. However, during the course of our separation, we grew much closer and our relationship became much deeper, and now we spending a LOT more time together. And when I'm with her, you can bet I won't be spending two hours a day doing flashcards!
Today, I had some time to work on the blog because Glowing Face Girl is in class until late. So, I could've done a full flashcard review session today. That would've been the optimal course to take as far as learning French goes. But, it wouldn't have really taught me very much about language learning in general, that I didn't already know. So I' just did flashcard reviewing for ten minutes. But I did spend some time studying French in a different way...
LA SAINTE BIBLE
For Christmas, my mom sent me a French bible. So, today I spent some time reading some of my favorite passages from it. One of my favorite parts from the Bible is the Lord's Prayer, or Pater Noster if you're catholic. I've even written my own secularized, modern version of the Lord's Prayer, a kind of New Age Lord's Prayer.
The Lord's Prayer appears twice in the New Testament, once in the letters of Matthew and once in the letters of Luke (by the way, it makes me shudder when people talk about the "book" of Matthew or the "book" of Luke or the "book" of Romans. These documents are not books, they are letters, allegedly written by the apostles to various early churches. They certainly weren't intended for inclusion into some massive institutional tome-- the whole idea of the Bible is massively unsupported by the Bible, and it really detracts from the real simplicity of Christianity, which most Christians are totally ignorant to. Based on His philosophies, Jesus does not support the manmade institution of the Bible. But that's a rant for another time...) I read both the occurrences in French, along with the contextual narrative surrounding them.
Reading the passages in French is really neat. Here's Matthew quoting Jesus about people who make a big boast about praying and religiousness, people like George W. Bush and James Dobson: "Je vous le dis en vérité, ils reçoivent leur récompense." ("Verily I say unto you, they have already received their compensation.")
It feels very cool to read the Bible in French, because I've read a lot of the theological writings of Blaise Pascal, and so now I'm getting to read the Bible as he read it. :) Hmmm, now that I know some French, I ought to try and obtain Pascal's works untranslated ;)
LEARNING A LANGUAGE VS. MAINTAINING A LANGUAGE
In many countries, some amount of language study is more or less mandatory. Here in the U.S., most people who graduate high school take a little bit of Spanish or French or some other language they choose. Certainly it's rare to find a college graduate who didn't take at least a couple semesters of foreign language. And yet, almost noone has received any formal training on how to maintain a language. Think about it: a college student spends half a year taking language classes, but not a single day being taught how to maintain that knowledge. She loses all her language gains within five years. One single day out of all those classes, devoted to maintaining rather than learning, might preserve that language knowledge throughout her life, assuming she puts in the necessary upkeep. For example, if she were taught about Spaced Repetition Software, she could easily keep her language skill as good as it ever was, all her life.
Part of my switch from intensive studying to light studying, is the transition phase from learning French to maintaining French. The whole point of maintenance is, it should be as little hassle as possible. After the French Revolution is finished, I will switch fully to maintenance, and will record what I learn about language maintenance. French gives me this opportunity, while Japanese does not, since I am still actively studying Japanese.
Maintenance of skills, is itself a skill. By examining how to maintain French, I'll be training this more general skill as well. Skill maintainence is an example of a metaskill. Metaskills are skills which apply to other skills. Another example of a metaskill would be the ability to teach yourself an arbitrary skill. Check out my article, Skills and Metaskills, for more about these "master skills".
FRENCH WORDS BY EMAIL
I was contacted by the folks over at bitesizedlanguages and I've signed up to get daily emails about French from them. I'll see how well this lends itself toward maintenance. I don't want to give an endorsement yet, the whole point of signing up is so I can see for myself how well the daily-word type programs apply themselves toward language maintenance. It would be interesting if there were some way for the party sending the emails to get feedback on how comfortable the recipients were with the daily words, and then the emails could employ spaced repetition to really optimize the learning process. I'll see how this daily word thing goes, and think about talking with some of these guys about SRS-like possibilities.
Previous Day in the French Revolution: Day 26
Next Day in the French Revolution: Day 28
You can also go to the French Revolution Table Of Contents...
...or to the French Revolution Introduction.
Here are some other things I've written.
Dealing With A Neglected SRS Deck
How To Keep A New Years Resolution
Leadership In Relationships
Five Reasons To Study A Foreign Language
Becoming More Photogenic
With the hectic rate that I've been adding new cards to my sentence deck and audio pronunciation deck in the last 25 days, ten minutes is nowhere near enough time to clear all the cards the flashcard program schedules for me to review. (By the way, I'm using the sophisticated spaced repetition software called Anki, which optimizes the hell out of flashcards-- check it out, it's free, but is higher quality than most commercial products you'll find anywhere) From the viewpoint of improving my French, the ten minute switch is a horrible idea. However, from the viewpoint of learning more about language learning and autodidactism in general, it's a great idea. I've experimented and even written before about restricting time-per-day on flashcards, when you're too busy or just want to do other things with your life. The underlying thesis I've presented is that any fixed amount of time per day devoted to reviews will give the full benefits, however, if the time is small, the benefits will be more delayed. I've tested that thesis with moderate time limits, but now I'm testing it with some extremely small time limits.
My hand is also kind of forced on this. Two things happened recently: my quarter started back up (in case you don't know, I'm a math PhD student and also teaching two business calculus classes); and my girlfriend returned from holidays in Japan. When I was first planning this 30 day challenge, I was doing it under the assumption that my girlfriend and I basically spend nights and evenings together and days apart. However, during the course of our separation, we grew much closer and our relationship became much deeper, and now we spending a LOT more time together. And when I'm with her, you can bet I won't be spending two hours a day doing flashcards!
Today, I had some time to work on the blog because Glowing Face Girl is in class until late. So, I could've done a full flashcard review session today. That would've been the optimal course to take as far as learning French goes. But, it wouldn't have really taught me very much about language learning in general, that I didn't already know. So I' just did flashcard reviewing for ten minutes. But I did spend some time studying French in a different way...
LA SAINTE BIBLE
For Christmas, my mom sent me a French bible. So, today I spent some time reading some of my favorite passages from it. One of my favorite parts from the Bible is the Lord's Prayer, or Pater Noster if you're catholic. I've even written my own secularized, modern version of the Lord's Prayer, a kind of New Age Lord's Prayer.
The Lord's Prayer appears twice in the New Testament, once in the letters of Matthew and once in the letters of Luke (by the way, it makes me shudder when people talk about the "book" of Matthew or the "book" of Luke or the "book" of Romans. These documents are not books, they are letters, allegedly written by the apostles to various early churches. They certainly weren't intended for inclusion into some massive institutional tome-- the whole idea of the Bible is massively unsupported by the Bible, and it really detracts from the real simplicity of Christianity, which most Christians are totally ignorant to. Based on His philosophies, Jesus does not support the manmade institution of the Bible. But that's a rant for another time...) I read both the occurrences in French, along with the contextual narrative surrounding them.
Reading the passages in French is really neat. Here's Matthew quoting Jesus about people who make a big boast about praying and religiousness, people like George W. Bush and James Dobson: "Je vous le dis en vérité, ils reçoivent leur récompense." ("Verily I say unto you, they have already received their compensation.")
It feels very cool to read the Bible in French, because I've read a lot of the theological writings of Blaise Pascal, and so now I'm getting to read the Bible as he read it. :) Hmmm, now that I know some French, I ought to try and obtain Pascal's works untranslated ;)
LEARNING A LANGUAGE VS. MAINTAINING A LANGUAGE
In many countries, some amount of language study is more or less mandatory. Here in the U.S., most people who graduate high school take a little bit of Spanish or French or some other language they choose. Certainly it's rare to find a college graduate who didn't take at least a couple semesters of foreign language. And yet, almost noone has received any formal training on how to maintain a language. Think about it: a college student spends half a year taking language classes, but not a single day being taught how to maintain that knowledge. She loses all her language gains within five years. One single day out of all those classes, devoted to maintaining rather than learning, might preserve that language knowledge throughout her life, assuming she puts in the necessary upkeep. For example, if she were taught about Spaced Repetition Software, she could easily keep her language skill as good as it ever was, all her life.
Part of my switch from intensive studying to light studying, is the transition phase from learning French to maintaining French. The whole point of maintenance is, it should be as little hassle as possible. After the French Revolution is finished, I will switch fully to maintenance, and will record what I learn about language maintenance. French gives me this opportunity, while Japanese does not, since I am still actively studying Japanese.
Maintenance of skills, is itself a skill. By examining how to maintain French, I'll be training this more general skill as well. Skill maintainence is an example of a metaskill. Metaskills are skills which apply to other skills. Another example of a metaskill would be the ability to teach yourself an arbitrary skill. Check out my article, Skills and Metaskills, for more about these "master skills".
FRENCH WORDS BY EMAIL
I was contacted by the folks over at bitesizedlanguages and I've signed up to get daily emails about French from them. I'll see how well this lends itself toward maintenance. I don't want to give an endorsement yet, the whole point of signing up is so I can see for myself how well the daily-word type programs apply themselves toward language maintenance. It would be interesting if there were some way for the party sending the emails to get feedback on how comfortable the recipients were with the daily words, and then the emails could employ spaced repetition to really optimize the learning process. I'll see how this daily word thing goes, and think about talking with some of these guys about SRS-like possibilities.
Previous Day in the French Revolution: Day 26
Next Day in the French Revolution: Day 28
You can also go to the French Revolution Table Of Contents...
...or to the French Revolution Introduction.
Here are some other things I've written.
Dealing With A Neglected SRS Deck
How To Keep A New Years Resolution
Leadership In Relationships
Five Reasons To Study A Foreign Language
Becoming More Photogenic
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment