I know that repetition of lessons is important, and Steve emphasizes this. And I try to repeat lessons until I can understand listening to them very well. But one thing I noticed is that sometimes it feels like I am simply memorizing the lesson, or memorizing the sentences rather than learning the language. For example I am reviewing a lesson and I can remember what the sentence is, from memory, rather then “reading” it. I wonder if anyone feels this tension as well? Maybe that simply means it’s time to discard that lesson. I usually have four or so lessons that I am reviewing once a day. Curious to hear others thoughts about this. Thanks
Do not read the same content again and again. Try fresh content also. Personally, I don’t review a lesson previously learned, but my language has been improving over time.
3 Likes
I second that. I never repeat a lesson, still I am under the perception of making good progress despite a relatively small amount of time invested, compared to what others are stating in the forum.
I’d say that your perception that you are memorizing the lessons, or at least parts of it, is true. This was a growing impression for me when my language journey started with Duolingo back in the day. I already knew the translation before having read the whole sentence.
You could probably compare it to listening to a music album. If you have listened to it often enough, once a song finishes you will start hearing the next song in your head before it even started. But if someone would turn on shuffle mode, this won’t work anymore.
You could try testing this by pasting a lesson to ChatGPT and ask it to create a new text using the words and grammatical structures but with a different content, as much as those two things are compatible, and see how easy it is to understand the new text compared to the original one.
4 Likes
Very interesting, because you both suggest not to repeat lessons, although I was following the advice of Steve K who emphasizes the importance of reviewing the same lessons, as well as adding novelty. Interesting proposition to use ChatGP although honestly, I have not done anything with AI in language learning. I really appreciate your response, thank you
1 Like
As far as I know, he emphasizes the importance of repetition, especially at the “beginning stage.” Because we can not understand most of the content until we listen again and again.
However, if you can understand most of the content with the help of LingQ, you can also notice common sentence structure, words, and grammar in other novel content. So the desired effect of the repetition will be achieved with the contents.
ps. I don’t use an LLM to generate new content or summarize content, since the content generated has a GPT-ish style and is not genuine. However, it is quite effective when I meet a sentence that requires background knowledge, or an expression and idiom that don’t appear in a dictionary. It can effectively translate and explain about that for me.
3 Likes
There’s nothing wrong with repeating lessons, but don’t rote learn them. When you repeat lessons, you notice things you didn’t see before, because you were struggling with the general meaning, and not details. But I’d leave some time between repetitions, that will be more of a test for you.
The distinction between learning and ‘acquiring’, and the suggestion that we must acquire, is a false one. There is nothing wrong with consciously learning words, they will become unconsciously learnt (acquired) with time, as you expose yourself to them from input. As you get used to the words, you’ll start to see the deeper meanings, not just a translation. But you need a mix of input so that you can see the different ways that words are used.
As regards Duolingo, it encourages memorisation and a one to one translation. Despite all the hype around it, as the new, modern language learning method, it is in my view a poor way to learn a language. I can only assume the creators were highly skilled at marketing.
4 Likes
I’m also against re reading the same lesson. You can get the repetition from narrow reading and it will not be boring.
Try in ChatGPT: “Write 5 long, random conversations in Chinese at B1 level hanzi only about XYZ. No extra notes needed. At the end suggest 3 new but related topics for continue narrow reading.”
Of course change the language, level and put just one word at the XYZ. Then either chose a topic it gives you or just ask:" please write another 5".
Even simple topics like: breakfast, mobile phones, walking, pasta, rain, egg, etc… can give you interesting conversations. And can deepen your knowledge in a small section of the world.
4 Likes
Thank you, I see everyone who answered seem to have the same consensus.
1 Like
Thank you. Maybe I should leave more time between repetitions instead of daily. I recall using Duolingo a couple years ago. The sentences it was using were so unnatural I quit .
1 Like
Thanks everyone, Steve’s lesson that I was referring to is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZZSq0jptGk where he discusses his repetition strategy, what not to do and what he does. He does say in a Steve’s Advice: “By repeating the same content over and over again you will eventually remember the words and phrases that content contains.” But obviously there comes a point where enough is enough, and that point may very well be where I feel like I am remembering the lesson rather than reading it. Thaks for all of your comments it’s very helpful for me to not worry about repetition as much as I was.
2 Likes
With the beginner material I think repetition is good. What I did in the beginning was to read a lesson up to a handful of times. Keep in mind I would really only do this for lessons that were under 5 minutes. Some that were around 10 min I might do once or twice. Anything longer than that I would never repeat. Basically I’d repeat the shorter lesson at spread out intervals (at least a few hours between, if not overnight). I would try to undestand as much of the vocabulary as possible (just to where I understood in the sentence and felt I could recognize in other sentences if it would appear). Once I felt like I knew the story too well, I would feel as though the effectiveness of that lesson was no good anymore and I’d move on even if I still had yellow words. You’ll see these common words again and again in the future and it makes no sense to stick to the same lesson for more than a few times imo. Also, some words just aren’t going to stick very well and it’s best to move on and learn many more words that will stick. Eventually you’ll learn the others but it’s not good to hold up progress for these “un-sticky” words.
In short, I think repetition helps, but it may have diminishing returns at some point…i.e. if you know 90% of the words in the lesson already and it’s just 10% you don’t know, it doesn’t make sense to repeat the whole lesson just for those 10%. You could skip through the lesson to those sentences with just yellow words to keep having repetition, but without wasting time on the parts you already understand as another option.
As others have pointed out, you don’t NEED to repeat either. You’ll see the most common words very frequently, so don’t feel like you’ll miss out somehow if you don’t want to repeat lessons.
I believe Steve usually does much of his repeating on the mini-stories. Those he’s frequently talked about doing them upwards of 30-40 times over the course of learning a language (not all at once). He’s likened it to going to the gym. I think there’s some merit to it. These are the most common words and it’s helpful to keep them locked in. As I’ve advanced, sometimes I feel like I’ve lost touch with some of the beginner and lower intermediate words as I move on to more advanced material so it may be good for a refresher.
I think better than just the mini-stories may be to create and study language islands. These would be topics that come up in your everyday life that you talk about or say. Or common situations that you may come across. Study the vocabulary of these and learn typical sentences and phrases for these situations. This is something I wish I had focused a bit more on across my learning experience. I’m kind of going “back” to figuring some of this out now.
6 Likes
Back in the day, enjoyable audio with transcripts were hard to come by. So, from an economic perspective, repetition made a lot of sense (efficient use of a scarce resource). Today, we don’t have that problem; with YouTube, podcasts and AI tools we have essentially an unlimited resource at our disposal. The scarce resource is now our time. Personally I’d rather not use that scarce resource in repeating material already listened to and read (which I generally do at the same time).
I don’t have any data to prove this; it’s just my personal experience that listen/read once and move on, cover as much as you can, is the most efficient strategy.
At least, that’s my experience as an intermediate / advanced learner. Maybe repetition is a good (even necessary) thing for beginners.
7 Likes
As many other people here have said, I personally don’t repeat lessons either. However I think reading several different lessons on the same topic is useful in terms of vocabulary repetition. For example, several articles on a similar subject. That way, a lot of vocabulary repeats, but it’s a lot less tedious than reviewing the same lesson.
However, of course everyone has their own strategy when it comes to language learning and no strategy is necessary superior - as long as it’s enjoyable and sustainable, that’s great.
3 Likes
How often do language learners say things like “I can understand in my classes or my tutor, but when I try to speak with natives in non-language learning contexts and I can’t understand them”, or “they talk too fast” etc.?
Re-listening helps to “develop an ear” for the language. Yes, it is great for beginners. However, even if you can comprehend beginner focused audio, that doesn’t mean you will understand (by listening only) intermediate content, or native focused news, podcasts or audio books, etc. If you understand those, it doesn’t mean you’ll understand a call in radio show, street interviews or a certain TV series. The same thing goes for regional variations and slang.
If I find I struggle comprehending a certain type of speech, I will seek that type of content to refine my listening comprehension through the standard RWL with LingQ and then re-listening. I have found that doing this also helps understand other content from the same source, so it is not simply memorization. Targeted relistening like this is one of the few areas in language learning where I can recognize immediate improvement.
Sometimes I speed up the audio while doing the relistens, and that helps make the natural speed seem much more comprehensible as well. I usually only re-listen once or twice, unless I am really struggling with the audio and then I may do it 4-5 times.
3 Likes
“All of the above” seems to be the best answer to “What approach should I use?”
If you watch more of Steve’s videos, you’ll see that he uses multiple approaches.
The marketing material for Lingq makes it sound like one approach (comprehensible input) is all you need, but that’s just sales hype. Don’t take it too literally, or too seriously.
4 Likes
This is a very valuable post, thank you! I’m learning Farsi, and after reading a beginner textbook, completing an online grammar course and a conversational podcast, I started with Lingq, which is helping my reading and listening comprehension. I am on Mini Story 21 and finding it helpful to listen to the stories while driving, cooking etc, to reinforce the frequent words and solidify sentence structure. I do move on to other stories in the interim, and also imported audio files of my own common phrases, which I added to my playlist. These audio files are proving to be very effective lessons. This strategy is working for me so far!
3 Likes
Sometimes it gets confusing. I am embarrassed to say how long I have lived in Colombia and still I can barley understand my friends, and not understand when they are all talking naturally at speed I understand almost nothing. I am talking a few years! But after starting out completely with "traditional"methods and not being very successful, and then going almost completely CI, and also not too successful, I imagine some mix of all above is the answer.
Most learners underestimate how long it takes to understand natural speech. You really do have to listen to hundreds of hours of audio input, with a mix of speakers and accents, in order to train your hearing, your speed of comprehension and your vocabulary. Usually I have no problem following a French radio debate, but many French films are hard if not impossible to follow, and this is after listening to at least 1,000 hours of audio input.
5 Likes
I’m just getting started with French, but French Canadians tell me the most important thing is listening. If an Anglo can follow a conversation, they don’t need much French at all to speak, but they need to be able to understand what they’re hearing. I’ve started using Lingq with recordings of fairly simple dialogs (from TV shows and movies), in sentence view. When I click for the next sentence, I close my eyes and try to figure it out by listening only, before I look at the text. I’m hoping that will help. ([CTRL-right arrow] for the next sentence, [A] to play the audio.)
1 Like