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Ease and Difficulty of Accessing Audio and Video
- Easy Access to Videos: Platforms like YouTube and Netflix offer endless content.
- Difficult Access to Videos: Finding content that interests you and obtaining audio and subtitles can be challenging.
- YouTube: Audio is not an issue, and there are auto-generated subtitles, but the segmentation is not suitable for learning. Lingq’s audio-to-text feature has incorrect timestamps.
- Netflix: While it offers dubbed content, it often lacks corresponding CC subtitles, and obtaining audio is difficult.
- For someone proficient with computers, these issues can be resolved, but for most people, optimizing this is challenging.
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Not Understanding = Boredom
- Even after solving the above issues and importing audio, you will likely not understand it, leading to boredom.
- At this point, you can only repeat single sentences or words.
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Repetition = Boredom
- Repeating single sentences or words, although not proven, I believe is the beginning of all boredom.
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My Solution: Progressive Repetition
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The following is my personal remedy, without any scientific theory, please take it rationally.
- Based on the concept of working memory, I have set some learning methods. Assuming this theory is correct, and my understanding is also correct.
- Principle:
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One view of working memory is that a person can remember up to 4 items at a time.
- When listening to sentences, assume you only have a memory capacity of 4 sentences. Should this capacity be used to repeat one sentence or to hold 4 different sentences? The answer is obviously different, because the brain dislikes boredom, and repetition equals boredom.
- Isn’t repetition still repetition?
- You will find that we still have to repeat previously heard sentences. Just don’t put the repetition in the current four memory capacities. Will this really not be boring?
- Actually, try it and you will find that the brain is really deceived. The brain really doesn’t feel it’s repetitive because it can only remember four!
- Listen to a sentence no more than four times.
- More than that will be boring. If you still don’t understand after four times, switch to the next sentence. Whether you understand the next sentence or not, switch, because the brain needs new content.
- Play sentences continuously, but no more than 4 sentences.
- Listen to a segment continuously, not just a single sentence. This provides enough new information for the brain and enhances overall understanding, not just a single sentence.
- A song, no matter how many times you listen to it, won’t be boring because each time it is moving information. We treat four consecutive sentences as a piece of music.
- Listen forward, backward, and roll forward. round and round,Don’t stop.
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3 Likes
I was hoping that you could get rid of the boredom of repetition once and for all.
The idea of 4 comes from here: The Magical Mystery Four: How is Working Memory Capacity Limited, and Why? - PMC
The key finding was that, when attention was directed different ways, a central working memory capacity limit still held. People could remember about 4 squares if asked to attend only to squares and, if they were asked to attend to both squares and digits, they could remember fewer squares, but about 4 items in all.
However, I find it a bit naive compared to 4 sentences and/or 4 times. What about repeating 4 minutes instead? Or 4 paragraphs?
The research talked about 4 items with squares and digits. You can’t think of an item as anything you want.
How long should the sentences be?
A word could be an item itself if you don’t understand it.
4 words you don’t know in one sentence?
Who is “we”?
2 Likes
@KuzmaSavchenko I agree that boredom is a motivation killer or reduces your concentration and therefore learning efficiency, however, the theory about four sentences is a bit much. It’s just full of too many assumptions.
For me, a piece of content can be boring the first time I listen to it. Other pieces of content are not boring even after the 10th re-watch. I think it’s highly individual how much you can deal with repetition vs. how much novelty you need. It is also highly content-specific.
This is like a ‘general we’, where ‘we’ in this case refers to the author and the reader(s). Not sure what the official grammar name for it is.
4 Likes
Interesting post!
As a beginner in French, any content longer than 8 sentences feels like a bit of a chore. Content around 5-7 sentences feels just about right for me.
A song, no matter how many times you listen to it, won’t be boring because each time it is moving information. We treat four consecutive sentences as a piece of music.
Something I have been doing is playing the lesson audio while also listening to some hip hop/rap instrumentals at the same time. Every so often the lesson audio lines up with the hip hop beats and is quite satisfying, haha!
2 Likes
I got that but he was talking in first person about his strategies, and then became “we” related to music. It made me think there were more people behind the scene, or like it was a copy/paste from another text.
In French I listen to engaging content. For example, did you know that the principal reason for a greenhouse getting warm has nothing to do with infra red radiation. It is actually due to containment of warm air. Hence the greenhouse effect is poorly named. Tell Greta next time you see her.
In German I have no choice but to listen to rather dull content. Anything more complex and I don’t learn. I am like a child, simple sentences, lots of them, they also consume content that we find dull.
A lot of life is dull, the reward comes from working hard and achieving success, or making progress.