@Sirob11 I agree 100%. The Goldlist worked ok for me, and I did it diligently for 1 year in Russian. However, after having done it, I found there were words that I still would forget.
@odinerod Yes, ANKI can be boring, however, I find that if I really want to remember words the best method for me is to use Russian words in sentences....thereby, learning in context. I have thousands of Russian phrases, sentences and connectors that are in my long term memory. You can also record a the native speaker speaking those phrases, making it much more effective than simple reading of the cards. You can also use visual cards if you like for nouns or verbs if you like. ANKI syncs easily with my computer, my Samsung Tab and my Android phone. It is has by far the least glitches and hangups that I have seen with a SRS/Flashcard system.
It just goes to show that we are all different. That does not necessarily make those who use different approaches lazy, Hape. In fact I spend a lot of time on language learning
However I see no advantage in a system that forces me to do something that I am simply not going to continue to do, in other words look up words and write them down. I would not do this more than once.
In order to get through the quantity of reading that I do, QuickLingQ is very useful. I clean up the unknown words, very often using Google translate, which I find very convenient, and then I go back in and read, either on the screen, adding phrases, or on the iPad. I then listen. I want to cover as much content, as much input, as possible. Looking up words, fussing about how accurate my dictionary definition is, writing things down on a list, etc. would significantly reduce the amount of time I have for reading.
In fact, now I find that in order to review my flash cards more quickly, I set the front page to show the Term, Hint and Phrase. I use the numbers on my keyboard and go through them as fast as I can just hitting 2,3,or 4 as I flip through them. I mean I have to be practical.
The lesson I am about to start in Czech is a 25 minute radio discussion in a wonderful series on Czech history entitled “Rambles through the Czech past”. This episode I am about to start is number 844 in a series that starts with the Celts and takes us to modern times. I started in the 19th century and am working my way back. After learning about famous bandits in the 19th century, details of the life of Bedrich Smetana, the Austro-Prussian war, the awakening of Czech nationalism, and I am now learning about the establishment of the National Theatre in Prague amidst tensions between the Germans and Czechs in the Austro-Hungarian empire. Lots of reading and listening.
As I open this lesson there are 392 saved LingQs and 318 new words, although this latter number includes a large number of names that I will delete in QuickLingQs.
I could not possible do all of this and write all new words down on paper. We just have to make choices and find the method that suits our interests and habits the best. But lazy, Hape, is not a word that I would use to describe the study habits of others.
@timroof Yes, I do know all of what you can do with Anki and its portability on smartphones and the like. I was very excited about it for a few months or so before I decided it wasn’t working out for me how I had hoped. I still save phrases and sentences through LingQ of course, however I learn them differently now than I did with Anki. To me, Anki was just boring, and it took up too much time to fiddle with the computer to get my decks how I liked them (and this is coming from a software engineer). At any rate, I already proved I can learn a language to fluency without anki, therefore I don’t believe that I will be returning. I may find the same with the gold list after a while, who knows.
@steve
I did NOT say “lazy people use LingQ” or “other students are lazy”.
I only wrote: "if you are lazy, you use Google Translate and do a “QuickLingQ”.
You may create a LingQ - as I did last year with 8,000 LingQs - by looking up all the details of a word in an online dictionary –
or you may just click on Google Translate and use that (which is wrong quite often).
Both methods take a very different amount of time and amount of thinking about a word.
Maybe “lazy” is not the best word for the 2nd and faster “method”.
I prefer the first and slower method because I think it’s important to create correct LingQs.
But it’s also important to THINK about a word or expression, not only create something that roughly may fit.
I just click on google translate and if I suspect the translation is not appropriate I open the dictionary. I prefer the faster approach because I feel that I can only learn the word if I see it in context often enough. The dictionary definition is only a hint, just a small part of learning how the word is used. What you think is important for you is not necessarily important for others. I tend to agree with David James that deliberate learning, thinking about a word, is not all that useful. Seeing it often is more important to me.
I’ve been working on an onion-layer approach lately. So when I first encounter a word I lingQ it and learn it, in isolation. After I’ve learned it I look out for it in short phrases, and lingQ and learn them. I aim to end up with the same word in maybe half a dozen lingQed phrases, finishing up with whole sentences. I figure that’s what it will take before I am really comfortable using that word actively.
I think “lazy” carries negative connotations. That said, I have discovered that being less concerned with knowledge about the word and more concerned with getting the gist of a word the first time you see it is key to my progress. The less thinking about the word, the better, for me anyway.