Flashcards feel like progress. But are they actually helping you learn a language — or just keeping you busy?
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There’s probably something off with my approach, but flashcards feel like a quick win right now. I’m only adding about 5 new cards a day and reviewing whatever Anki tells me (around 25 Russian words total). It gives me a bit of confidence that I’m really missing everywhere else in my learning.
Steve even mentioned in the video that flashcards can be useful at the very beginning, so I’m leaning on them a little for Russian.
With German I don’t need them anymore because I already have enough words to get traction from massive input. But Russian feels completely different — new alphabet, almost no shared vocabulary, still very much A1. I’m struggling more than I expected at the start.
My current plan is to just drown myself in listening. I went from thinking about a 10,000-hour challenge down to just 100 solid hours of input while occasionally checking the alphabet and looking up words as I go.
Would love to hear if anyone has advice or has been through the same thing with Russian.
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To me what beats flashcards is repeating old material. When i only practice extensive work, even if using LingQ, it’s painfully slow. If I spend at least 20% of our study on repeating older materials our language learning is vastly more rapid and fulfilling.
I get this from Steve and six years of LingQ. If you keep the idea that he sets forth of repeating the original lessons in LinQ to later lessons it’s a great idea to just keep repeating older materials.
Even if randomly selecting older materials isn’t set by an algorithm and not completely “optimal”
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Well, you could choose the material based on the share of yellow words, as there is probably more sense in repeating material that contains words you still haven’t fully memorized as oppossed to those who you can understand for the most part.
The idea of repeating old material is probably less useful whilst still in the early stages of learning a language, as most of the words are not topic-specific and will get repeated nevertheless. But once you’ve reached a higher level this changes. Words will become more and more topic specific, so you will likely not see some of them for quiet some time if you use new material all the time, unless it is all about the same topic or field.
What is useful in regards to repetition, too, is to stick to an author when reading books. Different authors use different expressions and vocabulary. You can see the same when using podcasts or other sources, where only one person is speaking, and thus not adopting the own speech to what someone else says. There is a significant amount of repetition there, too.
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There is real power in lots of listening combined with a little reivew.
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If you read books related to your work, school subjects, hobbies in your target language and sentence mine into flashcards/ANKI it is a double win. You can memorize facts you want to learn and at the same time learn the language.
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Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL).
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This video demonstrates that Steven Kaufmann doesn’t know how to use flashcards. Nothing more. As always, he’s selling his product as a “one size fits all” solution. If you watch his other videos it’s clear he uses multiple approaches, not just comprehensible input. This is just more marketing BS.
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His videos should carry an explicit warning or indication that they are product marketing.
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“Comprehensible input, the best way to learn a language.” sounds a lot like advertising, doesn’t it?
I don’t know how it is in GB, but in Germany such videos indeed need to be marked. Strangely Netflix shows need to declare if they feature product placement, but don’t do so if they just bought the licence and the placement is not for western products (you can see this in a lot of K-Dramas, but the ad there is super obvious, and the actors try very hard not to laugh 
).
LingQ is canadian, isn’t it? Maybe they have different laws.
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Haha, Germans really are sticklers for rules, aren’t they? 
Two things can be true at the same time though. Steve can genuinely believe that comprehensible input is one of the best ways to learn a language and run a company that helps people do it.
Doesn’t make the message any less valid.
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Actually, afaik the majority of new rules and regulations established last year were rules established by the EU, not our own government. 
No one is denying that.
That is a completely different point. Genuinely believing in something doesn’t make it valid.
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Not trying to get political, but your country has censorship issues for this reason. Toxic hivemind.
I apologize in advance. Kind of rude from me.
Yet he did learn other languages with other tools than just CI
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You are free to get political, I have no objections here. I genuinely believe in the freedom of speech, the power of the argument and that the majority of mankind consists out of kind, peaceful, sane people. Sadly a lot of the people in charge in the government as well as the established media share a different mindset, it seems. But I am an optimist, too. Things are getting better.
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This is getting into politics, but you’re seeing this at a superficial level. Suggesting that there should be no censorship, just freedom of speech, is naive. In reality what it means is freedom for the rich to influence society.
Let’s consider food.
Junk food is very profitable and junk food corporations have lots of money to convince children and adults to eat food that will cripple them and shorten their lives. Vegetables are not very profitable and growers do not have lots of money to convince children and adults to eat food that will make them healthier and live longer.
So, should we allow the rich to control our lives, to create a morbidly obese population of consumers, buying highly profitable junk food? Or should we introduce some controls to protect our children and others?
3rd option. Teach healthy nutrition at school.
Btw. almost every person I know, including many kids and teenagers, know that junk food is bad (it is called that for a reason) and that they should eat lots of vegetables.
So that would stop the five year old wanting the sweets with pictures of cartoon characters on the packaging at the supermarket checkout? And it would influence the parents who buy junk food? The UK and Germany have regulations on adverts including those aimed at children.
In Britain a worrying percentage of people consume unhealthy food at home. I’ve met people who think tomato ketchup is healthy, whereas it contains excessive sugar and salt. I recently watched a French video, many French children eat instant noodles at lunch, they are deep fried and high in salt. I did not realise they are deep fried.
Germany has advertising regulations. Apparently digital content that is sponsored must clearly indicate that fact. I would argue that the LingQ YouTube videos are promotions and hence violate German law since that fact is not made clear. I would also argue that they violate European law as they claim that Krashenism is fact, whereas it is at best disputed if not discredited.
How is the five year old kid supposed to buy the product? The parents have to and they can freely decide to not to. If a relatively high number of parents do prefer if there are no sweets at the checkout, supermarkets are free to change there layouts and parents can decide to go to the markets that did so. This creates an incentive for all markets to do this, so they don’t lose customers. Why do we need regulations for what the free market and the free choice of the people can handle?
When I was a pupil, so called “bio” products came up. (I don’t know whether the GB uses a similar naming). In essence it is fruits and the like produced with no or almost no chemicals and other stuff bad for the environment, making the products more expensive, though. In the beginning, only a few specialized markets sold that stuff. Nowadays, every supermarket has this products, because the people are willing to pay more if there are benefits involved, including less environmental polition.
Btw.: In Germany the percentage of kids with overweight is constant since ~25 years. All the regulations have done no good, besides giving us more regulations. Those who write those are happy, as they kept their job. The average person has no gain at all.
Which is written on the package and can be clearly tasted. It’s not the job of the government to protect the people from their own dumbness. 
The above mentioned child obesity is much more common among badly educated person’s kids and the parents themselves. So as said earlier, educate the people! If you make them smarter, they don’t need a government to parent them.
Probably. Although it is unclear to me how you want to ensure a law of one country (Germany) on someone from another country (Canada), using a platform of a third country (USA).
Every statement that claims a scientific theory to be fact™ is first and foremost a statement, that the person making such one has no idea what science is. At least when it comes to empiric science, which includes linguistics and the like.
That beeing said, there is no law against telling nonsense or even lies. That’s free speech, at least here in Germany. Although I assume this is consensus in most european countries.
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Advertisers make use of something called pester power. Basically parents may give in to the child’s demands, either for a quiet life, or through ignorance of the dangers.
We call such food organic. It’s a slightly odd name.
As for regulations having no effect, the trend in Britain and America has been increasing obesity. How do you separate trends from the effect of regulations in Germany? Would obesity have soared in Germany without regulations?
And yet it is the job of the government to pay the health bills for the children and adults who develop type 2 diabetes and other diet related illnesses, and for society to suffer the consequences. You are correct, obesity is higher among the lower income groups. Overall 25% of British adults and 20% of British children are obese (as opposed to merely overweight). A significant proportion of people in higher income groups are obese, it being more marked in deprived groups.
The problem with taste is that people adapt, and no longer notice excess sugar and salt. But it makes products sell better. I find many products inedible due to the sugar. My systolic blood pressure was over 120, I halved the salt in my cooking, it dropped below 120, and soon adapted to the taste. My doctor wanted to prescribe statins, and made no mention of dietary changes.
You say the government should educate them, and yet it is not the job of the government to parent them. You appear to be in two minds!
When I was young we had TV adverts for road safety, and against drink driving. The latter were very successful. We have laws enforcing the wearing of helmets on motorbikes, and in France they enforce the wearing of gloves on motorbikes. And of course some drugs are banned. (Please please don’t discuss that subject.) We are not free to do as we wish.
From memory Britain does ban TV food adverts targeted at children before 9 pm.
And therein lies the problem. However, the EU is imposing its law on the internet, witness those cookie dialogs we have to click on. Britain being smaller has less power to impose its will on the internet without pushback from America i.e. Big Sugar ™ and Big Salt ™.
There are in fact laws against deceiving and misleading adverts, in both Europe and Britain. It isn’t uncommon that an advert gets banned because it makes a misleading claim about the underlying science. The question isn’t whether or not we should regulate advertising, rather it is to what degree we should regulate it.