Spaced Repetition and Knowledge Overload
I've been listening to Know Can Do by Ken Blanchard, Paul Meyer and Dick Ruhe. According to Blanchard and Co., while we read lots of books and attend lots of classes and seminars, we don't really get around to absorbing the content, never mind applying it. The problem is two-fold: On the one hand, we try to learn too much. On the other hand, we don't have an effective way even of learning much less. The answer is to "learn less more" rather than to "learn more less." The key to this is spaced repetition.
Now, those who frequent language blogs are familiar with spaced repetition systems, or SRSs. I personally use Anki, as do a lot of other language bloggers. This helps us with the first part of language learning - the spacing. But there's a second issue, as I mention in my title, and that's information overload. If you've got 10,000 items in your Anki deck, you may get to where you can recognize them all with time, but until then you've still got a lot of language you might not be able to apply on the spur of the moment.
The other day, I mentioned fussing with Speak in a Week Spanish. My first temptation was to skim through it quickly since I knew most of the material, while maybe doing something to study the words from the glossary that I didn't know ("las colgaduras" means "draperies"?). Then I decided to take it slow, doing one chapter a night and putting the glossary words into Anki for only one chapter at a time. While I'm working through the booklets more slowly, my memory for the vocabulary words is solidifying more quickly.
Once I've finished the book, I'll pass along anything else of use that I've found about broader learning strategies. For the moment, though, I would recommend avoiding a mistake I've made in the past of loading up your Anki decks faster than you can memorize them. You really can learn more if you can just be patient about learning less.
Now, those who frequent language blogs are familiar with spaced repetition systems, or SRSs. I personally use Anki, as do a lot of other language bloggers. This helps us with the first part of language learning - the spacing. But there's a second issue, as I mention in my title, and that's information overload. If you've got 10,000 items in your Anki deck, you may get to where you can recognize them all with time, but until then you've still got a lot of language you might not be able to apply on the spur of the moment.
The other day, I mentioned fussing with Speak in a Week Spanish. My first temptation was to skim through it quickly since I knew most of the material, while maybe doing something to study the words from the glossary that I didn't know ("las colgaduras" means "draperies"?). Then I decided to take it slow, doing one chapter a night and putting the glossary words into Anki for only one chapter at a time. While I'm working through the booklets more slowly, my memory for the vocabulary words is solidifying more quickly.
Once I've finished the book, I'll pass along anything else of use that I've found about broader learning strategies. For the moment, though, I would recommend avoiding a mistake I've made in the past of loading up your Anki decks faster than you can memorize them. You really can learn more if you can just be patient about learning less.
2 Comments:
Hi, interesting thread. I have been thinking about the same topic. Right now, Im using 10 minutes dialogs (lingq.com) for learning Mandarin and I really dont know when to move on to the next dialog. I read and listen to the text, add and review new words in Anki. I use about 10 hours. Maybe I should use 20 hours and solidify the content instead of continue to the next dialog. I dont know.
Frederik,
The key to spaced repetition is the spacing. Try spending less time on study but make a plan to review an old lesson every time you finish a new one. Then take a little time at the end of each week to review everything you've worked on that week. You'll find that coming back to something you haven't looked at for a day or two and reconstructing what you've learned as you try to remember it will give you a clearer understanding than trying to master something completely before moving on.
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