Hi there, Steve here in Palm Springs. Um, I decided to try filming
outside because I had some negative comments about the redness of
my eyes using the lights inside. Um, I'm going to talk about spaced
repetition systems, which are very popular amongst language learners. I'm going to give you my perspective
on them and why I don't use them a lot. Um, down here in Palm Springs,
we've been here for about 12 days. Enjoying it. It's very warm. It's sunny. We're having renovations done on
our house in Vancouver, which is a good reason to be down here. Also, we were able to get our
second, uh, vaccine dose, the Pfizer, and we appreciate that. And a minor excitement like a bat flew
in the house a couple of nights ago. And, uh, we closed it into one
room and the next morning phoned the wildlife, uh, who came within
40 minutes and took it away, very impressed with the level of service. Um, now spaced repetition. Now remember that to me, and I think
this is sort of beyond dispute, the most important elements in
language learning are your attitude. In other words, are you enjoying it? And second of all, are
you putting in the time? Those are the overwhelming issues. So, obviously, if you enjoy
doing spaced repetition systems, then you should do them. Um, even if they are a less efficient
way of spending your time than something else, if it increases the amount of
time you spend with the language, then they are good things to do. Spaced repetition systems, uh,
represented by well-known names, especially for language learning, like
Anki A N K I and Memrise, and others are widely used by language learners. The idea is that there is an
ideal sort of spacing between when you first encounter a new bit of
information to learn like a word and when you should next meet that
and then next and next and next again. And so typically in spaced repetition
systems, there are flashcards. And you schedule these new words or
phrases to appear at a certain interval, which the app will schedule for you
in a way that optimizes your ability to retain these bits of information. Uh, so there's nothing
wrong with doing that. So why am I not a fan? And I should point out too, that at
LingQ, we also use spaced repetition systems and we have flashcards. But to me, the use of flashcards,
spaced repetition systems, et cetera, is the advantage of it is that it's
a randomized way to expose you to the language a different way than
let's say, reading or listening. So it's another way to get at
the same bits of information. Uh, I am not persuaded that the sort of
optimized algorithm achieves a great deal. Um, because you know, it's not like you're
learning objective facts of history, which there might be 5,000 that you may need
to learn or 1000 or some such number. When we're dealing with words, we're
dealing with a situation where the frequency with which these words appear
in texts declines very, very rapidly, so that the most frequent 500 words, you're
going to see them so often that you almost need and worry about learning them. But that's when the spaced repetition
system is going to be the most effective. And I certainly used space repetition
for learning Chinese characters, because I decided that the first
thousand characters, which would be very important for me to build
up my vocabulary beyond tha,. That I would use this sort of
concentrated way of getting at them and each one with all of the different
strokes and stuff like that, I felt it would be a useful thing to do. Also when I was doing Chinese, I had
six, seven, eight, 10 hours a day. However much time I wanted to
spend it was my full-time job. So I would still have three hours of
one-on-one lessons with my teacher. I would still be reading a lot. I would be listening a lot. And I would put in an hour or so
a day with these thousand highest frequency characters using sort of a
self-designed space repetition system. However, since that time I have
never used space repetition systems. Whenever I find myself going through
a long list and remember that in the languages that I have learned at LingQ,
the number of sort of words that I have saved, LingQs that I have created
the numbers in the tens of thousands. Okay. Uh, in a way, the way I create
flashcards at LingQ, every time I save a word at LingQ, I have
created a fresh card, flashcard. Every time I save a phrase, I've created
a flash card and I do review these when I turn the page, when I have just read a
page and there's a bunch of words there that either I just saved or I've saved
previously and they've shown up again and to kind of refresh them a little bit. They hit me again with them. I'll review them as I turn the page, but I
will not sit down for a list of, you know, 5,000, 10,000 words that I have saved. In other words, flashcards that
I have remembered or in Anki terms, a deck that I have created
simply by reading and listening on LingQ, saving words and phrases. I've got a deck, I've got lots of them. Um, I can even, uh, on LingQ if I tag
them, you know, I can tag them for verbs. I can tag them for tagging
them for other parts of speech. I can, uh, I can look at only
the ones that, uh, I just met or the ones that I almost know. And. And I've experimented with all of
these different ways of, of going through these words in some kind
of a concentrated learning session. And I always find that I lose interest. So I do it sporadically, but obviously
if you're doing it sporadically, you're defeating the purpose of the
spaced repetition system, because the spaced repetition system assumes
that there's a certain regularity. Okay. Now, because of the way in which
frequency, declines so quickly the first 500, the first thousand fine. You can see them again in
your spaced repetition review. You'll probably also come across
them in some form of spaced repetition, just through the natural
process of listening and reading. But after that, the frequency
declines so quickly that so many of the words that you need to learn,
they're only going to show up I don't know, twice in a book,
some of them, and yet you still don't need to know them. So even if you learn them through
some kind of spaced repetition, you're likely to forget them again. And to try to maintain all 20,000
of them in some kind of a deck that you're constantly reviewing would start
to monopolize all your study time. So I just, but I repeat what I
said at the beginning, people who enjoy doing that should do it. I don't ever, when I'm doing flashcards
and I do them from time to time, as I say, when I'm turning the page, I never treat
them as a sort of a test of my memory. I've tried to remember. I just treat them as exposures. In fact, I'll put everything
on the face of the flashcard. I just flipped through
them as quickly as I can. One thing that's good about our flashcards
or activities at LingQ is that we have a variety of different activities
that come at you in a randomized way. So again, by randomizing
the nature of the activity, in other words, it's either a flashcard
or a reverse flashcard or dictation or cloze test or multiple choice. So that makes it a little more
interesting, but I always come away if I ever do sit down for 30
minutes and just to go through a deck of say words and phrases, I
really wonder if I achieved anything. And of course, if I don't do it
regularly, I won't have achieved anything. But the idea of spending half an
hour a day when I only have an hour to spend on language learning to
spend that time on flashcards is not something that I'm prepared to do. The biggest part of my learning
time is simply listening. There is another issue with flashcards
and I'm not a neuroscientist, but Manfred Spitzer, whom I often
quote, he is a neuroscientist. And he says that the brain
has trouble learning details. We forget details there in
our hippocampus, we lose them. We forget them. What The brain is best at doing
is creating patterns, recognizing patterns, creating links, and
that way, becoming familiar with everything that we encounter in life. That's what the brain does. It, it, it enables us to deal with
situations by creating patterns so that we start to recognize what's about to happen. And that's how we become
familiar with a language. And my impression is that if I can
listen and read to content of interest without worrying too much about what
I forget and what I remember gradually over time, my brain is going to become
familiar with the language and that that is a more effective and in my case, more
enjoyable way of learning than trying to go through these stacks of flashcards. Um, so, uh, and, uh, you know, a big
problem, I think in, in, in Anki for many people is even creating these
decks, uh, at least a LingQ, uh, this job has done for you because when
you're reading and saving words, you're adding, uh, items, words, or phrases to
the deck that you're going to review. But I still think that once you're,
uh, you know, the number of words that you have saved, the LingQs that you
have created starts to get over 10,000, um, I don't know how you can
continue doing justice to the principles of these, uh, you know,
the algorithms of spaced repetition. Uh, and at the same time, find time
to do the listening and reading and speaking that you also need to do. And, um, so there you have it. Uh, I use, uh, you know, uh, at
LingQ I arbitrarily decide that a certain word is no longer status one. It's now status two. I know it a little better status three. I know it even better. It's that as far as I know it, then I
move it back again because where is it? I thought I really knew all of
a sudden, I don't know them. It always bounces back and forth. Uh, that's how I study, but I want
to stress again, that the two key elements to success in the language
learning are one, keeping a positive attitude and enjoying what you're doing. And second of all, you know,
finding the time to do it. And so if you are a devotee of
spaced repetition, you enjoy doing it, that's what you find the time
to do by all means keep doing it. I'm not suggesting people should stop. I'm just explaining why I'm
not a big fan or a big user. There you have it. And here are a couple of videos
that you might find relevant to this whole issue of remembering and
words and how we learn languages. Bye for now.
