{"id":169,"date":"2009-07-27T18:27:00","date_gmt":"2009-07-27T23:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/?p=169"},"modified":"2013-02-17T23:53:35","modified_gmt":"2013-02-18T04:53:35","slug":"iversens-method-vocabulary-japanese-kanji-and-anki","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/?p=169","title":{"rendered":"Iversen’s Method, Vocabulary, Japanese, Kanji, and Anki"},"content":{"rendered":"

After seeing this post<\/a> by Vosmiura on the RtK forums, I’m going to try Iversen’s method of learning lists of vocabulary before entering them into Anki.<\/p>\n

I’m not usually obsessed with getting particularly high pass rates or having high long-term retention percentages (mine is already around 96%), but I have been noticing lately that there are certain words that just don’t seem to stick, no matter how often I see them, and it’s bugging the crap out of me.<\/p>\n

If you jump down a few posts later on, Vosmiura provides graphical evidence of how his retention rates improved in Anki over a 47-day period. It improved for short, medium, and long-term retention, so that’s not too shabby.<\/p>\n

The basic gist of Iversen’s method is simple. I’m paraphrasing from his post here<\/a>. (Scroll down about halfway down to the big post.)<\/p>\n

How to Make Word Lists Work<\/h3>\n

Take a list of 5-7 words in foreign language X you want to learn, which have corresponding meanings in your native language Y.<\/p>\n

Write the words in foreign language X in a column on a piece of paper in one color of ink. Then learn all of the meanings in your native language Y, and only <\/em>write them down in the next column when you know all of them and can write them without hesitation<\/em>.<\/p>\n

So if you go down your list of 5-7 words, and you keep missing one, don’t write down the translations for any <\/em>of them yet. If you have to struggle to remember one <\/em>word in your native language Y, don’t write anything <\/em>down yet. Keep going at it until you can. If you have to look stuff up, then look stuff up.<\/p>\n

Once you can remember everything, then write down all of the translations in your Y language in a different color ink.<\/p>\n

Now go and cover up the original words in the foreign language X column. Based only on the words you see in your Y language column, use the 3rd column to reconstruct the X column the same way you had to construct the Y column. That is, you can’t write anything down until you can write everything down correctly.<\/p>\n

So when you’re done, your sheet looks something like this:<\/p>\n

X language --> Y language --> X language<\/pre>\n
With one column for each.<\/p>\n
Now comes the tricky bit: applying it to Japanese, which has kana and kanji for a lot of words. If a word has no kanji, you’re fine. It’s just English and kana. Not a problem. But kanji will complicate matters, as they always do.<\/p>\n
Vosmiura’s approach is to break it down like this:<\/p>\n
Kanji --- Kana --- English<\/pre>\n
He covers the kana and English columns while looking at the kanji. That way he makes sure he has the meaning and the reading correct.<\/p>\n
He also varies the way he tests the list. If the list has words in the order a-b-c-d-e-f-g, he doesn’t always test in the order abcdefg. He often tests gfedcba, or acfedgb, or any other random order.<\/p>\n
I think it’s a good idea to avoid getting the cde words lost in the middle.<\/p>\n
Remember, we’re good at remembering firsts and lasts, but horrible at remembering stuff in the middle.<\/p>\n
I’m going to try messing with the order a little to fit my models better, and see how it works. It may work, it may fail spectacularly.<\/p>\n
So I’m going to try setting it up like this for now:<\/p>\n
Kana --- Kanji --- English --- Kana --- Kanji<\/pre>\n
That way, I get Iversen’s X-Y-X pattern, and I get my production needs met. Although in this case I guess it’s more of a X-X’-Y-X-X’ method.<\/p>\n
Monolingual types will probably froth at the mouth a bit, but I’m not a monolingual zealot. Whatever gets my error rate down is cool with me.<\/p>\n
I am becoming more and more “theory agnostic” and am just using whatever works best for me.<\/p>\n
Oh, and the mountains are still gorgeous.<\/p>\n
Links:<\/p>\n