The Linguist Community Blog

Reviewing words is less fun but very important

Deliberate vocabulary study is worth the effort. It needs to be done efficiently.

I enjoy listening and reading. I am always keen to read on in the Russian content that I am learning. Sometimes I put aside or avoid the deliberate study of words in the Vocabulary section. Whenever I do force myself to sit down and study words I really am glad I did it. And I even enjoy it.

What I find useful are the following.

1) Do a Flash Card review of saved LingQs when you finish a content item. It is best to review these while they are still fresh.

2) Do a Flash Card or list review of the words in alphabetical order (A-Z) in the Vocabulary section. Since LingQ treats every form of the same or similar words as a different word, this gives you a chance to see these different forms, one after the other.

3) Look at your word list by Status. Pick a number of words that you already feel you know and move them up one Status level as a batch. (under more actions).

4) I sometimes vary it and review the words by Creation Date or by Importance.

The Vocabulary section needs to be improved and sped up. Yet even now, it is extremely useful to spend time there. Vocabulary growth is the key. I find that if I get a firmer grip on the words that I have already saved, I will be better at guessing at new words.

I find that I have to restrain my desire to read on, and make sure that I spend enough time on reviewing what I have already saved.

Keeping track

I hope you are able to follow the various interviews that I post here and on my other blog called The Linguist on Language. I usually post interviews with our learners here, like the most recent interviews with Thomas, and Hideko (a trilingual speaker from Japan). I usually create a link in the text using some of the words that describe the nature of the discussion. By clicking on the link you can hear the discussion. Sometimes it can take a little while for the sound file to open up.

I have just done a long interview with Ilya, one of our learners, on the subject of language learning. Since I had not posted a podcast on the other blog for a while, and because of the nature of our discussion, I decided to post it there. You may find it interesting so please visit the other blog to hear it.

Members' Chronicles - an explanation

I have decided to give the name "Members' chronicles" to the various writing samples that are posted here. Again I remind the readers that these "chronicles" represent the views and ideas of our members and have been edited by our corrector to be natural English.

I believe these articles are interesting in themselves, and can be effective reading material for lower intermediate and intermediate learners. I will be experimenting with recording some of these texts and would be interested in hearing back from learners or even teachers as to whether these texts are useful and interesting learning content.

There will be the odd mistakes that slips through. Note that the little numbers are merely an indication that something was changed from the original text. At present it is not possible to click on these numbers to see the correction. Nor, at present, is it possible to remove these little numbers.

Should we record some of these texts?

The previous post discusses our Community blog and how reading other learners' corrected writing can benefit all learners. In general the writing submissions here use less difficult vocabulary than regular authentic content. The sentence structure is often a little simpler. Yet the language represents normal English usage. Despite the best efforts of our correctors, there may be a few mistakes that slip through. But that can happen with writing done by native speakers. In general I believe these texts are excellent learning content, especially for beginner and intermediate learners.

Certainly the writing content is very interesting for all, including native speakers like me. It reflects the personal thoughts and experiences of people of different cultures and in different countries. In that sense it is authentic language, not artificial textbook language.

Would it be of interest to have these writing samples recorded by someone at The Linguist? I always feel that once a learner has invested time in reading something in a foreign language, and has reviewed the new words and phrases, it is helpful to hear the text a few times. I find, in my own experience of language learning, that listening to texts that I have studied helps me remember those new words and phrases.

I would be very interested to hear from the readers of this blog. Let me know if you feel it would be useful to hear these texts. We would then post the sound files on this blog and include the sound files and texts in our Linguist Library for the benefit of all our learners. Please let me know your views.

Using these texts

I am traveling and it is not easy to get access to the Internet and post new writing samples. I hope others will do so. If learners want to be Guest Authors on this blog, please let me know by email. steve@thelinguist.com.

The level of difficulty of these writing samples varies depending on the level of the learner. Some of the samples are particulary easy to understand, using simple and clear sentences with not many difficult words. It is always good to read content that seems simple, as long as the content is of interest. This increases your reading speed and confidence. So enjoy these writing samples. Ignore the odd error that might slip through our correctors.

You may want to import some of these items into your Linguist "Imported Content" area to save words and phrases. I look forward to hearing your comments.

Learner interviews

Thanks again to Sashi for his comments and enthusiastic support for our efforts here. We await comments from others. We can include a short discussion in the language of the learner or not. Let us know. The explanation of what we are up to will gradually not be necessary. Anyway, thanks for your input Sashi, and I look forward to hearing from others!

French demonstrations

As a great fan of France, I am very disappointed to see these violent demonstrations. I am an employer. When I hire someone it is with the hope that this person will stay with my company for a long time. Training a newcomer represents a major investment of time for everyone who has to deal with this person. If this person does not stay it is a waste of a lot of money.

It sometimes happens that it takes a year to find out that a new person does not suit a particular job, or that this job does not suit the person. I have never felt that I was obligated to keep someone even if they were not right for the job. What do these French students expect?

Money and profit are extremely useful devices to facilitate the evaluation and distribution of products and services. If we had to barter goods and services in order to acquire other goods and services, we would not enjoy the comforts and health standards we enjoy today.

There is an unfortunate tendency in all societies to denigrate commerce and people who are involved in commerce. Somehow scholars, soldiers, government officials, religous leaders, philosophers were virtuous and merchants and tradesmen were evil or not worthy of respect. Somehow money and profit are still seen as "dirty" even by those people who enjoy all the comforts and benefits that they can buy with money and which are created by companies and individuals pursuing profit and a decent income. Even teachers and social workers get paid, after all!

If we accept the usefulness of the money economy, we should accept to play by its rules. 

A list of new words

One of our learners offered the suggestion in a comment on this blog, that we should have a table or list of saved words with translations or meaning. Unfortunately we cannot offer this right now since we do not know which of several possible meanings for a given word is the one that the learner needs. For phrases we do not know which phrases the learner will choose. So we do not know the meaning.

All I can say that we appreciate this suggestion. It is one of many issues that we will solve in the new system in order to make that system even more effective than the present Linguist system. I cannot explain how we overcome these difficulties. I only ask that you stay with us and you will see.

A small problem

It is much more convenient for me to take the writing samples directly from our  "Writing" section rather than from each learner's account. The result is that the numbers for each changed phrase or word appear. Does this bother people?

We will always protect the identity of the writer of these texts. Please let me know if you have any objections.

Guest author in your language

I encourage learners to come on to this blog as a guest author and make comments in English or in your own language. If you are interested please let me know.