Category: Language learning

Learning a Language with Flashcards

By Simon

Today we have a guest post by Andrew Cohen.

Having been a reader of the Omniglot blog for quite some time now, I have seen a lot of discussion about the usefulness of flashcards for help learning a language – particularly as a tool for practicing vocabulary and verb conjugation. Spaced-repetition systems (SRSs) like Anki seem to have gained traction as the preferred vocabulary study method among the language-learning blogosphere.

Yet despite their popularity, SRSs have so far mostly remained limited to vocabulary memorization. I find it surprising that no SRS manager has yet attempted to develop a way for people to actually learn a language from scratch using audio flashcards. It’s as if language theorists are afraid of innovating too much in the flashcard realm, lest they be accused of advocating diminished human interaction.

That’s why I created Brainscape. We’re a web & mobile “smart flashcards” platform that has developed a fully flashcard-based language learning methodology called Intelligent Cumulative Exposure (ICE). (See our 30-page white paper (PDF) about the cognitive science behind ICE.) We basically took the often-overlooked body of research suggesting that adult language learners benefit most from practicing output, and we found a way for the learner to systematically practice output of full sentences.

Intelligent Cumulative Exposure is based on the following tenets:

(1) Use translation to solicit the learner to generate each foreign-language sentence in the form of a flashcard;
(2) Play a natural-sounding native recording of the full sentence on the back of the flashcard
(3) Introduce only one new concept (k + 1) per sentence, beginning at the most basic sentence possible;
(4) Provide grammatical annotation in the learner’s native language where appropriate; and
(5) Repeat previously seen sentence-generation exercises in a spaced repetition pattern driven by the learner’s own confidence levels.

We’ve spent the past two years carefully sequencing a curriculum that applies these principles on both the web and iPhone – and we are finally releasing the product today! Brainscape Spanish starts from the most basic Spanish concepts for novices, toward much more complex words, grammar, and phrases for the advanced user. The app is currently available to use for free on our website (for a limited time) and for $40 on the iTunes App Store. It contains over 6,000 flashcards and will continue to improve based on user feedback over the coming months.

Please check out the app for yourself – and tell us what you think! And thanks again to Simon for letting me share this new innovation here on the Omniglot.

क्या आप हिन्दी बोलते हैं?

By Simon

Last week I started learning Hindi – I was offered a free subscription to a Rocket Languages course in return for writing a review, which will appear here and on Omniglot once I’ve completed the course.

I thought that I should choose a language I hadn’t studied before, and of the languages they teach (Spanish, Korean, Japanese, Italian, Hindi, German, French, Mandarin Chinese, Arabic, ASL and English for Spanish speakers), the only ones I haven’t studied, or at least dabbled with, are Hindi and ASL. I chose Hindi because I thought it would be interesting to have a go at an Indo-Aryan language and to learn a new alphabet, and because I have a number of Hindi-speaking friends.

Rocket Langauge courses are online and audio-based courses with downloadable mp3s of the lessons, each of which is about 30 minutes long – I’m assuming they all follow the same format as the Hindi one. I’ve only done two lessons so far and have learnt some useful basic phrases in Hindi. Each lesson starts with a short conversation which is presented in spoken and written form (in the Devanagari and Latin alphabets), and the written material also includes new words and phrases not included in the conversation. The recordings feature an American narrator and two native speakers of Hindi (a man and a woman), and explain new words and phrases, go over things from the previous lesson, and give you alternative ways of saying things. You are also encouraged to try to make your own sentences.

When you have completed the lesson to your satisfaction, there’s a short written quiz, and also a review at the end of the recording. You can save words and phrases into a personal dictionary, and there are forums where you can discuss your studies and ask for clarification of anything that’s not clear.

I haven’t found any lessons on the Devanagari alphabet within the course yet, but there may be some. In the meantime, I’ve used the SOAS Hindi Script Tutor to help me learn how to write the letters and their sounds. I already recognise quite a few of them and know how the alphabet works.

In case you’re wondering, the title of this post means “Do you speak Hindi?” (kyā āp hindī bolte haiṅ?) – I can now answer this with, मैं थोडी सी हिन्दी बोलता हूँ (maiṁ thoḍī sī hindī boltā hūṁ), or “I speak a little Hindi”.

GC Life

By Simon

Screenshot from GC Life

A friend of mine in Hong Kong has set up a virtual world called GC Life which is designed as a place for people to learn and practise using their languages, and to explore and chat.

There are regular meet ups within GC Life for various language, including French, Mandarin, Cantonese, Hungarian, Italian and German, and other languages could be added if there is demand for them.

This could be a useful language learning tool, if you enjoy spending time in virtual worlds.

Have you used anything like this for language learning and/or for practising your languages?

上海闲话 (Shanghainese)

By Simon

According to an article I came across today, the local government in Shanghai is trying to preserve Shanghainese, the variety of Wu spoken in Shanghai. This involves recording people who speak ‘pure’ Shanghainese talking about local legends and traditions, etc. This is the third time such a project has been attempted, and they hope to find more speakers of ‘true’ Shanghainese this time – something they didn’t manage before.

Similar projects are underway in other parts of China, such as Jiangsu and Yunnan, to preserve other regionalects/languages. The plan is to compile a national database of regional languages and dialects.

This initiative marks a reversal of the government policy of the 1990s when there was a campaign to encourage people to speak Mandarin rather than Shanghainese in Shanghai. The use of Shanghainese was banned in schools and the number of Shanghainese programmes on the radio and TV fell dramatically. As a result, relatively few children speak Shanghainese and those who do don’t speak it very well, Mandarin became the main language for many people in Shanghai, and Shanghainese became stigmatised.

Recently the situation has changed somewhat with the publication of a Shanghainese dictionary, a regular and popular newpaper column, and music and stand-up comedy in Shanghainese [source].

Do you speak Shanghainese or are you studying it?

Language teaching in schools

By Simon

According to an article I found today, the majority of business managers in the Czech Republic who were surveyed by Czech Position think that at least two foreign languages (English plus one or more others) should be compulsory in Czech schools.

This came in reaction to a proposal from the National Economic Council (NERV) that the only compulsory language in schools should be English, as Czechs who speak English can manage without other languages and would do better to concentrate on such subjects as as law, finance or IT. Currently English plus German, Spanish or French are compulsory in schools and the Education Minister supports the NERV proposal. Many managers in large companies do not agree however, and think that knowledge of a foreign language or two in addition to English is necessary, especially as more than half of the Czech Republic’s foreign trade is with German-speaking countries.

Not all of those surveyed were in favour of the study of more than one foreign language (English) in schools. One comment, for example, was that “for butchers, joiners or chimney sweeps, I consider teaching foreign languages on top of the rudiments of English to be a waste of money”, and another comment was that “not every child is talented enough to manage two or more languages as part of compulsory education.”

This makes interesting reading from the UK, where the study of one foreign language is compulsory only up to the age of 14, and it’s relatively few pupils continue their language studies after that.

Speaking in Tongues

By Simon

The other day I heard about an interesting-sounding film called Speaking in Tongues, which tackles issues surrounding bilingual education in the USA, and follows four American children who are being educated in immersion programs in San Francisco. Two of children are in immersion programs to retain their native languages while learning English, and the other two are learning other languages through the programs. It demonstrates the practical benefits of being bilingual and dispels some of the myths. In part it is a reaction to the ‘English only’ movements that have sprung up in many parts of the USA.

There’s also a blog which discusses the film and the issues it addresses.

Have any of you seen it?

Audio books

By Simon

At the moment I’m reading the novel Le Grand Meaulnes by Alain Fournier, and have been wondering how to pronounce Meaulnes, which is the name of one of the characters. I guessed it was something like /meyln/ or /meylnə/, and have now discovered that it’s pronounced more like /mœln/. I’ve also found a free audio book version of the story on the Internet Archive.

When reading texts in foreign languages I usually read them aloud to practise speaking those languages. Listening to recordings of texts as I’m reading, and repeating what I’m hearing, helps me improve my pronunciation and intonation, as well as my listening comprehension. I find this a useful way to improve my knowledge of languages, and also to enjoy stories and learn new things from factual texts.

The Audio Archive or that site contains thousands of audio books, podcasts and other recordings. Most are in English, but there quite a few in other languages, including Arabic, French, German and Spanish. A related resource is Audiocite.net, which contains numerous audio books and other recordings in French.

Grok

By Simon

Grok [ˈɡɹɒk] / [ɡɹ̩kʰ] is a word I came across today in an email, and though I’ve encountered it before, I wasn’t sure what it meant. I thought it had something to do with programming as I’d only seen and heard it used in that context.

According to the Oxford Dictionaries online, grok is a verb meaning:

  1. to understand (something) intuitively or by empathy
  2. to establish a rapport

The Wiktionary definition of grok is as follows:

to grok (verb, transitive, slang)

  1. To have an intuitive understanding of; to know (something) without having to think (such as knowing the number of objects in a collection without needing to count them)
  2. To fully and completely understand something in all its details and intricacies.

The American author Robert A. Heinlein originally coined the word grok and used it in his 1961 novel Stranger in a Strange Land, in which it was a Martian word with a variety of meanings such as “water”, “to drink”, “life”, or “to live”, and also had a figurative meaning that is hard for Earth people to grasp [source].

When learning languages I aim to absorb them, to know as much about them as possible, and to speak them without having to think too much, or in other words to grok them. I’m not a big fan of this word, but it fits what I’m trying to do with languages.

Are there words with similar meanings in other languages?

Remembering words

By Simon

When learning a language one challenge is to memorise the vocabulary, and to be able to use it when you need it. I’ve tried a number methods to do this: repetition, flash cards, SRS, associations and so on. A method for learning individual words that works quite well for me involves making associations between the sounds of the new words and familiar words, especially if I build mental pictures to illustrate the words and their meanings. For example, a Welsh word for field is maes, which sounds like mice, so I picture a field full of mice.

Another way to remember things that I came across the other day involves giving inanimate objects character and life. The example I found discusses using this method to remember where your keys are:

[…] imbue your keys with character and life: this is my preferred gambit. Think of your keys as a living, breathing creature, and you’ll automatically know where they are.

Our brains like living things, it seems, they have more time for them.

Specifically, I deliberately experience my keys as a needy brood of motherless koala-bears on a hoop. When I drop them somewhere, my mind quickly wonders if they’re warm and comfortable, away from predators, in need of some amusing noises from their owner.

The location they’re in thus immediately gains my interest and attention, so I remember it automatically.

After reading this I started wondering whether you could do the same for words – endowing words for inanimate objects and abstract concepts with life and character might make them more memorable. You could also give masculine or feminine characteristics to nouns as appropriate. For verbs maybe you could picture conjugations as accessories – hats, scarves, gloves, bags, etc.

Snídanĕ - Czech word for breakfast

I haven’t actually tried this yet, but will give it a go and let you know if it helps.

The image on the right is a possible way to remember the Czech word for breakfast (snídanĕ) with the breve over the e filled with breakfast cereal and milk.

Have you tried this memory trick, or similar ones?

Benefits of being bilingual

By Simon

According to a study at the University of Haifa in Israel, children who grow up bilingually are able to learn a third language more easily than monolingual children.

The study compared children who speak Russian and Hebrew with those who speak only Hebrew, and who are all learning English at school. It found that the bilingual children not only find it easy to learn English, but also that doing so raises their IQs, and that they speak Hebrew better than the Hebrew monolinguals.

The researchers believe that learning several languages at a young age bolsters one’s language skills, and as skill in language is an important cognitive function, this makes learning easier in general.

When researching the phenomenon of language decline and death for my dissertation, I found that one common reason why languages decline is because many people believe that it’s better for their children to speak a mainstream language rather than a minority language, and that trying to speak both languages is likely to overwhelm their poor little brains and result in them speaking neither language very well. This research suggests that such beliefs are mistaken.