Something which I could never muster the energy to do before was to memorise music. I would learn to play a piece, but would have to look at the notes on the page before being able to play. This was a real handicap: If I was out and about with my flute and someone asked … Continue reading »
Chunking – Your New Best Friend
Chunking. Looks like the name of a Chinese kungfuist from Tekken IV, huh? But no. Chunking is the process of breaking up information into chunks. Essentially: unless you understand what they’re made up of, large pieces of information are hard to process and memorise. For example: I added the following Mandarin sentence to Anki: 電視螢幕因天線接收不良而模糊不清。 … Continue reading »
Adult Learner, Kiddie Textbooks
Although there aren’t actually any textbooks that teach Cantonese to Hong Kong students, there are a lot that teach Standard Chinese. A few months ago, I got 詞彙寶庫及寫作練習 for 小一, published by Pearson. Unlike TV shows or manga, it’s designed to teach you to improve your Chinese reading and writing skills – and of course, … Continue reading »
What should we memorise with SRSs?
Something which I noticed today, whilst watching TV, is that unless I put sentences which I find really interesting into an Anki deck, I won’t try to memorise them. This indicates a fundamental misassumption which I think perhaps a lot of SRSers may have: SRSs are for allowing you have on command the things you … Continue reading »
Context-Rich Learning #1
I have a hunch: something many L2 learners are deprived of is sufficient context for words that they learn. Schools (in the UK, at least) are very happy to: Give students lists of L1-L2 word pairs to learn. Give students grammar exercises devoid of real-life context. Present all information about L2 in English. Allow students … Continue reading »
SRS – A Comprehensive Review
A few months ago, I pretty much completely stopped adding stuff to my SRS. I’ve kept up reviewing everything I added, but that’s pretty much it. I can gratefully direct you to this post by Jeff for a good explanation of why. (Long story short: SRS is like performance-enhancing drugs. A game-changer in small doses; … Continue reading »
