PNW Linguaphile

Creating new sentences aloud, part two

From a list of sentences, substitute words to make new sentences

As I said in Part One, “Creating new sentences aloud is my main approach to learning languages as a beginner.” If a course already exists which helps me to do that (such as Michel Thomas), I’ll use it. If not, I need to create my own course in some way.

One way I sometimes do that is to take a long list of example sentences with audio (such as Glossika or Book2), learn some sentences by repeating a lot after the audio, deduce some grammatical rules from the sentences, and then substitute a word from one sentence into another to make a new sentence.

Here is an example from the old Glossika Indonesian course. This course is no longer for sale. Glossika now uses artificial intelligence (AI) to generate sentences for each individual learner. But I bought the old course and used it for a while. Of course, I could still use this approach with the new course or with a different source of sentences, such as Book2. Here are a few sentences from the old Glossika Indonesian course:

Lihat, temanku di sana. – Look, there’s my friend.
Ibunya di rumah. Dia di sekolah. – His mother’s at home. He’s at school.
Anak-anaknya di sekolah. – Her children are at school.
Saya seorang supir taksi. – I’m a taxi driver.
Adikku seorang suster. – My sister’s a nurse.

This doesn’t give much to go on, but after 50 sentences, I noticed patterns and started deducing the grammar. Actually, for the first 10 sentences, I had to look up each word and find out what it meant. After that, I was able to start figuring out which English word or phrase matches which Indonesian word or phrase. (Note that it’s not always a 1-to-1 relationship. For example, the Spanish word “hablo” means “I speak.” Here, two English words equal one Spanish word.)

For example, I realized that the English word “my” is expressed in Indonesian with the suffix “-ku” attached to the end of a noun. Likewise, “his” or “her” is the suffix “-nya.” In the sentences above:

temanku – my friend
adikku – my sister
ibunya – his mother
anak-anaknya – her children

From this knowledge, I can create new word combinations, such as “taksiku” (my taxi) or “taksinya” (his/her taxi). If “ibunya” is his mother, then “ibuku” should be my mother:

temannya – his/her friend
adiknya – his/her sister
ibuku – my mother
anak-anakku – my children

After each sentence study session, I stop the audio and try to recall as many sentences as I can from today’s session from memory. I then pick some sentences and start substituting words from other sentences to make new sentences. For example, I can make these sentences out of the first sentence just by borrowing words from other sentences:

Lihat, adikku di sana. – Look, there’s my sister.
Lihat, taksi di sana. – Look, there’s a taxi.
Lihat, sekolah di sana. – Look, there’s a school.

And from the second sentence:

Dia di rumah. – He’s at home.
Saya di rumah. – I’m at home.
Anak-anaknya di rumah. – Her children are at home.

I can coin new words such as “taksiku” (my taxi) and create even more new sentences:

Lihat, taksiku di sana. – Look, there’s my taxi.
Lihat, sekolahku di sana. – Look, there’s my school.

This method works best with languages that don’t have a complicated system of verb endings or case endings. It works well with Asian languages such as Indonesian and Mandarin Chinese, and might work well for someone learning English as a foreign language. Even so, it’s best to meet with a tutor after each 50-100 sentences to correct errors in your source of sentences or in your deductions about the grammar (as well as your pronunciation errors). My italki Indonesian tutor only made a couple of corrections when I read off Glossika’s first 50 sentences with their English translations.

I wouldn’t use this exact method to learn Arabic, Russian, or Turkish from scratch. I could, but I would make a lot more errors along the way and it would be more painful to correct them. However, after learning a lot of grammar, it could certainly be done. This is why Glossika was intended for high beginners, not total beginners.

The sentence-creating approach has weaknesses which you, the reader, are probably already thinking of. I’ll address one or two of them in my third and final installment.

(continues)

2018 Introductions

Lesser-known polyglots from around the world on YouTube

I like discovering lesser-known polyglots and aspiring polyglots (language learners) from around the world, and introducing them to the global polyglot community on Twitter. Here are the ones I introduced on Twitter in 2018. Let my efforts help in a small way to eliminate the stereotype that most polyglots are white, male, native English speakers.

Hyunjung Kim is a Korean woman who runs a clothing shop with her husband, and who speaks English, Japanese, and Mandarin Chinese. https://t.co/SdQD981mtH

Marlon Ramos is a teen polyglot in the Philippines. He speaks 18 languages at different levels of proficiency, but as yet almost nobody has heard of him. https://youtu.be/lWKtIg_6jX8

Shota is from Japan and speaks English, Italian, Spanish, and French. He teaches the Japanese language and culture on his channel, with an emphasis on the correct use and meaning of common words and expressions. https://youtu.be/LJZpb-DVOto

Shahidah Foster (Language Bae) is a black, American woman who speaks German, French, and Spanish and uses German in her career. She posts a lot of language tips, such as how to prepare for a job interview in a foreign language. https://youtu.be/BUlpx_uFhsI

I only started doing this late in the year, so I’ve only introduced four YouTubers so far.

Of course, I recommend all kinds of polyglots and aspiring polyglots on Twitter. This kind of introduction is just meant to overcome stereotypes and introduce YouTubers that you are less likely to encounter elsewhere. I hope to discover and introduce many more this year. If this interests you, feel free to follow me on Twitter. https://twitter.com/and_e_r

Social media

If you like my blog, follow me elsewhere.

If you wish to follow me on social media, here are the links to do so.

On Instagram, I post short videos of myself speaking other languages (just Japanese so far), post samples of my language notebooks, show you what books I read and study, and even post photos of my other favorite hobbies: orienteering and hiking. https://www.instagram.com/and_e_r/

On YouTube, I post a variety of videos that follow no pattern: speaking Russian, dabbling in Swahili, giving a tour of my bookshelf, and sharing my perspectives on language learning. In addition, I have links to other YouTube channels I follow and a playlist of other people’s tips about learning languages. https://www.youtube.com/user/akr2006

Twitter is where I’m most active: I introduce upcoming polyglots from around the world, announce new posts on my blog and social media, share other people’s blog articles, and even write an occasional pun. If you want to know what I’m up to in my languages, follow me on Twitter. https://twitter.com/and_e_r

On Facebook, the only language-related activity I do is to participate in polyglot groups. However, I do that less and less. I rarely accept new friends on Facebook, so I won’t post my Facebook link here.

If you like what you read on my blog and want to follow me on Instagram, YouTube, or Twitter, please click on the links above and then click the appropriate Follow button. Maybe I’ll follow you as well.

Creating new sentences aloud, part one

This approach saved my Japanese and Korean

Creating new sentences aloud is my main approach to learning languages as a beginner.

It prepares me for conversation (because when you speak, you’re always creating unique sentences–and if you can’t speak, it’s probably because you haven’t mastered that skill yet in the language you’re learning). It teaches me grammar without drills or exercises. It teaches me vocabulary with less memorization and less reliance on memory techniques such as mnemonics, memory palaces, or spaced repetition. It helps me to review and remember what my courses teach me, and makes the courses themselves less tedious and boring. It allows me to practice my languages anywhere, even in bed with the lights out or while taking walks. And it boosts my confidence and my motivation. For me, it makes learning more fun.

There are other polyglots that use this technique regularly: Jan van der Aa and Lucas Bighetti. They created a business that sells a course series called Boostcamp which follows this approach. I’m taking their German and Russian courses now. Their company is called Language Boost. I’ve heard of other language learners creating written sentences to practice new grammar, but I rarely hear of this technique being done with spoken sentences.

There are several ways I go about this. First, if a course of this sort has already been created, I’ll use it. The ones I know about so far are Michel Thomas, Language Transfer, and Boostcamp. (I don’t count Pimsleur and Paul Noble because they tend to review the same sentences over and over again. I need to create as many new sentences as I can in order for this method to work.) These three courses all teach one word or a very small grammar point at a time, and then give sentences in English for learners to translate into the target language. After pausing the recording and translating the sentence aloud, I resume the recording, hear the correct answer, and then repeat that. By the end of each hour of the course, I’ve created many new sentences in the target language and immediately had my errors corrected.

If a course doesn’t exist, one thing I often do is find a course that has a lot of example sentences or dialogs in audio recordings, such as Glossika, Book2, or an Audiolingual Method course. I generate new sentences based on the sentences in the audio. But my method in this case will require a little time to explain (I think), so I’ll save that explanation for the second part of this blog post.

Another option is to find a list of high frequency words that are often used in conversation and add some words I look up in a dictionary (because there are words which I use frequently but other people don’t, such as hobby jargon). Currently, I’m using the Vocabooster Indonesian course (also by Language Boost) which is a list of 500 words and expressions used frequently in conversation along with an example sentence for each and a casual language variant of the example sentence. I use whatever tools I can to help me with that list, such as Forvo (for pronunciation). If example sentences aren’t provided with the list, Tatoeba or Reverso Context are good tools to provide example sentences showing how those words are used in sentences–however, I haven’t used those websites much yet, though I feel that I should.

The last option is to create my own materials by skimming through a grammar reference book or textbook for grammatical constructions that I want to use in conversation, writing brief notes and/or example sentences in a pocket notebook, and then using the notebook to practice creating my own sentences while I go hiking or take walks (somewhere where not many people can see me). I often have a second notebook for vocabulary I want to learn, or I use a pocket-sized topical vocabulary book (such as the series by Barron’s).

The human mind seems to be inefficient when it comes to memorization. When we try to memorize grammar or vocabulary, we often end up with huge lists of words to review (even with the help of spaced repetition software) and then we still forget the words when we want to use them. I believe that using vocabulary is the best approach to remembering it–and the same goes for grammar. If we want to read well, we need to encounter the grammar and vocabulary a lot in our reading. If we want to speak well, we need to use the grammar and vocabulary a lot in our speaking (in context–that is, in sentences, monologs, or conversations). But as you can imagine, there are weaknesses to this approach, and those will be the topic of the third part of this blog article.

What I can say is that this approach saved my Japanese and Korean. I couldn’t find courses I liked for Korean. Even the courses I liked for other languages weren’t as good in Korean. With this approach, I created my own study materials and kept learning the language. As for Japanese, I had studied it for years but still had no ability to converse in it, and this approach prepared me for conversation by helping me to learn a lot of grammar so that I could express a wide variety of thoughts and ideas when I speak. You can see the results in my Instagram account ( https://www.instagram.com/and_e_r/ ). I achieved B1 conversational skill a year or two ago (but only practiced reading since then, so now I’m working my way back to conversational B1 and beyond).

(to be continued)

How I became an auditory learner

I hope my example will show you that it’s possible to train yourself to switch modes of learning.

Like most people, I started out preferring to learn languages primarily visually, from textbooks and the like. Audio input was also important, but it was meant to support the written textbook and certainly not to stand alone. As a result, I tended to know spelling better than pronunciation, and reading was a lot easier than listening.

Fortunately, one of the first foreign language courses I bought (after completing Spanish Now, Level 1, a self-study textbook with audio found in many US bookstores) was Just Listen ‘n Learn Spanish published by Passport Books. It was a textbook with 3 audio cassettes (yes, this was a long time ago), but the book was intended to support the audio rather than the other way around. The course (now way out of print) was centered around short dialogs between a couple of hosts and native speakers. If they weren’t speaking at native speed, they at least spoke fast enough to maintain their natural intonation and rhythm. To me, as a beginner, it felt like they were speaking native speed. I get the impression that the host or hostess would guide the conversation, but that they couldn’t control what the native speaker would say–except in the listening exercises at the end of each section, which were totally scripted and slowly-spoken. I loved that course. It was also my first introduction to a primarily input-based approach to language learning.

I also bought and started studying Practice and Improve Your French (also on cassettes with books to support them), which was even more listening-based than the Just Listen ‘n Learn series–but targeted to low-intermediate or high-beginner learners. The dialogs were scripted, but read by enthusiastic voice actors which made it entertaining.

I struggled a lot in Japan and South Korea because I still preferred to learn visually, and because I’m a reclusive introvert. Even though one of my goals for living in Japan was to master the language, I spent most of my spare time doing reading practice and never learned conversation until years after I returned to the US.

Then I started delivering pizzas and driving hour-long commutes to various IT temp jobs. This gave me a lot of potential study time in my car but little time in front of a desk (which was–and is–usually too messy to study at anyway). This situation forced me to change my study tactics.

I either had to use completely-audio materials (such as podcasts intended to teach a foreign language to beginners) or primarily-audio materials (Audiolingual Method courses, which included a textbook but which were intended primarily to be studied by audio). Over time, I discovered Pimsleur (which I studied for a long time but then got sick of) and then Michel Thomas (which I still love). More recently, I discovered Glossika (which I like) and Language Transfer (which I like even more). I’ve spent a lot of time listening to podcasts by Innovative Language (which I like) and Deutsche Welle (which I love).

When there is an accompanying textbook or PDF, I either listen to the audio first before reading the text (e.g. podcasts), or I read the textbook first and then put it away and use only the audio (as in the case with Audiolingual courses).

Over the past few years, I’ve grown accustomed to learning primarily via audio. I no longer study in my car (because of concerns of distracted driving, and also because of problems with my car stereo). However, I study more and more in bed with the lights out. I try to study every morning when I wake up, working on making it a habit. Less regularly, I often study either when I go to bed (listening to dialogs until I get sleepy) or when I wake up in the middle of the night (making it easier to get back to sleep).

If there are transcripts of the dialogs to read, I do so during my lunch break at work, and only after hearing the dialogs a few times.

All of this listening and speaking makes it much easier for me to speak the language. Good listening comprehension takes a very long time to learn even with a mostly-audio approach, but it still comes easier now than it did when I used a primarily visual approach to learning. Now I often discover myself talking to myself in this or that language, spontaneously and unintentionally. That didn’t happen when I learned from primarily visual materials.

Eventually I practice conversation with tutors via italki, but I’ve already written blog posts about that. Note that resources like italki and Skype didn’t exist when I started learning languages, and I only discovered them a few years ago.

I hope my example will show you that it’s possible to train yourself to switch modes of learning. If you want to master conversation and listening eventually, try to rely less on written resources for learning languages. Find a balance that works for you, but it might take you a long way out of your comfort zone and even be frustrating sometimes. That’s normal: It doesn’t mean you’re stuck forever in a visual mode of learning. It just means you need more practice with audio resources.

A verb drill method to die for

With practice, you’ll remember verb forms quickly.

One challenge many people have in learning to speak a language fluently is having to pause and remember the correct verb forms. Beginners following the “speak from day one” approach can avoid the problem temporarily by talking like Tarzan (as suggested by Benny Lewis). But most people (myself included) prefer to delay speaking practice–and, in any case, we would like to be good at grammar eventually so we can speak at a high proficiency. Furthermore, many people are in classroom settings and have to take tests which emphasize grammar.

There are many solutions: lots of writing practice (for example, a daily journal written in your target language), the sentence-forming-aloud method that I use (similar to Michel Thomas’ method), grammar exercises, Audiolingual drills (sometimes masked as communicative activities), sentence copying, memorizing by rote or with flashcards, and probably others that I’ve never heard of.

One that intrigues me is verb drills. French Today publishes audio verb drills for French that interest me. After I improve my French pronunciation, I’d like to buy them and give them a try–though I’m strong in French grammar already and probably don’t need them. But I’d like to duplicate the same approach in other languages. This gave me a dilemma: What can replace audio verb drills?

Dice came to the rescue. Many board games come with 6-sided dice. There are 6 forms in a typical verb table. Perfect!

For example, the Spanish verb “ser” (to be) in the present tense has these six forms (though not all forms are used in all Spanish-speaking countries): soy (I am), eres (you are–singular), él/ella es (he/she/it is), somos (we are), sois (you are–plural), son (they are). This is almost always the order you see them in tables (if all six forms are included): I, you–singular, he/she/it, we, you–plural, they. In Spanish, the “es” and “son” forms can also be used for “you are,” but that’s not true for most languages.

Do you see where I’m going with this? On a die (singular: die; plural: dice–like mouse and mice), the number 1 can represent I, 2 you–singular, 3 he/she/it, 4 we, 5 you–plural, 6–they. Try it out for yourself. If you don’t have a 6-sided die handy, you can use a dice app instead, or use Uno cards or something. Feel free to be creative.

Pick a language you’re studying that has these forms (Japanese doesn’t), then choose a tense you’re struggling with, and finally select a verb to practice. Look up its verb table online. For example, you can do a web search for Spanish verbs. Or, just to try out the method, use the example above: “ser” (to be) in Spanish. You might want to do the drill with just pronouns the first few times:

1 – I

2 – you–singular

3 – he/she/it

4 – we

5 – you–plural

6 – they

(I can even do this while I work. I roll a die a few times, go back to work, roll the die a few times a little while later, etc.)

See if your verbs get easier.

And if you have to memorize case tables (for a language like Russian or Ancient Greek), there are 8-sided, 10-sided, and 12-sided dice you can use. They are sold in board game/roll playing game stores and online–and are probably in dice apps, too.

This kind of drill is hard work mentally (which is why it can only be done for a few minutes at a time), but it might remind you of a game more than other kinds of grammar drills. And with practice, you’ll recall the verb forms quickly. Are you struggling with verbs in any of your languages? Give the method a try.

My goals with French

French has turned out to be a lifelong enterprise for me, which will probably never end until I die.

I recently heard Kerstin Cable, in an interview by Géraldine Lepère, talk about the importance of specific long-term language goals as well as a plan to reach them. A goal to get “fluent” is way too vague. French has turned out to be a lifelong enterprise for me, which I started when I was a teenager and will probably never end until I die. After listening to Kerstin, I thought about French and realized that I have quite a few specific goals which I would like to meet in my lifetime. In case anyone is interested, here they are. Writing them down like this will help me to think about my goals for each of my other languages. Reading about them might help you to think about your own goals for each language and make them clear in your mind.

First, I have several goals which I can group together. These are the ones I’ve been working on for the past several years. Essentially, when I graduated from the university (Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota, USA) with a Bachelor of Arts in French, my French skills were actually rather weak. My teacher said I was only “moderately fluent.” (I could probably converse at a B1 level.) I didn’t like to practice conversation because I didn’t like hearing myself speak French: my own pronunciation sounded ugly to my ears (and I wasn’t yet able to pronounce the French “R”). Another problem I had was that I didn’t have interesting things to read (such as graded readers or LingQ). That means my vocabulary was too small to read the news or French literature. These are things I feel in hindsight that I should have been able to do when I graduated. After that, I didn’t use French for over two decades, but I started it up again a few years ago and have been learning it ever since.

So, my first set of goals involves achieving skills I felt I should have had when I graduated. Over the last few years, I achieved two of them: I built up a strong vocabulary through reading novels and I built up my conversational skills to a high-intermediate (B2) level.

These give me the foundation for my next goal, which I’m working on now and which I’ve come close to achieving: comprehending (audio) news broadcasts. I’ve been using LingQ and Fiverr to help me. I pay someone on Fiverr to transcribe short news videos from YouTube and then I use LingQ to help me read the transcripts, after which I rewatch the videos. The videos are about Francophone African news, so the journalists have a variety of French accents. Now that I’ve been introduced to a few different accents, Standard French sounds a lot easier! And for the past two weeks, I’ve been listening to live news audio broadcasts. I understand a lot, but there’s a lot I still don’t understand. At this rate, I should be able to understand most of it soon.

My next goal will be to improve my pronunciation. For this, I purchased a Mimic Method course by Idahosa Ness, and I’ll also listen to YouTube videos about the differences between written French and spoken French. I’ve started learning German, and this has helped my French “R” tremendously, but I don’t pronounce it consistently yet. After that, I’ll start reading famous French literature, starting with Jules Verne and Molière. That will complete my first group of goals, after which I’ll have achieved what I had hoped to achieve when I finished college. To recap, those goals are: vocabulary, conversation, listening to the news, pronunciation, and reading French literature.

I have four more goals after I complete these goals. They’re more like wishes, but certainly achievable. I can meet them in any order, but the following order seems to go from the easiest to the most difficult.

(1.) I’ve been studying the French education system, and I’m impressed by it. The French study history and geography almost every year–from the beginning of elementary school through at least middle school. They also study a lot of math and science. Most students are required to study philosophy during their last year of high school. And all students in a general high school are required to select a study track: either languages and literature, or economics and social sciences, or physical sciences. And each year builds on intellectual skills learned the previous year. If a student is lazy or distracted one year, they will be at a disadvantage the following year. By graduation, French students in a general high school have achieved the broad liberal arts education that US students get in college. Some high school graduates are qualified for white collar or gray collar work, or so I’ve heard. I would love that kind of education! So, I bought some schoolbooks via Amazon France and plan to read them. I’ll probably choose the economics and social sciences track with a specialization in geography, if I can find all the schoolbooks I need.

(2.) One of my dreams is to use at least one foreign language in a career. My current, tentative plan is to become a multilingual tour guide when I reach retirement age. Therefore, my goal is to make YouTube videos where I talk in French about the local history around where I live. I can probably try to do it now, but I think it will be easier after I’ve read some history schoolbooks in French. Some science schoolbooks can help me, too, if I talk about local geology in those videos.

(3.) French is my most advanced foreign language. I’ve observed that the confidence I gain as I improve my French makes it easier to improve in my other languages. It’s like cutting a trail with my French that makes it easier for other languages to follow. French becomes a template for the other languages, like a prototype. Therefore, the more advanced I can get in French, the better. My goal, then, is to reach the C1 (low-advanced/moderately scholarly) proficiency level in French. Achieving all of the goals above might bring me up to C1 automatically. If not, I’ll be nearly there, I think.

(4.) Finally, another dream is to take university classes in another language. Since they’re expensive, MOOC’s (free, non-credit university courses) will suffice. They’ll help me to maintain my C1 level and they’ll be easier to complete if I achieve C1 first.

The goals I’m working on now will provide me a solid foundation for the final four goals. I’ve achieved two goals from the first set so far and I’m close to meeting the third. This makes me happy. I recommend you make long-term goals for each of your languages (or at least your most important language or two). Have you met any goals already? Are you close to meeting any others? Answering these questions can increase your confidence (maybe) and it will also give you clues about the skills you should work on now in order to meet your next goal.

Three chapters at a time

I study textbooks and readers in groups of three chapters.

I’ve studied textbooks and readers that range from 9 to 25 or more chapters long. Unfortunately, I often don’t finish them. If I’m on chapter 5 and have 20 more chapters to go, the end of the book can feel like it’s a long way off. And if I keep studying and reviewing the same chapter, I can quickly get bored and stop studying it altogether. There are several solutions to these problems. Here is mine.

Instead of studying one chapter until I know it well and then continuing to the next chapter, I study the book in groups of three chapters. I try to get through the first chapter relatively quickly and don’t care how well I remember the material, then quickly study the second and then the third. By the time I finish the third chapter, I’ve started forgetting the first and I start over. Each time through, I focus on something different: The first pass, I focus on vocabulary. This is when I use my paper flashcards, if needed. (I don’t need them for Spanish or German, but I need them for Japanese.) The second pass, grammar. The third pass, how well do I understand the reading passages without peeking at the glossary or grammar section of the textbook? Then, I move on to the next three chapters. I don’t do any grammar drills or exercises.

If the text includes listening material, I can study the audio for chapters 1-3 while I’m studying the book for chapters 4-6. In this way, I know the written material well before I start the audio. (I like to separate listening from reading. When I listen, I don’t read, and when I read, I don’t listen. I think this heightens my listening skill, forcing me to pay more attention. In conversation, after all, I don’t have any transcript to help me to understand what the other person is saying.) The delay in listening practice also prevents me from staying too long in the first three chapters. It can be done at different times and places using an MP3 player and headphones, like when I’m in bed with the lights out. When my car stereo worked properly, I used to listen while driving.

Three chapters is the number I settled on because if I wait until I’ve studied four or more chapters before I go back to the first, I’ve started to forget the vocabulary I’ve memorized. However, if you try this approach, you can experiment with different numbers of chapters to see what works well for you and what you want to focus on each time through.

My goal this year is to complete three intermediate Japanese textbooks, and this is exactly the approach I’m taking.

Why and how I use paper flashcards

For vocabulary to use in conversation, I primarily learn new words by using them in conversation

Some language learners rely heavily on memorization to acquire new vocabulary (such as Jan van der Aa and Olly Richards) while others don’t (such as Steve Kaufmann). I use flashcards, but not as my primary means for learning vocabulary.

For vocabulary to use in conversation, I primarily learn new words by using them in conversation or while thinking aloud (talking to myself). I combine two approaches: (1.) I prepare for conversation practice by selecting a topic well in advance, looking for useful words in topical vocabulary books (especially those by Andrey Taranov and Barron’s), writing questions and answers on the topic in my target language, talking to myself on the topic for practice while looking up words in a dictionary as I need them, and then practicing conversation with tutors on Skype. (See my blog post “How I use italki” for details.) (2.) During our conversation sessions, the tutors type new words and error corrections for me. When I invest the time to study those new words between sessions (and I’m not consistent about doing this), I can use them during the next session. If I use a word a few times in conversation, I tend to remember it after that.

For vocabulary in reading, I reread the same passages, read more novels by the same authors, or read more non-fiction on the same topic (such as several news articles on one topic). After I’ve read a word enough times, I eventually remember it for future reading. Sometimes I only have to read it a couple of times—sometimes many, many times—but it eventually becomes part of my known vocabulary.

How can I learn words even more effectively using these methods (reading and conversation)? And how do I handle the difficulty of 2000-3000 Chinese characters encountered while reading Japanese? By supplementing my learning with paper flashcards.

Since I learn words by using them (in reading or conversation), I don’t usually need to use mnemonics, Spaced Repetition Systems (such as Anki), memory palaces, the Goldlist Method, or other means. In fact, these approaches are too slow for my purposes. For example, Anki only reviews a word once a day, once every few days, or even once every few weeks. It won’t help me with the article or novel I’m reading now. I need something quicker. Also, with Anki, sometimes I skip a few days, and I eventually get tired of Anki and can’t bring myself to use it anymore. Both of these problems work against the SRS system of Anki.

Paper flashcards come to the rescue. I can study them several times a day if I want, easily add and remove cards, have few decks or a lot, combine decks when they get small, and feel a sense of accomplishment as each deck gets smaller. If I’m distracted away from that language for a few days and don’t review my cards, I don’t feel guilty or penalized. Also, making my own cards helps me to learn them, and writing them by hand helps me to learn them. From the moment I write a card, I begin to learn it.

I use half-size index cards or smaller. I either buy them at an office products store (or online–Oxford 10009 or similar, look it up) or I cut a regular index card into halves or thirds with scissors. They don’t need to be clean and neat because they’re only for my personal use. Remember, perfectionism is an enemy to language learners.

When I started learning my first language independently (Spanish, when I was 17 years old), I cut up envelopes into small rectangles to make flashcards. If you’re a poor student, look for junk mail envelopes and other junk paper from the recycle bin with blank areas that you can cut up to make flashcards. If you must use an app instead of paper, look for an app that will let you have control, rather than an app like Anki that gives you limited control (such as the option to review a deck a second time in one day), but which isn’t designed for quick memorization.

For my purposes, I actually memorize individual words out of context rather than memorizing sentences which contain the new words. If I used flashcards as my primary means of memorizing new words, I should definitely memorize whole sentences (or at least phrases)! I remember when I lived in South Korea and tried to learn Korean, after a while the Korean words started sounding alike and I couldn’t memorize them via flashcards anymore. Besides, the mind learns best in context. However, I already learn in context (through reading and conversation), so I don’t have to worry about that. I save time by memorizing individual words.

My plan is to dash through many cards quickly and immediately use them rather than trying to learn them via flashcards. In fact, if I don’t use them within 48 hours after I remove them from my decks, I forget them. But since I am using them (and not just memorizing random lists of words from a textbook), there’s no problem.

If I’m using the cards to help my reading (primarily to help me recognize new characters in Japanese which I encounter in my reading), I put the target language (Japanese) words on the blank side of the card and my native language (English) words on the lined side. The blank side is the front and the lined side is the back. I flip cards over from the bottom rather than left-to-right because that’s easier on the wrist. In other words, the words on the back are actually upside down. But after I flip the card, they’re right-side up again. The English side can be messy, with scribbled-out letters or extremely messy handwriting, but I try to make the Japanese side as clean and neat as I can. If I make a mistake while creating a card, I tear it in half and throw it on the floor or the desk, then later I put the pieces in the paper recycling box where the junk mail goes.

If I’m using the cards for speaking, the lined side (with the English) becomes the front of the card and the blank side (with the target language, for example Korean) becomes the back. I still flip the card up from the bottom rather than left-to-right to preserve my wrist. The difference is, in this case, I try to make both sides somewhat clean and neat (without cross-outs)–but not perfect. The front should be clean-looking because it’s the clue I use for memorization. If I crossed out a wrong letter, the smudge of ink could become a mental clue to help me remember the word, and I don’t want that. Meanwhile, if there are smudges on the Korean side, the word won’t fix itself into my memory as easily.

My cards are not there for completely learning words. They exist only to help me recognize them faster when I read or recall them faster when I speak. Therefore, as soon as a word seems easy to remember, I remove it from my deck. I either throw it into my recycling box or I put it in an index card storage box. The difference is, if I recycle it, I don’t plan to review it again ever but simply continue learning the word by using it. If I store it, I can review it again if I feel it’s necessary. For example, I stopped reading Japanese for a month, and when I returned to it, I had forgotten too many words. So I opened up the storage box and reviewed all those words, then put them back into storage.

How do I know if I remember a word well enough to remove it? If I review a list of words without the flashcards and I still remember them, I don’t need those cards anymore. If I use one while speaking, I don’t need it anymore. Or if I read it with comprehension, I don’t need it anymore. Finally, if I recall it quickly and easily while studying the cards, it can remove it (but I’d better use it within 48 hours!).

In Japan, they also use paper flashcards while learning languages. In fact, Japanese stores sell expensive, tiny, unlined flashcard decks on metal rings. I’ve also seen larger, lined card decks like small spiral notebooks where each card can optionally be removed via perforation. There are problems with this approach. First, if all of the cards are in a particular order, you can memorize them because of the order instead of the word on the front of the card. Second, it’s harder to remove cards when you’ve finished with them.

I shuffle the cards as I study them. I actually use my pant thighs (or two piles on a table) to sort them. When I study a word and don’t remember it or get it wrong, I move it to the back of my deck. When I remember a word easily, I remove it from the deck. But when I remember it with difficulty or had to study the same card two or more times before I could remember it, I put it on my lap. The first word I remember goes on my left thigh, the second on my right, the third on my left, etc. When I finish studying the deck, I combine the piles and put the rubber band on them. Then, the next time I study that deck, the cards are in a different order than last time. It helps if I have a few small decks rather than one large one. Otherwise, the piles on my thighs get too thick and fall on the floor. Small decks also mean less delay before I see a word again, if I fail to remember it.

In summary, I use flashcards to speed up my recognition or recall of words, not to learn words. Reading and conversation are my primary means of learning these same words. I only select words I want to use in conversation or words I encounter in my reading. Thus, it’s unusual for me to memorize a word and never use it. And when I get sick of flashcards for a few weeks, I can continue speaking and reading and learning words without guilt or penalty–other than the frustration of my recall being slower.

Templates and Innovation in Language Learning

Now I had a template (French) which I could use to eventually bring other languages up to B2.

Generally speaking, the first language you learn on your own (not from a class or teacher) is one of the hardest because you don’t know what works for you yet. You need to experiment until you find materials and methods that you can sustain and persevere through (and preferably enjoy, at least a little). You also need to learn how to adapt the way you learn as you become more advanced in the language: What you listen to and read at the intermediate level is different than what you listened to and read as a beginner. And you need to learn how to manage your motivation and habits through a roller coaster of emotions until you achieve the proficiency level you want. But once you’ve been through it, you can use your first foreign language as a template for languages you learn afterward.

In my case, I studied French and a little Spanish, Japanese, and Russian in high school and college. I was going to teach French, but then I changed my mind. I didn’t study French for over 20 years after that, but then I suddenly had a strong motivation to learn it. I had a Bachelor’s degree in French on my resume, but I had forgotten it and couldn’t use it. (Unfortunately, my teacher said I was only “moderately fluent” when I graduated: I could carry on basic conversations, but my vocabulary was still too small and I didn’t like to speak it because I thought my pronunciation was bad, especially the letter “r.”) My plan was not only to revive my French, but bring it up to a fairly high level, so that my resume could properly reflect my skills.

When I returned to French, I was surprised to learn that I still remembered most of the grammar, but only the most basic vocabulary. I had studied a half-dozen languages on my own during those two decades, but only achieved a high-beginner level in them (partly because I kept changing my mind about which languages to learn, partly because I only had books and audio courses to work with—no conversation partners, etc.). My plan was to use reading and listening to build up my vocabulary, which would have the extra benefit of reviewing grammar without effort. I focused on meaning, not form, this time around. I started with graded readers, then graded readers with audio, then LingQ, and finally novels for older children (starting with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and building up to novels for children by French authors).

Meanwhile, I discovered the online polyglot community and learned what other resources were available to me. I hired italki tutors for Skype conversation practice and took advice from Olly Richards about how to prepare for conversation. I quickly achieved B1 (low-intermediate) conversational proficiency–and eventually, after a lot of reading, B2 (high-intermediate).

Now I had a template (French) which I could use to eventually bring other languages up to B2. And once I reach C1 (low-advanced/academic-level) in French, it will serve as a template for bringing other languages up to C1.

My successful template for French was to work on form (grammar and pronunciation) first, then switch to meaning (reading, listening, and conversation practice). I used courses such as Michel Thomas to help me with the grammar. My goal as a beginner is not to make my grammar perfect, but to learn enough to express my ideas in conversation. Over the past two years, I brought my Spanish, Japanese, and (briefly) Russian up to B1–and Korean will likely reach B1 by the end of this year. Meanwhile, I’m slowly building my Japanese up to B2. Japanese is more difficult than French because of the complex writing system and different grammar, so it’s taking longer.

What if the template is hard to apply? Then I innovate. I use trial-and-error, but eventually I sometimes have to create my own materials and find my own way to make them work. This was the case with Korean. I tried a wide variety of beginner materials (Pimsleur, FSI, textbooks, etc.) but couldn’t find anything I enjoyed enough to continue studying for very long. In fact, courses that were relaxing and fun in other languages were stressful to me in Korean. Finally, I discarded them all.

Now I skim through textbooks and grammar reference books, looking for grammar which I’m likely to use frequently in conversation. I write grammatical constructions in notebooks and create my own sentences aloud in Korean. I skim through topical vocabulary books and create paper flashcards for words I think I’ll use frequently, then talk to myself in Korean. Meanwhile, I read just the dialogs in beginner textbooks and listen to the audio recordings of those dialogs over and over until I understand them easily. I prefer textbooks whose audio is recorded at native or near-native speed.

This innovation has been working well for me in Korean. And lo and behold: Korean has become a second template which I can use for other languages, especially languages that have few irregularities (few apparent exceptions to the grammatical rules or few additional rules which are needed to account for the variations in word endings). I’ve been using my Korean study methods for Japanese with a lot of success, and I think I can apply them to other Asian languages I might learn in the future.

Russian was a source of frustration for me because of its many irregularities, because of the need to match prepositions with cases, and because occasionally a different case is used than I expect. I studied 13 or 14 Michel Thomas CD’s, and these gave me the confidence first to talk to myself and then to practice conversation with tutors. But then the tutors corrected seemingly every other sentence. I tried out many italki tutors and got rid of half of them who corrected me the most or who were not good at conversation. I finally achieved B1 conversational proficiency but was completely demoralized and worn out in the end. Now I don’t know when I’ll ever have the strength to return to Russian, even though I love the way the language sounds. If I do resume it or learn a similar language, I’ll need to use trial-and-error or even innovate in order to master enough grammar so that I will be willing to continue conversation practice again. Then Russian will become a template for other languages with complex, irregular grammars.

Once I master kanji, I’ll be able to use Japanese (for learning kanji), Korean (for learning grammar), and French (for learning conversation) as templates for Mandarin Chinese, if I choose to learn it. (Yes, Mandarin does have grammar, it just doesn’t have word endings.)

If you’re working on your first foreign language but plan to learn more, take heart: You can use your current language as a template for future ones, making the next ones easier. If you’ve studied several languages but are now struggling with one that you find too difficult, try different materials and methods and then, if needed, innovate. There’s a lot of frustration in language learning (sometimes with the language, sometimes with the available resources, and sometimes with yourself), but a lot of fun along the way–particularly as you find yourself able to use it in more and more situations. Templates and innovation will allow you to learn a wider and wider variety of languages, if you choose to do so.