I’m still figuring out the mechanics for my vocabulary project. Since I’ve seen Anki mentioned quite a few times in Confessions of a Language Addict, I thought I’d give it a try. So far so good. I’ve only put a few words and expressions in it since I only got it installed today. But I think I’ve got the program more or less figured out. So the plan is to put my vocabulary list into Anki, use some mnemonics to memorize the words and test myself using Anki.
Here are some of the words I learned today. The mnemonics ain’t the best, but hey, I’m not quite used to making them up yet.
- un carnet: a book (number of sheets)
- Imagine opening a book of tickets, and all of a sudden a car is born (né) out of it.
- les cabines: changing rooms
- Imagine going to the changing room only to find a cab crashing into it.
- Imagine going to the changing room only to find a cab crashing into it.
- le casque: helmet
- Imagine going to a funeral. You look inside the casket to say the last farewell, and you saw the deceased wearing a helmet.
4 responses so far ↓
Josh // January 24, 2008 at 5:50 pm |
I love Anki, but I’ve tried using mnemonics for vocabulary, and I’m not entirely sold on the idea. Certainly, they’re useful for nailing down words that, for whatever reason, you just can’t remember any other way. But if we’re talking about learning a huge amount of vocabulary – say, over 1,000 words – I think trying to come up with a mnemonic for each one is just more work than it’s worth.
But, that’s me.
olivz // January 25, 2008 at 8:25 am |
I think the key is to come with the mnemonics instantly. Since I’m just a newbie at this mnemonics game, I’m still not able to do that, and that slows down the process. So I’m practicing to see if I can ever get to that point. So far though I found that it’s really much easier to recall words/phrases if I have mnemonics for them. And I try to find interesting mnemonics since that’s kind of fun. I don’t use mnemonics for easy or rather obvious words, since that’d too much work, as you say. But I’m quite happy with Anki and my mnemonics so far. I’ve only got 83 facts in Anki, but I’ve pretty much learned them all after only 2-3 repetitions (5 is the magic word, I’ve heard).
Josh // January 26, 2008 at 5:55 am |
Yes, you’re right – being able to come up with them quickly is pretty important, and certainly makes using them easier.
Just to clarify (because from your response, I think I wasn’t very clear in my first comment), I think mnemonics are fine – just as long as the learner doesn’t take it to silly extremes, trying to come up with one for every word they learn. I’ve used them for many tricky German words that I’ve gotten stuck on. Once I came up with a mnemonic for them, they were stuck in my memory pretty well.
Florian Lavoux // February 28, 2008 at 10:26 am |
juste un petit commentairepour te dire que j’aprécie de te lire