A few months back, I posted that I had once again gotten to a point on the Vietnamese Duolingo course where I couldn't remember all the vocabulary, and I was (once again) going to delete all my progress and start over from the beginning.
This is multiple times now that I've gotten to a point where I felt that I couldn't remember all the vocabulary Duolingo was throwing at me, and felt that I had no choice but to start over and try to be more thorough about learning the vocabulary.
But no matter how thorough I try to be, no matter how much I try to be systematic about reviewing and consolidating old vocabulary, sooner or later I always seem to get to a point in the Duolingo course where my brain just can't remember it all.
At the same time, since we've returned to the United States, my daughter has started studying Spanish at school, and I've been helping her study by reviewing the numbers in Spanish and simple Spanish greetings.
Now, I never actually formally studied Spanish in school. I joined Spanish club in junior high school, but that was as far as I got. So I pretty much only know the numbers and the simple greetings. But what amazes me is that they've managed to stick in my head all these years, even though I haven't been using them during the past 20 plus years I've lived in Asia. (One seldom finds it necessary to use Spanish in Vietnam). And yet, I still remember them after all these years, but at the same time, I can't seem to remember the Vietnamese that I'm actually trying to study.
Why is that?
It occurs to me that the reason I remember my basic Spanish after all these years is for a couple reasons. First of all, we practiced it orally. (We began every session of Spanish club by reciting the greetings.) And secondly, I had a context in which I associated that language. I can still picture in my head the room where we had Spanish club, and where we recited those greetings.
By contrast, when I studied Vietnamese on Duolingo or quizlet, I was just typing words on a computer screen. No wonder very little of it was going into my long term memory.
The more I thought about it, the more this also seemed to be true of the other languages I have learned. I barely remember any of my high school Latin, but the bits that I do remember are mostly the Latin songs that we learned, and the Lord's Prayer in Latin, which we recited many times over in class. (I attended Christian schools.)
As for my Japanese, since leaving Japan 15 years ago, I've forgotten much of the Japanese that I once knew. But I still remember a lot of it. And in part, I remember a lot of it because I can still remember bits of conversations I had in Japanese. For example, I can remember a joke I made in Japanese that got a laugh at a party, or I can remember an important conversation I had with a Japanese friend that sticks in my mind, etc. And recalling those conversations helps me to remember Japanese vocabulary.
So, the lesson is obvious. Language in context is memorable. Practicing vocabulary on a computer screen is not memorable.
So, to that end, I've decided to supplement my language study on Duolingo by trying to memorize some clips of Vietnamese conversation that I can find on Youtube.
The idea is to listen to the videos every day (to get them really stuck into my head), while also using quizlet to practice both the individual vocabuarly from those videos, as well as the full sentences.
The first video I'm doing in this series--Basic Vietnamese Verbs--actually doesn't fit this criteria exactly, because it's not a conversation. However, I'm starting off with it for 3 reasons:
1) I started studying this video years ago, so I wanted to finish the job.
2) I thought it would be useful for me to learn all the basic Vietnamese verbs
3) The verbs are put into the context of sentences--so they are at least in some context.
For the subsequent videos I study on this project, I'll try to make sure that they are all conversations.
4 comments:
As always, many thanks for your help in my Vietnamese studies.
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