I’m curious to hear people’s thoughts on this video. Do you use memory techniques at all when studying languages or not?
Contents:
- Why I don’t use any memory techniques to learn languages.
- Knowing how the brain works will help you with your language learning.
- The importance of the right kind of repetition in your language studies.
- We need to provide the brain with novelty in order to learn.
He says that memory techniques are ineffective, but he doesn’t say much about what potential techniques one could use. So I’m open to the possibility that he simply doesn’t know some techniques that are very effective. Allow me to make a suggestion of a simple technique (I’m sure many people already use this) that I used to learn about 500 Spanish words in just one weekend: look at a Spanish word and use what it sounds like to create a memorable connection (that you also visualize).
ordenador = computer: This is just an ordinary computer, a very medicore ordenador.
arbol = tree: Our christmas ball hangs in an arbol.
casa = home: In this case, the casa goes to the children.
conejo = rabbit: My phone can’t make a connection because the conejo ate through the wires.
If you have managed to learn a couple of thousand words (and simple sentences) with this method in about a month, you can start with the next fase of language learning and you might have a huge advantage over someone who doesn’t know this technique. My personal problem with getting to the next phase (and the reason I stopped with the Spanish learning) was that I couldn’t find any books that were as easy and effective as for example Spanish for Dummies, but with new words and sentences. I think that the reason that there is no Spanish for Dummies part 2, 3 and so on is perhaps:
- The importance of the right kind of repetition in your language studies.
- We need to provide the brain with novelty in order to learn.
I think that his point is that repetition should not take the form of reading or translating the same vocabulary list over and over, but doing something different with the same vocabulary information like listening to the news. So the novelty factor makes the spaced repetition (even though he says he is not a fan it) possibly more effective.
I have the impression that some high level memory competitors basically just memorize numbers or whatever and try to go faster and faster. From the book Moonwalking with Einstein I get the impression that Joshua Foer “simply” tried to memorize as fast as possible and then he hits what he describes as the OK-level (paraphrasing: your brain thinks the level is good enough and makes not much effort to go beyond it). He did say something about analysing of how and when you fail when going beyond the OK-level speed, but I don’t recall any specifics of that analysis and how he was able (if at all) to go beyond that level.
It seems to me that the possible value of the novelty factor might suggest that you can get better if you do different things with your memory system like (note that I am aware that many forum members already do some of this):
Kaufmann is addressing an environment where memorization is used poorly. If you’ve ever played baseball, the distinction he’s making here is similar to the distinction between visually observing the ball as it comes toward you and actually being able to reach out and catch the ball. When he says you can’t memorize a language, he has in mind the experience where your understanding has outpaced your ability. There’s a big difference between memorizing 500 words and recognizing/understanding them on the page as you encounter them.
With that said, keeping the acquisition and memorization distinction in mind, it’s entirely possible to memorize things that aid acquisition instead of interfering with it. For instance, memorizing the first 500 words in such a way that seeing the word on the page prompts recall of a vivid visual depiction of the word’s meaning would enable the same kinds of learning experiences Kaufmann wants. Part of why he doesn’t use spaced repetition is that the kind of recall that results from most approaches isn’t very useful.
I don’t use memorization for language learning, but I think it could be done.
I don’t really understand what you mean. I assume that what you mean by memorizing 500 words is gaining the abiliity to translate words in 2 directions (from your first language to the new language and in the opposite direction). Perhaps you have a low standard for memorization so that taking 10 seconds to translate a word (perhaps because you have the meaning encoded in an mnemonic image) still qualifies as having memorised it. In that case:
memorizing < recognizing/understanding
It also seems possible to me that you mean the opposite in that recognizing/understanding a new language word is easier then translating the corresponding first language word to the new language.
I can still read a Spanish sentence like this …
Hace muy buen tiemp pero la piscina está sucia y la comida es desagradable.
… and translate it very easy in: The weather is nice but the swimming pool is dirty and the food is disgusting. Translating the English sentence in Spanish would be quite a disaster for me since I had among other things completely forgotten how to translate “dirty” in Spanish (But I do recognise the word “sucia” as “dirty”).
So then also possible:
memorizing > recognizing/understanding
For instance, memorizing the first 500 words in such a way that seeing the word on the page prompts recall of a vivid visual depiction of the word’s meaning would enable the same kinds of learning experiences Kaufmann wants.
The way you describe the encoding is not really how it works for me. Like in the example I presented in my above post:
conejo = rabbit: My phone can’t make a connection because the conejo ate through the wires.
Not only do I not visualize a rabbit eating a wire that causes the phone connection to break, I don’t even make a sentence (the sentence is just to make a point). I just acknowledge the connection between the Spanish word for rabbit (conejo) and the the English word “connection” and how the rabbit may cause a break in the connection. So in summary:
It is not unusual for me that when I have memorized a list of words in this way, that the meaning of a Spanish word comes to me faster then the mnemonic logic that I have come up with to memorize those words.
These are great points! I like your insight.
This has to do with the poor memorization environment Kaufmann has in mind. It’s very common for people to spend a lot of time on memorization and never make much actual progress in internalizing the language. Often, the memorization techniques they’re using pose obstacles rather than supporting learning.
I had a few possible approaches to memorizing 500 words in mind. Flashcards with the written words on either side can result in a situation where relatively quick recall (say, 2-5 seconds) is possible during review but then actually encountering the word in a context rich with meaning might not produce the desired recall. I think this has to do with the study environment “helping” the recall when studying.
To give contrasting examples, suppose I have a deck of flashcards with great photos on one side and the target word or phrase on the other. If I spent my time drilling recall until I recall the target word when looking at the picture, the result will be that I have memorized words but they have not become part of my language. It’s unlikely that seeing the word in a book would draw the photo to mind.
Practicing the opposite way, so that I’m recalling the photo from the target word would result in a situation closer to the one you then describe here:
This situation is pretty close to ideal, to my thinking. Memorization for language learning should optimize for time spent doing things other than memorization. It should facilitate experiences in the language, and those experiences will create much richer recall than using spaced repetition software. The great benefit of Kaufmann’s approach is that it lets him log hours upon hours with a target language as opposed to studying or memorizing that results in these dead ends. This produces rich experiences where learners are using a new language in a kind of miniature fluent situation.
I think this is part of what you’re “missing” when you refer to your difficulty reading. Kaufmann’s big emphasis is on reading far before your vocabulary and grammar are up for the task. It’s difficult or impossible to read at just the right level outside a heavily controlled environment with expensive materials.
The more practical alternative used by Kaufmann and others is to utilize two (2) modes of reading with copies of the text in a known language for quick reference: 1) intensive, focusing on understanding nearly everything; 2) extensive, focusing on understanding sentences in broad strokes but moving more quickly.
This is the hallmark of good memorization. I’m still learning about encoding, but I’m really looking forward to experimenting with it in language learning.
Assuming good enough grasp on the way grammars work, it might also be very useful to memorize some grammar tables. As long as they are dead memories only recallable in practice, they will be useful only in very deliberate situations. However, I intuitively reach for my formal knowledge of grammar on the fly when speaking or writing in my native language, suggesting that a formal knowledge of grammar is useful even if it doesn’t translate to actual usage just from having memorized it.
I think Kaufmann’s approach is an improvement over the status quo at least in the US, where myriad people try and fail to learn languages by memorizing as if they’re in math class, but we can certainly make use of memorization techniques that complements this sort of approach.
I’m using memory techniques to learn a language because I have to, or I will forget everything.
The problem that I have with Steve Kaufman is that he is an outlier, but refuses to see himself as one. Let me explain what I mean by this.
When I was young, I could remember a word after seeing it just once when this was connected to a situation. For example, I would watch a movie and there was an interesting line with the word revenge in it. From that moment, revenge would be in my vocab and connected to this line. Every movie I would rent had a title and that was immediately stored in my long term memory, I could even remember the front covers. Same with books I started to read in English and words I didn’t know, I would look them up, and they were stored in my longtime memory. Very easy to learn a language that way and I had no trouble like some of my other classmates. Even word lists without association that I had to learn in school would stick pretty easily after one day of reviewing them.
When I was 35 I wanted to learn Spanish and thought this would take me 6 months, and then I would be just getting better and better in the language by watching movies and reading. Well, my brain wasn’t the same anymore, and I couldn’t remember a word after just one go. This is what happens to most of us, we lose our hair need glasses and are a lot less flexible.
Does this happen to everybody, no, some will keep a full head of hair and perfect sight or can still remember a lot of information without effort. Some on the other hand never had this to start with and had to cram information in their heads by repetition.
For most of us, our brain will get less reliable when we get older, but not for everybody.
Steve is an outlier in that he can still remember words, structures, after seeing them a few times. The problem with him is that he doesn’t recognize that this is “talent”.
He thinks that his technique that exists out of reading and listening to interesting texts and that way you absorb the language naturally will work for the average person.
He gets frustrated when people challenge this in interviews, and they are just plain wrong. He is kind of a bully when people don’t agree with him. I remember an interview with a language instructor that had the experience that the older the student were, the longer it would take them to learn the language. It was not a pleasant interview for this poor man. The facts were just ignored by Steve and if they would use his program than it would be no problem no matter how old they would be.
For people that don’t have a natural talent to just absorb words like Steve does, mnemonics are very helpful. They can help you to memorize a language. Because at the end you need to be able to memorize a ton of words to understand it and to be able to speak it. Not according to him and I understand it because if I would be 16 years old typing this I would have the same experience as him and agree with him. You don’t have to memorize words, they just stick in your brain. Nowadays if I don’t put a lot of effort in learning a word and really memorize it I will forget it. Yes, reading and listening to interesting content is super important to learn a language. However, for most of us this kind of passive learning is an extra step that we use to reinforce the language, not how we can learn the language. All the programs that teach employees a language (FSI and Military schools etc… ) use memorization to learn a language because at the end that is what you need to do when you learn a language. Unless you are like Steve and my younger self.
@user_7e You are right to keep an open mind when it comes to techniques, nowadays there is so much more information on how to learn and I think the memory palace can do wonders for remembering data.
I mean sure, I’d agree with the statement that you can’t memorize a language. At the same time you can’t eat a car either, but we still have drive-thru restaurants. Of course I can order food from the inside of my car without having to get out. Obviously, I can memorize vocabulary or grammar tables. Now, is “vocabulary” the same as “language”? No, it’s not.
The problem I have with Steve Kaufmann though is that he is no more than a walking, talking informercial for LingQ. Take this video for example: https://youtu.be/dUath2jmHlo where he gives a 5 minute intro and then from 5:54 gives a tutorial on LingQ about how he does vocab review.
LingQ, by the way, is a software that he developed together with his son and it’ll appear in just about any video of his. It’s not very different from Ronald McDonald giving some soundbites for a couple of minute about whatever and then talking about the McDonald’s menu for the next 10 minutes.
You can also take this one https://youtu.be/EbUGHi_y960 and you’ll realize that it’s hard to argue with people that have their own definitions of terms and/or create their own terms on top of it. You can’t win that argument.
If you wanna talk about outcomes… I listened to one of his videos in different languages and if that’s the level you want to speak a language at, go ahead… take his advice, I’d advise against it. I mean, he considers B2 (A1-C2 scale) fluent already. But that’s just his self-assessment because he never paid the hundred bucks to get certified. For a reason probably, because he would fail the A2 exam already for all his grammar mistakes, even though he’s got a B2 vocabulary.
Simply translated into English:
“Do you see the lady over there?”
“Yes, I see she.”
…that is the level of mistakes he makes, but according to him people still understand what he’s talking about. On the other hand, he’s frustrated by the fact that people want to switch to English when he’s tried so hard to learn their language. Well Steve, maybe you should have gone for 3-5 languages instead of 20… but the reason they want to talk to you in English is because you’re making their ears bleed.
I more or less agree with these criticisms. I don’t think he’s the best expositor of the ideas I’m explicating from his videos above. Frustratingly, most of the people in this polyglot space are also trying to sell something.
I also think the people in his circles tend to be overzealous in arguing against memorization and the wider variety of techniques that work for people. Even if we grant the argument that the only way people learn a language is by understanding messages, individuals have varying needs in terms of what sorts of learning practices lead to spending enough time understanding messages. For anyone who isn’t a big reader, telling them the only way to learn is to read more is just going to get in their way.
This is a reasonable criticism. My reply is more about the grain of truth than his specific perspective. I definitely don’t want to be speaking for him or defending him in particular. I do think the methods he’s using are based on good theory, but that doesn’t mean he understands and presents that theory well.
I also agree with this. I’ve also had good luck using sentences rather than words, since remembering specific sentences that I can understand also means memorizing uses of particular words within the sentence. I didn’t keep that up, but I really liked it.
I don’t agree with Kaufmann that memorization is pointless. I just think that emphasizing understanding messages is important alongside memorization, and that there is an abundance of counterproductive memorization in popular language learning guides, tools, software, etc.
The pendulum swinging toward understanding messages is, in my view, a welcome change, but maybe it’s going to have to swing back again before we start to see methods developing that combine the insights of the competing “camps” in the space right now.
For an alternative to Kaufmann but based on similar principles, checkout Dreaming Spanish. It’s a youtube channel that’s just tons and tons of Spanish content that’s meant to be understood rather than memorized, and it wasn’t selling anything last I checked. The content is also meant to actually teach language rather than convince the viewer about a method, too. That might be a better example of this camp than Kaufmann.
Great, and now that I’ve watched three videos of his, I get them in my shorts feed. Anyways, if you have a minute to spare, this is his definition of fluency. Also, wait until the very end to hear the following gem…
…“it doesn’t exist, not one person in 1,000 is gonna achieve this.” Luckily, there’s some 8 billion people out there, so roughly 8 million will manage to do so. Top off my head, a person that can do this in three languages would be Diane Krueger… you might know her from National Treasure with Nicolas Cage, Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, or Troy with Brad Pitt…
In French
In English
in German
I wanna give her in 10/10 in all three, though knowing that she is German you can notice the tiniest things… especially, since for some reason in her movies the accent is a bit stronger. My guess is that the directors want her to schwarzenegger it just in case she slips in just one of the scenes, so better safe than sorry and add a line that her character lived in Germany when she was in high school or one of her parents was German, etc.
The reason I’m not going to say 9.9/10 is because when you compare her French, English, and German to Steve’s I’d have to give him 5 for French, 3 for German, and take off points for his Canadian. Anyway, guess one in a thousand can in more than just one foreign language.
This also has nothing to do with Steve coming from English where the grammar is a joke compared to French or German. These are concepts that can be learned, unless you choose not to (like he does). Case in point, here’s Jody Foster, who by the way, speaks her own French dub on DVDs…
In French (much better than Steve’s French)
Ultimately, you can be a YouTube polyglot trying to sell your software subscriptions all day long… if you can’t walk the walk and talk the talk… your opinion is of no value. Might as well be monolingual and make those statements… what’s the difference really.
He ventures into many languages, he puts in a lot of effort, he stumbles a lot, but just being able to speak the basics is impressive. I think he is very strong, don’t you think?
To this I say, around the age of 30 some people develop a holistic way of thinking or top down, or Broadview, while others remain bottom up. Some great professionals lose some of their skills at work just because their brain is adopting a top-down approach.
as far as this whole conversation. from a psychological perspective, from my studies, there’s no way not to learn a language without memorizing. Its just a matter of how you put it into memory. And that folks is all personal preference and adaptation.
He is describing in this video that he memorizes and use spaced repetition.
He say repetition is needed and flash cards are good.
But what is spaced repetition about:
Managing time.
You have only x minutes per day to learn something.
And you do not want to overlearn too much that you already know and understand.
Memorization is about making pictures of the things that is new for you and pictures / concepts that are known for you.
Connect this in a way that you have the new information later in your brain library.
But he denies that it is usefull.
Can it be that he does not understand what memorization and spaced repetition is?
So really not qualified to talk about half the things he’s talking about is what you want to tell me. I agree.
Is it though?
…or if you already speak French: ordinateur. No need to even bother with a mnemonic.
…arbre if you speak French. From Latin arbor.
Same word in Italian and Latin
Or coniglio if you speak Italian. Which would be your next logical choice to learn after French before either moving on to Spanish or circling around to Catalan.
But that’s A2 stuff. What you really should learn is that this Spanish rabbit can be used to mean what chatte means in French if you don’t mean it in the context of a female cat.
Dunno how much he benches but it doesn’t look like he lifts.
Definitely more than 200 kg, if he takes less I’m crazy
Lol