Monthly Archives: February 2008

What, you forgot it? Good!

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When I wrote that current spaced repetition software all suck, I wasn’t saying that you shouldn’t use them or that the idea of spaced repetition itself sucks. To make an analogy, Linus Torvalds said subversion sucks in a talk about git and while I found his talk interesting I still continue to use subversion. It’s because his philosophy and needs for source control are different from mine. Just like Linus, I think that the current SRS can be so much better based on my needs and philosophy (the difference being he actually built the software while I’m just all talk).

I have a basic and simple philosophy that learning languages should be simple and enjoyable. Current SRS are all based on the idea of study and review. I don’t like “studying” because it sounds like work and flipping through cards is work to me (and boring work at that), especially when I have to make them myself. I’ve learned enough about myself to know that I could never stick with it. But hey, I’m just talking about me personally, so don’t let me discourage you from finding the techniques that work for you. In fact, I encourage you to try out various different methods of study to find what works best for you. I went through the same experience to learn enough about myself to know what works for me.

Personally, I think spaced repetition works naturally if you have reading material with words that are spaced out. I’m talking about graded readers that naturally introduce new words while reusing old ones. You can even throw all the vocab in an SRS as a bonus but the most important part that’s missing in current SRS is the material; you have to find it yourself. The simple reason is because software is made by programmers not writers. That’s why my idea of a great spaced repetition program is not one that flips through words but one that allows use to share and find material that interests us in the language and at the right level of difficulty. Flipping through words based on the material is simply a nice bonus.

I love the concept of spaced repetition and enjoy the effects every time I learn a new word without even realizing it. This may sound counterintuitive but forgetting a word really is the best way to learn it. If you forget a word it means that you’ve already learned it and spaced enough time to forget it again. It’s hard to explain without experiencing it yourself but the more times you think, “Oh I can’t believe I forgot this word again!” the faster you end up memorizing it. So you shouldn’t feel discouraged when you forget a word, you should be thinking, “Yes! I forgot it! This is really helping me to remember it for good.”

Lingq, a cool and promising flash card website

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I just wanted to write a quick post about Lingq, a website I just found about today. It’s so cool that I just had to write something about it right away. It’s a real world implementation of some of my ideas for a better flash card program. Instead of having to create your own index cards, the website has a thing called a store which is a library of content for the language you want to learn. You can create and share your own content by adding text and upload images/audio.

Flash cards are created by selecting text and clicking a little widget at the bottom of the screen. The flash cards show you a phrase with the word instead of just having the reading and definition like most flash card programs/websites.　You can add them if you want, however, as a hint.

This is pretty much exactly what I was talking about. Sharing content and creating flash cards that have meaningful content. Though it doesn’t work for Chinese, Japanese lookups work amazingly well. Now, all they have to add is user ratings to help filter out the most interesting content.

There are also additional features involving tutors and Skype that I haven’t tried out.

I encourage everybody reading this to try it out.

My only minor complaints are that the navigation is hard to get at first and the site seems a bit slow.

Also, my original idea had linking and giving proper credit to the original content. I guess these guys are not too worried about the ethical implications of uploading other peoples’ content directly to their website without providing any kind of credit. Especially since it looks like they are trying to make a buck.