Learn a Language by Taking Advantage of “Hidden Moments”
April 15th, 2007 by MarkSince regaining my motivation to learn languages a couple of weeks ago, I’ve been trying out some of the methods from Barry Farber’s text, How to Learn any Language.
study stuff Hosted on ZooomrThere are several components in Farber’s system, but the one that has helped me the most is the use of what he calls “hidden moments”. The idea is nothing new, but I’ve found it incredibly effective. The premise is simple. Forget all of those over hyped language programs claiming that you can learn a language in 20 minutes a day. It’s just not that simple. Learning a language is a gigantic undertaking and it takes time. The trick, is to free up time you didn’t know you had.
Flashcards
I’ve used flashcards many times, for more than one language, and I’ve always had mixed feelings towards them. One one hand, they work. If I had to memorize 30 Chinese characters for a test in 30 minutes, flashcards are definitely the way I’d go. They also served me very well when I did an intensive first year Japanese class over a summer in college. On the other hand, flashcards are about the most boring, decontextualized vocabulary-learning method I can think of. Relying on them over the long run has always been demotivating for me.
The solution is to use flashcards only during the times that you’d be bored anyway. Buy a set of flashcards on a ring, and make sure it’s small enough that you can carry it all the time. Then, rather than using them during a block of time you could be using for something else, use them during all of those brief moments when you have nothing else to do. It used to be that every time I took the subway anywhere, I’d sit down and basically just zone out for five minutes. Now I spend that time to review 30 words on my flashcards. Similarly, when I’m waiting in line at the grocery store, that’s another chance to review several cards. If I call a friend on the phone, I usually have time to scan over three or four words while I’m waiting for him or her to pick up the phone.
All throughout the day, there are bits and pieces of time that are perfect for flashcard review. Sure, flipping through flashcards is boring compared to other things I could do at home, but it’s not boring compared to doing nothing while sitting on a subway! In fact, during times that I’d otherwise have nothing to do, looking at my flashcards is fun.
MP3 recordings
Obviously, if one wants to get good at speaking a language, rather than just writing it, listening is an important component to any language study course. For beginners and intermediate level students, target language media isn’t that comprehensible, but there are a number of learner resources available. Most modern textbooks are accompanied by CDs, and there are numerous podcasts and other recordings to download, as long as the target language isn’t too obscure.
I’ve had the opposite problems with listening to recordings as I’ve had with flashcards. As long as I can understand them, they’re fairly interesting, but I just don’t learn that many new words. For the most part, they’re a re-enforcement tool. There are other ways to build up my core language proficiency faster, such as working through a textbook or finding opportunities for a two-way conversation. It’s always felt like a waste.
Fortunately, the prudent use of “hidden moments” solves these problems as well. I recently bought a very cheap MP3 player (about $25US), and I carry it with me all the time. I downloaded 50 Chinese Pod lessons, and 50 Japanese Pod 101 lessons. Whenever there’s nothing better to be doing, I listen to them. In general, I put the flashcards at a higher level of priority than the MP3 recordings. If I’m in a situation when I can look at the flashcards, I do. But when my eyes are occupied, such as while I’m walking to work, I listen to the MP3s. This way, I get the benefits of more listening practice, and it’s all without having to sacrifice any time I could use on more productive activities.
Authentic reading materials
Authentic reading materials are hard. Especially if you’re studying a language such as Chinese or Japanese, it takes a long, long time before authentic materials can be read with ease. Until that time, your choice in extensive reading materials will be limited to graded readers designed for language learners. Unfortunately, Chinese learners don’t have anything even remotely like the selection that exists for English learners. That leaves a more intensive approach.
Reading material that’s too hard is frustrating. However, by supporting it with the above flashcard method, it becomes much more palatable, and even motivational. For this exercise, I bought a copy of the Guoyu Ribao. I’m not a big fan of the contents of the paper, since it’s always crammed full of articles about various new regulations the Ministry of education is implementing, but there are a few interesting stories. More importantly, zhuyin is printed next to every single Chinese character. That makes looking them up a breeze compared to the nightmare it would be to look up every character I didn’t know by radical and stroke number.
Putting it all together
After buying a paper, I take it home and try to read an article. Anytime I see a word that I don’t know I highlight it. If I think I know what it means but I’m not completely sure, I still highlight it. Then after reading a paragraph or two, I quickly look up the words and make flash cards. I write the first word at the top of the card, flip it end over end (the long way), write the English translation at the top of the back of the card, flip it back over, write the second word beneath the first, and so on. I usually put about five words on a card. If there’s one that I can’t find in the dictionary, such as “資優” in article in the photo above, I just write it down and leave a space on the back for when I find out what it means. This whole process took me about 20 minutes the first time I did it, but it’s much faster now.
After marking up the first paragraph and making flashcards, I stop working on the article and move onto other things. The next day, when I come back to the article and try reading the first paragraph again, it’s much, much easier. Why? Well, it’s because I’ve made flashcards of every word I didn’t and I always carry those flashcards with me. I’ve probably reviewed them ten times each, and done all the review during time I otherwise would have wasted. So with what feels like zero effort, I can suddenly read a paragraph that was difficult just one day earlier!
After the first paragraph is done, I go on to the second paragraph and then the rest of the article. The rest of the article is always easier. Some of those words I had to look up in the first paragraph inevitably appear in later parts of the article. As you can see from the photo above, the beginning of the article (the upper right-hand side) is highlighted all over the place, and the highlighted sections decrease throughout the article, until the bottom, where it’s mostly un-marked. That in itself is very motivating. Better still, each time I buy a paper, the first paragraph I take a stab at is easier and easier.
Conclusions
I like Farber’s suggestions. I suddenly feel like I’m making more progress than I have in ages, and I’m doing the majority of it during time that I would just be wasting otherwise.
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April 15th, 2007 at 8:46 pm
Hi Mark,
I read your article and thought: Barry Farber would be proud of you.
You know that the book inspired me myself, as I wrote in my own article about the flashcards. But you tried it all, thats nice. I want to try the MP3 thing as well now. Where can I get those Chinese mp3s you are talking about? And how do you include that Chinese translation popup gimmick into your articles? I really like it. Bye, Sebastian
April 15th, 2007 at 9:25 pm
It was Rika’s friend who inspired me. Farber’s book was just the last little kick I needed to really get going.
The Chinese MP3s are all still up there on Chinese Pod’s site, that I linked to in this post. It’s just that since their recent site redesign, they’ve been harder to find. I’ve been meaning to blog about that. Anyway, click on “levels” (right under the search bar), then pick your level, and the lessons are displayed 10 to a page. You’ll have to go into each lesson page and download from there. If you want to download a lot, maybe you should just use isohunt to download a bittorrent of them.
I got the translation popup “gimmick” from my friend, David Lancashire, who uses it on his site Adsotrans. If you wanted to put it into your site, you’d have to copy the relevant portions of my CSS and Javascript files I use. Unfortunately, since you’re on blogspot, you can’t do that.
April 15th, 2007 at 11:13 pm
Hey Mark, great post. I’m going to start using some of these methods right away.
April 16th, 2007 at 6:51 am
i’ve already posted how i’ve been learning spoken chinese. my approach to reading chinese is the same. right now i can get the main idea of most newspaper articles that aren’t too techical, so i’ve gotten over the hurdle of being bored and frustrated because i can get interesting info even if i can’t understand everything. just as i would be sensitized to a word or phrase i coud pick out of the spoken language from having heard it over and over, i also zero in on character combinations i’ve seen over and over. those are the ones i look up- i don’t look up every singe character i don’t know. i’m in the us and don’t have any practical need to read chinese. it’s just an interesting hobby. but having my husband’s chinese newspaper on the kitchen table everyday ensures that i am at least reviewing a little everyday. as for writing- i don’t think i could learn that without a teacher correcting me. but i can write fairly well by inputting pinyin. i have to choose the character that goes with the pinyin, but that isn’t too hard since i’m only writing how i speak, and those character (combinations) i already know pretty well from reading. my method has enabled me to make painless progress. but it is slow. i’m sure your level of chinese will be much higher than mine putting in the same amount of time.
April 16th, 2007 at 7:03 am
I think all these are good tips. I’ve only been able to find one store that carries Mandarin Daily News, though, and it’s nowhere near my neighborhood. I think that for learning to read Chinese, zhuyin is superior to pinyin, because it prints right alongside the character and is more unobstrusive.
April 16th, 2007 at 4:34 pm
I think it’s likely that all three of you are advanced past the point where intensive methods like this are that useful. If your Chinese is good enough that you can just read normal texts for fun, then maybe that’s what you should be doing.
Prince Roy, you can pick up the Guoyu Ribao at 7-11. Actually, I don’t know of any other convenience store that sells it. They almost all carry them, but they usually don’t stock that many copies.
April 16th, 2007 at 7:34 pm
Interesting stuff. I will try those methods as well. By far, I need to improve my Mandarin quickly.
April 17th, 2007 at 4:05 pm
hi, guys,
as a guy who grew up speaking Mandarin, i feel good to learn that there are some people out there who are interested in Mandarin.
April 17th, 2007 at 5:02 pm
However, number 1 method still remains: fuck someone who speaks it.
Michael
April 17th, 2007 at 9:34 pm
damn, that’s a pretty crude way of putting it, MT.
April 17th, 2007 at 9:54 pm
I dunno, Michael. I’ve met some foreigners who do an awful lot of f!#$ing and not that much learning.
April 18th, 2007 at 6:41 am
damn, that’s a pretty crude way of putting it, MT.
Well, I didn’t think many people would get it if I had written “forget someone who speaks it.”
Michael
April 18th, 2007 at 1:12 pm
give MT a gun, he would shoot, wouldn’t he?
April 18th, 2007 at 7:51 pm
I also think the Guoyu Ribao is hard to find. It is certainly not in every 7-Eleven.
I don’t think that having a spouse or a partner who speaks the language you want to learn is necessarily helpful. I think for many people it is actually a major obstacle to learning a language as they come to rely on their partner as a translator and never have to put themselves in challenging situations with the language.
Friends are certainly helpful, especially if their abilities in your native language are not very good. The more friends the better!
April 18th, 2007 at 8:28 pm
I agree with David and Mark re SOs and spouses: it’s not necessarily a panacea. An anecdotal take from my own experience in Chinese pedagogy: I’ve found that those of us with Chinese spouses and SOs are often quite adept at mundane communicative skills, but others without, while lacking in this area, obtain extreme proficiency in their areas of specialty. For instance, I knew one guy who would have trouble ordering a bowl of beef noodles, or getting the cab driver to understand where he wanted to go, but he could expound to the skies in Chinese about international monetary policies.
April 18th, 2007 at 9:49 pm
David, multiple 7-11 employees have told me they were positive that all their branches stocked the paper, though in small quantities. As far as I know, that was true up until this January. They were taking a loss to do it, though, and now they’ve stopped.
7-11 is still the best place I know of to get it. There are four within a ten minute walk from my house that carry it. If you really have a hard time finding the paper, then try going to a 7-11 near an elementary school.
April 22nd, 2007 at 11:56 am
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July 3rd, 2007 at 3:13 pm
These are all really good things to be doing. The problem for me is I stopped doing them a long time ago. Using notecards is fine and all, making them is probably the biggest obstacle.
But you gotta do what you gotta do, right? My Chinese has regressed in a lot of ways recently, even with a Chinese girlfriend and a job where I need to speak Chinese a fair bit. Why? Because I gave up on the whole formal study / note card thing. Thanks for the proverbial kick in the ***.
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