Cheryl from Manitoba asks about the Gold List method

[siafulinux]

I personally would adapt from the "100 most common English words"; whichever applies to the language I'm attempting to study. Then I'd move onto 500 most common words and so forth.

[c0ley]

Me again :-) Just a quick comment on standard dictionaries - yes, they are pretty useless as a word source, but not just for the reasons you mention here. I actually tried adding words to my wordlist this way, and got nowhere fast. The problem is that all the As and Bs "merge" into one another - words which look the same mean quite different things, making it more difficult to remember them. Think of all the English words that begin with ex- or de- .

And I promise to write that blog post soon!

[c0ley]

As an example... the Danish word "affyring" means "firing" or "launching", while the very similar sounding/looking "afføring" is a bowel movement. That's not a mistake you want to make at the shooting gallery, but they're very close together in the dictionary and very easy for the learner to mix up!

[usenetposts]

Dictionaries are not the most interesting way of building vocab per se, but there are two times I can think of when they do have an advantage: first for languages where there aren't many courses that go past 2000. The small dictionary can give you the next 8-10,000 words. The second case if if you want to learn a new language via a better known language - the dictionary serves as a checklist and reminder also for the better known - but not native - language. In these 2 cases I do recommend them.

[c0ley]

To an extent, I'd agree, but I don't believe the learner should (say) "do all the As" then "do all the Bs" because, as I mentioned previously, I found it difficult to differentiate between different words. One way to get round this might be to "randomize" the order in which you note down words - so that each headlist starts with a word beginning with A, then a word beginning with B and so on. Anything to break up the monotony of similar words can only be a good thing.

[usenetposts]

Well, that could involve quite a lot of additional admin time. One possibility could be to take a frequentative dictionary like the one I keep recommending for Russian, in fact that is a very superior solution to the whole which is why one should always look and see if there is a frequentative dictionary.

[c0ley]

@usenetposts Yeah, that's the disadvantage of my approach.

Sadly, frequent word dictionaries are not always available for lesser-spoken languages. One (very geeky) way I've got round this is to find word lists on the internet, stick them into a spreadsheet, then randomize the cells so that the words are all mixed up. I've managed to find approx. 3000 words this way, in addition to the 2,500 in the "Teach Yourself" book I own.

[usenetposts]

If you wanna be really geeky, you can go to the wikipedia for the language involved, slap a whole bunch of the articles there into a .txt file, get rid of all punctuation except spaces using find and replace, then turn the spaces into commas, upload the csv file into microsoft excel so that it's one word per cell and then do a pivot table on the frequency of the return of each word. Hey presto! You have a frequency dictionary. Most people I think would prefer the disadvantages of a dictionary...

[c0ley]

@usenetposts Never thought of that. I might try it out! In fairness, it is beyond the abilities (or, more correctly, the willingness) of most "sane" people, but being a geek with a PhD in computing, I will always take the nerdy option!

[usenetposts]

You could then make money publishing your frequentative dictionaries as pdfs.

[templje]

I would also like your opinion on making Gold Lists of more than one language at a time? For instance, in the nearest future, I plan to learn French and Mandarin. Could I make Gold Lists of both? Or maybe set a French goal of a certain amount of words, then, once reached, begin Mandarin while still improving my French? Thanks Jeremy

[usenetposts]

You can certainly use the system for more than one language at once, but keep them in separate gold list books, at least in the first two sets of books. In the eighth distillation (the ninth time I write them out, so the third book) I mix languages, because there aren't enough words by then to even justify one book per language.

[templje]

Thanks for your videos. I plan to use the Gold List while deployed to Iraq. I plan to do it in 2500 word blocks. I hope I will be able to give feedback while overseas. J

[usenetposts]

I hope you will to. Keep your head low. And if the last letter should change, in that country, then keep your head even lower.

[templje]

Thank you for a quick response. I am now watching your Discourse to Lord Moggy

[ThuWalris]

You picked the most flattering pictures to freeze Cheryl as, lol.

[ThuWalris]

I do agree with your first comment.

My Latin textbook starts by giving you basic words such as "puella", "puer", "amare", "ager", "currere.

By the end of the book, it has taught you all of the cases, conjugations, plus useful, but not essential words, such as "necare", "aquaeductus".

[usenetposts]

It just goes to show the truth of the saying "Primum non necare".

[Sirob11]

Dear professor

I red in Internet a comment of a student who is working with the Gold List System. He was complaining about the fact that he hardly remebers one of the words of the "headlist" after two weeks. That means that he has to distilate 25 words again. It lowers your motivation if you still have about 20 words in the 4th distillation. Don't you think that for some student it would be better to try anyway to put the headlist in the s/t memory?

[usenetposts]

I don't think it makes any sense at all to learn languages to the short term memory. I have extreme cases where someone thinks that not even one item got learned automatically, and someone else who is sure that he learned many more than just 1/3 of the items. I think the problem is subjectivity. But also I don't know what language this student is trying to learn and the amount of information he is including in his lines. Maybe he was learning tired, tried to do too much, or studied with music.

[gemercan]

sorry if someone has already asked you this and you have to repeat yourself (you can just send me a link to your answer). reading a book in two languages simultaneously is a great method. I used to read the good news bible that way. thanks again. daj boh zdravia

[usenetposts]

You are very welcome. I have enjoyed your comments on several films and I'm delighted to have you on board. Thanks for helping to pioneer the method, as well as for your edifying Christian comments. God bless.

[gemercan]

hi d. thanks very much for all your effort, not just in the field of education, but also in spreading the good news. god has blessed us through you. my question: HOW MANY LANGUAGES (euro. family) CAN I STUDY USING YOUR METHOD AT ONE TIME? Im asking it, cos its a longer period method and Id like to study more languages. Ive started to study lang. using similar system (writing down basic vocab in 5 lang. to 5 columns on one sheet, still I didnt use LT memory) but then I found GLS and its better.

[usenetposts]

I believe that you can study two or three at a time, but of different families. I would not suggest learning two Germanic languages at a time, for example, if you are a Slavic speaker, as the English and the German will interfere with each other.Learn one, and then use that language's textbooks to learn the other.

[Flammenfisch]

Hi Davey,

Just embarked on your Gold List method to learn Russian vocab. I'm quite excited about it as I feel the words are starting to migrate to the useful parts of the brain, instead of loitering around in the s/t memory, where, let's face it, they're of no use to man nor beast.

Will update you on my progress!

Spasibo bol'shoi Viktor/ Davey!

Greg

[usenetposts]

Great! Please let us have your feedback after.

[ccurra2]

No, it's good. I found all the information very useful. I look forward to continuing my Russian learning, thank you!

[usenetposts]

I'm glad I answered the questions, and like I said they were very good questions.

[codychloe]

Hi Vicktor, first I would like to thankyou for sharing you Gold List method with the world.

You advocate using course books to get the vocab for the headlist. If one does this and actually follows the course book to learn the grammar and other aspects of the language. You will encounter the headlist and distillations vocab more frequently than you should for your method to work. What are your thoughts around this.

[usenetposts]

I find that in practice it doesn't have a very noticeable effect. The very frequent words which are repeated the whole time are going to be learned anyway, and you cannot get around the fact that there's about a hundred words in any language that you're gonna use in almost every paragraph. That would be true whether you used a course or literature. but learning lexical units in total isolation is a worse problem, as it can lead to misunderstanding.

[codychloe]

Thanks Vicktor. Also you have previously said in your videos that you put grammatical points in the headlist. Is this how you learn all grammar or only difficult grammar, and do you use the course book to do the exercises to become competent with the grammar.

[usenetposts]

I personally put all the grammar in the list, using practice sentences to put in the main paradigms and put together with the words in their line, or in the next line, any irregular points, whether grammar or pronunciation, that apply to them. I personally don't find the exercises in courses to be an efficient use of time, unless I need to do them to be sure I understood the explanations in the course correctly. For people not used to learing languages, the exercises may be more worth doing.

[ccurra2]

Apparently not :)

[usenetposts]

Well, other than not reflecting the full glory of your resplendent physionomy, what did you think of the video? Did it actually answer your questions in a useable way?

[ccurra2]

Thank you so much for pausing me with my teeth so aggressive looking!

[usenetposts]

I chose a random sample of your facial aspects. They may not all be necessarily representative of your natural appearance.