Can I learn language faster? Or, perhaps, can I memorize the foreign words and recall them faster?

post by jmh · 2025-04-11T00:01:25.530Z · LW · GW · 6 comments

Contents

6 comments

I've been learning Korean for a while now. I am finding a rather asymmetric aspect to my vocabulary learning process and results. I use Anki as the learning tool for vocabulary. What I find is that fairly quickly I get to a good recognition^[1] performance. But I find my recall performance is significantly behind. I've got some ideas on why this type of asymmetry occurs but the bottom line is that I am beginning to think I've been approach vocabulary building the wrong way.

A quick google about the asymmetry suggests that this is a fairly common problem for language learners. I wonder if it's not because most settings for developing one's vocabulary in a new language tend to follow the same approach I see in the Anki decks I've downloaded or created myself. You get the foreign word on the front and then learn what the native language word is on the back.

So what I've though is maybe that is backwards. I'm starting a test to see flipping the approach, putting the word I already know up first and then having to come up with the Korean word as the "answer" might perhaps improve my recall performance, which I suspect would have no affect on my recognition ability.

If my supposition holds here then I expect I will improve my learning speed and more quickly.  As it is now it's a bit of a slow slog of, what seems like, the process of hammering things into my head until I can recall the word on demand rather than recognizing the word when seen (or to some extent heard). And, at the end of the day that is the goal as I don't want to just read but be able to actually interact with others in a day-to-day type setting.

I've been trying this approach for a bit more than a week now. Too soon to say if it's actually working better for me but I have that "fuzzy" feeling I'm doing better. I am highly confident that reversing the process here cannot reduce my vocabulary acquisition rate. 

I'm wondering if anyone else has tried this and if they found it helped or not. Or what people think of the shift in approach in general.

 

 

1. ^{^}

   I will use recognition and recall in a pretty obvious way but for clarity, recognition is about seeing the Korean word and knowing what English word would have the same meaning. Recall is the ability to, without any English prompt, come up with the Korean word.

6 comments

Comments sorted by top scores.