Improved memory - listening and typing sentences

Improved memory - listening and typing sentences

Postby taeril » Tue Oct 20, 2020 8:30 am

Hello everyone,

Wanted to share with you a system that I have been using to learn Chinese language.

At the moment, as far as I know, this is fully possible only with this app.

I would be listening native Chinese speaker recordings of sentences while seeing their English translation, then I would type it in Chinese characters and then app would show me if I typed it correct or wrong.

I've started doing this with spaced repetition on default in FCD app, so I would need to type each sentence 3 times correct in a row in order for it to be marked as learned. Had 10 new cards, in each round, as it is important that you don't type one sentence over and over until correct three times, rather time in-between is important part of this as well (10-15 or more minutes, which happens when you type 10 sentences one after another), but anyone having any understanding of spaced repetition should already know that.
And there after I would review learned sentences based on spaced repetition algoritam.

Though I've first started with typing the words from the word list, so let's say I wanna type lesson 1 sentences, I would first go and type lesson one vocabulary, to get used to it, to train my hearing and recognition of those sounds and as well to prepare keyboard for it, (as anyone that typed in Chinese characters might notice, the more you type certain words in Chinese, easier and faster it becomes too type them on mobile keyboard as they move up on suggestion list.

Anyway, pretty soon into doing this I noticed I was able to listen these same Chinese sentences on music player or in FCD app and I would understand them in Chinese, on the fly, without any need to translate it to English in my head, and was even able to translate them to English to others while they were testing me.

So this is really great way for learning new language I believe, downside is that it is time consuming, though by doing this I've become very fast in typing with mobile keyboard (I'm using Glide typing feature on Google keyboard, also known as Continues input on Samsung keyboard or also known as Swype and similar, though, while Glide typing works great for English language, with Chinese language I had issues, it was working great before, because I've trained keyboard for words I've used, but once, I've factory rested my phone this isn't working as good any more for Chinese language. So I moved on to type with Bluetooth physical keyboard instead.

I've already learned to blind type years ago (this is how I got to idea to type sentences in target language, as I've back then noticed while learning to blind type, that with instant feedback and intervals in-between typing sessions I learned to blind type rather easy and it stuck with me for years to come, even though I didn't use it that much and while I was able to blind type, it was rather slow, so instead I was rather typing with two fingers and with looking on to keyboard. But every once in a while, I would set fingers on asdf jkl; keys, and I was always surprised how I still didn't forget key positions, even though I didn't really use blind typing.

So moving to physical keyboard I've in short time increased my typing speed while blind typing as well.

Typing each sentence, already second or third time one can already noticed he is creating memory of it, while typing a sentence for the first time, I would need to hear it many many times to be able to type it, (even in some cases I'll "cheat" and check sentence Pinyin and hanzi, of course, marking sentence as wrong, even if I type it right in this case), while already at second time, I could type it with listening to it considerably less times and eventually over time with most of sentences I could type it by listening to it just once.

Time

So to type 10 sentences, that are on average long 15 characters, 3 times each until correct, I would need from 1.5 to up to 2 hours, while for review, I would need on average 1 minute per sentence. This get easier of course if sentences are shorter, memory creation of them is still working good from my experience, though I've worked with my university materials that were rather long at times with longest sentence having 34 characters.

Important to note here is that this doesn't work as good with listening and typing the words, I presume this is to do with sentences being each in them a small story, like each sentence is like a Mnemonics tool that facilitates memory creation, even further, while typing sentences one notices that one notices way better what one knows well and what not so well, so checking the dictionary at that point, facilitates learning even more, whole awareness during this feels to be of higher quality, which I presume is crucial factor in this whole process. Which is I guess as well facilitated by hands and fingers being busy, so
Mind is easier to stay in focus rather than wander around.

I hope I gave you here some ideas and people try this out and I'm eager to hear your feedback, as far as I noticed, not many people here are using typing (spelling, as it is called in the fcd) feature, even Ernie told me that he never thought much of it even though he implemented it into the app, but for me, I was looking for this feature ever since I noticed how well I learned keys position with not so much effort, 20 minutes s day for a week. That was around 2013, but I didn't found FCD until when friend showed it to me last year, and as he was showing to me Pleco, FCD, Skitter and so on, I was interested, but not all that engaged. But then friend told me "and it even has Spelling mode" while showing me FCD app and I was like okay (like spelling associated me only to spelling competitions they have in America) and then he turned it on and started typing and I was like whaaat, light bulbs and buzzing started to go on and off in my head and I asked him can I try it and there it was, finally I found it. Needless to say that I immediately bought the app and spent hours with it to figure out how to work with it and of course, this is my favourite app of all times.

Now, because of everything, I was thinking that this all could be kind of placebo effect, namely, I thought, maybe I was remembering thighs so well, just because I was for years convinced this is great way to learn language, so I had others also try it and then I would test them soon after they finished typing 10 sentences 3 times correct each and would then have them translate it to me while just listening them, and it works for others as well.

Did anyone else here do that before here? I've seen one user asking Ernie to implement multiple correct answers option for typing, but in this post, he only talks about typing words, and one can't notice this by typing just words, from my experience. I've also found one research paper comparing acquing new vocabulary by learning sentences or just words, and in their data it clearly showed that learning sentences works better, but they didn't elaborate exact metodology of learning they used in research. And I didn't save this paper at the time and was unable to find it again


While I didn't try this out, I'm pretty confidante this could work for other things as well, like learning a poem, preparing for exam in language user already knows, learning text for acting role etc, and this is really great because in one day one could prepare rather well for next day exams, especially as FCD has TTS, so flashcards could be prepared in short time, and with spaced repetition in FCD it's easy to keep reviewing learned material
Though for new language I prefer native speaker, quality recordings, and was investing lot of time into cutting audio files my self and found ways to speed this up and with FCD, it's even possible to pull audio files directly from the websites.


Anyway I'm interested to hear if others have tried this before, as well in feedback if someone tries this now.


Especially as I was looking for more information about this but was unable to find any relevant information, even more, where ever I found someone discussing typing and memory, they claim that handwriting works great for learning but typing somehow is not... Like it is distracting or something...

I'm aware handwriting is working great for learning, but it is way slower than typing, and there's no instant automatic feedback either, instead one needs to evaluate answer himself.
I've noticed already in school, handwriting is great for learning and it works great for learning Chinese characters as well but it is slow, I need on average 1 minute to handwrite one Chinese character and I handwrote few thousand of them while not improving as much in speed, so it is really time consuming, but of course, one can learn each character better by handwriting it than typing it, I noticed that, but this is just not manageable by my time constraints.



Have a nice day
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taeril
 
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