Memory aids

Spanish
1

Hi Aran, (and anyone else with a comment!)

Ok, I’ve just finished Challenge 2. I’m happy to say that so far having fun with this course, which is different than my prior adventures in trying to learn foreign languages which were quite frankly just “work”. Taking every word learned and coming up with every possible combination of how to put those words together - then giving me a few seconds to put them together in the proper order and get them out of my head and past my lips is a pretty cool teaching method. :smile:

So my question has to do with a memory aid called Mnemosyne (http://mnemosyne-proj.org/). What this little (free) program does is allow you to create question & answer cards, then it pops those cards up in random order on a daily basis. You rank your ability to answer the question on a scale of 1 to 5 (1 being “never seen that before” to 5 being " course I know that!" ) and the program then does spaced repetition to put the vocabulary in front of you on a regular basis, with the words you have the most trouble remembering put in front of you more often.

I was thinking I would put the words from your Spanish challenges into Mnemosyne after I’ve finished each challenge. But only the words, not the phrases. And that this would help my learning while at the same time still forcing me to have unrehearsed fast responses to the phrases you throw at me while listening to your audio.

Do you think this would foul up your teaching method? Or is it worth a try?

Thanks,
Dan

2

Hi Dan! And thanks very much indeed for your really kind words :sunny:

What you’re describing isn’t bad in and of itself - there are a few pieces of software like that around - Memrise.com is another good one - you certainly won’t do any damage to your learning by using this at the same time…

My only concern is that it may well be extra work that you don’t really need to do - although you probably don’t feel that you have the control over your new words and structures that you would like yet, all our feedback suggests that if you keep working through the challenges, the paced repetition throughout the course will actually anchor them in your memory more efficiently then doing extra work… :sunny:

What I’d recommend personally would be for you to push on through to about Challenge 10 or 15, with no repetition of challenges if you can bear it, and then see how you feel about the material in Challenge 2 - you’ll probably find that it’s become second nature to you, but if by any chance you don’t, you could always fall back on a flashcard approach then… :sunny:

Hope this helps!