About 3 weeks ago, I accompanied my 4-year-old to play in a public play area. Watching her running around, I suddenly heard a mother beside me yelling at her kids, “¡Ven acá!” (come here).

My first impression was – ok, the Latino population has indeed increased in my area. My second thought was – what is the difference between “ven aquí” and “ven acá”? (’aquí’ and ‘acá’ both mean ‘here’).

I didn’t put in a lot of thought until a few days ago, the phrase came up in my mind again. So I decided to look it up on the Internet. No doubt, someone already came up with this question. One of the answers explained that “ven aquí” means “come here” and “ven acá” means “come right here”. What caught my attention was the illustration that followed:

“Most of the time I hear ven aca used in this particular area (like when a mother yells at their kid to come here in the store).”

However, an answer from the WordReference forum said the contrary:

Aquí mean here as in right here, acá is more flexible and mean closer from me than from you.

These contradictory explanations seem less important to me now. I bet if I encounter this phrase again, instead of thinking whether ‘aquí’ is more ‘flexible’ than ‘acá’, or the other way round, I will just remember this “mother yelling at her kids” incident. This is precisely what Dr. J. Marvin Brown in his book “From the Outside In” refered to as a ‘cascade’:

“It was like a cascade of light and sound waves rushing in and washing over nerves in my eyes and ears and then cascading on into my head to sculpture a device that could echo back similar waves on demand. A mechanism that could repluck the same nerves that had formed it.”

Dr. J. Marvin Brown is the creator of the ALG language course. According to his book, the fundamental idea behind his course is to have a lot of these “cascades”, so the students will remember what they have learned vividly through experiencing them, instead of being spoon-fed using traditional methods.

I thought for a moment. Perhaps it would be a good idea to share my own cascades in my blog. But then I think about the many times I read the “words of the day” from other people, I just seem not to be able to connect with their ‘cascades’. Surely, we need to be personally involved in them for the greatest effect.

Having said that, if you have any ‘cascade’ in any language you may want to share, you are more than welcome to leave it in your comment.

Keith commented on my previous post, questioning on how SRS can fit into the “natural language learning” model. After all, it is not natural.

It seems to be me that different “language naturists” have different degrees of “naturalness” in their approaches. By all means, I am in favour of the “natural approach” as opposed to the conventional classroom-style “structural approach”, which uses artificial materials tailored for learners, and encourages memorizing grammar rules, declension tables, and mechanical drills, and emphasizes on test results. I believe in using authentic contents (materials targeted for native speakers), light in grammar, focusing on comprehensive input and vocabulary building, and delayed output.

To many language learners, “natural” means “learning like a child”. Under this definition, I don’t think I am a classified as a “naturist”. I believe that, as adults, we are smarter than kids, and we should be able to acquire languages more efficiently than them. You can read more on this in my past post.

As a matter of fact, children don’t learn languages completely naturally. They are immersed in the language environment from the beginning. They spend a lot of time absorbing the language passively, not being aware of the presence of any grammar or rules. This part is natural. But remember going on in parallel, the adults still teach them the language explicitly. They speak to them at their level in form of “baby-talks”. They give them readings with vocabulary suitable for their ages, i.e., materials tailored for the learners.

As for adult beginners, I can think of 3 approaches in starting a new language. They can do it “unnaturally” and spend their time on learner’s materials, or they can go “natural” with authentic materials right from the start, spending a majority of their time on “incomprehensible input”. My personal choice is to still go “natural” with authentic materials, but spend time studying them and making them comprehensible. This means I have to work on vocabulary building. This process has to be “artificial” since I don’t have enough existing vocabulary to infer the unknowns from context.

I promote the use of SRS, because I personally experienced the huge difference it could make. But then I am not as hardcore as others like Khatzumoto. I rarely spend more than 20 minutes a day on SRS, and this includes card preparation and organization. Steve recently suggested that we should spend no more than 5% of our learning on flashcards. I totally agree with him.

I believe that after reaching a certain level, we should be weaned from flashcarding and other kinds of deliberate vocabulary-building activities. At this point, we should be able to absorb new vocabulary naturally and efficiently. I stopped doing SRS on my French now, since I can understand on average about 90% of the authentic materials. I can infer about 5% and comfortably leave the other 5% as unknown. I only had about 1000 cards in my deck before I stopped. As for Spanish, I had about 750 cards in my deck before a recent mishap wiped them all out. Although I could re-import them from my LingQ repository, I chose to let them go and reset my deck.

I have recently started to have a crack at Koine Greek. I started by learning the Greek alphabets and skimming through the basic Greek grammar. I am only on verse 10 of the 1st chapter of the Gospel of John, and already I have accumulated 50 cards in my SRS. I also listen to those 10 verses again and again, and will move on when I get bored. To some, my approach is not “natural”. It is natural enough to me. The material is natural – the New-Testament written almost 2000 years ago. I also avoid deliberately memorizing declension tables, verb-endings, and cases. I am going to absorb them gradually and naturally as I go along.

Content-wise, I prefer going “natural”. But as for methodologies, there are smarter ways.

The other day Kev posted an excellent question in my previous post. He asked:

If you spend progressively more and more of your time on reading and listening (as you should), wouldn’t the amount of time you spend on feeding/reviewing an SRS fade to zero? Therefore, is it worth spending any time at all on an SRS?

My short answer is ‘yes’. The amount of time you spend on feeding/reviewing an SRS should eventually fade to zero, but it still worths investing time in SRS-ing before you reach this point.

SRS and other flashcard methods seem artificial to many ‘natural’ learners. But if you use them properly, they become extensions of the natural approach. Here are the 2 rules you need to keep in mind all the time:

Always build your vocabulary on comprehensive input
You should only add new vocabulary you have encountered from your reading and listening, and not from dictionaries or other people’s decks. When you are reviewing your words, think of yourself as reopening the book you have read or the podcast you have listened to, and reviewing the original sentence where the word first appeared. I see this as a natural way to remember the word. Only with SRS, you can do it more efficiently.

Always connect with contexts when reviewing your vocabulary
When reviewing, you should at least recall one place where the word appeared in your past reading or listening. Some people even go one step further to look up how the word is used in other places (e.g., google the word).

SRS works extremely well for beginners and intermediate learners. I once tried the ‘natural’ way to absorb new French vocabulary, and my progress was slow. Then I started using SRS and that made a huge difference. Now, I know enough French words that I can effectively pick up new ones just by reading. So I have stopped SRS-ing for French.

Kev’s 2nd comment was about showing/hiding translations when working on your SRS. Some people have problem seeing the translations. They find them disturbing. They are if you really treat them as direct translations. I never have any problem since I always think of them as merely hints to the actual meanings.

The key to language acquisition is vocabulary-building. The best way to build your vocabulary is through comprehensive input (i.e., reading and listening). An efficient way to maintain your vocabulary is to use an Spaced Repetition System (SRS). There is no doubt about it. Look around and you will see everybody in the language-learning circle talks about SRS. I myself have also experienced the power of it.

I would like to share with you a few of my SRS tips in this post. “Best practices” here simply refer to my own best practices I have discovered so far. Feel free to share with me your own best practices.

DO – Review new vocabulary right away
I did not realize the importance of immediate review of new vocabulary until someone gave me this advice. After you read something and encounter some new vocabulary, input them into your SRS and review them right away. This way, you review the new vocabulary when they are still fresh in your memory, thus reinforcing retention. More importantly, the context of the new vocabulary is also fresh in your memory. Remember, the best way to remember new vocabulary is through context. Without context, we go back to rote memorization.

DO – Review new vocabulary first
At any point in time when you are working on your SRS, you face with 3 types of cards: new ones, old ones, and failed ones. New cards should always be reviewed first, because you want to start the scheduling as early as possible. Then comes the old cards. I always review the failed cards last, because they tend to be more difficult and often give me a strong sense of discouragement.

DON’T – Try to remember everything
An earlier misconception I had with SRS was that I thought SRS would help me to remember all of my vocabulary. When I failed to remember a word, I would become really frustrated. I later learned that forgetting is just part of the remembering process. It is alright to forget. I should not feel bad when I fail to remember a word. Often when the difficult words reappear in another context, they begin to stick. The beauty of SRS is that it tracks all your forgotten vocabulary. When time comes, you will remember them.

DON’T – Replace comprehensive input activities with SRS
SRS is quite addicting. You may find yourself spending hours everyday working on your SRS. However, you should only build your vocabulary through comprehensive input activities. You should only add new vocabulary you have encountered from your reading and listening, and not from dictionaries or other people’s decks. Therefore, do not bury yourself too much in SRS. Spend more time reading and listening in your target language.

• Loué le deuxième volet des aventures d’Harry Potter de la bibliothèque. Lu 2 chapitres dans le café. #
• Fini chapitre 3 de “la chambre des secrets” aujourd’hui. #
• 給了三歲半女兒一個小測騇.她以學懂這些字/Gave my 3.5 yr old daughter a quiz. She already knows these characters：人口手耳大小上中下水火天山兩米牛羊肉毛光月女. #
• Spanish Anki now over 700 cards. #
• Started Japanese Anki with 3 cards. Not sure if it will last. #
• LingQ’s ‘% of unknown words’ feature is still not back. Strange that I am the only one who feels inconvenient. Others seems to be ok w/o it. #
• Listening to an interview of Lorna Robinson, a Latin advocate. OMG! Is that RP that she speaks? http://tinyurl.com/bgjmwu #