Lessons

Lesson Info

Flashcard Review

Last time we talked about how to break down grammar from stories we had this she is on fire example for learning the word is, um this is all well and good, but where do you get those stories now? What if your book does not tell you that she is on fire just as she is? They are we are this sort of thing. Um and the answer to this is that you give it you make it yourself, you write down examples of every single thing in your dick lantian chart, you don't need to do this for every verb I mean french, for instance, has I think fifty five birds forwards for every single verb you're not going right down fifty five sentences for every single for bueller you need to do this for the basic form of any vermin if your book is going to say, ok, mull j to each like, this is the basic type of e r ver blah, blah, blah I actually doesn't today is kind of an exception. Um you're going to make sentences for these things and you're not gonna make sentences for all fifty five either you're gonna make sense ...

is for the tenth you're learning at the moment, so generally your burden of how much work you need to do is like right five sentences make them different make them don't don't make everyone scottish I did this in hungarian I said he has scott is she a scottish? It is scottish they are scottish were scottish and now I still struggle with the verb to be in hungarian because everyone is scottish and looks exactly the same uh make them different she's scottish he is a student they are on fire just jumble them up when you write them down you will make mistakes naturally you know he is a firefighter we are teacher they are student and that's a problem because if you try to teach yourself the language with the language you already know you will not learn anything you need some sort of outside source of correction or input because if you knew french already enough to write it for yourself and you wouldn't need any of this uh and the way you get this is by, uh getting corrections online there are two wonderful wonderful options out there. One is laying hyphenate dot com and that's generally my go to but I recommend for most people to do lang dot com we're going to go into it and sort of tour the interface a little later in the later segment but the idea is that you write down whatever you want you write down journal entries about today I went to the school and did this today I had delicious lunch whatever um you write down whatever you want in your target language you submitted and then within I would say three to ten hours uh a native speaker will correct that for you line by line it looks a little bit like the news uh where they will cross out the words you did wrong. They will put in the words you should have written they will write little question saying what do you mean here I have no idea what you men usually they'll do that in your target language which is fun to try and figure out what they want on earth their talent complaining about um and then you make flashcards out of it. The nice thing about writing is that is that it is always personal. It is if it is not even if it is not about yourself just the most personal option it's at the very least written by yourself and so that makes it really very personal which makes it very, very memorable. Um and every single mistake you make is something you need to learn every time you make a mistake on something it's an aspect of grammar that you need more reinforcement on it's a sort of customized grammar class that is designed to be exactly what you need and so every time you write something and you get a correction, you can throw it on the flash cards and you will not make that state mistake a second time, which is really, really neat. Usually we have this experience of going the language classes and making one mistake because I want each a lotto because I want to go to the store because I want and you keep making the same mistake over and over and over again this way you stop, you make one mistake corrected, you memorize the mistake, you memorize the correction, actually and it sticks. It was really, really handy. I love written corrections I think it's probably one of the best sources for grammar out there, you'll notice actually that I'm using pictures always always use pictures next if you don't want to right at the moment, though, I will we'll talk about this. You probably want a good balance between writing stuff that you've written and taking and stuff from the outside world. Um, you can use google images to fight example sentences for anything including conjugated verbs you look for, want or wanted, for instance, or have wanted or have gone in english you will find billions of examples of I have gone somewhere find these wonderful, wonderful examples with illustrations already there for you you could get basically any verb in your language, any construction your language you will find an unlimited amount of example sentences for that construction so in terms of like, oh I can't find a good example of is yes you can just search for is you're going to find ten billion of them I can't find a good example for you know would have gotten absurd english construction that we have I would have gotten it well actually you can find those examples there all on google images um the nice thing about google images is that it's extremely fast just type in the construction you get it immediately um it is visual naturally I mean you're seeing all these illustrated captions and it gives you all these new words and grammar like look at this look at this sentence this is I search for the word definitely last and I see eye saw all sorts of images about you know arnold schwarzenegger's le dernier stand like that all these things and I found this wonderful example you know tha t the final the last dictator of argentina was condemned to prison to life imprisonment and I'm using this to learn the word last which is sticky I mean, this is something that will stick because okay, this is the last dictator and he's been in prison like this is a compelling story well, look what you get in is a sort of bonus to this like I'm just learning the word last but I also pick up the word dictator I pick up the word argentinean I pick up this idea of sentenced to life imprisonment corn danielle opry's own just this wonderfully french way of saying, you know, like sentenced to prison called ani like condemned you to prison and then even life imprisonment like we have life in prison and french has like prison at pep a treaty prison before forever for perpetuity I mean it's, this beautiful florid thing that you get all at the same time as trying to learn the word last you get all of these words now connected to this one word you can even reuse the sentence. You can keep using the same sentence too. Uh, lauren, the word adelita entangled in a blank crazy. What proposition should you use there? Calm down, eh? What? Go on and do, please own company, please. Oh, no, please. You can use this over and over and over again to get every little bit of grammar that you want to get out of there. I'm not saying you need to make let's see, this is what how many words in the sentence? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten the need to make ten flashcards are actually twenty flashcards for the sentence no, take what you want do you need to know the word argentinean on its own flash cardinal you're gonna get it anyway actually generally as every one of these words every one of these flash cards will give you around three or four words passively in terms of what actually sticks in your memory three or four potentially all nine extra words but if you find some construction you really like like please want pick up a treaty because it's awesome it's a wonderful construction then grab that on a flash card to keep reusing the sentences because they're really nice material so let's look at some flash cards because the grammar flashcards are really the kind of the most fun part I like the flash cards we talked about in the earlier segment about picture words idea of a camera find the russian deal's gone I'm gonna connect her with something personal in all this stuff but as soon as your words start playing around with other words soon as you start making sentences out of these things they really start to blossom I mean it's this this really fun process of language building in your head so I really like these flash cards um as I said there's sort of three options for grammar you have new words you have word forms and have word order and so there's gonna be the three proofs of flash cards new words looked like this your first card is going to be a production card you're gonna have a sentence with a blank, innit he lives blank new york city. And this is what it means for now and forever. This is what annan is in terms of the things that are mandatory, as we talked about before they're things that are good to know and things that you must know for you to say that. Okay, I got this. Uh, if you see this card and you say the word correctly, if you can say in, then you will have succeeded. That is what you're trying to do if you can spell the word in bonus that's great by this stage. Honestly, spelling is not gonna be a problem. If you've already gone through your first six hundred twenty five words, you're not gonna have get tripped up by spelling except maybe in english, because english is just a portable language for spelling. Er and so, uh, occasionally, occasionally will get tripped up by spelling. But for the most part, you're going to get that down that's by this stage. It's already near your master. This but in the case, you have to be able to pronounce this word correctly. Word there is in you have a second card that starts getting interesting and that you have in with no context in convene a thousand different things in english, so what do you supposed to remember here? We supposed remember this specific sentence he lives in new york city or what? What do you suppose? Remember here and again, we're going to use the golden rule of flash cards if you're right, you're right if you look at this and you think he's in a store in is the kind of word that you use for being inside of a store in a box or in a in a container and you look at this and you're like, oh no, this is about new york city, this is about where he lives he's not physically in new york city, buried under the ground or something that's fine, you were right, you do use infer boxes and for containers, just this is another use of in when you're right, you're right, this is the same thing. Is that chocolate bar and you are you should mark yourself is correct you are trying to think of can I come up with any example of this word? That is your goal here? If you can come up with any example of this word and if you could pronounce it correctly, if you don't look at this and be like gene, then great you've succeeded, ian has lots of definitions just make more flash cards, a cat blanket box this is now another definition of it and there's this works just fine again you're you're trying to generate the sound in and if you can spell it e I mean if you think in then you need to redo it but if you can't remember the spelling of in well you will remember the spelling bee in but still if you can't it's not a big deal um if you have a language that's really going to bother you in terms of spelling which is pretty much at this stage only going to be japanese and chinese which you will always need these cards for um then you'll use this type of flushing this type of flash card will just ask you in chinese and japanese what is the country? What is the hunt for this work? And it will say in you know it'll say that word out loud these are what you do for new new words word order new word form cards actually are basically the same I'm reusing the same sentence here he lives in new york city, but this time I'm gonna learn the form of live toe live in this case turns into lives. The only difference is that I'm giving you a clue I'm putting in the base form of the verb in this case to live um I am giving myself if I want it uh a little congregation chart a little dick lantian chart he she it lives we live this is just extra information just to kind of have it just in case. I like that sort of organization of my head, of knowing that what? Where it fits in the structure. It was a sort of bonus material again, this is not something I don't need to spit out every verb form. When I see this card, I just need to think, okay, this is this is lives lives is the correct word that goes in here and again, I need to be able to say it. They need to be able to say it out loud correctly infection spelled ingrate, his comprehension card very similar. Think of the word in context. But how do I know this isn't lives could totally be lives and again when you're right, you're right. If I look at this and I think lives, many lives were lost, I can think of some example sense in my head. Lives were lost this day, and then I turn the card over and says he blank in new york city, and I go, oh, no, that was the wrong word. You just learned something new about this construction. You just learned that l I v s has two completely different pronunciations, two different meanings, more than two meanings, really that's great so again any time you see something and you think about something and you are correct and then you look at the flash could you see something else that's actually a beneficial learning part of the part of the learning process there's a new meaning no one blinks forever lives again same sort of thing this is just the same as we had before. The only difference again is this clue to live and then spelling for japanese and change country is that the word forms very few differences here and last one is just word order there's only one kind of car you can have here lives in new york city you take the word he out where does he go lives he in new york city lives in new york city he what's what's the correct option here you take it out you put it right back in this how you gonna learn word order in any language this becomes really important for things like chinese where that's most of the game is word order and some added words you know, mess with word for him that much therefore sort of special scenarios in which you kind of have to modify things slightly um one is with dick lantian charts what do you do? How do you learn the infinitive of a word um you sort of have to really three options one you can just prompt yourself in the clue you could say he blank in new york city and you say I want the verb but I want the infinitive form I'm just trying to quit I'm here's an example of how the word is used in context but what I want is the base form and you can quiz yourself that way say to live uh and then on the back side you're gonna have a different card you're gonna have live and your job is to spit out what is this? This is a verb and when would I use it? Oh yeah he lives in new york city so doing two things at once with these types of cards um you have actually well we'll talk about the second option first you can have a full sentence that just says he lives in new york city what's the infinitive here I find these kind of boring and kind of easy I prefer the first one I prefer where I don't give myself any clues I say he blank in new york city spit out the infinitive I find that much more challenging and interesting but you do have this option especially have a language that has really completely different infinitives from the way the verbs conjugated is like doing some crazy stuff this is a nice way of handling it. Um your third option is actually to have uh choose example sentences that used the inventive no, I want to live in hawaii I want blank in hawaii I mean many most of the time if you're looking for base word word forms or baseball reforms especially there is some use of the infinitive or else I wouldn't even exist if people don't come up with random for informs that are never used what you do for short phrases uh you have this conversation like many of our grammar books come with conversations in many of the first chapters of every grammar book like the beginning of every chapter is like let's have a conversation about the topic you know and so you'll have this sort of conversation here's your coffee thank you you're welcome so I show up in chapter one or two of an english book uh how do you learn the phrase you're welcome which is just a thing we don't actually think you you person are like to be welcome we think the thing that you say after thank you is you're welcome it might as well be one word why are there any spaces there anyway? Um you have two options here you khun basically split it up and you could say your blank you're welcome or you can not split it up you can just use it as a single unit I prefer option one I find that more interesting if I can split something up into more pieces I prefer fewer pieces so generally, if I have phrases, I like splitting them up as much as I can, but it's just a matter of personal preference. Um, eliminating clues. He was holding a blank rifle on automatic rifle. If I put in, he was holding and blank rifle. I'm giving myself this huge clue. Like this word starts with a vowel that shows up in a lot of language is russian, for instance, if you put in the adjective beforehand will tell you all sorts of things about the case about the gender, same thing in german, if you put in the article the daddy dust of the german has, I think sixteen does, and it does tell you all about the word. Uh, if you put those in, you will know a lot about your your word in advance, it's it makes it too easy, and so I like to take those clues out. I either do this. I will put multiple options there, you know, a slash and for english, so I don't know if there's an avowal or not, or I will just default to the standard one. This is what I've been doing in hungarian. I will just put he was holding a blank rifle, and then I need to correct it in my head he was holding a blank rifle, I wasn't automatic rifle, an automatic rifle and I will correct that on the other side, but you basically take out clues. One there when it's too easy take out the clues and when you don't know what to do when these flash card forms you're like, well, I don't know. Is this a word form is this. Ah, new word card is just a word. Order car just doesn't matter. Take out, just take out some words, put a blank, put it back in the other side, use a picture, that's it. I mean, this is while I like the forms that I've developed here in terms of the new words and the word order stuff. This is not exactly rocket science. This is just deal with what you have in front of you. You're trying to get that content that sentence into your head using a fill in the blank in some format, so just do that. Just make sure it has a picture in a blank with something on the other side of the card.