Pop-up dictionaries - how perilous are they?

[Guest realmayo]

From the discussions in a couple of other topics, I was wondering if using mouse-over dictionaries or other computer based dictionaries -- which allow you to instantly look up any new or forgotten word -- really are that bad?

 

The accepted wisdom appears to be: they are a bit dangerous because it's too easy to look up words, so you end up doing so even for words that you'd recognise if you you had the patience to think about it for a second or two.

 

But how about thinking in terms of:

 

1) exposure: if you have to interrupt your reading in order to start thinking furiously about the meaning of a word, you don't know it very well anyway; you need more exposure to this word. Looking it up straight away via pop-up provides that exposure -- is forcing yourself to remember it going to make the memory stronger than if you just look it up? I suspect it might, actually, but perhaps not in a significant way.

 

2) willpower: apparently everyone has kind of a finite amount of willpower each day -- the more frustrations you meet during an already-difficult task, the quicker you'll give up. I could either:

- read a book with no pop-up dictionary, get frustrated and stop after 15 minutes

- read a book with a pop-up dictionary and stop after 45 minutes.

 

If that is how it pans out, I think I'd choose the longer reading.

 

[imron]

so you end up doing so even for words that you'd recognise if you you had the patience to think about it for a second or two.

I have found that this thinking for a second or two is part of the learning process.  If you try and shortcut that process, then you are short-cutting your learning.

 

 

 

Looking it up straight away via pop-up provides that exposure -- is forcing yourself to remember it going to make the memory stronger than if you just look it up? I suspect it might, actually, but perhaps not in a significant way.

The thing is, it doesn't provide that exposure if all you are doing is looking briefly at the English (and possibly the pinyin), closing the popup and moving on because you aren't paying attention to the things that caused you not to understand the word in the first place.

 

If you check the popup, then stop and think about the meaning, and pronunciation, go over the sentence it occurred in to help cement context and then break down the characters in to their component parts and spend a few seconds, or maybe even half a minute going over this word in your mind to make sure that the next you encounter it you'll get it right, then you're probably getting good enough exposure.  The problem is, that's also a lot of effort and if you had to do it too often it would also kill any enjoyment you get out of reading.

 

 

read a book with no pop-up dictionary, get frustrated and stop after 15 minutes

If this is happening, then to me it indicates the person is choosing content that is not appropriate for their level and the solution should involve easier content rather than a popup dictionary.  It can be a blow to the ego when you realise you're not advanced as you'd like to think (happened to me with 金庸) but you can either face the reality of the situation and try to make improvements, or continue blindly on despite evidence to the contrary.  Unfortunately there's not a huge amount of content available for beginner and intermediate learners and it's also difficult for people to know beforehand whether or not an article or a book is suited at their level.

 

 

 

If that is how it pans out, I think I'd choose the longer reading.

On the other hand, reading a Chinese book for 45 minutes is probably not that useful if a large part of it is really just reading a poor word by word English translation.

 

What it comes down to though is each learner needing to find a balance that works for them.  I also think it's important for learners to continually assess the tools and learning methods they use and see if they are having a positive or negative effect on learning in relation to their long-term learning goals.

[Guest realmayo]

I have found that this thinking for a second or two is part of the learning process.  If you try and shortcut that process, then you are short-cutting your learning

 

That might be one way of looking at it. Another way would be that you're sacrificing the benefits of reading extensively, just to re-learn a small number of words: perhaps seeing the word three times in context can be better than just thinking deeply about it.

 

 if all you are doing is looking briefly at the English (and possibly the pinyin), closing the popup and moving on

 

Well, you can copy & paste it or add it to flashcards -- no more effort than underlining it in a book. And then go back later. This way you don't interrupt the flow.

 

the person is choosing content that is not appropriate for their level

 

Or just, they can't read it comfortably in paper form but can do so with a pop-up dictionary to hand. But actually -- I'm not talking about books where there are loads of unknown and forgotten words. Just looking up a few can be a hassle, one which is eliminated by a pop-up. 

 

 if a large part of it is really just reading a poor word by word English translation.

 

That's not the case, so it doesn't apply.

 

 

I'm not saying you should pop-up-look-up every single word you have the tiniest difficulty with. That would be a bad habit. 

Instead, I am increasingly confident that these pop-up dictionaries can be profitably used without developing that bad habit.

So it comes down to: do you trust yourself to use them 'safely'?

[laurenth]

As mentioned in another thread, the things I've been doing recently in order to try and strike a balance are:

 

 

- getting into the habit of pausing and thinking before tapping an unknown word, and then ask myself why it is unknown or why my understanding/pronunciation was mistaken (just like imron says above);

 

- reading an electronic version and a paper version in parallel. I try to use the paper version as much as I can, usually after a few epages to test the level of the book, get acquainted with character names and the author's style, etc.

 

- forcing me to use a ZH-ZH popup dictionary. That way, looking up vocab still amounts to reading and learning.

 

 

That said, popup dictionaries are a godsend, because they significantly lower the threshold at which you can start reading interesting stuff in Chinese.

[imron]

So it comes down to: do you trust yourself to use them 'safely'?

If you are using them safely, spending some time to try and figure things out first, asking yourself why you failed to know the word, and keeping track of which words you are looking up and adding them to some tool to help reinforce them later, then I think their use is not perilous.

[ouyangjun]

The big step forward to me was changing my Amazon reader to a Chinese to Chinese dictionary.  I feel that this helped me a lot in the past month.  It helps me reinforce the Chinese meaning of the word much better... likely because I'm spending more time understanding the word.  When I use the Chinese to English I found myself skimming over the definition much too fast and it takes me many more repetitions to memorize.

[Guest realmayo]

Yes, I see how that would help memorise words, perhaps I ought to do more Chinese-to-Chinese myself. 

 

Here's the thing though. That's fine for, say, the first 20 or 30 unknown or forgotten words you come across. And maybe you come across that number of words after 20 minutes of reading. But if you carry on reading for another hour or two, is it worthwhile making this 'intensive' vocab effort for the next 100 such words? For me, I try to limit that effort to a smaller number of words each day, closer to 30 than to 100. But I still think I derive a lot of benefit from that extra hour of reading (when it happens). 

[ouyangjun]

 

 

Here's the thing though. That's fine for, say, the first 20 or 30 unknown or forgotten words you come across. And maybe you come across that number of words after 20 minutes of reading. But if you carry on reading for another hour or two, is it worthwhile making this 'intensive' vocab effort for the next 100 such words? 

 

That's a good point, and I agree with you there.  At a certain point you will likely reach of point of diminishing returns, and if you looked up 100+ words in the past hour or two, then the chances of you retaining 10 of those 100 versus 10 of 10 you really focused is much less... clearly the 10 of 10 would yield better results.  

 

I guess it all comes down to the quality of the study, not the quantity.  As my dad used to always tell me, "Practice doesn't make perfect, a perfect practice makes perfect".  Whether you use a popup with English, paperback, C-C, etc., it all comes down to the quality of your study and how much you focus your learning efforts on properly learning, and not just going through the motions.

[querido]

Some popup tools will keep a history. But some kind of automatic linkage to your flashcard system would be convenient. Then set "new cards after reviews", and if you've used the popup too much you don't get to learn any new words that day. 

 

(Such a system probably already exists but I was thinking about the future of Imron's program. Edit: I think this is in the spirit of the reason he gave for not providing a popup at this time.)

[歐博思]

《zhongwen》can export to Skritter, which can export to Anki. It'd be nice to leave out the middle man....

 

 

...but I'm just watching 非诚勿扰 nowadays anyway ---- what reading???

[Law-West]

 

 

...but I'm just watching 非诚勿扰 nowadays anyway ---- what reading??? 

I watch that show too, just saw the episode in which a guy starts dating a girl working at the show

 

My advice is: use pop-up dictionaries, but turn them off by default. This way you'll only have to click it to look up anything, but this little bit of extra effort will make it less likely that you'll start looking up words that you could figure out y yourselves.

 

Or an alternate method: open a dictionary in a separate window and alt-tab in and out whenever you need to look something up, this way you'll still have to type the word, meaning you will practice recognising it and memorise its pronunciation more easily.

[imron]

but I was thinking about the future of Imron's program.

Yes, this is something I plan to integrate at some point - popups, but with tools that make you acknowledge that for the purpose of reading, any looked up word is an unknown word, and therefore you should be added that to a list of vocab items to study.

 

That's fine for, say, the first 20 or 30 unknown or forgotten words you come across. And maybe you come across that number of words after 20 minutes of reading. But if you carry on reading for another hour or two, is it worthwhile making this 'intensive' vocab effort for the next 100 such words? For me, I try to limit that effort to a smaller number of words each day, closer to 30 than to 100

For me, when I'm in vocabulary learning mode, I'll not learn more than 10 words a days.  Anything I come across after that I might look up, but won't add to flashcards or make much effort to remember, though I'll generally pause for bit to think about the word and the characters used and make a mental note of ones I see repeating often.

 

For those first 10, I'll make sure I learn them really well.  I have no problem with popups if usage of them incorporates revision of a certain portion of looked up words.  The problem I have with popups is that they tend to discourage that to some degree.  That's a problem I hope to address with Chinese Text Analyser, by providing an easy way to get those words in to your revision process.

[querido]

Hurray! 

 

(Sorry for the one-liner. Oops, now it's two!) :-)

[roddy]

Maybe a good rule of thumb is: 

 

"If I had to interrupt someone who was reading a book this often to ask vocab questions, would I feel I was excessively disrupting that person's reading experience?"

 

Because basically, that's what you're doing.

 

I think pop-ups are fine, but the very important rider is that you need capture and review processes. If you're just looking the same word up over and over again, or recalling the vague meaning but not pronunciation or specific uses, you're failing. 

[skylee]

How about try reading a real book (paper)?  There will be no pop-ups, and you either can read it or you can't.  No interruption by pop-ups at all.  By doing this you get to know at which level you really are.  I started reading English novels this way, and experienced what imron described when the books were too difficult. When the books are at the right level, you don't really need to pause to look up words that you don't know.  No need for pop-up dictionaries, really.

 

Sorry if this is irrelevant.

[Guest realmayo]

 If you're just looking the same word up over and over again, or recalling the vague meaning but not pronunciation or specific uses, you're failing. 

 

 

Well, you're certainly failing to learn that word. But maybe that word's not too important in the grand scheme of things, as long as you're learning others and reading lots.

 

The more you read, the better you get at reading. I'm sure that's been said before! And that skill improvement is surely not just limited to learning some new words. The benefits of reading must be:

 

- learn new words and grammar, and reinforce recently learned material

- improve reading skill (figuring out complex sentences etc)

- spend extended time receiving 100% Chinese input

 

If you're only reading in order to increase the number of words you know, fine, you can get that done in 15 minutes, assuming you're only going to learn 10-20 new words a day. That's vocabularly building, rather than reading.

 

But if you see benefits to spending an hour or more reading, then you've got to go beyond the focus on vocabulary (unless you've got a photographic memory for words).

[Guest realmayo]

Skylee, what you write isn't irrelevant, but it is unrealistic for me at my level: if I read any proper Chinese book for an hour or two, I will come across more than 10-20 unknown words. My brain won't let me learn 100 new words every day. But I enjoy reading. 怎么办? 

 

Lots of those words, I don't need to look up, because their rough meaning can be guessed. For others, it's easy to see that not knowing what they mean isn't a big deal, and I keep on reading. But there are some times when you need to know the word, to maintain comprehension, and a pop-up allows you do do what without breaking concentration. 

 

Sometimes hikers like to walk with a stick. That doesn't mean they're walking at the wrong level. 

 

But I agree, sometimes it's imporant to read on paper, just so the process doesn't feel alien.

[li3wei1]

When the books are at the right level, you don't really need to pause to look up words that you don't know.

 

That works in English, but not in Chinese, because while you may get the meaning, you won't get the pronunciation.

[skylee]

That may be true... which is perhaps why I don't know how to pronounce many characters. But this does not bother me at all...

[hedwards]

I think the answer depends primarily on how much self control the user has.

 

Like li3wei1 said, you can't count on picking up a vocab word just from seeing it.  Often times infer meaning once you're past a certain point, however the pronunciation is largely a mystery without knowing the answer. Yes, you can guess successfully far more frequently than by chance, but you have to choose the right radical, guess the right tone and that's unreliable.

 

Personally, I think using a pop up dictionary to verify that the word means what you think it means is OK. It's also great to use it to quickly look a word up for inclusion in your flashcards. But, habitually looking the same words up over and over is something that you want to avoid.