Gold list method

[gingaginger]

I haven't seen any posts about this so please correct me if I'm wrong. Has anyone used the gold list methodfor learning mandarin Chinese? Do you need seperate books for learning characters and vocabulary? http://huliganov.tv/goldlist-eu/

[耳耳语语]

Thank you for the reference, I read the article and comments, and I intend to give it a try with the 10 000 chinese word list

 ( http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/42692-spreadsheet-of-10000-most-frequent-chinese-words-2397-characters/ )

 

In short : M.Huliganov idea is to copy 25 words and translations in 20mn, then only review it 15 days later and keep the 70 % you least remembered. Then proceed to 3 "distillations" like this over time. According to him, it boosts long-term memorisation, whereas more frequent repetitions would only make work the short-term memorisation, which he thinks is inefficient. He insists that you must keep this work slow and relaxed, and make a 10mn pause beetwen each 20mn.

(He adds that you also need to read novels to actually make this method useful later).

 

M.Huliganov himself is learning Japanese and Chinese, and uses the Heisig books of characters.

According to him, you could use separate lists for characters, and proceed by successive distillations : first keep the characters which order strike you remembered, then the sounds, then the meaning, then examples of words and sentences.

http://huliganov.tv/2010/12/13/the-goldlist-method-and-kanji/#more-1163

My guess would be that the method is easier when you already know enough characters and only try to learn new words, since you only have 20mn each time!

 

Anyway it's a kind of "space repetition but anti-flashcard" method and i will give it a try.

 

[sorry for my clumsy english ^^]

 

PS : The author M.Viktor Dmitrievitch Huliganov seems actually a really nice and practical guy. Someone in the comments wrote that he was too fat and should eat more carbons and vegetables. 6 months later M.Huliganov notes that he followed the advices and feels much more healthier now.

[gingaginger]

Great, that sounds good, let me know how you get on. I'll give it a go again as well.

[chuff]

I made a short video about how to use the Goldlist Method that might be useful! 

 

You can find it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ixxq8moh4pg

 

I'm using it for 普通话 now. Give it a go and let us know your progress!~

[耳耳语语]

Ok so I made my first distillation yesterday. On 25 words I "kind of" remembered 12.

 

* disadvantages of the method :

- In chinese you have to remember many layers at the same time : characters, pinyin, and often several meanings (it's more complicated that just "chat" or "gato" equal "cat")

I think this method would be very too long if you have too make different distillations for each layer (as M.Huliganov is doing in Japanese Chinese).

- Lack of context, especially for verbs and functionnal words. Sometimes I have to look in a dictionnary to find examples sentences.

- Sometimes I approximatly remembered the concept implied by the word, but not exactly

 

* advantage of the method :

- for the first time, planning long-term revisions IS the priority

- this method keeps me motivated, it focuses on the positive side of remembering (you don't have to remember 100% of the list)

 

So in short, it would be better to read a chinese text, look up all the unknown vocabulary, then re-read it 15 days later.

But because I'm far too lazy to do that, this method is more realistic for me !

Now I go on with my long lists of chinese words, to see how far I can keep on ^^

[edelweis]

@耳耳语语

hmm your idea of re-reading a text after 15 days sounds interesting. I might try something of the kind.

 

Where are you now with your word lists? how many words at the various stages?

[imron]

Re-reading texts is a very good idea.

[Guest realmayo]

I saw this topic six weeks ago and thought I'd give it a go. I've since done 30 of these 25-word blocks, and distillations after between 2-4 weeks. That includes four blocks where I've distilled down a second time.

 

Am finding it pretty easy to recall one-third of the words each time. First time I did the 'distillations' I was nervous that I'd remember almost nothing, which would have meant the previous two weeks worth of work were for nothing. But no, it seems to be working for me and I'll stick with it.

 

Writing out the words, and the pinyin and the English, slowly, calmly, neatly, in a nice hardback A4 book with strong paper, taking some satisfaction from the process and the result, and doing this in a relaxed environment, maybe in the garden or somewhere I don't normally sit and study, and with no big pressure to 'test' or 'learn' but just enjoy the words, let them roll around in my head for the 25 minutes I'm spending -- this suits me at the moment and seems to suit my memory too.

 

Eliminating one-third of the words is quite therapeutic and quite 'meta' as well. It doesn't feel that I'm testing myself. More, that after waiting for a few weeks, I get to discover which I remembered and which I didn't. And when rewriting those ones I didn't remember (or didn't remember as well as the best one-third), it's nice to think about why I found them more difficult to remember.

 

Waving bye-bye to the eliminated one-third: that is quite satisfying, although I'm sceptical that that particular process in itself does anything to further enforce the memory. And eventually I'll probably get round to adding all the eliminated words into Anki SRS.

 

 

So thanks to the OP for mentioning this 'method'. It doesn't promise anything radically new or magical: just encourages a good environment to learn new words initially, and then a neat way to put more renewed effort into dealing with those words that are trickier to remember.

 

 

(I'm not sure I would have found it so smooth, though, when I knew fewer characters: having to remember characters and their pinyin along with the meaning of a multi-character word might have made it impossible to even get near that one-third success rate.)

[edelweis]

@realmayo:

were those new words, or a words from a textbook you're studying on the side?

[Guest realmayo]

New words, or properly forgotten words, picked up from TV, textbooks, news, fiction etc.

[edelweis]

ok. I'm thinking about doing this for the vocabulary of the textbook I'm (not really) studying from, and/or for the surnames in the 百家姓. Lots of words or characters I already know in both

[Wippen (inactive)]

I love the Goldlist method. The use is for words that I have studied in a text with a teacher. I feel it helps me justify the costs of lessons, ie I feel I am not "losing" the words. the second reason is to try and establish words that are in my passive memory, hoping the goldlist will help get them to the active memory. Here is a post of a page.

 

(Note: The hanzi is not pretty but it is not the aim here and this is never going to be a goal)