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Thanks for the memory

May 18th, 2007

Posted in Integrated Learning

28 Responses to “Thanks for the memory”

1. Michael Butler Says:
   May 18th, 2007 at 10:57 pm

   I look forward to hearing more. I have always thought that rote learning is a worthless construct with no empirical merit. Please let’s strike this word from our conversation and let’s talk about the many, many things that do enhance memory and make language learning easier and faster.

2. Jeff Says:
   May 19th, 2007 at 3:48 am

   Ken, an interesting post. It’s good to hear that such a methodology exists in the background of the Chinese/Spanish lessons. Because we’re talking about memorization, I’d like to compare my experiences using Chinesepod and the Pimsleur system, the two “tools” that I have most experience with.

   I started using Pimsleur soon after I decided to learn Chinese, and didn’t start using ChinesePod until much later. To me, the Pimsleur lessons are a great accompaniment for a beginner of the language. They drill you on listening skills, pronunciation, and sentence formation much like ChinesePod does - listen to the sentences and try and figure out what they mean and why the work with a reduced level of guidance (in a way replicating the way a child picks up a language). The fact that they demand a verbal response is also unique and highly effective.

   However, when I started to add ChinesePod into my study materials, I found I wasn’t initially getting as much out of them as I was the Pimsleur recordings. The beauty of the Pimsleur system was the each new word or idea is introduced, and then repeated at increasingly longer intervals and in different contexts. By the time you’ve finished each set of lessons, the words and phrases are truly memorized. I have not been exposed to a better way to ingrain something in your memory; I can still repeat verbatim many of the phrases I heard months ago. I was finding with the ChinesePod lessons that once they were over, I had retained very little. There was no “intervaled” repetition in further lessons. Although the lessons were more relevant and up to date, the “coding” process that you describe above wasn’t enough for me to retain what was being taught. Also, there is no verbal aspect to the lessons, no opportunity to actually USE what was heard.

   I still think this is an issue with ChinesePod. I am encouraged to hear that there are audio exercises in the works. While I think that ChinesePod is a fantastic package of resources, it needs some sort of continual reinforcement mechanism that allows the users to exercise verbally. Right now, I view the lessons as fragmented chunks - a great dictionary of modern Chinese, but not yet a flowing novel.

   I’m afraid I’ve come off a bit negative when all I’ve meant to do is give some constructive criticism. You’ve come a long way since your inception, and I love how you are open to new ideas. Please keep up the good work, and thanks for listening.

3. Ken Carroll Says:
   May 19th, 2007 at 10:02 am

   Jeff,

   No problem. This is exactly the kid of feedback that we need. As I’ve said here before, we don’t want to be static. We want to grow with you guys and be as relevant as we can. We’re on the case. Thx for that.

   Ken Carroll

4. Joe Says:
   May 19th, 2007 at 11:04 am

   Ken,
   I too started with the Pimsleur method. I recently finished the three levels and found Cpod some time during level 2. I must agree with Jeff on all his major points. The repetition at intervals method seems to work for me and I have been trying to go back over the Cpod lessons to enhance my retention. The question/novel response method also helps to force thinking about speaking and real time conversational rhythms.
   At Cpod I recently started using the Pinyin and character transcripts (which I didn’t want to do until I got comfortable with the sounds of the language). I don’t seem to be tempted to misspronounce the Pinyin on first sight now that I “know” many of the words in the dialogues from prior auditory exposure. So I am mapping from “known” auditory memory to new visual data.
   While the Pimsleur recordings were effective, they are nowhere as compelling to listen to as the dialogues you, Jenny, John and the Cpod staff produce. Your team’s enthusiasm and honesty keeps me listening on a regular basis and that is in the end what has enabled me to keep learning. My vocabulary and comfort with the language is now rapidly expanding thanks to your extensive collection of interesting dialogues. Thanks again for your commitment to continual improvement.
   Joe

5. Lorean Says:
   May 19th, 2007 at 2:12 pm

   Ken, with regards to memorization, I need to review things many times before I can say I’ve learned them. I’m talking about over the course of weeks and months, not mere days here.

   From personal experience, there appears to be decreasing marginal return from repeated listenings of the same material on the same day. This is why I strip the dialog and listen to it for months. Itunes keeps track of how many times a song has been played. I can safely say that dialogs that I have listened to over 50 times are very well ingrained into my memory.

   Cpod could further improve its lessons by using key vocabulary more than once in the dialog. Currently, at intermediate level a new word typically only appears once. Take a look at my comment on “Wedding Customs”. That podcast is an excellent example of how repeating a piece of vocabulary facilitates memorization.

6. salairedelapeur Says:
   May 19th, 2007 at 9:14 pm

   My experience is identical to that of Joe and Ken. There is something about the Pimsleur method which allows new words to dig in deep. I’ve gone over the whole cycle three times, and now I still do one Chinese and one Spanish lesson every day while walking.

   Since you’re interested, I’ll show you how it works in MY own fast decaying brain. Let’s say the new word is Fan Yi (interpreter). The first time the word is introduced, my mind tends to create a little cue: (i.e. I’m a “fan” of Nicole Kidman, and she was “The Interpreter”). By the third time the word is introduced in context, I don’t need this crutch. However, when I revisit this section six months later, up pops Nicole, and Fan Yi follows. I almost feel the folders opening in my brain.

   I also revisit Rosetta Stone, for the vocab. But it’s less catchy, and much closer to the dreaded learning by rote. The brain gets sore if anything.

   ONE NOTE,HOWEVER: Being a native French speaker, I’m closer to Spanish than to Mandarin, and I retain more from SpanishSense than from ChinesePod. I absolutely adore both of course.

   Here is my experience working with all three systems:
   http://www.nextjourney.org/Dianying/putonghua.html

7. AuntySue Says:
   May 19th, 2007 at 9:35 pm

   Yes, each podcast lesson is constructed very well, as a self-contained lesson, to maximise the ease of taking it in. Personally, I don’t get much out of the three readings at the beginning, because I “can’t hear” anything until I understand some of it, but if I’ve already listened through once or if it’s really easy then the three readings are useful because I can follow it a bit.

   These podcasts seem to have reached perfection of delivery to a student who is going to learn a language for 24 hours. For a longer period of learning a language, I think you need to cover each day what you did yesterday but changed around a bit, with a couple of new words and a few from previous weeks. I can’t imagine learning any other way. Also while I agree that lots of listening is important especially in the early stages, there comes a point when nothing is retained without being challenged to process it as output.

   For me, the podcast lessons are extension material, a little entertaining educational reward for the other study I do, and something that keeps me motivated an interested in learning the language. I have found other course materials that give me the kind of learning that I want, acknowledging and reusing what I already know and providing lots of speaking exercises, and it’s quite unlike what I get here, in every way. Some people attend classes which is even better, but there’s none available where I live.

   There’s nothing wrong with that kind of use. If you have a good course or one that gives most of what you need, and use ChinesePod as well, you have the best of both worlds. They are so unalike that they do not conflict, and if you tried to make them similar they’d lose their appeal. It’s likely that you’ll encounter the same words in two places, one in a real life lover’s quarrel about a toilet while they wait for the bus to the restaurant, and one in a he said she said what did they say textbook, and you can compare and benefit from the two. No course is going to give you such a wealth of easy and fun listening, they don’t have enough time to spend with you.

   Listening to Chinese radio shows isn’t so good. Apart from being too hard, there’s nobody there to stop and point out interesting or useful words, and there’s no way to see the words written down which is really important, because even when your fun exposure isn’t meant to be “serious learning” at that time, you still need to satisfy your curiosity straight away, before it turns around and binds you in apathy. You can’t help but learn a third of the stuff in a podcast even if you don’t pay attention. If you forget the other two thirds, permanently, within 24 hours, well hey, it only cost you ten minutes and you’ve got a third of it down. An hour on the site will knock over the rest of it, but maybe you only need to learn that first third, the words and phrases that jumped out at you.

   Who says you have to learn everything just because it’s there? Would you rather learn a little bit out of a hundred podcast lessons, or know 25 of them inside out? Both are equally valid approaches. The best one is the one that motivates you most, because we’ll all get to the same point so long as we keep going.

   So I guess I’m saying that for my learning style at least, as a full course it isn’t all there how I want it, but a course of the kind I’d like could never keep me going on its own, it’d drive me crazy after a while. If these podcast lessons were to become like any other course, which I can’t see them doing, it would be a net loss.

   Most of the language that I’ve found most useful and easily remembered, I’ve learned when I was only listening for fun and something motivated me to see what that word looks like and fiddle around with the phrase. On the other hand, I can’t think of a single lesson that I know and remember all of. Who cares? There’s 500 podcasts that I only recall a little bit of, which is a lot better than a year ago when I didn’t know 5 words, so it’s working. At least it’s never boring, and never compulsory. The approach of the current lessons is unique and valuable. If like me you need something a bit more blatently re-using and slowly incremental, sure, but then why not supplement with a class or something, and fully use the best of both worlds?

8. FuDaWei Says:
   May 19th, 2007 at 11:00 pm

   Ken … all this talk of Pimsleur here and in other threads lately … Have you actually ever listened to a Pimsleur lesson, or are you going by our descriptions?

   You might want to check out a free sample lesson in the language of your choice to get a better idea of what we’re talking about.

9. FuDaWei Says:
   May 20th, 2007 at 2:28 am

   *sigh* If you follow that link I gave you, you probably won’t want to download the Mandarin example. They messed up. It’s actually ESL for Mandarin speakers.

10. Roger Chriss Says:
    May 20th, 2007 at 2:31 am

    I used Pimsleur when starting Chinese, and have been on ChinesePod for about a year. This being my seventh language, I’ve got some experience with the memorization issue.
    The problem with Pimsleur is that their approach can only work at the elementary level. The volume of material necessary to create a program to develop adult-level proficiency would be astronomical. This is where most language learners get stuck: how do you retain words, phrases, idioms, and grammar that just don’t occur often enough to be reinforced?
    Children’s brains are well developed to do this once (for their native language), but most people lose this ability by the time they turn 10. So we adults have to use “crutches”, whether memorization tricks like the one above about Nicole Kidman for “fanyi”, repetition drills, immersion programs, or just endless practice over years, it’s a slog.
    I’m hoping to see more “related lessons” in future ChinesePod programs. In other words, a series of lessons on doing business (or whatever) that all use similar vocabulary, grammar, idioms, etc. so that reinforcement can come smoothly over a short time. Changing the voices, context, and such while keeping the vocab, etc. the same might help.
    Thoughts?
    Roger Chriss

11. salairedelapeur Says:
    May 20th, 2007 at 3:16 am

    Yes, Roger is right. For all the merits of Pimsleur, if you finish the whole course (48 CDs), you’ve learned ONE color: green.

    When I started listening to ChinesePod, I was disappointed that I only felt comfortable at the Ellie level. I thought I was much better than that! Now, I can grasp a good bit of Intermediate.

    If anything, as a Pimsleur graduate, I still find much to profit from in the Newbie lessons, Putonghua AND Castellano.

12. FuDaWei Says:
    May 20th, 2007 at 3:28 am

    To be fair, I think it’s a conscious decision on Pimsleur’s part to limit the scope. They’re providing a solid foundation, not a Ph.D.

13. Lorean Says:
    May 20th, 2007 at 10:51 am

    “Children’s brains are well developed to do this once (for their native language), but most people lose this ability by the time they turn 10.”

    Please cite your source. I’m interested in reading scientific evidence that supports this much-stated assertion.

14. Ken Carroll Says:
    May 20th, 2007 at 12:19 pm

    FDW,

    I have listened to Pimsleur, but I’ve never tried to use it as such. I think the constant references to it amongst the community has convincved me that I need to explore it in more depth.

    Ken Carroll

15. AuntySue Says:
    May 20th, 2007 at 4:39 pm

    Ken, I suspect when people refer to Pimsleur, a lot of the time they’re talking about a set of learning principles (for anything, not just languages) which Pimsleur and some others use. It just so happens that Pimsleur is the only one most people know about, so it’s mentioned a lot in discussions.

    Some of the key features, off the top of my head, are:
    * Student active rather than passive most of the time
    * Nothing new is ever learned without immediately linking it to a few things that you already know well and using them together
    * Much repetition, trailing off over many weeks, but never repeated in quite the same way.
    * Everything once remembered is honoured by frequent opportunity to use, demonstrate, manipulate
    * No separate studying, drilling, no working alone, every minute of the learning is interactive and guided.
    * Student can be 100% successful throughout, while still being challenged. Repeat lesson if necessary before moving on. Avoids drilling errors, and maintains self esteem.
    * Absolutely student centred during lessons, even though guided. It’s not about what the teacher does/knows, it’s all about the student, while the teacher prompts and extracts what the student already knows or can work out easily.

    The FSI course shares many of these features even though it takes a very different approach. Both tend to be excruciatingly dry and boring but their effectiveness and activity basis, with students forced to notice their own sucess every minute, is highly motivating. It is not surprising that students often express a love-hate relationship with these courses. I would not be surprised if BF Skinner thought they were pretty good.

    If you don’t like these courses, that doesn’t necessarily mean you don’t like the approach. The actual implementation has a lot to do with it, and at least in the case of Pimsleur. Its implementation is constrained by having no further contact with the student after purchase, and the student possibly working in complete isolation with only those recordings.

    The opposite to that approach is to give students a good range of excellent resources, and assume they know best how to turn those resources into knowledge.

    Neither of these two extremes teach grammar in the traditional sense. Both allow the student to spend extra time using and exploring the language if she wishes to.

16. Ken Carroll Says:
    May 20th, 2007 at 5:26 pm

    Aunty,

    Great points and it’s good to see a discussion build up over here - like the old days! I will refer to these points closely as I do some more research on Pimsleur this week.

    I want to pick up on a couple of your points. The first concerns isolation. I firmly beleive learning must have a social aspect. Contact with a practitioner or other learners will almost certainly make learning more effective, hence the community element here.

    The second point concerns autonomy and the assumption that people will be able to turn the resources into knowledge. Fundemantally I have faith in the intelligence of our learners to figure out what will work for them, but we definitely DO NOT leave that to chance. The discussions lesson comments, forums, etc, all allow users to share ideas on how to maximize these tools, particularly with people with similar learning styles. This, to me, is the single biggest advantage of the Community of Practice notions that I’ve spoken about before. I trust the natural intelligence of the learners to figure it out and share those insights.

    Ande btw, there will be more formal grammar coming this summer.

17. Lantian Says:
    May 22nd, 2007 at 7:12 pm

    TRUTH BE TOLD - I haven’t heard people talking/writing about the memorization turning into utilization. There’s a definite difference between being able to recall a word, versus inserting it into spoken conversation without being jilted.

    I’d like to hear what the learners using Pimseleur say about this.

    I think Cpod in the early days utilized more narrative and stories which engaged the listeners,

    “Researchers have found that the human brain has a natural affinity for narrative construction. People tend to remember facts more accurately if they encounter them in a story rather than in a list, studies find.”
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05.....ref=slogin

    With a consistent set of teachers, narrations and anecdotes; that person’s (host/teacher) own set of vocabulary naturally brings in the necessary repetition.

    I think this kind of input becomes output in our own ability to tell our own stories. In other words language.

    Although John has definitely built up the academic aspects and structure, I think we have lost the early days of Ken and Jenny with the rigid separation of languages spoken, levels, etc.

    Memorization is a false idol, only a very few have memorized (in it’s common definition) a whole language.

18. Michael Butler Says:
    May 22nd, 2007 at 9:17 pm

    How can memorization be a false idol? Everything we learn ultimately exists in memory. Moreover we would be wrong if we didn’t acknowledge that there are easy ways and hard ways, fast ways and slow ways to get something into memory.

    To ignore the role of memory in language learning is to turn your back on the thing we put most of our effort into during the beginning and intermediate stages. At advanced levels it could be argued that instead of remembering single words we are now concentrating on remembering how to put strings of words together in native-like, appropriate, and meaningful ways.

    I believe that good teacher and a good training program makes REMEMBERING easier. It also makes it fun to put all the time in that is necessary to learn a language. Pimsleur recognized this when he established his principles for learning a language. Helping students remember was one of the issues he dealt with quite explicitly.

    Every time this question comes up at Chinesepod someone is quick to equate memory with memorization which then morphs into “rote memorization”. This is a very shallow understanding of the place of memory in language learning. There is room for a much broader and student friendly understanding.

19. Lantian Says:
    May 24th, 2007 at 2:33 pm

    SPEECH - Maybe there is an example that can explain my point better, there are those who have had brain injuries or conditions where they have lost all short-term memory, or lack a long-term memory, yet they are still able to speak.

    Yes this person is not ‘whole’, but I think we spend a lot of time thinking about memory and not about the production, output and ways language really works. I really think that language learned ‘absent’ memorization tricks and false satisfaction can be much more pleasant, fun and well-retained.

    It’s like calling a house a bunch of bricks, and I’m talking about what we call home. The bricks of language I have no disagreements with anyone, but I think teaching/learning about home/language is under represented.

20. Michael Butler Says:
    May 24th, 2007 at 3:42 pm

    Lantian

    My point is somewhat simple– memorization is not the same as memory.

    What is more, I believe that most of the fun associated with learning a language comes from being successful. Success is impossible without moving the stuff you are learning from short term to long term memory.

    There is no contradiction in being interested in memory AND the other things you mentioned.

21. salairedelapeur Says:
    May 25th, 2007 at 7:05 pm

    Lantian, you wrote: “I’d like to hear what the learners using Pimsleur say about this (memorization turning into utilization).”

    You’re right onto one of the beauties of Pimleur. Half the time, you simply repeat, but the rest of the time, you have to make it up. The instructor says “Señora Gomez is going to invite you to lunch. Please answer that you’re not able on any of the dates she offers.” To me, the very nugget of Pimsleur consists of the moments when you must jump in and - especially - come up with the right word order on your own.

    As far as narrative is concerned, Pimsleur Spanish has much more humor than Pimsleur Chinese. But in both, there is a progression. It’s not like Rosetta Stone (today office supplies, tomorrow reptiles…)

22. Jim in SF Says:
    May 26th, 2007 at 10:42 am

    Here’s another endorsement of the Pimsleur program! I went through all 3 levels of Mandarin before I found CP, and it was just amazing how well the Pimsleur course burrowed itself into my brain.

23. Jeff Says:
    May 29th, 2007 at 3:11 pm

    I really enjoyed pimsleur. Mostly the parts in which it kind tested you by giving a short pause then telling you the answer. ALso as someone else said, the progression and building upon what you’ve already learned was helpful. I think I learned alot from it. I do enjoy chinesepod alot, though i am getting tired of hearing chris tucker when i want to repeat a lesson. Might have to use an mp3 splitter and edit out all that.

24. Eric in Portland Says:
    June 3rd, 2007 at 12:50 am

    I started with pimsleur also, and followed through with all three courses. Even today, 2 years later, if I am unsure of a tone for a word I can pull it from memory by remembering the a line from pimsleur with that word in it.

    Aunty Sue did a good job summarizing the key points of the pimsleur method, but she missed the most critical one: the language elements (vocab and gramar) are repeated at specific intervals through out the courses across lessons. And the intervals of repetion are not random, they are strategic and scientifically based. The pimsleur people claim that this feature is fundemental to their success.

    But, this feature is not only missing from chinesepod, it is antithetical to the fundemental principal of chinesepod: Modularity. I have read (over and over) in this blog that Chinesepod does not want to impose an order on their lessons, that learning needs to be student directed, etc.

    Certainly students need to be self directed and motivated, but I don’t think that providing a structure which makes learning more effective is in conflict with the learners initiative.

    A couple months ago I did frequency analysis word used in the chinesepod lessons and “published” it in this blog. The study demonstrated that 75% of the vocabulary at any level is not repeated or repeated only once. Of course this is consistent with goal of modularity but it reduces the effectiveness of the material.

    Both of these systems are pretty cool and make a huge contribution to set of materials available for learning mandarin. But personally, I prefer text books which offer dialogs and text in a convenient format (convenient in the sense that it is in a book not scattered across a web site). This allows me to review just by re-reading the passages. This, by the way, is my number one complaint of pimsleur: they do not provide any text (pinyin or hanzi) for review.

25. Eric in Portland Says:
    June 3rd, 2007 at 6:09 am

    Anyone interested in learning more about the Pimsleur method may want to check out this site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P.....ing_system

26. AuntySue Says:
    June 4th, 2007 at 6:18 pm

    ChinesePod provides something unique, and does a bloody good job of it. There’s nothing remotely similar, and I doubt anyone could imitate it.

    Pimsleur and a bunch of others sit at the opposite extreme of a continuum (think of a VERY long line with one sitting at each end). A few others cluster around the Pimsleur end (e.g. FSI), and the bulk of them are around the middle, but chinesepod is almost on its own way up the other end.

    Some of us find Chinesepod isn’t enough, so we try stuff from down the other end. We like it, it works for us. Then we have a four way choice:

    1. Use the more boring material at the Pimsleur end, that provides lots of repetition, practice, etc etc
    2. Forget it, stick with chinesepod and make do
    3. Use both approaches together
    4. Change chinsepod to become a mixture of the two, to sit more centrally on that continuum

    What we’re talking about here is tending towards number 4, and I can’t see any good coming of it, for any party.

27. Ken Carroll Says:
    June 4th, 2007 at 6:37 pm

    AuntySue,

    I agree with you. It would be pointless for ChinesePod to suddenly try to appropriate the Pimsleur method. It wouldn’t exactly be a case of blazing new linguistic trails. I’m doing this because I believe there’s a chance to do something radically new, not in order to copy others. I know that pretty much goes for the rest of the team.

    Ken Carroll

28. freda Says:
    June 7th, 2007 at 12:37 pm

    Yes, memory is a goodd thing for us, it can make us happy or unhappy, it is the only thing which can not be changed.

    Qweas ( http://www.qweas.com/ )

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