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Marvelous weather we're having...
Dec. 22nd, 2011 08:07 pmIt was uncomfortably cold out during Zorra's "retreat" on top of the building across the street. And last night, I had barely fallen asleep when I was awakened by the sound of hail hitting the roof and the flash of far-off lightning. Today, however, was a different story.
It was positively nice out. And when I looked up, I could swear some of the trees have been fooled by recent weather into thinking it'll be spring soon (and here we are, barely past the winter solstice!).
It was a fairly quiet day. I helped Galina with some yard work (as far as I'm concerned, although some additional effort could go into moving leaves, I'll feel no qualms if snow falls on the leaves where they are right now). I emptied out the several boxes of stuff I brought from Colorado, threw out some junk, and scanned some papers before hiking most of them into the trash as well.
I've become reacquainted with a product called SuperMemo, whose purpose is to provide a flash-card experience with spaced repetition. The idea behind spaced repetition consists in presenting material you "know" at ever-longer intervals, and drilling you on the stuff you don't know as well, or at all.
One interesting aspect of the software is that grading is on the "honor system," i.e., once you ask to see the answer, you're asked to grade yourself as eihter "I know," "Almost," or "I don't know." (I seem to recall earlier versions of the application—which has been around for over 20 years—had more choices, ranging from "I knew it immediately," through "I remembered with difficulty," etc.)
Another interesting aspect is the creation of a web-based version where one can sign up for various courses on a subscription basis. What I find particularly butt-kicking about the specific courses (I've signed up for Spanish and French) is that instead of showing you the English and asking for, say, the French, the prompt consists of a definition and an example.
For example:
Now my job is to (a) figure out what the text in bold means ("a doctrine considered as true"), and then (b) supply the appropriate French word. So not only am I being drilled on vocabulary, but I need to understand what elements of that vocabulary mean. In this particular case, the sought answer is orthodoxie.
This passion for understanding, by the way, fits in with the philosophy of learning espoused by Dr. Piotr A. Wozniak, the developer of the SuperMemo spaced repetition algorithm, the first principle of which, in an essay titled Effective Learning: Twenty rules of formulating knowledge, is "do not learn if you do not understand."
An extreme example he gives for learning what one does not understand involves a non-German speaker cramming the content of a history book written in German. Such an achievement is possible, but the effort will be monumental, and in the end, the gained understanding of history will be nil. (There I go, thinking in LISP again. ;^)
I need to get back to today's slug of French.
Cheers...
It was positively nice out. And when I looked up, I could swear some of the trees have been fooled by recent weather into thinking it'll be spring soon (and here we are, barely past the winter solstice!).
It was a fairly quiet day. I helped Galina with some yard work (as far as I'm concerned, although some additional effort could go into moving leaves, I'll feel no qualms if snow falls on the leaves where they are right now). I emptied out the several boxes of stuff I brought from Colorado, threw out some junk, and scanned some papers before hiking most of them into the trash as well.
I've become reacquainted with a product called SuperMemo, whose purpose is to provide a flash-card experience with spaced repetition. The idea behind spaced repetition consists in presenting material you "know" at ever-longer intervals, and drilling you on the stuff you don't know as well, or at all.
One interesting aspect of the software is that grading is on the "honor system," i.e., once you ask to see the answer, you're asked to grade yourself as eihter "I know," "Almost," or "I don't know." (I seem to recall earlier versions of the application—which has been around for over 20 years—had more choices, ranging from "I knew it immediately," through "I remembered with difficulty," etc.)
Another interesting aspect is the creation of a web-based version where one can sign up for various courses on a subscription basis. What I find particularly butt-kicking about the specific courses (I've signed up for Spanish and French) is that instead of showing you the English and asking for, say, the French, the prompt consists of a definition and an example.
For example:
(f) doctrine considérée come vraieIn operation, the web application displays the prompt and a voice reads the text in bold.
(p. ex. L'........ s'applique à la religion, aux sciences, à l'art, etc., ne légitimant pas ce que iest dissident, hérétique ou hétérodoxe.)
Now my job is to (a) figure out what the text in bold means ("a doctrine considered as true"), and then (b) supply the appropriate French word. So not only am I being drilled on vocabulary, but I need to understand what elements of that vocabulary mean. In this particular case, the sought answer is orthodoxie.
This passion for understanding, by the way, fits in with the philosophy of learning espoused by Dr. Piotr A. Wozniak, the developer of the SuperMemo spaced repetition algorithm, the first principle of which, in an essay titled Effective Learning: Twenty rules of formulating knowledge, is "do not learn if you do not understand."
An extreme example he gives for learning what one does not understand involves a non-German speaker cramming the content of a history book written in German. Such an achievement is possible, but the effort will be monumental, and in the end, the gained understanding of history will be nil. (There I go, thinking in LISP again. ;^)
I need to get back to today's slug of French.
Cheers...
