This is part 5 of a multipart series that is boldly freaking going where no series has gone before. Go here to read the series from the start. And here to read the previous installment.
OK, so after all that talk, let me show you a few examples of the SRS cards I’ve been using with the Unified Reading Process (URP). Remember that the URP was designed (which seems a bit of a posh word for how simple a thing it is, but, there you go) by yours truly to solve problems with both (a) native-level languages and (b) sucky-(not-yet-native)-level languages.
So, while it is a single process, it does have two rather different motivations, and this produces two broad types of cards:
(b) is the type of thing we typically discuss here at AJATT. So, it uses the same types of SRS cards as we’ve been talking about all this time. No changes, no surprises. In this article, we’ll focus mostly (though not exclusively) on type (a)
But before we hit the example cards, let me answer a couple of your questions all nice like.
Currently, I have a bunch of different decks. I think this is definitely the way to go, as:
My current deck breakdown is:
I just kind of play it by ear, to tell you the truth. I use the scoring principles outlined by Dr. Woz at SuperMemo. Namely:
So basically a card is either correct or incorrect, but then within that binaryness, the 0~5 scale gives uz a finer-grained way of explaining the correctness. 0~2 is all incorrect, 3~5 is correct; it’s all a matter of degree and the specifics don’t matter too too much. SRSing isn’t so ossified a field that these things are hard and fast yet.
We are living in a golden, lawless age where no one’s telling you what to do*: enjoy your freedom. In any case, once you decide what constitutes correctness and incorrectness for your cards, then scoring is smooth sailing. The key is that you recognize that most decisions are ultimately arbitrary, that there’s nothing wrong with that, and that you have the right to start making some of these arbitrary decisions. You are the rules. That’s my take on it.
Besides, I don’t like other people controlling my whys, whens, whats, with-whoms and hows, because they’re not very good at it .
*For example, some idiots went and decided that socks + slippers = lame, before I was even born. From birth, I have known that socks + slippers = a prudent foot-hygiene choice in any urban environment. But now, on top of making good decisions for myself, I’m beating off the social inertia of someone else’s ancient opinions. Is that what you want? Coz you’re asking for it! Don’t come asking me to make rules that don’t exist.
I choose decks in order of fun/priority and I delete extensively. If I’m avoiding a deck, then I go on a deletion spree, and I keep deleting until the deck feels good again.
Also, while there are many decks, many of the decks contain only a handful of cards (80-20 rule) or are information-only decks, so…there are no reps to do as such.
So, no, I don’t necessarily touch every deck every day without fail . Rather than try to “work harder” to correct this, I instead tweak things to make it so that I want to touch the relevant decks — again, deletion is big here. Also, if, for whatever reason, time is short, then priority rules take over. Japanese is a top priority deck for me. Humanities is not.
Surusu does automated rep-capping and deck-switching for me, so a lot of the thought/selection/management burden is taken away.
Yeah, and it was your mother I was loving…jerkwad.
What? No…Um…OK card. The simplest way is to just give you a nice, pretty table, much like in “My First Sentence Pack”, except MFSP is even better.
To make things easier for myself, these cards do not have links to actual audio files (even where applicable). In a real, live SRS, they would…I just wanted to save myself a few steps since this article is so long already! … ‘Told you I was lazy 8)
So are you offended by the “jerkwad” part or the advertising?
Deck | Front | Back | Notes |
Japanese | テメエら人間じゃなええや! | Don’t come to me with a note from your Japanese wife saying that this is a “very rude” phrase. I flipping know it’s rude, OK? That’s the point. She likes it when I talk to her like this. | |
Japanese | 本日、営業部長に就任致しました大久保恆でございます。 | しゅう‐にん〔シウ‐〕【就任】 [名](スル)ある任務・職務につくこと。「取締役に―する」大久保恆(オオクボ ヒトシ) スピーチに強くなる!―ビジネスに役立つ スピーチが楽になる (特選実用ブックス) (単行本) |
There’s your precious 敬語. |
Kanji | MUSK DEER a DEER that’s begging for you to SHOOT it! |
麝 | Yes, it’s the older format: the one that isn’t lazy kanji. |
Kanji | QUARREL STAREeyes + quarrel | 睜 | A simpler format. Front has component names only, no explicit story (although one always seems to get made up in my head by just looking at the components). |
Math/Science/Engineering | ##### Biochemistry. the substance acted upon by an enzyme. |
substrate Biochemistry. the substance acted upon by an enzyme. |
|
Math/Science/Engineering | #### 熱の遮斷および保溫のために用いる、熱を伝えにくい材料。石綿・ガラス繊維・コルクなど。 |
だんねつ‐ざい【斷熱材】 熱の遮斷および保溫のために用いる、熱を伝えにくい材料。石綿・ガラス繊維・コルクなど。 |
|
Math/Science/Engineering | この公式を因數分解せよ (x^2 + 2x + 1) |
(x + 1)^2 | Not MathML or anything. Not ideal for notation. But a start. |
Math/Science/Engineering | 【×閏秒】天體観測をもとにした平均太陽時(世界時)と、原子時計ではかった國際#########時とのずれを調整するために加えたり引いたりされる1秒。→協定世界時 | うるう‐びょう〔うるふベウ〕【×閏秒】天體観測をもとにした平均太陽時(世界時)と、原子時計ではかった國際原子時とのずれを調整するために加えたり引いたりされる1秒。→協定世界時 | |
Humanities | #### 1 さいころばくちの親。また、ばくちの場所を貸して、寺銭をとる者。胴親。 |
どう‐もと【胴元/▽筒元】 1 さいころばくちの親。また、ばくちの場所を貸して、寺銭をとる者。胴親。 |
|
Original Ideas | Deck rename | @Surusu | AJATT articles, Surusu features, etc. |
Business | ・自分に厳しくしない→自分という子どもを育てていると思い、@@@@を使わない。 | ・自分に厳しくしない→自分という子どもを育てていると思い、否定語を使わない。
なまけもののあなたがうまくいく57の法則 (単行本(ソフトカバー)) 本田 直之 (著) |
Primary goal of this deck: increase effectiveness and efficiency.Contentwise, this deck is very close to the personal development deck, except that the PD deck contains only cards that are worded positively. |
Business | @@@@のある浪費に手を出さない | 常習性のある浪費に手を出さないなまけもののあなたがうまくいく57の法則 (単行本(ソフトカバー))
本田 直之 (著) |
Lots of ideas from Seth Godin and the like go here as well. |
Cantonese | 具有多元嘅種族 | [media: canto-london- 005.mp3] | Read the front; confirm my pronunciation against audio on the back.A contributor at RhinoSpike kindly supplied the audio in this case. |
Personal Development | my compliments to Khatz for breaking down my resistance to motivational writing, that was not an easy task ^_^ | Source | Primary goal of this deck: increase self-efficacy.I also put compliments from people in this deck. |
Personal Development | A setback is a setup for a #### | A setback is a setup for a comebackLes Brown | . |
Personal Development | F = False E = Evidence A = Appearing R = Real |
Zig Ziglar | . |
Mandarin | 飛 看大雪紛飛 卻再也找不回 | fēnfēi【紛飛】 (雪や花などが)ひらひら舞い落ちる. ¶柳絮liǔxù~/柳絮(りゅう じょ)が舞い落ちる.diǎnzhui【點綴】 (2)付き合いとしてする;間に合わせる. ¶我唱得不好,隨便哼hēng幾句~一下吧/私はうまく歌えませんが,お付き合いに歌わせていただきましょう. yīpiē【一瞥】 ★cōngcōng【匆匆】 **★★喝 ★dǎrǎo【打擾】 duōqíng【多情】 ★★yuánliàng【原諒】 ★wúliáo【無聊】 jìng huā shuǐ yuè【鏡花水月】 míliàn【迷戀】 jiān’áo【煎熬】 ★yōngbào【擁抱】 pòxiǎo【破曉】 **★醉zuì **★★杯(盃)bēi dānfēi【單飛】 ★húdié【蝴蝶】 **★握wò ★liángshuǐ【涼水】 **★涼(涼)liáng guǐmèi【鬼魅】 ★jǐngsè【景色】 bēizhōngwù【杯中物】 **燭(燭)zhú ★děnghòu【等候】 字級選擇 夜好深了 紙窗裡怎麼亮著 杯中景色鬼魅 我忘了我是誰 心情就像夜涼如水 花田裡犯了錯 說好破曉前忘掉 醉 怎麼會喝醉 美 因為你的美 愛匆匆一瞥不過點綴 當時空成為擁有你 唯一條件 我又醉 我的山水全部褪了色 多情的打擾請原諒我 |
This is an example of a song card. |
Hangul | 국 | 국민대학관(國民大學館)’ | Extremely low-priority deck. |
Recipes | 筍のわさびカルパッチョ レシピ | 材料 ( 2人分 )筍 小1本
わかめ 適量 ○オリーブオイル・しょうゆ 各大さじ2 ○わさび 小さじ2 こしょう 少々 1筍はアク抜きして姫竹を殘すように皮をむき5mm位にスライスする。わかめは戻して水気を絞る。○を合わせて混ぜ溶かす。 2器にわかめを適量のせ、上に筍をバランスよくのせたら○を回しかける。お好みでこしょうを振っていただきます。 |
Food, baby.Yummy in my tummy.
This is an example of what I like to call a “static” deck, in that I don’t actually do reps on it; I just throw things here because it’s an easy way to data storage/management. I’m going to be using the SRS anyway, and it’s easy to run searches on my decks. |
Unconfirmed/Questionable | 呢個手提電話係一件非常恐怖嘅武器 | 根據我嘅情報顯示,呢個手提電話係一件非常恐怖嘅武器料[Audio]
★wǔqì【武器】 武器.兵器.件;[ひとまとまりになったもの]批pī. 【補足】広く闘爭の手段にもたとえる. ¶用現代的~和技術jìshù來裝備zhuāngbèi軍隊/近代的な武器と技術で軍隊を裝備する. ¶把筆當做dàngzuò~/ペンを武器にする. ¶核hé~/核兵器. ¶化學huàxué~/化學兵器. ¶思想~/思想的武器. ★qíngbào【情報】 (1)(機密性を帯びた)情報.個. ¶軍事~/軍事情報. ¶刺探cìtàn~/情報を探る. ¶遞送dìsòng~/情報を送る. ¶蒐集sōují~/情報を集める. ¶提供可靠的~/信頼できる情報を提供する. ¶~員/諜報部員. ★kǒngbù【恐怖】 (2)恐ろしい.ぎょっとする. ¶感到~/恐怖を感じる. ¶昨晚他做了一個非常~的夢mèng/昨晩彼は恐ろしい夢を見た. xiōngbào【凶暴】 凶暴である. ¶脾氣~/性質が凶暴である. ¶~殘忍cánrěn/凶暴で殘忍である. hung bou hung bou ★bùmǎn【不滿】 不満である.不満に思う. ¶他對你的發言很~/彼は君の発言をとても不満に思っている. ¶~情緒qíngxù/不満の気持ち. yau me ye mun yi? 有甚麼不滿? |
Items remain in this deck until checked off with a native speaker.Usually, these are things taken/transcribed from raw native media.
Often, these have sound files attached. |
Pre-Dump | 令人類可以賴以生存 | xìtǒng【系統】 (1)系統.システム.★wánshàn【完善】 (1)完全である.りっぱである. ★yōngyǒu【擁有】 yung yau yat go yun sin |
This deck undergoes heavy triage/deletion.Much of its current content is full, “raw” dictionary entries. |
Links to Websites | YouTube- 舛添氏新黨結成へ 會見ノーカット(10/04/21) |
That’s about it. I look forward to your insight and feedback .
This is the fourth article in an ongoing series. To read this series from the beginning, go here.
Now that we’ve talked about the Unified Reading Process (check out the previous article in the series) in general, let’s take a little walk down Specificity Lane. The following advice probably applies to all kinds of books, but I’ve written it from the specific perspective of personal development/business books, which account for most of my reading right now.
Funnily enough, the methods I am going to share with you in this and future articles seem to be on their way to allowing me to read less and less of this type of book: since SRSing allows me to remember so much of what I’ve already read, there’s no need to buy any old (unoriginal, low-quality, or simply well-promoted) personal development book just for “review” or a “motivitational boost”.
The personal development (PD) genre is as popular as it is despised…the reasons for that are interesting and warrant their own article. But for now, let’s keep to the topic at hand.
By way of note, for the uninitiated, an SRS is a smart electronic flashcard system.
OK, here we go!
Perhaps you can’t always be surrounded by positive people, but you can at least have positive books. And that’s almost as good. The key is that contact with the information in these books be:
Of course, there are some exceptions; we’re speaking very generally here.
One is reminded of that rather sinister-sounding quote by Lenin (?apparently?):
“A lie told often enough becomes the truth” .
Human beings’ judgment of the correctness of many ideas appears to be determined in large part by exposure count. Expose yourself to a quote, an idea, a product enough times, and it becomes part of your reality; it becomes part of your choice-set; it becomes “true”…regardless of actual veracity or quality.
It’s a lot like how advertising works — Coca-Cola doesn’t ceaselessly advertise that strange, corrosive beverage of theirs in order to tell you it exists — we all know it exists — they advertise it to you in order to alter your environment, your psychology, and therefore your choices. These frequent “nudges” seem to be what’s needed to push human beings over the edge.
I mean, you didn’t think all that money was being spent on advertising with no real idea whether it worked or not, did you?*
*I guess this did happen during the “Dot Com Boom” but…then again (at the risk of “interpreting the results to fit the theory”) while many of the Dot Coms spent a lot of $$ advertising, they didn’t continue the onslaught for years on end, plus they didn’t give their products and business models time to mature. Internet or no Internet, things like that still seem to take a few years. Not that I really know, but…
A lot of the ideas we come into contact with in our daily lives are, at the very least, half-truths; they also tend to be of a negative, destructive, or otherwise unproductive nature. Turn on the news, a movie or a pop song, and you’re likely to be assaulted with a stream of incredibly repetetive, low-quality assumptions about life and human capability, wrapped in an immensely entertaining package, sort of like junk food for the mind: tastes great, widely condoned, kills, and it’s mostly high-fructose corn syrup anyway. Personal development books, at their best, are collections of better ideas, better techniques, better alternatives for working our lives. Better food for the mind. And if some people accuse you of mental orthorexia? Well, stupidity and blindly following the crowd tend to be their own “punishment” (said in menacing tone), in the long run.
The more we can expose ourselves to these better ideas…the better. And in my brief experience on the topic, I’ve found that it’s not enough to just have vaguely remembered inklings of certain ideas — it seems like it’s important to re-view them somewhat more fully, more directly. Basically, “repetition is the mother of skill“, if you will. You can’t just have seen that Coke ad once. In fact, I read somewhere that a typical consumer needs to be exposed to an ad about 7 times before they actually make the purchase. Magic number, I know. But clearly, either way, what we’re dealing with is not an inherent property of advertising, but of the relationship between human beings, ideas and action.
So, rather than passively receiving other people’s advertising your messages, why not “advertise” to yourself the ideas that you like and find important? That’s the basic idea. If we want to change our habitual behavior, then it comes as no surprise that we may need some level of habitual expsosure to the behavior-changing ideas.
Another problem I found with not SRSing or otherwise broadly reviewing personal development books, was that my behavior and opinions would become completely biased in the direction of whichever author I was currently reading. Of course, there is some good in this. But the problem with being so totally saturated in one author’s world is that one inherits all her blindspots and biases as well. Much good can be gained, but much good also gets lost, ignored, or replaced by the bad-to-mediocre.
Intellectually, we all know that no single author is going to have the fullest, best answers on every issue. But recency can blind us to this in a practical sense. SRSing information allows your techniques and philosophy to remain a unique, well-balanced amalgam of all the good stuff you’ve been exposed to: your very own syncretic approach, taking the best from wherever you find it — like a mental file that is actually appended to, not just constantly overwritten.
But, at the end of the day, I don’t really know, it’s all really experimental . Maybe you can pick up on some of these ideas, and take them somewhere interesting.
I really hope this has helped you…it may just be me going off on a personal tangent. Anyway, let me know…gently …
In the next article in this series, we’ll cover some practical elements of this SRSing-beyond-pure-language-learning business (including demonstrating some actual SRS cards), as well as answer some pertinent questions. If you have anything you want answered, now’s the time to put it forward. It may or may not get dealt with, but, you never know until you try, right?
This is the third post in a continuing series on Why The Way We Read Sucks and How To Fix It. Go here to read the series from the beginning.
Please take all this advice cum grano salis. Take it for what it is — one star (don’t say “yeah, a supernova”, really…just don’t) in a galaxy of information about reading. Everyone has their pet-techniques, and everyone’s situation is different to some degree. As a wise young woman on the Internets once said:
“no method will ever be 100% perfect for anyone except its creator.”
All of this, this entire site, is just my personal…thing, so…don’t take it too seriously. You definitely want to try, pick and choose what works and what doesn’t for you. My own methods are constantly evolving, so in a sense you could say I end up disagreeing with myself now and then. And, if I disagree with me sometimes, so should you . A few months from now, I may not even be using any of the techniques I’m about to share with you. So, keep that in mind
.
Well, It’s complicated. But only slightly so. Basically, I had two different sets of reading problems with (1) native-level languages, and (2) sucky-level languages. These two problem sets ended up being fixed with the same solution. And that’s what makes this article-series seem complicated: I’m really attempting to discuss two things at the same time. Confusing, I know. I’m a cruel, inconsiderate man — get used to it.
One thing common to both sets of problems is that, despite continuing efforts, electronic books are yet to reach the level of availability, let alone convenience, to allow one to go “all electronic”. My ultimate goal is 100% digitization, which would render a lot of this book-handling business obsolete.
Anyway, here are some issues that were unique to each set of problems:
Problem Set 1: Native-Level Languages
Problem Set 2: Sucky-Level Languages
Two different sets of reading problems united by a single solution. Hence, the Unified Reading Process.
The unified reading process (this sounds so…Proctor & Gamble…I love it) I currently use for each book is:
- (a) Discard (give away, resell) || OR ||
- (b) Keep & Reprocess from step (2)
In the case of native-level languages, I tend to discard — i.e. give away to friends or resell. In the case of sucky-level languages, I tend to keep and reprocess. This has less to do with the languages themselves, and more with the fact that the very nature of things means that the more proficient one is at a given language the more likely one is to have a surplus of books in it.
The key to discarding is to not force yourself to instantly make a permanent decision (while still retaining that defining characteristic of real decisions: clarity). Instead, split the decision into two clear, instant parts. In my case, I have a temporary “to discard” box with a deadline on it. Once the deadline is reached or the box becomes full, then the permanent discarding happens. So a book could be waiting there in the temporary bin for a month or more. Plenty of time to reconsider any decision.
Anyway, as you can see, it’s a really simple process. Here are just some of the benefits:
At the risk of repeating myself, the keyphrase throughout the process is low conversion. By “conversion”, I mean the fraction of the book in question that gets:
Only a fraction of the pages of a book get read closely, in detail. Only a fraction of these pages get dog-eared. Only a fraction of the content of a fraction of the dog-eared pages gets entered into the SRS. Fraction. Fraction. Fraction.
No matter how much you own or suck at the language, conversion is low by nature. In fact, ironically enough, the more you suck at a language, the lower your conversion will probably be (for one thing, there’s only so much you’ll be able to read well…and then there’s the other extreme, where your conversion goes low because you already have so much prior knowledge). You see, conversion takes work. And there is only so much work that you can do. Far less than you wish you could. But that’s okay, because humans are smart; you could argue that we’re built to be lazy and low-conversion.
Even people who intend to have high conversion end up with low conversion. In fact, the more pressure you put on yourself to convert, the more likely you are to (eventually, unconsciously) rebel and end up with 0% conversion. Zero conversion is fine if the book sucked that much, but it’s not so fine when the book is otherwise good — well-written, and about a topic you’re interested in.
The way to deal with sucky books is simple — throw them away as soon as the suck is clear; get rid of them. My problem was that I was having trouble approaching the books I liked, books I had chosen, books I knew were good; I wasn’t even picking them up any more. And the root of the problem was my attempt to have high conversion.
Anyhoo, that’s all for now. But the series continues!
Wherein are discussed the reasons for and benefits of subjecting personal development books to the Unified Reading Process.
]]>There’s so much I want to say on this topic. But it would take too long to put it all together, so I’m going to do what we always do here at AJATT — give it to you piecemeal.
As with everything on this site, the advice here is just based on my personal experience. I’m not an expert. Take what works, leave what doesn’t — the overall principles matter more than the minutiae of technique. Your mileage may vary and all that (then again, I am quite confident that it won’t vary by that much — otherwise I wouldn’t be writing it, eh lads, eh?).
Also, an interesting thing happened. While I originally intended this advice to be specifically directed towards languages we suck at (i.e. early- and mid-stage foreign languages), I soon found that it applied just as well to reading languages where we have native-level skill. Yay!
Anyway, first, a little bit about:
The Sucky Way We Read
By “how we read”, I mean “how we are taught to read in school”. Fortunately for me, growing up, I did a lot (indeed, most) of my reading entirely outside of the school framework, so for a long time I wasn’t “infected” as much by the school disease — at the very least, I was asymptomatic for many years.
But over time, it did get to me as well. So much so that I had to reach back into my childhood and reflect on what I had been doing outside of school, why it was so much fun, and why it worked so well, in order to get my then-stalled reading habits back on track (in the early years of my adult life, I went through a stage where I was basically not doing any reading, despite having a strong desire to read and a history of reading).
The style of reading that is typically taught and/or encouraged in school is all about:
It’s no wonder that so many adults never pick up another real book once they leave school. If you’d never ever been allowed to set or change the channel on your TV, and never been taught that you even had the right or ability to make such a judgment call, then you’d probably hate TV, too — no matter how many “TV-worms” (think: bookworm) told you that TV was the shizzle and that there were tons of great channels and shows out there.
The above is a style of reading that is, on the surface, well -suited to an early-stage student. After all, does someone who can barely read or who barely knows the subject matter at hand, really have the ability to decide where and what to skip? (Actually my answer to that is “yes”, but, school’s answer tends to be a resounding “no”).
Why How We Read Sucks
My guess is that the core reason why this reading style came about in the first place is because, at one time, in many parts of the world, there simply weren’t that many books, period. So, reading one book a year was fine, since you only owned one book and maybe had access to a few more. Oftentimes, the books in question were these massive, dense, metaphor-laden sacred texts, which probably do lend themselves to a special style of reading (then again, judging by how few people of any religious persuasion actually read sacred texts, perhaps these too could benefit from techniques like those I’m intending to share).
Of course, things have changed. A lot. At least in terms of the number of books available. But in most schools and classes, the reign of tyranny of a single source of information continues. Moreover, the semi-compulsive behavior of reading (or, attempting to read) every-single-word-on-every-single-page-so-you-get-exactly-what-was-said-and-don’t-miss-a-single-thing is exacerbated by the earnest student’s fear of “missing” something that might be “on the test”. In fact, many tests are designed to reward this one-tree-matters-more-than-the-entire-forest type of reading.
There’s just no sense of priority; everything becomes equally important. It’s as if the Pareto Principle never existed. Indeed, some people might argue that that was the point: it is said that most school systems in the world today are based on a design that aims to produce compliant, docile factory workers — people who unquestioningly obey pre-made decisions, not people who make them. Those who go on to be managers get let in on the secret that most decisions are arbitrary, but people lower down on the ladder are to be left in the dark, believing that the pre-made decisions are absolute, based on the perfect or near-perfect knowledge of their elders and betters (“experts”, “superiors”), and carrying all the weight of divine decree.
OK, social engineering, blah blah whatever. Let’s not get too worked up. The deeper problem is that to force yourself to read everything is to force yourself out of your growth/true-comfort zone and into either your boredom zone or your panic zone (both of which are places where you are just going to…wait for the pun…”zone out”).
This leads to stress. Stress makes you forgetful: short-term memory gets pwned. No short term memory → no long-term memory. No long-term memory → no learning new information. No new information → less intelligent choices, far less brilliant flashes of insight. Less intelligent choices → more stupid choices. In short, the way school typically teaches us to read, makes us stupid. As in, Republican Gilmore Girls the end of Prison Break running out of cheap jokes stupid. The phrase “dumbing down” starts to take on a whole new meaning..
And now that we’re done complaining and making sweeping judgments and dubious historical references, it’s time to talk about how to fix the problem! But for that, dear children of the AJATT, ye shall have to wait for the very forthcoming sequel to this article — part deux! Wherein shall be demonstrated reading techniques that can help you have more fun reading any language, including Japanese.
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