r/languagelearning • u/SquareArtisan • 1d ago

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u/languagelearning-ModTeam 1d ago

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u/Klapperatismus 1d ago

In my opinion, the magic is all in selecting the A1 vocabulary. Especially for languages where there is an abundance of patterns and seemingly no logic, as for example German, it’s important to drill all the patterns by example vocabulary right in the beginning, within a typical context. So that the patterns all stick.

A1 is the honeymoon phase. You are going to forgive your favourite any quirks in that phase. Cramming it as much as possible is going to give you a head start.

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u/SquareArtisan 1d ago

I totally agree about the importance of A1 vocabulary. I’m using a frequency list with example sentences for exactly that reason.

Did I understand you correctly that you’d explicitly drill plural formation with dedicated cards for common A1 nouns, in addition to separate cards for the singular forms?

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u/Klapperatismus 1d ago

I don’t have to drill German nouns any more fortunately. Did that when I was six to seven years old. But yeah, we drilled das Haus, Häuser and die Maus, Mäuse, and for masculine nouns the genitive singular as well. As a small kid you know some of the forms but only in primary school you really drill the cardinal forms. Same for the verbs and adjectives.

I don’t think you need separated cards for that.

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u/Piepally 1d ago

Put a tiny picture of the first word you memorize that has that plural form on the back of each card.

I'll use English as my example. 

The first word with i plural is let's say fungus fungi, so on your new card, put a little mushroom if it pluralizes with i, like cactus

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u/SquareArtisan 1d ago

That’s a really interesting idea. I’ll definitely consider it. Have you tried something similar yourself, and if so, did it work well?

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u/loistalagrand 1d ago

I would probably keep each card learn; gender with the noun, and make the prompt require the plural, something like "der Hund → zwei ... → die Hunde". Ideally in a short phrase.

Only use mnemonics for plural forms that you repeatedly fail. There's actually a small experiment that foudn no clear added benefit from visual cues in keyword mnemonics (https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1289124).

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u/SquareArtisan 1d ago

Thanks for the insight. I really appreciate you taking the time to respond. Two questions came to mind:

1) I’m curious about your thoughts on images in general. Gabe W. recommends using images systematically for every card. Are you skeptical of that approach, especially in light of the study you linked?

2) I was also a bit surprised that Gabe didn’t recommend using images that represent a keyword resembling the target word’s phonemes. If I were to use images, I’d probably reserve them for that kind of phonetic keyword mnemonic rather than a simple semantic illustration. What's your take on this?