|
Dr Klaus Bung
© 2010 Klaus Bung This article first posted on the web in Arabic on: 2010-08-028 If you detect any mistakes or inadequacies or have suggestions for improvements, please e-mail us. We will always be grateful for such information. Click on each section to make it larger
At this point we have to insert an example of a vocabulary exercise in DYLL layout. The website now has examples in English-Urdu (English = native language) I will replace these by examples in English-German, or English-French etc. You will use them in order to try the system for yourself (i.e. you will learn some German words to see how effective the system is). Then you will convert English-German into Arabic German. In addition to German, I will also supply French, Spanish and some other languages. This will take a few months. But I hope, insha Allah, to provide German before the end of this week or next. Exercises in the DYLL format in different languages
Click below to find an exercise which suits you. L1 = English, L2 = Arabic, French, German, Spanish L1 = Arabic, L2 = English, French, German, Spanish Urdu Vocabulary for English learners
Urdu numerals from 50 to 59 for English learners
Troublesome Urdu numerals for English learners
- -------------------------- Text below here has not yet been translated into ArabicTerminologyGet used to our terminology. In the examples, the native language is English and the target language is Urdu. Adjust these to your own circumstances, e.g. if your native language is Hindi and the language you are trying to learn is English. We practise, almost always, translating from the native language into the target language. So you will find pairs of words: (native language, target language). Another term for "pair" is "item". 10 items make up an Exercise. Only very rarely, for very specific reasons, do we deviate from that measure. The exercises are numbered to make them easy to identify when they are due for revision. We call the native word "question" and the target word "answer". Sometimes other terms may be convenient. In our context, they mean more or less the same. Here is a list of them:
The correct answer, the one you are learning to give and the one which is written down in your workbook, is called "the model answer". Initial learning / Initial mastery"Initial mastery" is that achievement which leads to a retention time of 15 minutes. You have reached the level of initial mastery if you are able to answer a question correctly 15 minutes after having last heard or seen it. Initial learning is that activity (procedure) which leads to initial mastery. Practise each Exercise using the "simplified technique" of DYNAMIC LANGUAGE LEARNING. This simplified version is not the most effective but it is the easiest to learn and easiest to explain. The professional version will be published on the website within a month or two. Fold an A5 sheet of paper so that it is no longer transparent. Cover Exercise 1 at the very top. The open end of the folded paper must point upwards. Slowly slide down the folded paper, until the first question (but not the answer) becomes visible. Guess (or remember) the answer and write your best bet on the folded paper. Slide the paper down to reveal the model answer. If your answer was right, move down to the next item (the next question). If your answer was wrong, cross out the wrong letters or the whole wrong word on your folded paper and copy the correct answer, concentrating on your mistake and trying to learn from it. Do not cheat. Be strict with yourself. Even if one letter is wrong, that answer counts as wrong by the rules of this game (DYNAMIC LANGUAGE LEARNING). If the correct answer contained a "T" (retroflex sound) and you wrote a "t" (dental sound), that counts as a mistake. Before starting the exercise again, fold the paper back so that your previous answers are no longer visible. Move the paper to the very top again and cover the whole exercise. Make sure you cannot see any of the items while you are moving the paper from the bottom of the exercise to the top of the exercise. In DYLL you never look at the answer, except immediately after having made a written guess and having committed yourself. If you do not follow that rule, you defeat the system, and its promises are no longer valid for you. It is essential that you WRITE your answers and corrections. Just saying them or doing them mentally is not effective. If you want to be successful, follow the instructions to the letter. Tackle one item after another until you reach the end of this exercise. If you managed to get through it without a single mistake, then, for this exercise, you have reached the first landing of learning, "Initial Mastery". Initial mastery does not mean that you will remember the words tomorrow or next week, it just means that you have made a start. You are in first gear, and the engine might stall again any minute, unless you do something to prevent it. Or, to put it differently, you are in a helicopter. If you do not keep the propeller running, you will crash. In language learning you keep the propeller running by doing the prescribed revisions. To use yet another analogy: When you have planted out seedlings, you have to water them daily so that they can become strong and resist the heat of the sun. Once they have become established plants or big trees, you can ignore them for a while. Proof of mastery on any one day (be it in initial learning or revision) is "10 items correct in succession". Continue doing the whole exercise from beginning to end until you have "mastered" it, exactly as defined. The DYLL Retention Algorithm (Revision Algorithm)To ensure retention and to do it efficiently and without the frustration of never ending mistakes, you have to apply the DYLL Retention Algorithm. Here is a simplified version of it. Theory of revisionsIf you follow the DYLL revision instructions to the letter, your retention rate will be extremely high and you will make hardly any mistakes. Revision times will therefore be very short. It all depends on the timing. As far as revisions are concerned, Dynamic Language Learning differs in two fundamental respects from the practices common in many schools: Revise as little as possibleIn school (and from conventional language teachers) you are given the silly advice: "Revise as often as possible", which is a recipe for failure and one of the reasons why so many adults (and children) fail to learn a foreign language and find language learning a painful experience. The result of this advice is that people revise when it is "convenient", which it never is, They will therefore not revise often enough, or not at the correct times (which is the same). They will therefore forget what they have very temporarily learnt and blame themselves (rather than idiotic advice and a haphazard learning technique) for the failure, lose self-confidence and consider themselves, always wrongly, as untalented. By contrast, Dynamic Language Learning tells you: "Revise as little as possible (but as much as necessary)." That is much more realistic advice, and something that students like and can take seriously. DYLL actually forbids you to do unnecessary revisions. DYLL tells you exactly how many revisions do and when to do them (which is the same: by being given the times you are also given the frequency). Since this instruction is clear and reasonable, students are more likely to carry it out. As a result, students will achieve 90% retention and minimise the amount of time invested in learning. The corollary "Revise as often as necessary" is self-evident. DYLL tells you how often and when it is necessary to revise. These figures differ for every learner, every subject and every item (bit of subject matter; pair). They are dynamically established and adjusted on the basis of the student's correct or incorrect responses while he is learning. Human memory has its own laws. They do NOT abide by what a teacher or a student thinks is "possible" or "convenient". DYLL recognises these laws and systematically exploits them to achieve its fantastic results. Revise before you forgetIn school we are told that we must revise because we have forgotten, i.e. we revise after we have forgotten. As a result revisions take long and they are one great display of the pupils' incompetence. They prove, yet again, that we, the pupils are bad learner, have bad memories, have not learnt well in the first instance. They are one great and embarassing gala of failure. They are an unpleasant experience, and therefore fewer and fewer revisions will be done - a vicious circle. By contrast, Dynamic Language Learning says: "Revise before you forget". Result: Each revision takes very little time, confirms what a good learner you are, shows that the subject is easy, is fun, and motivates you to revise again - on time. This is positive feedback in the desirable sense of the term: The better you do during revisions, the more you enjoy your studies, initial learning as well as revisions. As a result of your success, you will consider yourself talented, and the more talented you consider yourself to be the more successful you will actually be. That is in absolutely enormous benefit of the principle "Revise before you forget". The psychological theory underlying this principle, and how it can easily and cheaply be put into practice, has been summarised in Klaus Bung's 1982 paper "Dynamic Learning Algorithms". Revision calendarRevise the current exercise (and each exercise) at exactly specified intervals, as follows:
Here endeth the chain of revisions. Revision diaryYou will need a special diary to keep track of your revisions. This diary will turn out to be the best investment you have ever made. On the appropriate date write the number of the exercise and the "revision level" (R1, R2, ...) in to your Revision Diary. For example, if on 14 March 2011 Revision R9 of Exercise 3 is due, write into your diary: "Ex3(R9+1m)". This means that this is Revision 9, and the next revision must be entered 1 month later. Writing down the revision level and the distance of the next revision helps you to keep track when writing the entries into your diary. So the entries in brackets after the exercise numbers will always be one of the following:
Every revision follows exactly the same procedure: You do every item from top to bottom, in writing, until you have done 10 items in succession without the smallest mistake ("mastery") . Then you proceed to the next exercise. PrioritiesIf you are short of time, the following rules apply:
By contrast, a longer delay, e.g. two days, at R7 or R10 has less serious consequences. In the case of R7 a two-day delay is 29%, and in the case of R10 a two-day delay is 3%, whereas in case of R1 a delay of 15 minutes (i.e. revising after 30 minutes instead of after 15 minutes as prescribed) is 100%. The seriousness (in terms of forgetting) is equivalent to these percentages. A higher percentage of delay means a higher percentage of forgetting. Therefore, if you have to postpone revisions because of shortage of time, delay the Revisions with high R-numbers (R11, R10, etc) rather than those with low R-numbers. If you follow these instructions to the letter, your retention rate will be extremely high and you will make hardly any mistakes. Revision times will therefore be very short. It all depends on the timing. A 100% delay does more harm than a 30% delay. Cheat and shoot yourself in the footDo not shoot yourself the foot. If you cheat (as defined by DYLL) you do. It is essential that you do *** not *** look at the workbook exercises at any time except while doing a test/revision in writing and following all its rules. You and the system need to obtain a written and reliable record of all your mistakes after a specified interval so that the system can respond appropriately. If (as you might do before an official exam) you look at an exercise five minutes before doing a prescribed written revision in order to get a better score during the revision/test, this is cheating, for you will mislead the system. The system will have no true information about your length of retention for each item, and it will therefore be unable to tell you correctly what to do next. You will suffer as a result. Cheating bears in itself the seeds of your punishment: future failure. The theory behind this observation can be found on the Internet in the following paper: "Klaus Bung: Dynamic Learning Algorithms". Reason: Let's assume there is an item which your memory has stored at a retention level of one day. This means that, if you test after two days (prescribed revision time), you will get that item wrong. It is important that you actually make that mistake, in writing, because this will tell you and the system (in its professional version) that the revision intervals for this item have to be shortened. You therefore have to be grateful for this mistake, because it reveals an important truth with practical consequences. It has nothing to do with you being clever or otherwise but only with what to do next. By contrast, if you try to improve your test results by looking at the exercise five minutes before doing it in writing, you will get that item right. The system, assuming that you followed the rules, that you did not cheat, sees the correct answer as evidence that this item was stored at the two-day retention level, as desired. It will therefore now increase the revision interval to four days, assuming that this item will, as a result of this revision, now move to the four-day retention level. Since this is the wrong decision by the system, the chances are that you will get this item wrong again next time around, and your results will get worse and worse as time goes by. More and more such not known items will accumulate. You will become as stupid as your mates. The 90 per cent retention promised by DYLL will not be kept because you have not been using the system. Therefore follow the rules to the letter. Do *** not *** use your intuition about the best thing to do. Your intuition, if it deviates from the DYLL rules, is bound to be wrong. Follow the rules to the letter. Do all revisions in writing, at the prescribed times. Do not look at exercises at any other time. Also do not look at any item during a revision, except after you have written down an answer and marked it as right or wrong. You must not even catch a glimpse of an item while sliding your folded paper up and down. Be very diligent about that. Paradox: Try to expose your ignorance. Make your mistakes apparent since, if you do, they can be corrected. If you hide them, e.g. by cheating, they will fester undetected and spread like a cancer and lead to premature death, i.e. the collapse of learning, skill and knowledge. Patience and persistence:
|
specimen_scripts | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|
|
