Repetitio est mater studiorum...right?

I'm sure the above Latin phrase is something we have all come across at some point or another. "Repetition is the mother of learning." The more often you repeat something, the better you will learn it. This is logical, common sense, tried and true, an' a' that (points for the reference).

So why is it that we use the SRS in our language learning? The purpose of an SRS is to space repetitions out (hence the name), so that a word is repeated the minimum number of times necessary for retention. This, as Keith points out in his latest blog entry, is at odds with how languages are learned. Go read that post. Lots to think about.

In addition, keeping up with your reviews, as I'm sure many have noticed, is a drag. Really. It sucks. Do you really need to read that sentence again to make sure you still understand it? Not likely. Will it bore you to tears to read it again? Yeah, probably.

And I think that's the problem with the SRS. It sometimes takes two hours just to review a bunch of crap you already know. I think we SRSers do way to much reviewing and not nearly enough learning. That's about as boring as it gets. It's very rare for me to have to fail a sentence card. Extremely rare. I'm certainly not going to forget how to read something within a couple weeks, so why review it three times in those two weeks? As long as you're reviewing stuff periodically, you shouldn't forget it. And of course I by "review" I don't mean reading an isolated sentence in Anki and marking a number. I mean simply going back to that newspaper article or comic book chapter or whatever it was you worked through a while back, and reading it again. If it was an audio clip, listen to it again. Do you still understand it? Yeah, probably.

So I'm thinking about going with a simpler, more traditional self-study method. I may give the SRS the boot altogether, but I'll probably still use it for character recognition. I mean particularly the rarer ones. This is a skill that I think will come in particularly handy for me, because as I get further into my study, I'll be using more and more classical texts and the likelihood of coming across more obscure characters will increase. If I've learned to recognize a fair number, I won't have to resort to a dictionary as often. And that type of thing is exactly what I think the SRS is best suited for: learning things you won't need to use very often. But as far as reaching fluency is concerned (as opposed to needing to read and decipher ancient texts), I think that if that word is important, it will show up again in other things you read. You may have to look it up again. Thankfully, with tools like Pleco, that's a pretty simple task. But you will, at some point, not have to look it up any more. And that point will be sooner rather than later if you're reinforcing your reading practice with writing, speaking, and listening practice with the same material.

I think the following seems to be a much more organic and effective approach (for me anyway):

Ideally, I'm fortunate enough to have both a text and an audio recording of the text. I can work through the text and look up all unknown words and characters in Pleco. Anything giving me trouble as far as grammar can usually be resolved by looking in my Dictionary for Readers of Modern Chinese Prose. I need to also get a grammar reference that goes beyond the beginner stage, but haven't yet. Once I've learned the new vocabulary and grammar, I'll read through the passage to make sure I can comprehend it. Next comes something like Dr. Arguelles's scriptorium method. I copy the passage out by hand and read it aloud. That's as far as it goes if I don't have the audio. If I do, however, I can then listen to the audio for comprehension. Many times, if I feel like I need to. That's the beauty of the iPod. I can also do something like Professor Arguelles's chorusing method, which I find helps a lot with speaking and pronunciation. I've quipped about his eccentricity plenty of times, but it turns out that his method is pretty solid.

Not that I'm recommending you march back and forth in a public space while making strange sounds in a loud voice, but his core approach to study is great.

Now, I know none of this is very exciting. It isn't sexy, it has no catchy acronyms or touchy-feely self-help BS, and it doesn't have an army of devoted, overzealous, fan boys. It's a fairly old school approach, with a few updates in technology (eg Pleco). But it's effective. And it doesn't make me want to shoot my computer when I sit down and realize it will take me 2 hours just to review a bunch of crap I already know.

Think about it. The big buzz word in second language acquisition is 'input,' not 'review.' Comprehensible input, i + 1, all that. I think if I increase the input and decrease the review time, my language skills can only improve for it. Or at least I won't be as bored.

We'll see.