Flash Cards and Bird Lists

[livingdeb]

I just read a book (Lawrence Block's Hit and Run) where a stamp collector always carried around a stamp catolog in which he had circled all the stamps he had so that he could make sure not to re-buy those stamps.

One day he lost his collection. He didn't really have the motivation to start a new collection from scratch, but he still had the collecting itch and he still had that catalog. So he decided he would continue buying stamps he hadn't already bought before. He would just circle the new stamps in a different color so he could see which ones he currently owned. He decided that this way his catalog would be like a bird-watcher's birdlist--it showed every stamp he had ever owned.

And so it occurred to me that making Spanish flashcards (and then learning what's on them) is sort of like adding to my life list of Spanish words I have learned. Of course with words, after a while you get to a point where you can communicate with some people who don't know your native tongue, but until that point, it also feels a little like a collection.

I could copy the stamp collector and circle words that I master in a dictionary. Would that be motivating or disheartening?

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

How would you identify "mastered" words?

-Sally

[livingdeb.livejournal.com]

Definitely a grey concept.

It would have to be words that I know English to Spanish as well as Spanish to English.

I'd want to include only words that I knew cold, by which I mean quickly, not the kind where there are intermediate steps. (An example of a currently intermediate-step word that I would not circle yet is the word for "trunk" on a car. First I remember the British English word for trunk is "boot." Then I remember that the Spanish word also starts with a "b" and is four letters. Then I remember that the Spanish word is "baul" with an accent over the "u.")

This also means I don't automatically get to circle all words that are English cognates; just because the Spanish word is a cognate doesn't mean I know it's a cognate and, if it's not exactly the same as the English word, I may not know exactly how it differs.

I would only need to know one of the meanings of the word to circle it.

Sometimes I know a word cold for many weeks or months and then don't know it anymore. Oh well, no system's perfect!

[(Anonymous)]

Interesting. The move from bird list to stamp list is a relatively straightforward one, but applying this idea to make a Spanish word list is not something I would have thought of.
-Sally