Between five and sixteen, according to English language teaching guru Johanna Sterling. Eight times is a decisive threshold in this study. And according to this site, it takes "the average student about twenty-five experiences with a word before they 'own' it in speech." Twenty-five experiences!
When I first heard this kind of thing as I was learning German (seven reps was the magic number I heard at one point, and that's been my general rule of thumb), I started writing down my new words and phrases in little index-card notebooks, which I would carry with me everywhere and review constantly. I did this for many years, well into graduate school. When I was living in Salzburg in 1993-1994, I would take long walks through downtown at night with the Duden reference book of idioms under my arm ...
... reviewing them systematically and mumbling the example sentences over and over again to myself!
In the first L2 year with my son, massive repetition of basic vocabulary was part and parcel of the game-routines. Our accompanying reading and viewing, and later audiobooks, were also repeated many many times, both because toddlers love repetition and because of the above considerations.
My basic system was that we would first read/view/listen to something new a bunch of times in rapid succession, then let it lie for a week or two, repeat one or two times, then let a longer period go by (two-three months) before repeating, then revisit after a very long time (six-eight months). This was to safeguard against what is known among linguists as "decay," which means gradually forgetting words you once knew because of long disuse.
About a year ago, when J started getting bored with so much repetition of individual books, videos etc., I started using little index-card notebooks to keep track of individual words and phrases I wanted J to learn.
The slashes record instances when I use the word/phrase in conversation with J. The stars record instances when he uses the word/phrase independently. For awhile I had other marks too, like a dot for those times when he would use a word/phrase right after I used it, or an x when we heard the word/phrase in an audiobook, but that got to be too complex, so right now I'm using just slashes and stars. The different colors are for different days of the week. I use one of these pens:
As a rule I only record one instance per day, no matter how many times we may use the word/phrase that day. This is to safeguard against confusing short-term memory retention with real mastery of a word.
So in the examples "daneben gehen" and "bei der Sache sein" here ...
... I used the word in conversation at least four times on four different days (mostly Saturdays = red) before J started using it independently. However, I don't usually record the first encounter, which is usually in a book we are reading (see below).
There are many instances in my current notebook where J starts using a word/phrase independently after four or five recorded reps:
But of course the ground is being prepared.
There's no real system to what I write down. Most of it comes from our readings, and I just follow my nose. In those frequent situations when we have a reading-story and its audiobook going at the same time, then I write down material from the reading and, ideally, seek to practice it a couple of times in conversation with J before we get to the relevant part of the audiobook. When I coordinate it perfectly (unfortunately not as often as I'd like), it's just incredibly effective—then J is in the back of the car listening and having eureka! experiences of understanding, excitedly calling out the new words and phrases as he hears them!
I also usually take a notebook along on our walks. I'll have it in my hand, page through it as we're on the trail, and try to weave as many of the words/phrases as possible into our conversation, checking them off as I go. Sometimes I start little conversations entirely for the sake of practicing a particular word or a phrase. Eventually this kind of artifice and artificiality will fall away, but while J is still so young and conversation with him is so meandering, associative, and generally silly (in a good way!), it works great.
No comments:
Post a Comment