Goldlist Method
Tea or coffee - the fuel of learning!
In this page you’ll find the initial article from www.goldlist,eu about the Goldlist Method, but this blog contains a whole category on Goldlist, which you’ll find under “categories” – there you’ll find all the videos as well as articles and third party video about this method.
Uncle Davey’s “GoldList” methodology for learning to the long-term memory.
1. No reliance on mnemonics and no creation of strange methods to try and “visualise” words in contexts. No “think of a cat in a cot and you’ll remember that Polish for ‘cat’ is ‘cot’ “. – These are the ways by the way that course makers like Daniels gets phenomenal results over two weeks but they never last. Just as well, if they did, they would create a learner who, when he came to fluency, would not be able to say “kot” without thinking about a baby’s bed. Ridiculous. Oszustwo. Don’t let the oszusty deceive you by filling your shoes with the letter O at tea time.
2. No cramming, no learning against the clock. No learning for next week, or for tomorrow, or for a test, or for an exam. No conscious “memorizing”. The long-term memory is not a conscious function. Its samples are taken automatically and subconsciously out of the material which is run through the conscious. What we decide to memorise or forget only relates to s/t memory. You cannot decide to learn to the long term memory any more than you can decide to forget to the long-term memory. Disciplines based on the ‘aha!’ moment of putting two and two together to understand something can use the short term memory and be sure that they will get a long-term effect, but in languages there is very little “aha!”, and so short term memory is of next to no use at all.
You need to think of memory as a similar function to breathing – we breath best for our bodies when we don’t think about it, trying to breath at a special rate or especially deeply. The body regulates itself. We breathe ideally when we keep our mind off the process of breathing. For memory, when we take over the process consciously, like holding breath or breathing at a faster rate (‘hyperventilating’) we shut out for a time the body’s natural function. In other words when we take control of our memory by trying to memorize something there and then, we automatically shut out the possibility of long-term memorising and switch on instead the short-term memory function. And we can’t keep it up for long, and also it results in repetition of items in order to learn them which might be sampled on first reading even, if we just let go and let the God-given faculties of our body work. That’s why cramming methods and deliberate memorisation methods waste so much time for language learners and serious polyglots never use them.
Chomsky once commented on the inability of the child to learn language so well after the age of five or six, whike language seems naturally to be acquired until this time. Chomskyites and other linguists have conjectured on numerous occasions what this faculty is that is lost, and how to measure it. In fact, there is nothing to measure being lost as nothing is in fact lost. What happens is that at that age an ‘extra layer’ comes in as the child learns by then to be self-consciously learning. The child, by school age, is aware that it is “now learning something” and making an effort to remember, not just being put through life’s algorithms passively. And so the short-term memory starts to come more and more into play, blocking the long-term memory function essential to the easy learning of languages. This method is all about putting back the long-term, unconscious memory into the learning process, which it does by taking any effort to rote learn or memorise on demand out of the progress, and focus instead on the mathematical process, the algorithm of the goldlist method, and on the pure enjoyment of writing out new words and just liking the experience of touching those words with our minds in a relaxed way, without pushing them on our memories.
3. Pay attention to study times. Because the l/t memory is not a conscious function, we are not aware of when it tires. This is measured to happen after 20 minutes. At that point, the sampling process will be become less than optimal, and so the learner to the long-term memory is wasting his time, although he or she may feel interested and want to keep going. The rule is, after 20 minutes, take a break of at least 10 minutes in which a completely different sort of thing is done.
It really doesn’t matter whether the student comes back for one more or ten more sessions of twenty minutes in the day, as long as it is not forced and the interest is still there and therefore the motivation. It is not necessary to do the work every day. The more regularly we come to it the less likely it is that the habit of doing it will break, but we do not need to feel enslaved to it. The language learning is a relaxing, fun thing, not a chore.
4. Get comfortable when learning, don’t rush, and use attractive materials. We banish unpleasant experience from the long-term memory and garnish pleasant experience to the long term memory. By all means eat and drink during the 20 minute sessions of learning, but not alcohol, and also avoid music and background noise. After all, when learning to the l/t memory, you don’t have to work that hard. Less is more – less effort to cram means more of what you do learn actually sticks.
The use of Omega 3 and Vitamin D is helpful. The goldlist can easily be taken on walks and done outside, because it is ink and paper and not a screen that whites out in the sunshine. Similarly sleeping well assists the balanced functioning of the memory. If the gold list system doesn’t work for you even if you are sure that you understood the whole rationale and why it should work even though it is counter-intuitive (and by now there are videos all over the internet which back up the fact that this works – you’ll find some of them below) but you are finding a different story, then you need to look at how much Vitamin deficiency you may have, get sunlight, omega-3 and other vitamin and mineral supplements and ensure you are getting enough rest, enough sunlight, fresh air and water. Check your water for fluorination, which is something everyone should do anyway, and use filtration in the home.
5. Use a variety of materials that present the content in a different way. For example, which explain the use of a particular tense or case in different ways. One book should be the “pace setter” and the other courses supplement it. A good choice of pace setter will be a course book which has vocabularies in the back going in both directions and which clearly teach something like 2000 words or more. There should be graded explanations of grammar, not shying away from grammatical terms but giving plenty of explanations and examples. Lengthy passages just on culture are a mere padder in language books – you can learn about any culture without learning the language properly. Photographs likewise, as well as cartoons and pictures. Discount these when choosing a language book in the shop. But give a premium to courses which offer a lead on second book for intermediate level, and advanced.
6. When using the key item in language learning, the vocabulary book, ensure that all the grammar for each word accompanies the word into the book. For instance, you would not just write “to begin” but also (began, begun) to show that it is a strong verb. You would not just write “Jugend” but “die Jugend” or “Jugend f.” Write the word on the right hand side of the page in your own language or the language from which you are learning the target language, and do 25 words at a time. 25 words can be comfortably written out that way in the course of 20 minutes, with time just to read the list through aloud at the end. Always work with units of twenty five head words, which wshould be written at the outset on the top left hand page of a double page A4 hardback writing book. You number the headword list from the beginning onwards so that the 5th such page will have numbers 101-125, etc. You always note the date you added the owrds to the list. You make an overall target of words to cover with no short-term time limit. It will be something like 2,500 words, which gets a learner up to what we used to call O level, and means that they become intermediate and most teach yourself course have roughly this number of words. I’m coming to the timing shortly.
7. You write the words into the vocab book by hand, in a beautiful hard back book, as neatly as you can, without getting stressed over it if it’s not as neat as you would like – so that the learner can take a pride in the look of it and not hurry over it. Write at a pace that is comfortable and natural. Do not do this in a computer, latch onto the natural memory that is linked to handwriting. It is a long-term memory function, which is why your signature always comes out the same, year in, year out, and you don’t even need to think about it consciously. Also, as stated above, you want to take your goldlist with you, and do it in the sun and in the bathroom and all sorts of places – even on aircraft when the fasten seatbelts sign is on and you can’t have the computer on. Also fiddling with diacritic signs means that the computer is not the best place for this – you will work slower and more arduously and less flexibly than you think. I like the computer as much as anybody does but we need to remember its limits. With computers it’s a bit like with the guitarists in a student Christian Union meeting or a youth worship meeting – the best guitar is the one that knows its place and doesn’t chime in when not needed, and the best guitarist in the church is the one who knows when to stop playing and give primacy to the voice. Computers are best when we reserve their use for the bits they do best. You could have your source word list or grammar book open in the computer, for example, no problem with that. Especially when so many good language books and audio files, often out of print in paper versions and replaced with more dumbed-down versions, can be found being file-shared on pdfs.
8. The explanation of the grammatical models and the practising of basic sentence types goes like any other system. The gold list is not a course book it is an approach to the course book. In fact you don’t only need the goldlist method for languages, I’m sure it also helps with history, geography, case law for those studying law, and latin names of things for scientists and doctors. There are many possible uses for goldlisting other than languages, but languages is the place where the dividends it pays are the most clearly evident.
My system differs in how you approach the learning of the vocabulary, which is 80% of learning a language if you consider that the irregularities of grammar can and should be linked as I say to the specific words they refer to.
9. After writing out the vocab set of 25, and reading it through, a process which should take 20 minutes, you break for at least ten. You did not try to learn those 25 words, you just enjoyed writing them out in a nice book with a nice pen slowly and in pleasant comfortable surroundings. you do nothing more with them. If after ten minutes, you would like to go on to the next session, then you turn the page of the vocab book, go to the top left of that double page and do the next 25 numbered words. Then read them out aloud, and then take another break. You are enjoying the language, not cramming it.
10. Don’t do more than about 10 such sessions a day. If you get anywhere near that, make sure they are spaced out with other things going on between them.
11. After no less than 2 weeks and no more than 2 months, go back to the headwords. No less than 2 weeks because the short term memory effect has passed, so anything you still remember is already learned to the long-twrm memory, and you will not deceive yourself. No more than 2 months in order to keep up a certain tempo. This should be a relaxed process, but there should be a limit to stop the laziness that is in human nature from making it ground to a halt. By 2 weeks a really enthusiastic learner may have already put all 2,500 words in their headlist but not have memorised them, resulting in words being repeated by accident, but that is really of no importance in this process.
12. What you then do with the words in the vocab book headlist that are more than 14 days old, but less than 60 days old is that you “distil” them. And this is what I call a “distillation”: Hermann Ebbinghaus’ experiments and the knowledge about the sampling habit of the long-term memory means that some of these words will already have been learned, despite the fact (actually because of the fact, but this is of course counter-intuitive) that all you did was try to enjoy them, not memorise them. In fact the prediction is that up to 30% of the words will be retained. You are looking to distil out the “hard to learn” expressions and obtain a concentrated, whisky-like list of distilled words that are an absolute bugger for you to learn (by which time you will, of course, actally have learned them, because they will have gone through this distilation process ten times with two weeks’ break in between each time). I call that the “gold list”. On the way to the gold list you will use up the first hard back book and a thinner second one.
If you intend learning, say three or four languages to fluency (over 10,000 words) then you’ll need three or four first books per language (with the head list and the first three distillations) I call these the bronze books or the bronze lists. Then you will find that as the 4th time you distil there are only about a quarter of the words left that you started with, you only need one second level book, or “silver” book, as I call it, per language. And likewise when you come to the final distillations in the gold book, you’ll find you only need one gold book for several languages to fluency, as by those higher level distillations there is less than 10% of what was in the first head list in the bronze books.
13. The first “distillation” therefore takes the first 25 words from the top left hand side of your A4 hard-back writing book and you pick from them 70% of the words which you least remembered, and write them again on the right hand side. You can test yourself by covering over the English, but that is not the best way. The best is to say “I know that I must now discard 8 of these 25 words which are on the top of the left page and write 17 of them on the top of the right page. Which do I think I have remembered best? These you ignore, and list 1-17 the least remembered of 1-25 from the headlist. If you cannot bring yourself to drop out a full eight words, then instead in one or two places you can conjoin words to make a phrase, and then learn them together in the system from then on. When writing the words of the first distillation, you take it nice and slow and keep to all the princliples of the writing of the headlist, namely easy, confortable work, not more than 20 minutes work at once, and read the side aloud when you are finished.
14. The act of discarding words from the distillation by the way is the final stimulus to learning them, by the way. Psychologists have discovered that, just as in physics for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, for every conscious action there is a subconscious reaction. Note that we tend to lose and spend time looking for things which we intended to keep and often put in a special hiding place, but we rarely forget the things that we have thrown away or given away. We don’t usually think we still have them and look around for them. So the very conscious act of discarding tricks the subconscious memory, namely the long-term memory, into being sure it jolly well has got those discarded bits. So if in doubt, discard rather than merge, when distilling.
15. Again, you do nothing with the words of the first distillation for a period of at least two weeks (this is why you always date when you do the distillations also) and not more than two months (same reasons as given above) and then, when that time comes, you go back to the first distillations on the top of the right side page, and make from them the second distillation on the bottom of the right hand page. From those 17 words you will be looking at keeping 12 and discarding or merging 5. Again, first plan and ask yourself “which 5 of these seventeen words did I remember best?” and put a cross next to them, don’t write them out again. It is a game with by our brain, an exploration of how our own memory worked – in some ways a discovery of ourselves and can be very interesting as an exercise in its own right – actually it is a lot less boring than cramming the vocab for a Callan lesson. Some users of the system have found it an interesting voyage of self discovery – why did they find this word so easy to remember and some other word harder? And for each learner it would be different, which means that group learning of languages is intrinsically wasteful of time as each person in the group has their own individual things they remembered automatically. The only common thing is that for each person, if they had allowed their long-term memory to function not just the short-term, it would be in the order of 30%, as Ebbinghaus found.
16. It will come as no surprise when I mention that you put the third distillation on the left side under the head list at the bottom, and that it has the best remembered 9 words of the 12 on the bottom right, and that you need to leave between the two a space of no less than 14 and no more than 60 days.
17. A person can structure this so that they are working on the later parts of their headlist while bringing the early parts already into the second or third distillation, or do the whole of the headlist, then the whole of the first distillation, etc. That depends on the learner, their time available, and the number of words they plan to cover in their language learning. For really big projects, learners will be working on different distillation levels for the earlier and later parts of their vocab stock. As long as all the above rules are kept, this won’t matter at all.
18. The head list and three distillations will cover the full space available on the ‘bronze” excercise book, and so after that you take a fresh book, the silver book, for distillation number 4, etc. Now distillation number 4 will have numbers 1-25 of that distillation on the top left hand corner of the first page but they will be taken from the first 36 of the third distillation which was the toughest to remember of the first 48 of the second distillation which was the toughest to remember of the first 68 of the first distillation which was the toughest to remember of the first 100 of the head list and therefore will be taken from the first four double pages of your old book. The gold list system in full f/x, used here on basic Spanish. This illustration shows a mature vocab book with the head list and the first three distillations finished.
- An actual gold list mature bronze book for Spanish
19. So the second book (‘silver’) will only need to be a quarter of the thickness of the first one (‘bronze’) or there will be one silver book while there are three or four bronze books, getting your headlist up past 16,000 words, which is a degree level knowledge, if you want, and will be worked through on the same principles as the first one, but in a quarter of the time. Always taking 20 minutes and taking your time and sticking to the same principles throughout.
20. The second vocab book then takes you to the seventh distillation. That would be enough for most people, but if you want to take it further then you probably don’t need a book for the last bit, as the 2500 words in the headlist have become 150 words identified in this process as the toughest to rmember words. by this time you already know them better than most people anyway, but of out of interest you wanted to continue than in little time engaged you could keep going on and distill this away to nothing. If you get to the seventh distillation you cannot be less than three and a half months from the beginning of learning even if you learned it to the max, as two weeks should be rested in between, or the short-term memory will deceive you.
21. Because you are in for the long haul with the long-term memory system, use the fact that you have numbered the words to motivate yourself. You will know that you are 40% through your target of 2500 words when you have 40 pages of headwords. As the number of repetitions on average that are needed in order to learn the words to the end is 3.3 (some are learned after one but some will only be learned on the tenth reiteration or ‘distillation’) then we know that having 40 percent of one’s head list in place is equivalent to 13 percent of the whole work. Use these numbers and statistics to motivate yourself, and note that even a small learning session can represent a small but irreversible advance on the road to learning the language. The s/t memory method makes huge advances at the beginning which are forgotten and the learner goes backwards, despairs, and drops out of class. The l/t method means that you are only ever going forwards, so the method is a more effective use of time, and much more motivating once the student understands memory in language learning and understands what is going on.
22. Need to activate – language learners using the long term memory will obtain a large passive knowledge of the language. They will quickly move towards being able to read newspapers and novels in the language. But they may have difficulty and be discouraged when placed in a situation where they have to “activate” their knowledge and start talking. They will feel tongue tied, and not be able to find words that, when someone tells them, they know they knew. The activation of a language learned well in my method by means of immersion in the environment of the language takes a maximum of three days. In this time, the person who has spend the hours with his vocab book doing what I suggested above, and doing grammatical exercises, suddenly starts speaking the language with fluency, and the experience of this “activating” can be very exhilirating, actually. The person who thinks that they will learn by immersion and have not put the hours in beforehand will not have this, and will learn to the short-term memory, and forget it all on his return out of the milieu, and not achieve the results of the learner to l/t memory, who is able to reactivate his language every time he goes into the milieu for a few days, for the rest of his life. He appears to be someone who has learned thousands of words in a few days – a claim which not even the boldest short term system would make – but of course he knows them, he is only bringing them “to the front of his mind”, which is a different matter to putting them there in the first place. Some people, witnessing the remarkable effect of immersion on activating the language ability of the long-term memory optimising student, and not giving full credit to the work this student did in his own time beforehand, think that the immersion method is a great way to “learn languages”. So you get people trying to combine Callan and immersion, then doing more Callan and more immersion, and then more of the same, and never getting off the ground with it. One Callan victim I knew had done the callan-immersion mix three years running, and when her boss came from England the first thing she said was “would Meester like the cup off tea?” and we’re talking about an otherwise educated person whose knowledge of her mother tongue is nothing short of eloquent in both speech and in writing.
Any questions? Please contact me, but questions are MOST appreciated from those who have seen the available videos which are all here in the same “goldlist methodogy” section here on www.huliganov.tv and still have queries about things I may have overlooked to talk about so far.
Also your feedback is appreciated. The more people come back and tell me that they had success with the method the more I am motivated to keep sharing it on and developing it. Also please tell your friends about it, and anyone who thinks they cannot learn a foreign language, like that was somehow more difficult than learning his or her own.
Teachers – consider teaching this method to your students so as not to waste their time – they will thank you. Spend lesson time showing how it works and working on their lists with them until they get the hang of it. You will not only have liberated them for the learning of the language you were teaching them, but also put a tool in their hand which they can use throughout life to learn many languages.
DJJ.
The Goldlist Method is fantastic. It efficiently takes care of vocabulary learning, the most time-consuming part of learning any language. What used to be a tedious necessity for applying the grammar is now the most fun and interesting part of the learning process. Language learning will never be the same again. With some time and determination, it’s no problem to learn 10 000 words in less than a year! It’s like a dream come true! It’s so counter-intuitive, yet it makes so much sense! I’m totally in love with the Goldlist Method!
Is there an equally wonderful method for learning grammar? How do you personally go about that, uncle Davey?
I’m delighted to read this. Effectively I do use GL for grammar too, but splitting grammar into four parts. The rules which you can write out, the example paradigms, the example sentences showing syntax and grammar in context, and the irregular aspects linked only to particular words.
The first three parts can be turned into line items and goldlisted in the usual way and distilled off in the usual way. For a rule you will write it out on one line. An example might be the consonants which can be written double in Spanish, or the “for luck” rule in French. A regular paradigm can be written out spaciously in the headlist and distilled into more compact versions in later distillations, become tables, later tables where the axes are swapped so that they are written longways on, and as usual what you do remember, you simply leave out of the next re-write. The example sentences I think are self explanatory, but in H you might be writing also a line of translation or explanation which might be dropped as early as D1. D2 may have only 1 instead of 2 examples per point, etc.
In fact grammar usually distils off quite a bit quicker than vocab. Learning the regular parts of grammar is not more than 30% of the task of learning even grammatically loaded languages. For languages with much easier grammar like Chinese but where the whole task is remembering kanjis, tones, and the meanings of combinations, regular grammar itself you might consider to be as little as 5% of the whole task, It depends of course how far you are taking the language, and how grammatically laden the language is.
If we are talking about Japanese, the amount of grammar taught in most courses is pretty finite, but you can go on and add in all sorts of additional grammar points, such as the keigo uses of the passive voice, as well as modestive and exultative verb trios, lesser known nuances connected with certain particles, or lesser used classifiers that are more correct than hon, mai etc but where you’d easily get away with a less accurate classifier. Add to that some archaic points of older Japanese grammar and you can easily end up knowing four times the grammar that you would actually need on a day to day basis.
When it comes to the irregular grammar that we still think of as grammar as it involves an irregular genitive or plural are really irregularities occuring on a word by word basis, and therefore just as you see them by the word in the better learners’ dictionaries, so you include them together with the word on Goldlist. You can even have them on separate lines on the headlist, or on the same as you like. Goldlist is a game of solitaire, you play against yourself in the end, and so how you decide questions like this are a matter of individual preference.
Thanks again for your warm words of recommendation!
Thank you for your thorough explanation! You can imagine how spoiled I felt while studying Chinese before going on to goldlist Greek with no clue as to what I should do with the irregular word forms. Once again, the Goldlist makes me feel spoiled for learning so comfortably. Thanks a ton!
Speaking of being spoiled, it happens every now and then that I remember too much, like the last distillation I did, where 25 headlist words went down to 10 words in D1. It happens very often in silver books, and I guess it is expected, since you’re supposed to know most of them by the end of that anyway. You just go along with the distillations normally, except with shorter lists, right?
Yes, if you can go beyond target but know that you didn’t do something like leave less than two weeks, etc, then so much the better. Certainly sometimes the results are worse than that, and it is hard even to get to a modest 25% off without resorting to binding and combining lines. But then all of a sudden on a later distillation you find that the penny has dropped for them and a load of words get remembered at once. The thing is not to worry and just have confidence in the algorithm. It simply has to work.
2 questions:
1) Sometimes it takes me more than 20min to make a headlist. This happens if I randomly select words to use (usually online) one by one. Having a dictionary decreases the time. So is it ok? Or should I speed up by already having a preselected list?
2) What do I do if I find on my first distillation that I didn’t remember anything, or maybe only a few words? Should I merge words and learn them together as you said or should I repeat the whole headlist again? I guess I should ask if this has ever happened to you? Has your mind ever been blank when coming to the first distillation? I can see how you would improve on further distillations. The first seems the hardest
Thanks
Dear Mitch,
I think that in most cases you need to have preselected the material you want to put through the system. If you are sorting out what you actually want to goldlist while doing the goldlist, it’ll add to the time, but that might be fine, as long as you’re comfortable going through your material that way.
As a generally rule as extra “pass” through any material, rather than trying to do too much with a single “pass”, cannot be faulted.
As to your second question, you can always combine words from more than one line onto a single line as an alternative to discarding them altogether.
There are a number of ways of doing this. You can make a phrase, a title for an imaginary book, chapter or poem, you can match words to their opposites or contract the different meetings of similar looking words on one line.
Hello, and thank you for your website.
Please, I would like to know how you deal with bad pronunciation, I can read and write very well, and even understand everything that someone says, but I can not sound like a native speaker, I am taking accent reduction lessons, but I still think that the actual speaking part is the most complex aspect in learning a foreign language, what is the best way in your opinion to reduce a foreign accent when using your method? Should the person wait until the immersion phase, or start working on it as soon as they begin learning. It’s really costing me a lot of money and time to learn the new sounds.
Thanks for your help.
Corina
Dear Corina,
I suggest the following steps
1. Check that you don’t have any speech impediments and that you can indeed make all the sounds of the chosen target language. If for example you can’t say “r” with a trill, find my film on youtube “Roll your ‘r’s now, baybee” which seems to have helped a lot of people crack that problem, judging by the comments under the film.
2. Test whether you are a good voice actor in your own language. It’s no coincidence that someone like Stephen Fry or Rory Bremner are capable of speaking foreign languages with convincing accents when they are good voice actors and impersonators in their native tongue. Can you do other accents of your native tongue?
3. Further to 2., remember what elements voice acting and impersonating is made up of. Experiment in your own language with the effect of holding your mouth in differnt shapes. holding the tongue further back or further forward in your mouth, raising or lowering the vocal chords and palate, choosing different default resting places for the tongue and lips, creating the shape of the sound further forward in the mouth or further back, considering rhythm, speed, pitch, melody, staccato vs elision, a whole load of things to experiment with, and use your own language as the laboratory.
4. When you start a new language, before even thinking about reading, writing, and goldlisting, first off do one of the audio courses in full. Be that a Michel Thomas method one or a Pimsleur one. That will give you the feel for the sound of the language and you’ll know what you’re aiming at withut being drawn aside by the way it is written
5. When dealing with a word in the language, start at the back syllable as they show in Pimsleur, built it forwards. Consider where the stress falls and how heavily it falls, and exercise it slowly at first, building up to a more natural speed. Exaggerate the foreign pronunciation while drilling and you can fall back to something more natural later.
Whilst the issue of worrying about fluency of speech I would seriously leave until immersion phase, you can and should work on pronunciation from day one, if pronunciation is really something you want to achieve.
HOWEVER it’s not just pronunciation that makes a linguist. Unless you are planning to be an undercover spy, having a fioreign accent can be a positive advantage. I do the Huliganov lessons in English with heavily accented Russian for a whole bunch of reasons, but one of them is to show that you can have a foreign accent and still be perfectly functional and well understood.
Hey Uncle Davey,
I just wanted to leave some feedback as I’ve been employing the Goldlist Method to learn German. My first head list is dated September 29th. As of yesterday (November 30), I am up to 800 words in my head list. For verbs, I have been listing the infinitive, perfect, and simple past. For nouns the article, singular noun, and plural noun (fully written out). I know that you advise against covering up one or the other side of the page when distilling the lists, but I have to confess to covering the German and trying to guess the word based on the English. At first I did this to keep myself honest and to see if I was really retaining the words. After I established that I was in fact retaining the words, I continued the practice for no good reason (ha).
Anyway, I wanted to comment on one aspect of the Goldlist which you’ve mentioned in writing and in the videos which I found to be of great importance. You emphasized writing out the lists in a relaxed, quiet setting. I’ve found that I had a higher rate of retention when distilling lists that I constructed in the quiet of my house compared to those that I constructed while traveling, or when surrounded by distractions. The only times I encountered difficulty in distilling from 25 to 17 was when working on lists constructed under less than ideal circumstances. When watching your videos I underestimated how important environment is to retention. Now I know better!
Thank you for giving this method to the world. I hope to continue my head list until I run out of pages, and then to start another, and another, and another.
Many thanks for this valuable feedback. I think that the unconscious as well as the conscious mind can be subject to distraction by stimuli – even those that we become not conscious of, and maybe even especially them. That’s why a quiet place is essential. Especially damaging to study is having music on in the background for those who claim that they are not distracted by it. If their conscious mind is not registering it, but they feel they need it, then it must be the unconscious mind that is feeding on it and therefore not sampling the material we want it to to the proper degree.
I believe also that stimulants and other chemicals can effect how well we do, and the best way to study is without such chemicals as caffeine or alcohol coming in. I’ve made real breakthroughs in Japanese since giving up caffeine.
In just moments I am off to the store to find a proper notebook and try out this method, but I have a couple easy questions.
It makes sense that after the first go on a list of vocabulary, a certain percentage is ingrained in long term memory. I wonder, does it help to go over the list several times, and THEN take the 2+ week break? For instance, 20 minutes writing your list of 25 words, 10 minutes off, 20 minutes studying that list, THEN a long break? What is the effect on what transferred to long term memory?
What do you think of Rosetta Stone or other immersive language learning methods?
Thanks! I hope to post again with my success story!
-ab
It harms this method to go over the list several times. That switches on short-term memory functions. You should do it once, at a leisurely pace so that you enjoy doing it, and then go on to the next page and the next 25 of headlist if you are on the headlist, after a short 10 minute break. If you are using Super Memo then there are different staged repetition lengths because it maps onto Ebbinghaus’s findings whereas I just use those ideas generally and approximate to Ebbinghaus more broadly, but still the effect is the same – you don’t spend longer than you have to long-term memorizing words, and with Super Memo you are bound to a computer whereas with Goldlist you have a more portable system which you can do in the sun or carry in the pocket of your coat. Super Memo gets you there a bit sooner, but that’s the cost, more typing – which is what people do at work all day anyway, and using a pen or pencil becomes for me and many others a welcome break from using a keyboard.
And I forgot to respond to your point about Rosetta Stone. I know it has some fans but it is not worth the money in my personal opinion. I do not accept that immersion is a good tool for learning. I believe that passive knowledge building over a long period without immersion followed by real immersion (ie by going there, not kidding yourself with a program) after already acquiring a large passive knowledge by working alone, in order to activate the language, is the more effective means in terms of not wasting time and money.
There is also less material than you think in a Rosetta Stone course. It will not get you very far.
Anyway, read up what other polyglots think of it, on Google if you don’t believe me. Among serious polyglots RS has more detractors than fans, it seems to me.
I just thought I’d write a bit about your Goldlist method while I’ve got a few spare minutes. I have just started using it and wonder what your thoughts are on a few issues I have.
First a little background:
I had, by chance really, happened upon my own method of learning vocab but without really thinking much about the function or structure . Like yourself I had an instant aversion to the standard mnemonic memory tricks, thinking that I just didn’t need all of that extra baggage to learn simple words. I also didn’t get on with flashcards very well. Since I was getting all of my vocab from reading literature I was looking up a lot of words in order to simply follow the story. This was time consuming and I would frequently realise that I had already looked up a certain word, sometimes several times already, only at the point of once again looking it up.
This all changed when I purchased a brilliant dictionary for my Iphone which had a ‘favourites’ folder where you could bookmark words for learning later. However I found that I didn’t ‘learn them later’- I simply looked them up again and again. It was much quicker to type half a word than search through the pages of a dictionary and it would also tell me if I had that word already in my favourites list. After about a month or so, I would go through the list of favourites and delete the ones I definitely knew. So, depending on how common the word was, I was, by default almost, using a spaced repetition system, though I knew nothing of this type of system at that time. I found that I was learning the words without trying, just by reading them. And it won’t surprise you to learn that some words would ‘stick’ first time and others took many ‘passes’. There are obviously problems with this rather disorganised method , for instance the slow rate of vocabulary acquisition and the limited source of the vocabulary to name but two.
So When I found out about your goldlist system I immediately thought of the similarities to what I was doing and thought that it could definitely be an improvement. I agree with you about our relationship with the subconscious long-term memory and that explains why words can simply ’appear’ into my vocabulary without me remembering even remembering having heard them – if that makes sense. My subconscious has ‘sampled’ them from a radio program or somewhere without me realising. I also see the same process occurring with my kids who can grab the strangest words and phrases from seemingly nowhere.
I have only been using the goldlist for a month or so and so have only done a hand-full of distillations but I was wandering what you thought about a couple of issues I have come across so far:
If I still get most of my vocabulary from reading literature then I cannot avoid coming across a certain amount of the words again, by accident, before its time to distil, simply by looking them up whilst trying to follow the story.
I sometimes find that I am very familiar with the word itself but have trouble remembering the translation. This can be exacerbated when I look again at the headlist and remember the word itself very well but not necessarily the meaning. I have ‘sampled’ the word but not the meaning.
I don’t yet find it easy to remember the genders of words using this method.
My active vocabulary can only be increased by ‘needing’ to say a word and I still may need to look it up to do this. Therefore, have I really learned the word if I can only recognise it whilst reading?
I don’t see these questions as problems as such since my goal is increasing the speed of my vocabulary acquisition and that is already working. It was just to find out what you think.
Also as a separate question: How would you define being fluent in a language.? At what level do you consider yourself fluent? Or is this question relevant at all anyway. I only ask this last question because it’s one I am asked a lot and cannot usually give people a satisfactory answer. I feel it’s a distraction at best. It’s easy to tell when someone is fluent and just as easy to say when someone isn’t. As for the in between?
This was an excellent comment, which I would like to answer while elevating the whole thing to a main article. You will see it on the main page shortly.
Back with a question:
My Russian teacher says that I don’t spend enough time watching Russian news, talking to people in Russian etc. (I actually have other things going on in my life and learning Russian is not what I want to do all day long.) What do you think? I keep telling her that when I “immerse” myself in Russia for a few days, it will all come to me. She doesn’t accept that. What do you think? FYI I attend a 3 hour Russian class one day a week and I spend at least a couple of hours doing various exercises for homework. This is in addition to the goldlisting that I do. I really don’t talk much and my conversational skills are sorely lacking.
Of course she doesn’t accept it. Teachers of languages get much much more money out of unwitting students by insisting on wasting their time on pointlessly keeping them active the whole time. These students are encouraged to measure their progress in class by how well they can do performing seal style activities without real measured long-term vocabulary growth. Once you actually have enough vocab to be able to read novels in Russian, it will seriously need only a short time for you to activate the whole of your vocab. You do not need to keep bringing yourself up to a semi-active state repeatedly as doing so involves activities more likely to switch on the short-term than the long-term memory.
Find out how far any student has ever actually gone with this teacher of yours. Did any achieve a vocabulary of say 3000 or 4000 words under her wing? Or did they just use 1000 words over and over? How many of her students could pick up a Dostoyevskii and read it? If you do goldlisting I guarantee that in the long-term you will know much more than if you spent that time senselessly watching the news or drilling things to the short-term memory just so that you can subjectively feel as if you know them.
Find out how many of this teacher’s ex students can still speak Russian at will one year after leaving her classes.
She is doing the same ignorant things which schoolteachers do in their classes, as a result of which in the UK kids leave school having done on average 5 years or more of French for 2 hours or more a week. 5*2*40 is 400 hours. You should be fluent, then, and they come out knowing next to nothing.
It’s all in the method.
I thoroughly agree. Everyone has his own goal and can probably work out for himself what works and what doesn’t. Personally while at school in Brighton, England, which is just across the Channel from France and has good reception of French radio, I learned a great deal of french just by listening to French pop songs most evenings. As a teenager I was well into pop music, so that worked for me. Now (62 years old) I would be more lilkely to approach a new language through You Tube talks,books newspapers all free on the net.
In short, motivation is all. If you need to take an active approach to the language,find some topic you are passionately interested in and you’ll find loads of like-minded people to discuss it with in your target language on the net. Never forget that language is (mostly) communication, so get out there and communicate rather than going over boring exercises that will probably soon be forgotten.
I started learning languages at a time when the translation method was much in use, and still find it a great exercise for learning new material in a really difficult text. I doubt if the method is much used nowadays in lessons or textbooks because the learner may get in the habit of translating thoughts instead of trying to express them directly. I think it probably depends on the learner. Anyway to work on a text that seems unintelligable and to come up with a really polished translation can be extremely satisfying and forces you to develop an ear for nuance.
I noticed that you mentioned that you don’t have a Russian keyboard. Actually, anyone can have one because it is just a definition in the control center of your Windows Operating System. The trick is to get labels for the keyboard cause it’s murder to find the right letters!
That’s the point. Of course I can swap the keyboards in Windows, it’s a question of remembering where each of the letters are. Могу, конечно, но достаточно медленно.
Hi Mr James,
Your GL method has helped me to learn vocabulary. I am a Stanford-Harvard educated MD. You are quite overweight. This can usually be cured. The key is to obtain your energy from complex carbohydrates = with intrinsic fiber such as whole grain cereal, rice & beans, whole grain bread, rolled oats. The best thing to drink is water. Take a look at the river and the lake. What does it contain? Water. That is what animals like humans are designed to drink. To obtain vitamins & minerals, the best source is vegetables > fruits. In general, meat should be avoided as it is always high in fat, even the so called “lean” meats. The book, “Prevent & Reverse Heart Disease” by Esselstyn is excellent. Obesity is strongly associated w/atherosclerosis of the coronary arteries (heart) and carotid arteries (brain). Thus w/heart attack and stroke. Obesity also increases the risk of impotence. Obesity requires the heart to pump blood to a larger body which leads to hypertension. Hypertension increases the risk of stroke and kidney failure. Adipose tissue increases resistance to insulin which overworks the pancreas and greatly increases the risk of type 2 diabetes. Of course, you could take meds for this. However, it is more effective to lose wt. If you follow the guidance of Esselstyn and start to educate yourself on what is truly healthy about food, you will become a lot healthier. The books of Dr McDougall, eg. “Digestive Tune Up” are also helpful. Thank you for inventing the GL method and for teaching me about it. Good luck improving your health. Remember, the key to improving your health is to make it a top priority and to start learning about how diet affects risk of coronary artery disease and obesity etc. Good luck.
Many thanks. I will look for the writers and books you’ve recommended. If I may, just a few questions:
1. What relative importance would you place on exercise, portion control in volume terms and the selection of better nutritional alternatives?
2. It sounds as if sushi is a quite healthy option from what you have written. Is that so?
3. Do you subscribe to the idea that sparkling water is less good for you than still water? It’s just that I cannot abide still water but quite like carbonated water.
Many thanks in advance for your views.
Maybe I’ll be able to find some of these in Honolulu in a couple of weeks.
Personally, I found the book “Ma gavte la nata” by Pomposius Melanom very helpful in
dealing with obesity-induced lack of rudeness. Good luck.
I can’t work out whether this is a spam or not, but I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt.
Uvajaemyi Victor, spasibo,chto vykroili vremya,chtoby otvetit mne! Prosto,mne neponyatno s chego nachat. Na razvernutoi stranice tetradi,kotoruyu Vy pokazali kak primer, mne neponyatno,pochemu slova imeeyut razlichnuyu numeraciyu: odin stolbik v tysyachah, drugoi 3oo,sleduyushii 500 i tak dalee,otkuda eto beretsya. Izvinite menya ,no ochen hochu ponyat i primenit na dele. Pomogite mne,pojaluista!!!! Hotya by nachalo….. S uv. D.Roza
Postarayus delat film ob etom na russkom yazyke.
hi there Dr Huliganov, hope y’all cool o/
Many thanks for the R rolling you-tube video that led me to your crazy world. I had abandoned my dream of learning another language in despair after failing hopelessly at trills for at least a year. Then your mental video cheered me up, I had another crack at it and now I can sort of trill badly, which is progress enough to convince me it’s doable. So it’s back on, woo!
Goldlisting looks awesome; I’m all over this idea. Despite eagerly devouring every word I can find on the subject I still have one question. How many words would you recommend as a target for goldlisting prior to activation?
Finally, aaargh! Now I believe I can do this again I can’t decide which language to start with. I’ve narrowed it down to Polish and German, as I know and meet a lot of cool Poles and my favourite music is mostly in German. If I learn one I’ll definitely learn both, but which to start?!?! Do you have any insights that may indicate the optimal one to start with? If not I’ll flip a coin.
Many thanks for all your entertaining**, illuminating and inspiring work Doc* You Rule.
Dave
*except the Peter Paczek material which is borderline cruelty, hilarious, but still cruelty
** You don’t know that you need to see Pancakes of the Opera until you see it and then you do.
Nice to hear from you. I think that if you have never tried languages before German would be a gentler experience to start with than Polish. You can graduate to Polish by learning German first. I’m not saying that it’s impossible to learn Polish first, it’s just that if you wanted to end up speaking both, you’d find that you’d done yourself a big favour by taking German first, as the fact of learning concepts like cases and conjugations in a language more similar to English will ease you into it all a bit more. Also you don’t need to trill an r for German unless you want to speak Bavarian. You said your favorite music is in German, but I’m imagining Rammstein rather than mountain yodelling…
Здравствуйте,уважаемый Виктор! Спасибо за Ваш метод! Но,из-за слабости моего английского( изучаю его третий год) я не смогла понять Ваш текст досконально. Не будете ли Вы так добры ответить мне на русском языке,разложив по полочкам,с чего начать и так далее.Очень заинтригована Вашим методом,хочется быстрее взяться за дело.Спасибо.Удачи Вам! С уважением Роза
Nado budet delat’ takoy video. U menya net russkoy klaviatury i napisat’ vsyo budet ochen dolgoe delo. Postarayus’ delat film ob etom v rabochem poryadke.
One more thing. I just went through my book and counted – I have about 1,450 Russian words in my first list book. I am having serious trouble keeping up. Meaning, I keep finding distillations that are dated over 2 months ago! I’m going nuts trying to keep up. I guess this means I should stop compiling new lists and go back and “finish” my old ones. Sheesh. It’s tiring business, this language learning….
You don’t need to worry, seriously. It is a new way to learn, and it involves not getting stressed. You are trying to keep up with a class and that is what is stressing you out. You’re also sticking the new wine of the Goldlist into the old wine skins that is the class.
My Czech head list has 8400 words, and it’s at 8 different phases of distillation as I have over 11 batches in there so far. I am currently distilling words I last wrote 4 and a half months ago for Czech and it’s still fine. The 2 months outer limit is a moveable feast. The lower limit of no less than 2 weeks of not seeing them is the strict one.
FInding it hard or onerous or stressful will not help you learn, just enjoy the experience and the indpependence it gives you just as you would paint a picture for pleasure or do exercises.
Hope this helps.
Davey
It’s me again. I’ve done 4 distillations on some of my words already. It’s hard to say how much I’ve retained. There are some words on my lists, by the way, that no matter how many times I look at will simply not take up residence in my memory. Very frustrating. But, all in all, I find that the Goldlist method is useful as a COMPLEMENT to my classroom learning. After every class I try to sit down and take all the new vocabulary words I learned and put them into a list. This way, I’m looking at words that I’ve actually USED in class. Anyway, just wanted to leave you a little update.
Thanks again from your fan in Israel.
I think that the way you are using it will help your class, or make more of a success of your class, but it will hamper the method from working to its full advantage as you are also using s/t memory tecvhniques on the same material!
Hi there Mr. Huliganov.
I’m Spanish and I’m trying to learn Japanese, this language seems complicated using Gold List Method because of the kanji but I have some basic questions because my English skills are not good enough and I don’t understand some points of the method.
1 – I read people is trying to do huge lists like 600, 1000, 2000.. and that sounds a little scary so, as a beginner in your method, how many words are recommended to familiarize yourself with the method?
2 – If you are going to do a huge list, suposedly you have to write 25 and then take a short break like 15 minutes, ok, but then you need one week or more to write all the words, right?
3 – After you create your headlist and let’s say a month later, do you just try to write out the words your remember or you look your list in your language and translate it?
4 – In your explanation of the steps to Taylor, you did a “new step” which is like creating a new list in the middle of the other one, with new words I guess but when did you started it?how long after the second destilation? and then you do two destilations at the same time? I’m a little confused.
I hope you can understand my questions because my English skills are just decent, and thanks.
I’m going to give this a full reply as a new article. Sorry it has taken a while to get to it.
Witam. Zobaczyłem Pana filmy na YouTube o Gold List. Mam kilka pytań.
1. uczę się już angielskiego jakiś czas i znam wiele słów i czy te słowa też muszę wpisywać do czołowej listy czy już nie, znam je na tyle że ich nie zapomnę?
2. czy mogę prowadzić równocześnie dwie Gold list jedną z językiem angielskim a drugą niemieckim?
3.wszystko co mam robić to tylko napisać słówka, odczekać 2 tygodnie sprawdzić które umiem, i przepisać te których ie zapamiętałem? wiem żeby przez 2 tygodnie do nich nie zaglądać ale czy później też się ich nie uczyć tzn. nie powtarzać?
4. czy jeśli np znajdę w internecie 2000 najczęściej używanych słów w danym języku i te słowa wykorzystam to czy taka ilość pozwoli mi się swobodnie komunikować w danym języku na codzienne potrzeby? 5. lepiej będzie jeśli słówko angielskie będę pisał na zielono a polskie znaczenia na niebiesko czy obydwie kolumny na niebiesko?
6 jeśli słowo wymawia się inaczej niż pisze to wymowę mam pisać normalnie tak jak słychać czy za pomocą transkrypcji fonetycznej( np. why – łaj)
czekam na odpowiedź. jacek33176@o2.pl
OK, dziekuje za serdecznie za cierpliwosc, nareszcie sie biore do odpowiedzi na te b. dobre pytania. Przepraszam, jezeli jestem nieformalny i per “ty” mowie, ale jakos mi sie lepiej tak piszy on-line.
1. Jezeli znasz slowo, nie ma sensu dolaczyc tego do goldlistu. Zaczalbym od poczatku osobiscie tylko gdybym znal albo mniej niz 500 slow, albo mniej niz 10% swojego docelowego slownictwa. Inaczej mozna zrobic cos takiego: wziac slownik angielsko-polski, (badz cokolwiesko-polski dla tych polakow, ktore nie chca sie uczyc angielskiego lecz innego jezyka) i wtedy odnotowac (lepiej liczyc dla siebie anizeli ufac liczbe na okladce ksiazki) liczbe pozycji (slow, czy tam “entries” tak zwane) i lepiej wziac slownik kiszonkowy o jakies 20-30 tysiecy slow w jednym kierunku (ang>pol), nie wiecej.
Wtedy wez co 17ta strone i co 17ta pozycje (lub co 13. strone i co 13. pozycje albo cokolwiek co bedzie juz z gory nakladany jako algorytm) i napis te slowa – i czy znales to czy nie. Mozna tez prosic kogo innego o pomoc jezeli chcesz byc totalnie objektywnym. Wez ze 100 slow i daj sobie 1 pkt jezeli:
- znasz conamniej podstawowy zakres znaczen tego slowa, i
- umialbys to napisac bez bledow ortografycznych
- znasz gramatyczne warianty typu nieregularnych liczb mnogich oraz czasoe przeslych, itd
- umialbys to wymowic prawidlowo, napotykajac na to podczas czytania na glos.
Jezeli nawet jest elementem niepewnosci, lub gdzie myslisz ze to wszystko znasz ale nie czynnie tylko biernie, daj 1 punkt.
Jezeli mialbys blad ortograficzny, lub nie znasz czegos z podstawowych zakresu znaczen, lub nie umiesz to wymowic, ale cos tam bys pewnie zrozumial z kontekstu daj sobie pol punktu. Innymi slowami 20% do 80% wiedzy slowa to jest pol punkt, 81%-100% wiedzy to jest punkt, a mniej niz 20% jest zero.
Masz wtedy procent slow w tescie, i rozmnozysz to przez ilosc slow w danym slowniku, to Ci daje wielkosc twojego slownictwa poczatkujacego.
Kolejny krok jest ustalic cel – do jakie wielkosci slow chcesz zdazyc.
Wtedy goldlistujesz do 7mej destylacji na headlist o tylu slow, i potem zrobisz jeszcze raz ten sam sprawdzian, i zobaczysz, ze dziala bez problemu. Nie musisz tego rodzaju slow, gdzie dalbys sobie 1 pkt, do systemu.
I w tym jest caly klucz uzywania goldlistu dla tych ktory uzywaja goldlist do jezykow, dla ktorych istnieje tylko kurs podstawowy, a potem tylko slownik, i dopiero po pewnym czasie by mogli czytac literature.
Dla tego Goldlist jest metoda nie tylko dla poczatkujacych, ale tez dla “Orlow”, i pasuje do Ciebie!
2. Mozesz ale odradzilbym uczenia sie jakakolwiek metoda dwoch jezykow z tej samej grupy jednoczesnie, dopoki jeden z tych jezykow nie osiagal 10,000 slow. Wtedy uzywaj kurz napisany dla anglikow aby uczyc sie niemieckiego (lub odwrotnie jezeli znasz wiecej niemieckiego) bo w ten sposob lapiesz latwiej roznicy miedzy tymi jezykami. Zawsze widac na 100 metrow polakow, ktore lekcewazyli te porade, bo mowia rzeczy typu “My brother is doctor” oraz “yesterday I have been to the cinema”. Niemecki potrafi szybciej zniwelizowac twoj angielski niz powiedzmy jezyk arabski badz turecki jednoczesnie, gdzie nie co drugie slowo ma to samo pochodzenie jak jest pomiedzy angielskim a niemieckim.
3. Najlepiej nie probuj ich zapamietac w ogole w tych systemach tradycyjnie uzywanych. Tylko mniej przyjemnosc z ich wypisania, poznania ich znaczenia i skojarzenia ale jakby b ylo to tylko ciekawosc a nie czescia wielkiego maratonu pamieci. I tak podswiadoma funkcja pamieci zrobi swoje, i duzo skuteczniej niz kiedy sie probujesz swiadomie uzywac pamiec. W sumie czekamy te 2 tygodnie aby te krotkotrwale nauczone czesci juz ida do niepamieci, a to co zostaje mozemy smialo liczyc do zapamietanych i nie napisac ich na nowu. My tu probujemy szukac wlasnie te slowa ktore NIE chodza na jakos do pamieci. Ktora nasza podswiadomosc nie lubi dlugotrwale zapamietac, i to wlasnie szukamy to przez to wielokrotne destylacje lub filtrowanie tak jak prospektorzy szukali zloto powsrod zwiru rzecznego w Alasce. Dlatego nazywa sie to metoda “goldlist”. Nasze osobiste “zloto” jest ta kolekcja slow ktore dla nas sa najtrudniej do automatycznego zapamietania. To bedzie indywidualna kolekcja – lista zlotych slow sasiada moze wygladac totalnie inaczej, bo on ma inna podswiadomosc z innymi glebokimi i nieswiadomymi kojarzeniami.
4. Zawsze jest dobrym pomyslem zaczynac od najczesciej uzywanych slow, wiec te listy na pewno warto uzywac. W jezyku angielskim 2000 slow daja bardzo duzo. W innych jezykach mniej. Jednak uwazam ze 10,000 slow nawet angielszczyzny sa potrzebne dla uzywania angielskiego do profesjonalnej pracy i zupelnie komortowego radzenia sie w anglojezycznym swiecie. Nikt nie powinien wychodzic z uniwersytetu z diplomem anglisyki moim zdaniem bez 15.000 slow angielskiego. I to wszystko jest jak najbardziej osiagalne, tylko wymaga kilu lat regularnej pracy.
5. Nie strailbym na to czasu. Jeden z fanow systemu lubi tak robic, i jezeli mu sie podoba, to wtedy warto. Jak nie, to nie. Osobiscie kolory stosuje i radze stosowac tylko do nauki jezykow tonalnych typu chinskiego. Wtedy radze uzywania zielone do pierwszego tonu, blekitne do drugiego, czerwone do trzeciego oraz czarne do czwartego, czyli metoda dr Harolda Goodmana, ale on nie daje koloru do piatego tonu (tzwn “zacisnieta piesc”) wiec do tego uzywam szary olowek.
6. Rob sobie transkypcji tylko tych slow gdzie nie znasz wymowy. Naprzyklad, powiedzmy, ze trafisz na 2 slowa w jednej sesji: “vehicle” oraz “fleet”. Wieksosc uczacych rozpoznalaby od razu, ze “fleet” bedzie podobny do “feet” (stopy) i nie musi napisac [flijt] w zeszycie. Ale vehicle nie jest zbyt podobny do niczego i wiekszosc uczacych sie nie wie z istniejacego doswiadczenia angielskiej ortografii, ze trzeba mowic “wijekl” ze stresem na pierwsza sylabe i bez wymowienia “h”. Wobec tego napewno warto napisac transkypcje takiego slowa. Ale to nie powinno dotyczyc wiecej niz 20-30% slow, jezeli chodzi o angielskim.
Mam nadzieje ze to pomoglo, jeszcze raz dzieki za cierpliwosc, bo bylem bardzo zajety ostatnio.
I Like your methurd Mr. Huliganov !
Thanks Sophie. Why are you hacking into your Aunty’s e-mail?
Hi Everyone.
I just saw a new comment on the blog and it gave me the urge to write in. I have been practicing the Gold List method for a couple of months now, in conjunction with my Russian studies (once a week for 3 hours with a fantastic teacher at the Russian Cultural Center in Tel Aviv) and I think it’s working! I’ve done alot of work already and have even reached my 3rd distillation with some of my lists. It’s working! I’m remembering more and more words. I don’t know if it’s because of the Gold List work or because I have become more familiar with these words from my classes and reading. But I don’t care. It’s easy work – this list making and I am enjoying it.
Thank you ever so kindly Mr. Huliganov/Uncle Davey for sharing this method with us. I really am enjoying it.
Dena
Thanks, Deena. Todah rabah. I am hoping that one day someone will do a Hebrew course, as I still want to learn that.
Actually, someone already did upload an excellent course in Ancient Hebrew to Youtube. I haven’t finished it yet, but it seems to go relatively far, and it thoroughly explains verbs in a systematic way.
http://www.youtube.com/user/animatedhebrew/videos?sort=da&view=u
Hi Dr. Huliganov,
Firstly I’d like to thank you for sharing this method. I’ve been watching your videos and reading on other reviews of your method but I still have some questions. I am already quite advanced in the language I wanna use the goldlist so I would just use it to build up new vocabulary, nothing to do with grammar.
- How much information can you add in your list. I quite like having the definition rather than the translation (as sometimes the words does not have a direct translation) and some examples. Of course I can’t write a paragraph for every word but I thought of having an example instead of a single word and then either the translation or a short definition. I’d like to know your views on that and how you actually built your lists of the languages you learnt.
- I’d like some further clarification about the 20min study times. If I am reading(or watching a movie) I can easily read for several minutes without finding new words(depending on the book, of course) so does that count in the 20min or not.
Plus do you think it is better to write the words down in the list as I find them or instead I should create a pre-list in which I would just store the words that later I’ll goldlist.
I think that’s all for now.
Regards,
PS. When’s your book coming out and how can one get it?
Gosh, I seem to have over looked this kind comment by Pol.
I think the answer is to the first question that you can add all you can comfortably fit on one line of handwriting. Don’t put too much on a line in the headlist, as your lines get longer when distilling using on occasion the technique of coompacting rather than dumping outright known words. If there aren’t enough known words for some reason, it’s possible to make up the number by compacting.
20 minutes is a good study time for the long term memory. It is not a conscious function, and so therefore we are not aware when it tires. We can only assume it will get tired, and take breaks for it. The memory that we can “feel” getting tired is the conscious memory, and therefore the short-term memory. Hopefully we are working in a way that doesn’t even switch that one on in the first place.
I think that whether to pre-arrange your headlist depends on the source you are using. If it’s a dictionary, then you don’t need to as your source is in list form. If you are goldlisting words that come up in a conversation lesson, then it could be a good idea.
Hope this helps, and sorry for omitting you earlier. Thanks to Deena I’ve seen your neglected query now.
Best
Davey
Many thanks for the Goldlist method-it certainly deserves to be more widely-known. I have tried on and off over the last 40 years to teach myself Russian, but always came up against the fact that on taking it up again after a time lapse I had to practically start at the beginning again as I had forgotten so much. I have been using the Goldlist method for only 2 months so far, but am getting amazing results- the words seem to pop out of my unconscious sometimes in an eerie way. It takes the drudgery out of language learning and lets you appreciate the way the language works, it’s really fascinating.
I only wish the Internet and Huliganov had been around when I was younger and learning my other 3 languages. I’d love to hear of other users who have tried this method to learn ancient languages or in
other fields,like medics memorizing the names of bones or nerves or suchlike.
απ’την Αθηνα, πολυ ευχαριστω.
Hi Frances! Another fantastic letter which I omitted before – I’ve been really busy this Spring and certain things appear to have simply by-passed me – many thanks.
I’m delighted that you’ve had amazing results using this method after 40 years of drudgery. Well I’m sorry about the 40 years of drudgery, but glad it’s now over for you, and thanks for adding your name to people publicly recommending the method.
I would like to think of doctors using the method to keep their studies in their heads for life. Whether the stresses of a medical degree even allow them to be so paced in their study I do not know, but there is no harm in doing a gold list even after the degree is over, or for medics to incorporate a Goldlist system for their CPE.
Nice to read and understand your Greek thanks. Mou agapoun poli ta ellinika alla den exw elliniki keys sto keyboard mou!
I am working on my lists already for the last week and I am now passing the link to this site to my fellow students and teacher from my Russian course.
I really look forward to getting to my first distillation and seeing what I remember….
Thanks for all this incredibly interesting information!!
Dena (Batyaboo)
Hello Victor,
I saw you on youtube and i will say- I think your method is absolute stunning so thanks lots of helping people.
But I will have some question: I am learning English but i want to improve it. And the question is about this: when I come back to my head words list and I try my first destilation HOW I MUST to DO IT? HOW to check witch of this word I remember or witch one I don’t remember? Do I have to read 1-25 words from the headlist and then put words on some of the shit of paper which I remember(maybe 10 I wrote) and 15 I should put on my firs destilation on my notebook? I don’t get it, how do I know that I remember maybe 10 from 25 words, what to do? But If you say I should mist my column, whith do I have to mist? In English languge or in my native language?
I would be extremely grateful if you could answer me giving me a great help
Yours Sincerely
Anna Kozłowska
Właśnie Panie Davidzie,
podpisuję się pod pytaniem Pana Mirka – którą kolumnę zakrywamy a na którą patrzymy destylując listy?
Mam też swoje pytania:
1. Czy podczas stosowania Pana metody można równolegle chodzić na kurs językowy, czy to może przeszkadza i źle wpływa na proces zapamiętywania?
2. Różne formy czasownika w zależności np. od czasu wypisywać oddzielnie jako osobne linie czy w jednej linii?
3. I ostatnie pytanie. Czy każdego języka uczymy się dokładnie w ten sposób czy może do jakichś ma Pan dodatkowe wskazówki? Dajmy na to np. norweski, bo ten jest w centrum mojego zainteresowania…
Będę wdzięczny za odpowiedź,
Pozdrawiam – Przemek
Hello,
1 question. The gold list is activated after 3 days in an immersion environment. This will require correct pronunciation. How do you go about getting this for each word? Do you find audio for each word on your list? I don’t remember doing this as a child. I don’t think I asked someone how to say this for every word I found. I’m missing something.
Thanks Viktor
Mitch,
This is actually a very good question, so in addition to answering it here I think I’ll also make this answer a fully fledged article on the front page of the blog. I’ll kick it off here and continue on the full article.
The first thing I will take issue with is your statement “this will require correct pronunciation”. I am not sure what “correct pronunciation” is, all I know is that there are people who mimic native pronunciation better than others and they may sound like better linguists when what they probably are is just better voice actors.
What you definitely need to have an awareness of is how that word is supposed to sound so that you would be able to say it understandably – without having a native listener confusing what you were trying to say, and to recognise the word when another person says it.
You don’t need to worry about this mythical holy grail of “correct pronunciation” in the way you’ve formulated it in the question.
Now for most languages in the world, and surprisingly not for the so-called “easy” language of English, one of two things is true….
and now I’ve hopefully whet your appetite and I’ll take it forward in the full article.
Witam Pana,
czy moze ma Pan opisana metode po Polsku ? czy sa roznice w niej w przypadku uczenia sie roznych jezykow ?
pozdrawiam
Rafal
just trying to learn easy traveling language/ I adopted two teens from Ukraine…..but they speak Russian maingly. Thanks N
Chomsky’s age of six is indeed a fabricated fantasy, I learned French as my second language, from Polish, at the age of 11-12 and it has become my mother tongue in full, with an above average proficiency at it compared to native kids. Apparently I had lost nothing of this something by then! I had lost any trace of an accent after a year or so, though.
One question, sir.
How many head-lists do you think someone can run concurrently (i.e. per day or within two weeks)? Assuming one has free time and motivation.
It depends on leaving enough breaks between parts of twenty five. Working for twenty minutes and having a break for ten, that’s two lots of 25 per hour, I wouldn’t do more than 6 hours a day, 30 a week. If you keep that up you’ve done 750 words a week. Allowing 12 weeks a quarter so that you can have time off now and then you would do 9000 words that way a quarter. It takes on average three meetings with a word to memorise it, so with those 9000 words you’d have memorised 3000. That’s a language to O level in a quarter, or four languages to O level in a year done concurrently. But that would mean it’d have to be the main thing you did with your time.
Drogi Davidzie, przypadkowo natrafiłem na film w którym opowiadasz o swoim odkryciu chcę go wykorzystać. Wierzę w skuteczność metody. Mam 50 lat i uczę się angielskiego od kwietnia 2010 metoda Callana.Mam tygodniowo nawet do 12 godzin lekcji. Skończyłem właśnie 8 stage z 11. dużo się nauczyłem potrafię odpowiadać dość szybko, dość dobrze rozumiem gramatykę. Jednak z czasem zapominam słów i mam taką pustkę w głowie że mam wrażenie kiedyś wiedziałem więcej niż obecnie. Jestem momentami bardzo zniechęcony, Mam lekcje indywidualne i sporo mnie to kosztuję. A efektów spodziewałem się lepszych. Bardzo chcę się nauczyć i tylko dlatego jestem zdeterminowany kontynuować naukę. Twój film dał mi nową nadzieję na przyjemniejszą naukę i bardziej skuteczną. Mam pytanie. Kiedy po dwóch tygodniach wrócę do destylacji materiału jak mam ją przeprowadzić. Jak sprawdzać co pamiętam , zasłaniając kolumny ? jeśli tak to którą ze słowem angielskim czy z polskim. Czy też może jeszcze inaczej. Jestem bardzo zdeterminowany, dziś jadę po polecane przez Ciebie książki i zaczynam przyjemną naukę języka. Pozdrawiam Mirek Kyrcz
Hello Viktor!
Reading the Goldlist method has gotten me really excited about trying it out, but unfortunately I’m still somewhat confused as how to do that… I guess I just have some very specific questions. Also the first language I would attempt this with is Russian, my current focus. I’m hoping to develop my skills in it as much as possible between now and June 17th, when I’ll be in Tartu, St. Petersburg, and Kiev for three weeks.
Okay here are my questions,
A. For my goals would it be better for me to put whole sentences or just words?
B. And when I do words/sentences, should I put every form? (ex. every form of the verb possible)
C. Say at the end of 2 weeks I’ve written in the journal 18 times. I have 450 words(or sentences). At the end of those two weeks the only thing I can distill is any work I’ve done on the first day right? The others I have to wait? Should I make sure I don’t glance at those other pages for fear of corrupting my l/t memory with s/t memory?
D. Assuming the above example I gave is correct… for further distillations I should also make sure I count at least the full 2 weeks out for each next distillation right?
As a Student with a lot of free time and a love for languages and a goal of going from practically 0 Russian to as fluent Russian as I can possibly manage by June 17th, is there any other advice you could give me?
Thank you so much! Also, I love the site! I watched the video of you singing, whose name were you saying at the end, was that from the song or some creepy movie??
Sincerely,
Taylor Mendelsohn
Many thanks for your questions, Taylor. This also helps me to know where the weak points have been in my explanations to date, and to ensure that the book will cover everything once it finally is ready.
A: it depends on two things, where you are now with the language and where you want to be. For example, if a person is a beginner in the language, then if they wish to attain proper fluency they should be counting words. Whereas if they only want the language for a holiday, then learning phrasebook phrases might be better. The learner who wants to really advance starts with individual words, and in later distillations makes his own phrases by combining the words once he understands how the grammar works. Or learns the set phrases which are in the material.
Essentially the gold list doesn’t give you the material – you choose the material from the bookshelf or from pdf torrents and then you use the goldlist to process it into your long-term memory. So the short answer is if you have material that you like which has words, then you are doing words. If it offers phrases, then you’re doing phrases, and if it has a mix, then you just goldlist the mix. That’s the pure answer as far as goldlist is concerned. From a linguistic point of view I refer you to the first part of the answer, but goldlist is the same whichever you do.
For Russian, I would put every form of a typical 1a verb, like ponimat’ or delat’, and then only conjugate after that in the headlist verbs which don’t follow that model. For 1a verbs, most do. In 1b and 2 conjugations there are many more exceptions, but in fact it’s enough to learn the ya, on, my and oni forms as the second person forms will always be predictable. In later distillations you may be able to get by with fewer. For ovat’ verbs there are few exceptions, so I’d follow the 1a method.
When you see verbs behaving similar to one you know, you can just write “like ….”
I’d take a similar approach to nouns. You’d learn a typical inanimate masculine hard stem, a typical inanimate masculine soft stem, a typical animate masculine hard stem, a typical animate masculine soft stem and a typical masculine animate vowel stem (I don’t think there are any inanimate masculine vowel stems) You keep in mind the action of spelling rules on the conjugations, and then after you have conjugated out the standard forms (and you do something similar for the feminine and neuter paradigms – a good book will take you through them) then you only need to write out the full declensions of the nouns which are exceptions. You get most exceptions in masculines. Here you can find exceptions among nounds which have a vocative form, a common partitive genitive form, accented -u locative endings and unusual plurals like druz’ya, synoov’ya. Each of these has a manageable list of common nouns following the exception pattern and I suggest you learn them together. The there is something like put’ which can’t decide whether it’s masculine or feminine, and kofe which looks neuter but is masculine.
It’s not really an awful lot. Polish has more, but even for Polish the list of exceptions is finite and manageable.
Once you have the main paradigms in the list in full, you only need to write which ones the remaining nouns are like. Or write nothing if they follow the default pattern for a noun with the given ending. You need of course to note the gender of the noun with soft sign roots as these can be masculine or feminine. Here again the letter before the soft sign gives a strong but not always absolute indication of what the gender is.
All of the above will be covered thoroughly in the Huliganov RL-103 course, when I finally get to it. The 102 course still needs about ten lessons.
C: You don’t have to start distilling immediately that two weeks have past. You can leave it longer if you would like to get a good swing at the distillation. Sometimes I’ll take a month or so over the first lot, and maybe do 1000 words, and by the time I have distilled them I can go from start to finish and it’ll take over two weeks so I don’t have to do it piecemeal.
The key is not doing it earlier, as the risk is you could have a word in the short-term memory and believe it was in the long-term memory, as this is not something you can know without giving yourself a proper chance to forget it. Some words you just don’t forget.
I don’t say to get anxious about avoiding words in the meantime, the common words you’ll see again and again in your ongoing study, but they’re the ones you almost can’t avoid learning anyway, as they are so frequent. So don’t worry about it, only don’t actively review them as it will defeat the object of the method, which is to increase your “long-term memory/work and time taken” ratio as far as it will go. Which is panning out in my experience as being two or three times as far as using traditional methods.
D: In each further distillation you are using the self-same incubation period of two weeks. That’s why in practice, in order not to lose momentum, you can either do two lists for two different subject matters (not similar languages, though) or simply use a ‘step system’ which is what I do.
Let me explain how the step system for Goldlist works:
The headlist (bronze book top left of a double page) is “H” in my notation.
The top right of bronze book is D1 (first distillation)
The bottom right is D2
The bottom left is D3
The top left of the silver book (which can be a much thinner book, or you might have one silver book to three or four bronze books) is D4
The top right of the silver book is D5
The bottom right is D6,
etc etc. You get the general idea.
So I do things in this order:
a. H 1-1000. (Let’s say that’s a month’s work at my pace. If you’re working faster, then that number will be bigger, but make it a comfortable month’s work)
b. D1 1-700 (say) from H 1-1000.
(This usually takes two weeks or three so I’m fine)
c. H 1001-2000
(this is a new “step”.
Now I go to the top of the “staircase” with:)
d. D2 1-450 (say) from D1 1-700 (say) (was H 1-1000)
e. D1 701-1400 (say) from H 1001 to 2000
if you drew a graph of that, it would look like walking down stairs, and now I build an extra step, but I may find I don’t need a full thousand this time, as I have enough buffer. I might start working with shorter base steps, like 800, and later 600, etc
f. H 2001-2800
back to the top of the staircase I’m building under myself…
g. D3 1-300 (say)
h. D2 451-900 (say)
i. D1 1401-2100 (say)
j. H 2801-3400
That new bottom step was only 600. How short you need to make them depends on your pace. It’s good if you can get through your cycle in two months or you may lose momentum. But I will admit that for Czech I have a three month cycle and it seems to work just fine.
E. (The next question after D, in your letter. I’m just being pedantic) If you have little Russian now, then quite apart from goldlisting a good grammatical Russian course you could get the Michael Thomas method and the Pimsleur Russian courses. (Your university language lab may have them) both of which are audio only. You can even kick off with them, and take them in that order, MT first, then Pimsleur. They don’t teach writing at all, so you can do your written goldlisted approach concurrently. The effect should be fast learning and a rounded language ability at the end.
F. There are loads of song videos by me, so I take it you mean the one I just posted on here, the Bob Seger cover, which I finish off by saying “Clarice Clarice”. This is an obscure pop literature reference to the Hannibal Lecter books by Thomas Harris, and the characterization of Lecter by Anthony Hopkins in the films, whose voice I am attempting to impersonate there.
Good luck with your learning, enjoy it, and let us know how you got on.
Dr. Huliganov,
Thank you so, so much your your quick and luxurious reply. This has helped me a huge amount! It’s funny you should mention Michel Thomas and Pimsleur, because those audio programs (especially MT) have been my favourites forever. You recommending them makes me feel even better about using them. What would you recommend for Russian grammar courses? I figure I should buy a comprehensive textbook or something.
Once again, thanks a ton!
Taylor Mendelsohn
Bonjour,
Je découvre votre méthode.
1- Peut on inscrire une phrase dans le cahier à la place d’un mot et de sa traduction ?
Par exemple je voudrai retenir la formulation suite : “Investors with stronger stomachs might even consider Greek debt. ”
A/ Est ce que je dois l’écrire en entier dans le cahier ou juste des mots ?
B/ Dois je inscrire sa traduction en français sur la ligne du dessous ?
C/ Comment être sûr de retenir de si longues phrases plutôt que des mots ?
D/ La traduction du mot à coté est elle obligatoire ?
E/ Mon cahier peut il être rempli de phrases tenant sur 1 ou 2 lignes plutôt que des mots ?
Merci beaucoup.
Dear David,
Many thanks for your question, which I shall reply to in English since you are studying the language, and it will giev greater utility to other readers coming on this question and answer.
A. If you already know all the words, then you can write out the phrase. You can also put unknown words from the phrase on separate lines, or break the phrase down into a few words at a time in the head list and then reduce the number of lines in later distillations.
B. If you fully understand the phrase, there is no utility in translating it into the list. Instead you could make a note highlighting why you found the phrase interesting.
C. You may be surprised to know that the brain is just as capable of retaining phrases as individual words. How many words in your own language did you learn as part of a set phrase, which often if not always comes to mind when you hear the word? So it is with the foreign language also, when learned correctly.
D. Not if you already know it. Only if you’re not sure you know it or if it could be a ‘faux ami’.
E. Sure. Or you can build up phrases from the words you are trying to learn. These can be quite random, or sometimes make good sense. Recently from random Czech words I got the phrase “opanovat se a ovlivit jinych” “to control oneself and to influence others” which seemed quite deep, although it was simply concocted as part of the whole memory game.
J’espere t’avoir aide un peu, et bonne chance.
Pingback: Vevritet hans Victor » Blog Archive » Å læra kinesiske teikn (漢字/汉子)
Pingback: GoldList, la methode zen | Le Blog De Mister Villeneuve