Endorsement of Gold Listing from the banks of the Hudson River

One YouTube user who came across my Gold List method for the long term memorisation of vocabulary was kind enough to go for provide his feedback in a video on YT today.

The prophet Joel states “I’m taking a greyhound on the Hudson River line” – and this YT colleague takes his dog Frodo Baggins, which is not exactly a greyhound, but looks like a find companion anyway, out onto the banks of the beautiful Hudson river about 35 miles north of NYC. Let’s hope this beautiful and informative video about the Gold List method puts you too into a “New Work State of Mind” – or gives you a readiness to try out this new way of working with your language learning!

My heartfelt thanks to Syzygycc for giving feedback. All feedback is welcome, but such positive feedback is especially pleasurable. Negative feedback usually means that the person trying hasn’t been able to get their head around the counter-intuitive nature of gold-listing, but Syzygycc explains how he decided to give it an open-minded attempt even though he found what I was saying counter-intuitive, and was surprised at the result. This reaction occurs quite commonly. There’s also a film on my channel showing how the Australian user Lord Moggy was astounded by the results of applying the method.

There is not 100% success – because some people understand what I say in an opposite way to what I mean because a little filter in their head says – “he can’t possibly be saying that I don’t need to put effort into learning these words, just write them out the once and then don’t look for two weeks – and just treat the whole thing as a pleasurable activity in itself”? Well, I am. You don’t drill, you don’t try to learn. Ebbinghaus, the father of memory, discovered 85 years ago that you will learn 30% anyway, and then you can go ahead and learn the next 30% by doing it again. That’s what I found, that’s what this YT friend Syzygycc has now found, and that’s what hundreds more who have written comments on videos, written to me privately, or been to see me, have also said.

And, like this man says, it doesn’t cost you anything. I’m not even asking for voluntary donations – you can’t give me money even if you want to! (If you want to give something to for example an autism or a MS charity in Huliganov’s name, or to some disaster relief like Haiti, I can’t stop you, in my name, I can’t stop you there either, but that’s the only way you can pay for it.) I don’t have a paypal button up anywhere and I don’t have a price tag on it, and nobody else is allowed to either – so there’s nothing to stop you using it. All the relevant films are on the Gold List section of this blog, and you can click through on them to YouTube and get an extra portion of information from the comments written by other people.

4 thoughts on “Endorsement of Gold Listing from the banks of the Hudson River


  1. I am looking forward to trying the Gold List method for French, German & Italian vocabulary learning as drilling and cramming has definitely had poor results in the past.
    Mr Huliganov’s Gold List approach to learning seems to have the same approach as the Michel Thomas method insofar as TRYING to remember causes tension and is counter productive. Paradoxical but as far as I can make out it is so.
    The main problem I seem to be having is finding large enough notebooks. Most of the outlets (sheeplike corporate mentality) have the same limited stock as each other but I will keep searching for what I want.
    I’d like to add my thanks to VDH for his method and for his excellent edutainment YT uploads. Long may they continue.


    1. Thanks for that, DevaDog. I hadn’t heard of Michel Thomas, but I’m not surprised that other people will have elements of the same in their approaches, as there is probably nothing new under the sun, just new ways of formulating and packaging it. I can’t be the only linguist ever to have read about Ebbinghaus!


  2. Hi,
    After receiving my hard copy of The Polyglot Project I watched this video again (for the third time). Now knowing more about syzygycc, I find his support for the Goldlist Method even more compelling.
    Peter

Your thoughts welcome, by all mean reply also to other community members!