Here is an article on the goldlist method which I wrote very recently on the How to Learn any Language forum in a thread which was very useful on the whole for the system – some of the top linguists and polyglots you can find on the net are there in that discussion, and they are putting this methiod to the test. Now some of them have already had the most tremendous success learning languages with their own preferred methods and are naturally suspicious of new-fangled approaches like this here Goldlist Method – some of them had criticisms to make, which are addressed below, but among them are plenty of hardcore linguists and polyglots who seem to really like the method. They are the hardest group to please, and you’ll see that despite the dissenting voices there are many who stand up for the method and more people do seem to approve of it than disapprove. And I don’t think I’ll ever have a tougher audience for this. Continue reading “The Goldlist Method – Response to Appraisal and Critique by Group of Hardcore Polyglots and Linguists”
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.
Człowiek, który mówi w 20 językach – Dzień Dobry TVN
Enjoy.
And by the bye, many thanks to TVN’s producers for withdrawing their complaint to TVN about my cap and upload of this, and clearing everything up.
On the Google Beta group Huliganov and Friends, one contributor, lepenseur, asked:
When you are doing the distillation process, what number do you use? Example if you are distilling the first list do you use 1 – 25 or the next number? How do you know (if that’s important) to what list that list belong to?
My answer:
Generally you treat each of the four “corners” of the exercise book as separate lists run with their own sequential numbering through all the pages of the book. The head list is top left, so the first page has 1-25, the second has 26-50 and so on very predictably. The 20th page will have 475-500. This is for ease of counting the input into the system, as well as being a convenient and appropriate portion for memory work before you should take a 10 minute break.
The top right hand of each page is the first distillation. It is sequentially numbered through the book, but the numbers will be about but not exactly 30% smaller than the numbers on the Head list. Page 1 may be 1-18 only. That would make page 2 start at 19, and if that adds another 16 then the second page will be 19-35, and the third 36-say 52 or 53 – it’s roughly going to be predictable but it can vary a bit. Similarly the bottom right hand will be 1-12 or 13, second page 13 or 14 through to 23, 24 or 25… and you get the idea.
A hard word which isn’t filtered out may for example be number 990 in the headlist, number 672 in the first distillation, number 503 in the second and number 378 in the third, but it will always be on page 40 of that first exercise book you use, which I call “the Bronze Book”. When you transfer to the second level book, the “silver book” in order to do distillations 4 through 7, the number this hard-to-remember word may have could be say 246. And this time it will no longer be on page 40 but in the second book it will already have moved up to page 10, because distillation number 4 also has 25 word blocks, like the Headlist.
If the word makes it to Gold Book, which is distillation number 8 and final, then it will be not in a group of 25, but will be written as beautifully as you can on a beautiful book using all the space as you think fit aesthetically. You can also mix languages in the final gold book, whereas I would advise keeping the bronze books and the silver books for one book at a time, and three or four bronze books will distil into one silver book. You would never use up a 96 side hardback book on one language once we got to the gold level, distillation 8. three thousand words at that level of distillation would have been 40 to 50 thousand at headlist. There is no sense in learning that number of words in a single language. Much better to learn with the same time 12,000 words in four languages than 48000 in the one foreighn language, which you will never use in ordinary conversation. Either way you are looking at many years to process such a lot of vocabulary properly into your memory. 48000*3/25/3 gives you 1920 hours. That’s an hour a day on average for a little over 5 years. With language school style learning it’d probably take you ten.
Lepenseur, many thanks for a good question. I shall also add this answer to my blog called Huliganov TV. I’d like to welcome everyone of you over there as there are also things going on over there for languages gthat will overlap a bit with here, but some completely different stuff too.
