Well, I joined the Yahoo group of Supermemo, and they tried to help me with the cloze deletions as well, but still no luck. So finally, without looking for it, I found my answer in the article “20 rules of formulating knowledge in learning” on the SuperMemo site.
So now, I’m happy 
I agree about Pimsleur, it’s fantastic. I’ve been using the Mandarin Chinese and it’s so easy to learn the way they present it. If they have it at your library, get it and make copies for yourself instead of paying out the butt for it.
I read Superlearning years ago.I believe that it’s related to “Lazanov” learning yes?
Brandon Green
Ya know better than any of these learninng methods is taking the smart drugs! Like piracetam yes. Works so much better.
Brandon Green
Besides taking classes, the best way to learn a new language is to go and live in that country and immerse yourself there without any American/English communications. It takes about 3 months to develop some basic fluency in the new language. It sucks because you have to completely isolate yourself from anyone who speaks english, but it is worth it because you develop fluency in reading, speaking, and writing after 6 months.
What you learn in class is not necessary used in everyday conversation, or how things are even written in that country.
But if studying abroad is cost or time prohibited, you should use the Rosetta Stone courses, they are the best on the market. Also, find a tutor ($15 - $20 p/hr on craiglist), use your tutor to help with pronunciation, reading, and writing. The focus of the tutor should be outside of learning from a language book. You should use your tutor for reading native language news and discussion topics and issues versus trying to remember - “my name is … the sky is …”
Language is about use not memorization.
While Korean is complex and does require learning tons of characters, you cannot gain any proficiency without putting some serious time and effort into learning it.
[quote]chrismcl wrote:
I read the book Superlearning by Ostrander last semester for a class of mine and I found it very intriguing. However some of the claims in the book seemed to be too good to be true.
For example, learning a foreign language within a few months.
Right now I’m trying to learn Korean, and the only thing I would like better is to be able to learn Korean faster. (I don’t know anybody else who wouldn’t want that when trying to learn a new language)
I’m just wondering if anybody here has employed the techniques in the book and what sort of results they had.
Thanks.[/quote]
I just read “Accelerated Learning for the 21st Century”. It basically talks about learning strategies, and learning how to learn.
I haven’t read Superlearning, but I’ve looked through the table of contents on Amazon.com, and there are some similarities between the 2 books. Both have methods for learning a language.
In Accelerated Learning, the method actually makes a lot of sense. They tell you to learn about 10 new words per day, read children’s books in the language you want to learn, listen to TV and radio programs, and other very interesting strategies.
But the most interesting and useful part of that book I found is their M.A.S.T.E.R. plan, which is a strategy for learning.
It stands for:
Mind (resourceful and relaxed)
Acquire the facts
Search out the meaning
Trigger the memory
Exhibit what you know
Reflect on the process
All in all, they recommend learning according to your learning style, which they present in 2 ways. You’re visual, auditory or kinestheic, but also they present Gardner’s 8 intelligences, and recommend a way of studying and absorbing information for each intelligence.
I found this very interesting, and it shed some light on my own learning style, and gave me a very interesting study method to go by, which I intend to use starting in the new semester. This method is mind maps (AKA learning maps and memory maps). The authors make a very good case for the visual learner to use this great technique.
Then, they go on to describe another effective technique, that they call “memory flashing.”
Here are the steps:
i. Make notes in learning map or a list.
ii. Study it carefully for a couple minutes
iii. Try to recreate the notes from memory
iv. Compare the original and the one from memory. Notice anything that?s missing.
v. Repeat until the 2 sets of notes (the original and the one from memory) are identical.
That’s all.
I just wanted to revive this thread, and get much more discussion going. It’s really interesting stuff!
Hey Nephorm, what area of political theory do you major in? Ancient, modern, Hegel. Just curious.
what the hell… bump.
I use NLP and stuff like that. Same sort of theories.
[quote]alstan90 wrote:
I use NLP and stuff like that. Same sort of theories.[/quote]
I’ve heard of NLP a lot, but never really got any good information on it. Care to enlighten me?
[quote]AndrewA wrote:
Hey Nephorm, what area of political theory do you major in? Ancient, modern, Hegel. Just curious. [/quote]
Sorry it took so long to respond… I just started a new job, and my internet usage is much more restricted.
I haven’t yet picked a dissertation topic. I’ve spent a few years studying political psychology, and the past couple working on classical political philosophy (Plato, Aristotle, Rousseau). My inclination is to work on “something Roman” for my dissertation. We’ll see.
NLP stands for Neuro Linguistic Programming. NLP is essentially like a form of hypnosis. Which will aim to do things like improving self confidence, motivation, hapiness, and other things. You can buy and download NLP products, I personally have found them a help.
[quote]alstan90 wrote:
NLP stands for Neuro Linguistic Programming. NLP is essentially like a form of hypnosis. Which will aim to do things like improving self confidence, motivation, hapiness, and other things. You can buy and download NLP products, I personally have found them a help.[/quote]
Fascinating! Can you recommend some resources that I can download?
Lol, obviously you are meant to pay for it. However many programs used to download music have NLP files on. However a program that’s perticuarly good and has many on is called BitComet. You can download it from
good luck.
[quote]alstan90 wrote:
Lol, obviously you are meant to pay for it. However many programs used to download music have NLP files on. However a program that’s perticuarly good and has many on is called BitComet. You can download it from
good luck.[/quote]
I guess that was some wishful thinking on my part lol.
I use Shareaza for my p2p needs, and indeed it has some great resources, but from the many times I’ve searched for NLP, I didn’t really get anything good. There are a lot of audio files, but no good ebooks. I’ve looked through my univerity’s library, which is quite vast, and to my surprise, no books on NLP.
I guess I can still search my local library. I got my fingers crossed that at least it has something.
I still reccomend Pimsleur (or Rosetta stone) Vis-ed cards, a good text/workbook and a friend who speaks the language. Preferably a cute girl from that country.
Now onto a questions about torrents…I can download the torrents but the files won’t play…whats the deal? Do I need some kind of program? I have win rar but it doesn’t work.
No, you wouldn’t need any additional program. Only a media player. Such as quicktime, or windows media player.