spaced repetition

Its all in the algorithm, baby.

Last Wednesday, I was discussing learning and spaced repetition with a co-worker. A couple good things came out of this conversation.

Firstly, that I should blog more. This inspired me to finish up an introductory article on spaced repetition that I had been working on for Memorati™. I also decided to try and make Tuesday be blog-day. Since I spend so much time writing each entry, Tuesday will really just be blog-publish-day, but thats fine, whatever gets me to post more.

We also discussed my experience using Memorati with its algorithms and some things that have been unsatisfying about them. Those things are:

  • The aggressiveness of the algorithm used should vary with the number of cards a user has decided to tackle. Aggressive algorithms work better for lots of cards but less aggressive is better for fewer cards.

Harry Potter: The book that taught me Polish…

The title of this post is very misleading... I could already speak Polish at an intermediate-ish level before I started reading Harry Potter. However, this experience has really taught me alot!

What and why?

First, some background. Along with my own evolving ideas about language acquisition I've recently (maybe over the last 6 months?) become interested in the ideas of Stephen Krashen and Steve Kaufmann. They both emphasize "comprehensable input" as the primary means to language acquisition. This means reading and listening.

So, I decided that I wanted to read more in Polish. I had two primary goals:

  • To expand my vocabulary.
  • To read something interesting that I would enjoy.

I chose Harry Potter for the following reasons:

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