kangmi: learning korean

Supermemo

Just finished a whole week of almost nothing but 아름다운 유혹. I got distracted by Flashcard Exchange and the Leitner cardfile system.

When I started studying Korean again last fall, I looked for flashcard software. I found nothing suitable online, so I started using paper flashcards. That soon fell by the wayside, as I found the method too cumbersome to maintain.

The vocabulary list I’ve maintained here has been of limited use and doesn’t begin to catalog all of the vocabulary I know.

So when I stumbled upon Flashcard Exchange last week, I thought I’d found a great resource. The whole idea of regular, scheduled review of items with which I’d had trouble in the past seemed like a great system. I started doing some research on the Leitner system, and almost immediately discovered Memorization Software Reviewed, a site that reviews over two hundred flashcard programs (guess I didn’t look in the right places last fall).

Not surprisingly, the one program that receives the site’s Best rating is VTrain was created by the same fellow reviewing all the other software. He does make an “ethical note” that “the author of this review made some contributions to the new version of this product.” “Some contributions” appears to be an understatement, as the author is the only person listed on their development team. VTrain uses the Leitner system.

My non-exhaustive research quickly led me to a program called Supermemo. Supermemo has not been the easiest system to understand. All the hype on the front page (the design isn’t much help either) was almost enough to turn me away, but there was something about it that encouraged me to try to cut through it. The General principles page admits that it’s complicated:

Are you getting lost? Do not despair.

I was lost, but not quite despairing, when I discovered Len Budney’s Supermemo page. His Pros and Cons of Supermemo helped me to understand it better. This Supermemo manual also provides easy-to-read explanations.

My one-line simplified Supermemo explanation is this: It’s like the Leitner cardfile system, but uses an algorithm to optimize repetitions.

So for now, I’ve abandoned Flashcard Exchange in favor of Supermemo. It’s important to note that some people will probably be more comfortable with a program like FE. Len Budney says:

Dr. Wozniak has compiled some statistics on Supermemo users, and apparently Supermemo requires a certain kind of personality. Women, artists, and humanities majors tend to hate it; men, scientists and engineers tend to love it. The idea behind Supermemo, just like Ben Graham’s ``Value Investing’’, apparently either hooks you in five minutes--or never hooks you at all.

As a woman and a former humanities major, I shouldn’t like Supermemo, and perhaps time will prove that to be true. But its systemic approach appeals to me.

If you think Flashcard Exchange (specifically) is more your style, I can testify that they have great customer service and were speedily helpful in accommodating my request to have Korean added to their list of languages.

Now for a few of my own cons. The intro to the online version says:

With the SuperMemo method, you can memorize the contents of supermemo.net courses in record time. By spending just half an hour a day on learning, you can memorize the basic vocabulary of a foreign language (3000 words, fixed phrases, and grammatical forms) in less than a month!

That could well be true. However, that assumes that you have already entered these 3,000 items into Supermemo. I have twenty-some right now (I’ll be adding daily), so I’m not going to hit that magic language number in four weeks’ time.

Another con is that it’s more difficult to make my vocabulary file public. The only way I could do it would be to regularly export it to a .qa file and post it here. I’ll probably start doing that within the next couple of weeks.

There’s not a lot of Supermemo Korean out there. I’ve been able to find only one other publicly available Korean Supermemo file, and it’s only available in .pdb format.

Another debatable con is that the method behind Supermemo is not easily understood. I tend to be skeptical of practical ideas that are difficult to explain, because part of my definition of practicality is simplicity. The idea is not simple, and neither is learning how to use the software. Help files are either not complete, or I just haven’t found it all on the labyrinthine Supermemo web site.

This page lists all of the available Supermemo versions. I’m starting with the free beta online version (it’s been in beta since 2001).

If you elect to use Supermemo, I’d love to hear your feedback.

Posted by kangmi on August 19, 2004 at 8:00 AM10 comments