Keeping a journal about your language (study log, a notebook about the language you are studying or any other kind of journaling) is a good habit, I think.
Here's Arthaey's language bullet journal
Learning journal as a means to foster metacognition
Lexical Notebooks
How do I record all the new words I learn in another language?
Updated 8/8-20
So... this is internet, which means that what was there yesterday, isn't necessarily there today, and that is what happened with my links. I'm going to leave them here, anyway, to give credit, but - *sigh*
So, I'll just write down why I shared these links and what in there I found interesting.
Learning journal as a means to foster metacognition
"The journal is a collection of a student’s science-related learning experience, such as his/her proposed solutions to a problem, summary notes of lessons, science issues encountered in the media and daily life, results of an internet search for a self-study topic, home investigations and reflections."
"To motivate her students to take ownership of the journal, Miss Cheung encourages them to use their own language and preferred styles of presentation, so each learning journal is unique and personal."
"The student, Ching, used point form, drawings and a mind map to summarise her understanding of the mechanics in launching a rocket, and compared two types of fuels used by rockets. "
"They will record their thoughts about designing the experiment, what they have done, what was found, their discussion about the limitations of the design and their reflections in the journals. Most of all, the journal is not just a descriptive account of what the students did, but a platform for sharing their thinking processes: how and why they did what they did, and what they think about what they did."
"The investigation had motivated Chun to move beyond describing patterns in data. He searched for what scientists know about the phenomenon and learned about Hook’s Law (a senior form physics topic) by himself."
"A learning journal may also be called a learning log, a fieldwork diary or a personal development planner, taking any form like a notebook, a blog or even an audio record. The essence is, it gives a “live” picture of a student’s growing understanding of a subject experience and what he/she thinks about and responds to the experience. Being able to reflect, monitor and regulate one’s learning experience and thinking process is crucial to independent and life-long learning."
Lexical Notebooks
Some facts about learning vocabulary:
- learning vocabulary from a list is perfectly fine
- learning vocabulary from contextual clue (i.e. guessing its meaning) is awfully hard and requires that you know at least 95% of the surrounding vocabulary
- learning vocabulary through translation is worthwhile, though the simpler the vocabulary the better it is learnt with pictures
- learning vocabulary in thematic (green, frog, green beans, grass, trees) rather than semantic sets (green, red, blue, yellow) is more effective
Lexical notebook are about quality, not quantity.
- pick high interest words, not every word you encounter
- give a lot of high quality information about the word, like word used in sentences, information about collocations, colligation, related vocabulary, etc. Basically like a good Wiktionary page :-D ("high quality" means, don't add every little bit of information you can find, but add information that is relevant, interesting, good, useful, helpful etc. Quality over quantity!)
- don't fill up the notebook in chronological order, but thematic
- leave a LOT of white space for additional information, examples, etc. as you encounter it in the future
- it is a good idea to create a table of contents
- read your notebook often, so that you don't record the same thing over and over again. Learn what you write down.
Here's Arthaey's language bullet journal
Learning journal as a means to foster metacognition
Lexical Notebooks
How do I record all the new words I learn in another language?
Updated 8/8-20
So... this is internet, which means that what was there yesterday, isn't necessarily there today, and that is what happened with my links. I'm going to leave them here, anyway, to give credit, but - *sigh*
So, I'll just write down why I shared these links and what in there I found interesting.
Learning journal as a means to foster metacognition
"The journal is a collection of a student’s science-related learning experience, such as his/her proposed solutions to a problem, summary notes of lessons, science issues encountered in the media and daily life, results of an internet search for a self-study topic, home investigations and reflections."
"To motivate her students to take ownership of the journal, Miss Cheung encourages them to use their own language and preferred styles of presentation, so each learning journal is unique and personal."
"The student, Ching, used point form, drawings and a mind map to summarise her understanding of the mechanics in launching a rocket, and compared two types of fuels used by rockets. "
"They will record their thoughts about designing the experiment, what they have done, what was found, their discussion about the limitations of the design and their reflections in the journals. Most of all, the journal is not just a descriptive account of what the students did, but a platform for sharing their thinking processes: how and why they did what they did, and what they think about what they did."
"The investigation had motivated Chun to move beyond describing patterns in data. He searched for what scientists know about the phenomenon and learned about Hook’s Law (a senior form physics topic) by himself."
"A learning journal may also be called a learning log, a fieldwork diary or a personal development planner, taking any form like a notebook, a blog or even an audio record. The essence is, it gives a “live” picture of a student’s growing understanding of a subject experience and what he/she thinks about and responds to the experience. Being able to reflect, monitor and regulate one’s learning experience and thinking process is crucial to independent and life-long learning."
Lexical Notebooks
Some facts about learning vocabulary:
- learning vocabulary from a list is perfectly fine
- learning vocabulary from contextual clue (i.e. guessing its meaning) is awfully hard and requires that you know at least 95% of the surrounding vocabulary
- learning vocabulary through translation is worthwhile, though the simpler the vocabulary the better it is learnt with pictures
- learning vocabulary in thematic (green, frog, green beans, grass, trees) rather than semantic sets (green, red, blue, yellow) is more effective
Lexical notebook are about quality, not quantity.
- pick high interest words, not every word you encounter
- give a lot of high quality information about the word, like word used in sentences, information about collocations, colligation, related vocabulary, etc. Basically like a good Wiktionary page :-D ("high quality" means, don't add every little bit of information you can find, but add information that is relevant, interesting, good, useful, helpful etc. Quality over quantity!)
- don't fill up the notebook in chronological order, but thematic
- leave a LOT of white space for additional information, examples, etc. as you encounter it in the future
- it is a good idea to create a table of contents
- read your notebook often, so that you don't record the same thing over and over again. Learn what you write down.
