Friday, June 29, 2018

The Goldlist Method

 Uncle Davey's Goldlist Method

This is another method of learning without learning. You just write words in a list, and they somehow magically transfer into your memory.
Now, I really don't believe this, but there are people who swear by this, so who am I to say anything different.

So - how this works.

1. have an A4 notebook. Choose one you think is beautiful, precious, enjoyable.(Though the person who invented this uses an ordinary hardcover composition notebook. Nothing precious about it.)
2. open a page. Write the date on top. Then write 25 words on it. Write them with all the necessary information, like if it's masculine, feminine, strong verb etc. Write them as beautifully and carefully and neatly as you can, slowly and enjoying the esthetic impact and the writing. It is also good if you choose the most comfortable, enjoyable place to write these words, and make it a nice experience, with something good to drink.
3. Read out loud the list.
4. Close the book and don't open this page in at least two weeks.

Next day - or when ever after 20 minutes - you open the book on next page and repeat this - write the date, write 25 words.

And so on. Rinse and repeat.

Step 2.
14+ After at least 14 days (it can be more) go back to your list and distill it.
Write 17 of those 25 words on top of the page 2 of the opening.
Choose the ones that are hardest for you to remember.
Again, pay attention to enjoying the lines and writing.
When you are done, you read up the list out loud and close the book, and forget all about it the next two weeks.

Step 3.
28+ After at least 14 days, go back and distill it.
Now it's 12 words.

Step 4.
42+ After at least 14 days, go back to your list and distill it.
Now it's 9 words


Step 5.
56+ After at least 14 days, go back and distill it.
Take a new book. If possible, this one should be even more beautiful than the first one. This will be your Silver Book.
Take the first 4 pages, the first 100 words of the first book, and pick 25 words from the 9 words' lists.

Step 6.
70+ After at least 14 days, go back to your list and distill it.
Write 17 of those 25 words on top of the page 2 of the opening.

Step 7.
84+ days after you started 17 become 12

Step 8.
98+ days later, 12 become 9

Step 9.
112+ days from the beginning, you'll be able to start your Gold book.
Start a new book, this time the most beautiful, precious book you can find.
Write the hardest 25 words from the first 4 pages of the Silver Book on the list. Then you repeat the procedure for steps 10, 11 and 12.
And that's it.

For every Goldbook page, you have learned 400 words. It will have taken 155+ days, about 5 months.


Now, I'm not that into this and my math can be wrong, but... that sounds like a huge waste of time. Because all this time I have not been able to use the words. If I had used flashcards to learn those 25 words by heart with the what ever it was called method, I would have learned 3600 words and I would have been able to use them from day 1.

Because day 1 words would have been
1: no
2: hello, hi, good day or some sort of variant of this
3: I
4: no
5: speak
6: -ish
7: you
8: English
9: please
10: thanks
11: what
12: is
13: this
14: yes
15: help
16-25 numbers 1-10


I... find it hard to believe this works, because as Bartosz says, the "science" behind it is total... er... not correct. But - I really don't care about the science babble, I care about if the method works, and there's a lot of people who say it does. I don't need to know why it works, and unlike Bartosz, I'm not ready to throw out the baby with the bathwater. I'm not ready to ignore it just because the explanation stinks.

Also, I find the claim unbelievable, that "you just remember these words, and when this library is activated, you will be speaking the language fluently". And apparently it is activated by someone speaking the language to you. It would be nice, if it worked that way.

Also, I haven't been able to find out how Lydia Machova has learned the languages she speaks. She mentions text books and audio, and Goldlist doesn't use those things, so I don't think she uses it as much as she makes it seem. And that makes me very suspicious.

I sincerely don't think this method is "popular" among polyglots. It is too slow. The only practical application I can think of, is to use it on a language I'm planning to learn, in the future.



But - I'm willing to try. Even if it would only give me 20 minutes of calligraphy time, that would be quite nice. And - so many people say it works, maybe it does work.

Now, the "record" is 15000 lines in 70 days, that's about 8-10 pages a day. Now... if this really works, that would be very nice.  That means I would get a 15.000 words' vocabulary in 225 days, with practically no effort. The only thing it would cost is the composition notebooks (you'll need 18 of the 100 pages ones or 25 of the 70 pages ones), and the time it takes to write 8-10 pages every day.

Updates 5/8 2020
I chose Latin for this exercise, because it's on my list of languages I want to learn, but not a priority, it's easy to find sample sentences, that has been parsed "to death",  and I don't mind not seeing it the rest of the time.
I suppose I did something wrong, because I didn't learn the sentences. I can understand what I read, and when my priority is to read in foreign language, then it's kind of perfect, but Uncle Dave promises we actually learn the language, and that did not happen. I couldn't repeat one sentence from the books. So - it doesn't work for me. It's basically just a waste of notebooks.

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