LANGUAGE LEARNING | PROGRESS REPORT | EDUCATION
My Language Learning 1: What Is Sentence Mining?
How I will learn Chinese and Finnish in 2023
Missed any of my past language-learning stories? Find them here. 👇
As I announced in December, I am now on a mission to learn Finnish and Chinese! One thing in advance:
Chinese is damn hard! 🤯
The same is said about Finnish. Here, however, it is going surprisingly well.
What makes Chinese difficult for me is mainly the translation into Pinyin.
I’ve found that it’s often easier for me to remember what the characters mean. But when it comes to pronouncing them, I’m frequently faced with a big question mark on my flash cards.
Perhaps I should be less perfectionist here and be satisfied with recognizing the meaning. Maybe it’s easier to acquire the pronunciation naturally later with the help of immersive activities like short video clips, etc...
By the way, in December I mentioned a tool called Skritter.
An app that allows you to practice the characters. However, I found the price of €15 monthly quite high. But I discovered an alternative!
TOFU is free! But without audio. If you want that, you need the Pro version. However, the price is really fair at less than €3 / month.
About Sentence Mining
What is “Sentence Mining”? 👩🚒 As a gamer, the term sounds extremely attractive at first. After all, I associate mining with the search for valuable treasures and relics!
So I got curious and did some research.
“Sentence mining” is a strategy that can theoretically be used to learn any language. The focus is on immersion! For example, with the help of
- YouTube videos
- Podcasts
- Netflix shows
- Books (fiction/nonfiction)
- etc.
You then take complete sentences from these media and learn them via Spaced Repetition (SRS). 👉 A popular tool for this purpose is Anki.
However, the process can quickly become overwhelming if there are too many unknown words, which is why I +1 is often recommended. This means that the sentence contains only 1 unknown word. Thus, the new vocabulary can be learned directly from the context.
For Sentence Mining itself, there are various browser extensions. Migaku is a popular one. But since it doesn’t support Finnish, I decided to use another tool: Language Reactor. In action, it looks like this:
You can also look up the meaning of a word in the subtitle at any time:
A great way to actively immerse yourself in a language!
To get started with this method, a vocabulary of about 1000 words is recommended as a prerequisite, as well as some basic grammar.
I have no idea how many words I already know in Finnish, but beginner content is not very difficult for me. As far as Chinese is concerned, however, I’m still far away from sentence mining.
You can then create your Anki cards in the following way:
- The sentence in the target language is written on the front. Optionally, the word to be learned can be highlighted.
- The translation is written on the answer side. Some people write only the translation of the word to be learned since we assume that the rest of the sentence is known. I personally like to write down the complete sentence.
- Furthermore, audio is added to the answer page. Many people use the original audio that comes directly from the medium from which the sentence was taken. Personally, I currently use TTS. It’s faster and easier. However, I possibly use the original sources at some point.
- Also, a picture can help remember the meaning of the new word. If you take the sentence from a video, you can simply use the snipping tool to insert the current scene as an image. Personally, I like to use Google image search for now. If I enter the sentence in English, I usually get great examples.
My Anki cards look something like this:
Not bad, right?
In the following, I would like to share my progress with you! And where currently in brackets “/na” stands, will come next time the comparison to the previous week.
My Progress in Finnish
Duolingo
- 🎓 Experience: 10416 XP (+ /na)
💬 Do you also learn with Duolingo? Let’s connect and add me: Henryetha. 👫
Anki — Sentence Mining
- 🔵 New Cards: /na
- 🟢 Young Cards: 111 (+ /na)
- ✅ Mature Cards: /na
My Progress in Mandarin
LingoDeer
- 📈 Progress: 15.6 % (+ /na %)
Refold Anki Deck — Mandarin 1k
- 🔵 New Cards: 950 (- /na)
- 🟢 Young Cards: 50 (+ /na)
- ✅ Mature Cards: /na
Finally, I would like to share this Finnish cover of the 3rd opening of the anime Demon Slayer! So you can also listen to how beautiful Finnish sounds!
