Just wanted to ask who here still take notes by hand when learning languages? I’ve tried typing them on my laptop and/or iPad, but unfortunately, I don’t seem to retain as much information.
In my case, as a more visual-spatial learner, I still meticulously take notes by hand and color-code them. It especially helps with agglutinative languages and languages with cases. I tried using just one color before when taking down notes, and I found it extremely difficult to concentrate on my studies and retain information. With colors, I can group the words into their respective lexical categories or emphasize a few points and understand everything in a few seconds.
Attached here are some of my notes. Anyone here employs a similar method? I’d love to hear your tips and suggestions.
PS: I also meticulously analyze song lyrics and excerpts from books (especially “The Little Prince”).
Glad I’m not the only one! I tried typing my notes out as well but didn’t really worked. I remember better when writing by hand. I color my notes using my own color code system like different conjugations of a word, vocabulary, grammar and particles. But once I pass the intermediate stage, I tend to not color code and just use colors for the sake of making my notes look good.
I don’t actually take notes by hand, but I do written tests by hand on a regular basis – like, I look at sentences in my native language on the screen and write them on a sheet of paper in the target language, and then check the correct answers and rewrite with red the ones I got wrong. Or I would conjugate a verb on a sheet of paper and then compare it with the conjugation table in the computer. And I write language cards by hand, of course.
I still color code my notes way up until the advanced stages, but I implement a different system. For example, I color code the 한자 in my Korean notes. I memorize Sino-Korean vocabulary better with the corresponding 한자 in different colors.
I agree that typed notes do not work as well as hand-written ones, even if I type them in different colours!
I used colour-coding effectively when I studied German that has male, female and neutral nouns eg I used red for male nouns, green for female nouns, black for neutral nouns. Blue was used for the verbs. This system worked well, because in exams I could visualize the different words in colour and know their gender.
I actually also use a similar method. I still write my answers to a practice/mock test or reviewer by hand on a separate piece of paper or another notebook. I also take note of my common mistakes and some newly-learned information and add more bullet points for clarification, color-coded of course.
I also use the same method for my German, which I just recently started. Honestly, without colors, Das, Die, Der, Den, and Dem would just be jumping all over the place evading capture. I color code my cases because that’s where I need to focus on more.
I have used color-coding to help remember the gender of words. In school, we had to use pink ink for feminine nouns and green ink for masculine nouns (since blue and black ink are so common, the green stands out more in the memory) in the beginners’ foreign language classes. Granted, these colors are outdated stereotypes for female and male, but whatever, because it worked well so I don’t care. This color association is so strongly ingrained in my head that I still use it. I can occasionally still envision a word in my head as being written in either pink or green, even if I learned the word about twenty years ago. I would not have anticipated that strong of a retention.
Yo voy a todas partes con mi boli de cuatro colores y lapiz (tengo unos cuantos). Cuando leo algo subrayo en azul las palabras que quiero buscar más tarde; si después no las encuentro o sigo teniendo dudas las rodeo en rojo para buscar quién me pueda ayudar o investigar más cuanto tenga más tiempo. Al hacer ejercicios uso el azul y para corregir el verde. El negro lo dejo para cuando hay algo mal en el texto que tenga que corregir. Apunto pocas traducciones, pero si lo hago uso el lapiz y si lo estoy haciendo con el ordenador, pues el gris.
I just wanted to copy here a link on the topic of how to make homemade labneh. If you have questions, let me know
This guides you through the steps of how to make yogurt out of milk, and then how to strain the yogurt to get to the labneh.
Always use whole-fat milk and whole-fat yogurt, and the straining process ideally should be done over night. Normally, I put 1 cup of yogurt for every gallon of milk, which feeds four people, for at least a week btw.
The final consistency should be a bit looser than that of creamcheese. And don’t forget to put a cup or two of yogurt aside for the next time you are making labneh
Hope that helps!
Zeina
BTW I like this link better than the one I shared earlier in the chat. The end product looks better and more successful.
This sounds delicious, but I just imagined doing this in my kitchen with two cats… And leaving the labneh out to drain for 2-3 days I think there won’t be much left after that time, left alone some hours during the day with two cats
I am similar in that I need color for my notes. I’m still developing my own techniques for the beginning stages when I’m learning grammar, but when I’ve got to the late-beginner/early-intermediate stage I tend to narrow it down to three colors: red for the words I absolutely do not know, green for words that are familiar but need a bit of work, and blue for the things I know. If there’s a grammar concept that I need to apply this system to, I’ll underline the parts in either green or red. The underlining was especially helpful when studying Korean, I’d realize that I actually did recognize a word but not the particle attached to it (my brain wanted to treat it like an entirely new word). The reasons why I chose those colors for their designated roles: red because it pops out and will catch my eye, making it more likely that I’ll look at it repeatedly; green because it’s a soothing and reassuring color that tells me “hey, you’re doing well, you know this concept enough for it to ring a bell”; blue because it’s my favorite of the three and I get so much gratification from seeing a lot of it on a page.
This is the simplest technique I’ve come up with, because I tend to get all sorts of unhelpfully nit-picky if I have too many colors going on at once with different meanings/roles.
When you take notes, do you find you continue with the same visual note-taking methods when you’re at intermediate/advanced level as when you are at beginning level? Or does it change the more familiar you are with a language?
You can put the cloth full of yogurt in a big strainer and fit the strainer in a bigger bowl.