As a child of an immigrant (I’m Italian-American if you didn’t know), a second language has always been a part of my makeup. Though I didn’t grow up speaking Italian, I learned enough at a young age, and then moreso in college and spending time with my relatives in Italy. Still, to this day, I’m only partially fluent in Italian. Enough to be capable, but not enough vocabulary.
Over the years, there have been many a system to help improve one’s language skills. Rosetta Stone had some early success. And today, I think the freely available DuoLingo is probably the most popular. And while dedicating some time and effort to this each day will help you learn over time, it’s no where near good enough to acquire the skills to master a language (in my humble opinion).
Recently, I happened upon the GoldList method during a talk by a polyglot who referenced the system as one of the ways that she was attempting to assimilate new languages more quickly. Great, I thought! So I looked it up, and became excited to try it myself.
Learning about this method is somewhat involved. Probably takes an hour to understand what it’s all about, and how to learn. However, the simple idea behind it is utilizing your long-term memory for language assimilation through writing, reducing, and repeating lists of words. Sounds really exciting, huh? It is and it isn’t.
If your goal is to learn a language, vocabulary is key to your understanding others and relating your own thoughts. How do we normally learn vocabulary? Through rote memorization, and these attempts hardly ever make it into long-term memory, so you are always resorting to your dictionary. This has been my life-long battle with Italian. But repeated workings with words over time will put words into your long-term memory, almost as if you had never had to actually study them. Some words sink in like that, but most don’t… at least when you are trying to learn a new language.
Of course another way to learn a language is to visit a country and start speaking! But you still have to put in the effort. Reading, writing, speaking, and learning. So nothing changes. You still must attempt to learn vocabulary.
I will share with you the basics of the GoldList method, but if you find this interesting, you’ll find a better and fuller explanation on the GoldList method website. The simple premise is one of reducing a list of words (what is called a “distillation”)that you wish to remember into smaller and smaller more manageable lists over periods of time spaced several weeks apart, until you’ve fully assimilated nearly 70% of the original list of words. Below is an image of how that is accomplished in a notebook on two facing pages.
It really is a quite simple and ingenious method. These 70% of words have become a part of your long-term memory! They are yours to use… forever!
Imagine doing 25 words on a list in a notebook with 100 sheets. So that will be 100 lists of words, or at least 2500 words (or phrases) that will get entered into this notebook, of which you will have memorized just through the action of thinking and writing about them, 70%, or 1750 words! These words will be a part of your long-term memory. This notebook is your Bronze notebook.
That’s wonderful! But what happens to the 30% of words (750 words) that didn’t get into my long-term memory, you ask? These words are the final result of each Headlist and make up the Third Distillation (D3 list) on each page, as seen in the picture above. These become the new lists and get entered into a new notebook. This becomes your Silver List.
As you can imagine, you wouldn’t fill up your 100-sheet Silver notebook with just one Bronze notebook. So you might have three or four Bronze notebooks before your Silver notebook is filled!
And you guessed it, as you complete your Silver notebook, you’ll eventually have newly distilled lists of words that will go into your GoldList. These are the words that have taken you the most time and effort to remember. But through this process, you will get there!
Just like the Silver notebook took three Bronze notebooks to have enough words to fill it, your Gold notebook would take many silver notebooks to fill up as well. But unless you want to become a PhD in your chosen new language, 7000-10000 words is more than enough to become fluent in the target language. So your Gold notebook can be the GoldList for several languages. 3 or maybe 4 languages!
And you can see after all the work you will have put in to learn vocabulary in a target language how this notebook will be a treasured item to you, just like gold! So the name is apt…
It seems like a lot of work, but it should be no more effort than one puts into other methods for learning a language. But you will walk away with a far better grasp of vocabulary in your new language.
My first foray into this will be with French. I have been learning French with DuoLingo, and I printed out the most frequently used 1000 French words. This has not served me well. DuoLingo is fun in a way, and I will always use it as a resource. But for vocabulary, I believe the GoldList method is going to skyrocket my learning!
And after a year of doing this for French, I expect I’ll get back to my Italian to try to become more advanced. Spanish and Tagalog are soon to follow. But I can see this being very useful for anything that requires memorization… so any host of school topics, but also learning for your hobbies. It’s just a much quicker, more thoughtful way to learn, review, and assimilate knowledge… AND have that information at your fingertips when you need it! Too bad I didn’t have this method when I was younger. But it’s never too late to begin!
I’ll share progress as I go!