Working memory test - interesting to see your results

Welsh General / Questions
#21

I scored a 6 on the test. I’m on challenge 21 of Level 1. I find the SSI mthuch easier than other language learning I’ve done. Occasionally I have a complete melt down and feel that I don’t remember anything (and there have also been awkward moments when I’ve been so tired I’ve fallen asleep mid challenge then woken up near the end wondering what’s going on!) However generally there is a feeling that most of what I need is there to hand and if I forget something I will get it from the answer and be able to reuse and consolidate it again within the next few sentences. I guess that this means holding it in working memory in the meantime?

For me saying lots of different sentences with the vocabulary I have has made me much more confident about being able to say what I want to say. At school the focus seemed very much on learning vocabulary and dialogues about ordering food, booking hotels’s visiting the Dr etc. In reality I needed my german to talk to a child in a playground or have a chat at the bus stop or at a concert. With SSIW I feel more confident to think of a sentence I want to say and try it in Welsh. Somethimes the experiment even works.

Also I’ve noticed when I mention I’m learning Welsh the response is often a quick indrawn breath and a comment about it being a really hard language. I’m a bit non plussed as using SSIW it has seemed easier than any other language I’ve tried. I don’t know if it is because this system works really well for me with my working memory, or whether those mythical beasts the mutations put off people who get faced with a card and try to learn which to use when. I think I might need such a card if I ever get the urge to try and program a computer to speak Welsh correctly. Till then I think I have a feel for how some sounds change in some places and if I’m wrong people will either work it out, laugh at me, or let me know so that,s OK. An attitude SSIW has helped me to develop.

so for mw

6 level 1 challenge 21 and 9/10

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#22

I’ve had that too. The last time I mentioned to someone that I was learning Welsh, the response was: “Ooh, you’re brave.” I told her I actually wasn’t finding it that difficult, and she said she learned a tiny bit in uni when she was studying Celtic myth, and it still scared the life out of her.

I agree that with the way SSi teaches, that’s kind of hard to believe!

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#23

Thanks to everyone who pointed out what Aran probably really meant :smile:

My revised reply then:

4.5 (it seemed easy at first, but got surprisingly hard later!).

I’ve done Course 1, Course 2, Course 3 superficially, came back to it and started off doing it more seriously but never finished.
Did Level 1, and about 10 challenges of level 2 so far. Had also done a bootcamp before Level 1 appeared I think.

Initially found Course 1 difficult (4/10), but after the lessons 6 hurdle, it got easier and easier (8-9/10).
Found Course 2 slightly difficult at first (6/10) - seemed a bit of a gear change, but then like C1, it got easier and easier. (8-9/10)

found Course 3 difficult (5/10), partly because I was doing it on the move, and not hearing the endings of the short forms properly. I suspect if I did it again now, having had more experience of short forms generally, it would probably be no more difficult than Course 2.

Found Level 1 very easy to be honest, but I don’t know if I would have done if it was my first SSiW course. 9/10

Level 2 is a slight gear change upwards, but not really difficult so far. 8/10

I didn’t think my working memory was brilliant but about average, but it must be worse than average to only get 4.5.

Having said that, I think it must be easily enough to cope with the SSiW approach, because after the initial steep learning curve, I usually didn’t have problems remembering what Aran and Catrin were saying. (Not so easy to remember outside the lessons, but I think that’s a different kind of memory, not working memory. Long term memory I suppose or at least long-ish term.)

So perhaps the SSiW method doesn’t actually need a brilliant working memory. Just a functional one. :slight_smile:

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#24

I don’t think we have any evidence to claim this as yet - but I’m very interested in what can (or can’t) be done to help improve working memory in particular - if we could find anything reliable, it would clearly be a valuable addition for our learners… :sunny:

Thank you everyone for your fascinating input. It’s looking more and more as though a very strong working memory makes this approach particularly accessible, but that it’s possible for people to thrive and even enjoy the process with lower working memory scores (on this single test)… all extremely interesting…

#25

:slight_smile: How much I found myself in this sentence! There was the time I found myself in this situation too but now I rather do my lesson in the middle of the afternoon or early evening to avoid this. :slight_smile:

#26

You can do this on the ipad if you use an alternate browser. Both Puffin and Photon support flash. I think you can get a free trial of puffin, or it’s not terribly expensive to buy the full version.

I got 6.5. I’ve completed courses 1 & 2, but was completely defeated by course 3. I’ve very nearly finished level 1. I’m not use how I would rate ssiw. Apart from course 3 it’s just about right for me. Challenging, but not impossible.

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#27

Aran: … what sort of things in particular do you struggle with? Since you’ve got a good working memory, it might be more to do with expectations than processing issues…

I find two difficulties but they may be the same thing. The first is with long sentences to translate I get most of the way through and then cannot remember the remainder so I have a guess at it and often guess wrongly . The second is that it takes me a moment to switch between languages in my head and I find it easier to just stay in one language or the other. This may be causing the first problem if I cannot get all the sentence in one go and have to switch my head back into English before translating the rest of the sentence.
About the expectations, you’re very probably right, Aran. I don’t find it easy to move on when I am making mistakes and so I repeat the lesson until the mistakes are few enoiugh and small enough that I can live with them.

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#28

ooh, I love these things!

My first run was 6.5, but I was in a noisy kitchen at the time and tried again later for 7.5. Although it seems like the patterns are the same every time, so that might have been cheating.

I’ve finished lesson 8 in course 1, and I really like this method of learning. I find it much easier and more intuitive than other language classes, and I like the constant pronunciation/listening practice. 9/10 so far, but who knows, it will probably get much harder!

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#29

That’s very interesting, Raymond - the long sentences thing in particular is definitely affected by your working memory (although nobody thinks the really long ones are easy!). The switching bit may be a different interpretation of how you feel during the long sentences - but it’s also pretty common to have a ‘gear crunch’ switching between languages.

The big takeaway here is definitely, definitely that you’re repeating the lessons too much! You might find this post interesting: https://saysomethingin.wordpress.com/2015/03/20/make-it-stick-a-book-which-uncovers-scientific-support-for-some-of-what-we-do/

Particularly the bit about making mistakes: ‘Trying to solve a problem before being taught the solution leads to better learning, even when errors are made in the attempt.’

How many times do you tend to repeat a session, on the whole?

Ooh, now I’m going to have to go back and try again…:wink:

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#30

It actually seamed the same to me, but, this only shows my working memory is actually even more lousy then the result shows. It only seamed to me but wasn’t sure!!! but yah, it can very well be true … the test might be the same every time … (I did it 3 times …)

Yes, do that. I’m curious what you’d find out. :slight_smile:

#31

[quote=“Nskaran, post:28, topic:3456”]
Although it seems like the patterns are the same every time, so that might have been cheating.[/quote]
Yes, I definitely noticed the same thing, and they are definitely the same each time. So you could build up a ‘catalog’ of the patterns and then just follow it, I guess. (But I don’t think doing it without such a catalog would be cheating at all.)

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#32

Yup, they are definitely running the same patterns - I managed to squeeze my 7.5 up to an 8.5 - although to be honest there was nothing that struck me as consciously familiar by the time we were up to the 7s (although there may well have been some subconscious pattern familiarity stuff in there).

#33

Ah, you could run the same (exactly the same) pattern to me over and over again and I’d surely miss something in it. I caught myself unconsciously panic that I won’t remember everything if there are too much things to remember. This actually could cause my working memory being so bad but it’s one of those hard works which really need a lot of concentration, will and stubbornity to get out of this “habit” (although I can’t actually say it’s a habit really). And, yes, my head is always full of thoughts even when I don’t want them in there. I NEVER have really “empty” head (probably even not when I sleep) and I’m not sure I actually am capable of reaching such state of mind. …

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#34

@tatjana Everybody’s head is always full of thoughts! That’s just the way minds work - there is no way to turn off thinking. I understand about the unconscious panic…it happens to me sometimes when I feel like I am being evaluated, even if it’s just me evaluating myself, and even when it’s not about anything important.

@aran I’m impressed…once it gets to 6 dots, I just can’t keep it all in my head!

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#35

I was thinking about this today (my wife says I have to stop doing this - she is afraid I might wear something out).

Well, the dot test is, on the face of it, a test of visual memory. (There is probably something more subtle going on, but anyway…).

We often talk here about whether people are visual learners or not. I used to think I was one, and while I think there is a visual element to my learning and my memory, there is definitely an aural element as well.

For example, if I look up a telephone number some distance away from the phone and don’t want to write it down, I will often say it out loud, then when I get to the phone, what I am remembering is more often than not, not the visual impression where I looked it up, but the “sound” in my mind’s ear of my own voice saying it. This has happened so often there must be something to it.

It’s not always necessary to actually say it out loud either: just “say” it to yourself mentally, and imagine you can really hear your own voice, and that seems to work almost as well.

So something similar is possibly going on in the SSiW lessons/challenges, at least in my case.

So (in my case at least) the “dot” test is perhaps not directly relevant to my success or otherwise in SSiW.

#36

5.5 level 6

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#37

Aran:
How many times do you tend to repeat a session, on the whole?

I start on a new session until I get too slow or make too many mistakes. Next day I start again but I note where I get to without mistakes and carry on with new stuff as I did at first. Next day I start from the time I recorded as OK and continue in the same way moving up the start point to where I’m happy with it. And so on until after five or six days my start point reaches the end of the lesson. It does require an effort and I do, eventually, learn from my mistakes.

I’m going to have to change, aren’t I? At least, I am now that you know what I’ve been doing.
I don’t waste the the rest of the time, though. I will expand my vocabulary into areas not covered in SSiW, generally by following a theme and finding words that can be used in everyday conversation. Which means I can find my way round town by following the sign posts, go to the greengrocer and buy a cauliflower, apples, potatoes, beans, etc and go to the pub and ask for a pint and a packet of crisps in Welsh. So, it’s not all bad.

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#38

Aran:
How many times do you tend to repeat a session, on the whole?

@raymondkefford hope you don’t mind. Here’s something about how you can quote parts of the posts and posts in whole. Hw to quote

Enjoy quoting and replying. :slight_smile:

#39

Yes, I marked Aran’s words for ‘Bold’ but for some reason it didn’t work and just printed the ‘*’ characters. Some software needs each line marking separately and may also need start and finish markers on each line but this discussion board didn’t need either of these in my previous post.

#40

Yes, Mike, a large proportion of people have minds that work visually. They read a word as a whole, not as separate letters or even syllables, by recognising certain featues that distinguish it from other words. If they are proof-reading they can read the text correctly even with missing letters because the points they recognise are still there. Also, their language uses ‘visual’ words so when checking the spelling of a word they say things like ‘it just looks wrong’. Your language doesn’t betray a preference either way so maybe you are using both visual and aural ways of working.

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