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December 28, 2011

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Subvocalization and handwriting in the SRS

I emphasized before the importance of subvocalization in learning Japanese. Subvocalization is a reflection and usage of phonological knowledge, tied to your ability to represent the abstracted aural forms of the language.

In pseudoscientific advice about speed-reading, among other things it is suggested that subvocalization is a hindrance, a bad habit, and should be eliminated through various means. Research shows the opposite is true, that subvocalization aids comprehension and attempts to suppress it (it can’t be eliminated) reduce comprehension. Some methods for suppression include overloading the phonological loop by adding interference through repeating numbers or letters to oneself while reading; this simply reduces your total working memory capacity, a valuable resource.

We naturally subvocalize more intensely and overtly when closely reading a text, especially for difficult texts. This aids comprehension. Phonological and orthographic (written) routes during reading operate interactively with one another, augmenting one another in a kind of synthesis. Your phonological skills heighten your mental graphemic representations (and vice versa).

If you wish to read faster and subvocalize less overtly, increase your orthographic and phonological knowledge, your reading skills in general, in part by practicing more at those skills, not less. Reading skills are a multidimensional continuum involving orthographic, morphological, and phonological awareness operating dynamically depending on the properties of the text, and the reader, who makes adjustments to reading rate and subvocalizing, to eye movement, etc., based on their proficiency and their aims.

Subvocal rehearsal also benefits vocabulary learning, better enabling the processing of new words with unfamiliar structures in working memory. Suppressing rehearsal by methods such as repeating unrelated items aloud also hinders grammar learning, as the phonological loop is used for elements such as word order.

We only refer to reading ability in part on the level of words. There is also the element of suprasegmentals, e.g. prosody. Poor readers are unskilled at prosodic chunking of the sentences into meaningful components.

These are reasons why I emphasize subvocalization as a part of the multimodal or multisensory integration I advocate during all forms of encoding materials for memorization, as it has a superadditive effect. Humans learn best by synthesizing information from multiple senses; this is simply how language and thought works. Audio, visual, and motor skills are entwined. I shall address the motor skills and the importance of the visuospatial for Japanese momentarily.

Also, keep in mind we are speaking of when text and sound have been mapped together in the learning process, for hearing rather than deaf readers. Think of subvocalization as a path to phonological processing, processing which transcends a particular modality. Speech is not language and does not exist in the brain, per se. Only the mechanism for producing it based on abstracted, amodal, or supramodal elements. Thus even the prelingually deaf make use of these areas of the brain for articulation. In fact, they seem to rely on it more, along with other strategies in other modalities, to adapt to auditory impairment. This being even easier with written Japanese and its less phonocentric emphasis. There is also the argument for a role of sensorimotor encoding in working memory alongside the phonological loop and visuospatial sketchpad, for signers especially.

The point being, we are speaking of subvocalization’s utility, like language itself, as an emergent, flexible phenomenon, an option that should not be neglected, but should instead be cultivated as much as possible, even or especially when the aim is the same level of ease and transparency that we feel we have when reading in our native language as skilled readers. For the deaf L2 learner, I would also go as far as to recommend mapping the kana to yubimoji (指文字/finger-spelling), so that there is an extra gestural component to aid articulation of the written language in lieu of auditory representations. Research on fingerspelling suggests that it aids literacy. Update: For yubimoji, try this deck.

Subvocalization in Anki

When I learn Japanese items, I use both individual word cards, and sentence cards. The aim of single word cards is to learn the visual and aural form of the word, mapping the text to the sound and the meaning and vice versa in all directions (sound to text, meaning to sound, etc.).

For certain types of sentence cards, I focus on sentences with known words. Typically the text is on the Front, with the audio of the sentence, from a native speaker—such as from the Core 2000, 6000, and 10000 decks—on the Back. Given the text, I focus on reading the text and subvocalizing it, then I flip the card and listen closely and repeat the sentence aloud. In this way I develop a link between processing the text, articulating it in my own mental ‘voice’, and then getting listening and speaking practice that acts as corrective feedback. Here we make the sound our own, rather than parroting it, developing our ability to chunk the sentence prosodically and naturally.

Forcing yourself to subvocalize a sentence without relying on the audio teaches you to manage complex language without external aid and increases your working memory capacity as you develop phonological skills. It also sets up a chain between thought and action, so to speak, similar to the processes of internalization and resonance mentioned before. Prosody is a key to fluency, making this technique useful for the transition to fluency development exercises and output practice.

Keep in mind that Japanese has more reliance on the visuospatial in relation to the aural, due to the morphographic kanji which are processed differently from phonograms such as kana and alphabetic letters. As I previously mentioned, it’s skimming-friendly and opens up the trajectory of literacy development. But this doesn’t change the importance of the phonological, for the written and the spoken language. It just evens things out, different from the much more sound-based writing system of English.

Handwriting in Anki

Part of the difference in kanji is that handwriting becomes very important to aid recall and recognition of written characters. This is true for letters as well, but kanji are on another level of complexity as strokes and radicals cohere into iconic wholes, and the internal programs we create when learning to write kanji are very capable mnemonic aids. We actually encode not just static representations of kanji, but the dynamic sequences of how they’re written as well, which are activated for both writing and recognition. It’s a common practice for Chinese and Japanese natives to practice the “air-writing” of kanji to aid recall. Keep in mind stroke order isn’t important, but the consistent use of a stroke pattern is.

The research on this is definitive, and so I recommend incorporating muscle memory into your study by using either finger, a stylus for tablets, or pencil and paper. Something with static external feedback and more refined movements such as using a utensil is probably better than using a finger, but a finger will do if necessary. When first learning kanji, you need only write it a few times, preferably while rehearsing the Heisig story to yourself, anchoring the “caption” to the “picture” kinetically as well as conceptually. As the spacing effect applies to procedural memory, motor memory, etc., as well, please continue to periodically write the kanji during reviews. I only do it for kanji I feel fuzzy on. With this, you will have a quicker and more detailed recognition and recall of kanji during reading or writing. Studies also show that retrieval practice increases visuospatial learning, specifically writing the kanji.

Once I acquired an iPod Touch, I procured a Griffin capacitive stylus to go with it and the Handwriting app. I use those during reviews. Targus and Boxwave make identical styli to the Griffin, the only differences are the prices. I believe there is a plugin that enables a scratchpad for AnkiMobile as well.

For a tablet PC, if you don’t have handwriting recognition for your version of Windows 7, try downloading Vistalizator and related language packs.

Windows Journal, which comes with Windows tablets, has genkouyoushi (原稿用紙) templates built-in.

References