Format for verb flashcards?

Your Input
1

Continuing the discussion from W7 — Past:

I ni ce @gregorio !

Good question and thanks for sharing some of your brainstorming :slight_smile:

I have experimented with formatting the verb flashcards in a more detailed way before but I haven’t landed on a homerun format that seems intuitive for all students.

One thing that comes to mind in reading your potential system; did you realize that the way that flashcards are formatted right now already tells you part of what you are asking?

For instance for the k'à fo…

k’à fo
: to greet somebody

  • The k’à in this setup is telling you that it is a underlyingly transitive verb (e.g., N bɛ cɛ fo “I greet the man”, which there requires the use of kɛ if you don’t want to specify a direct object (e.g., N bɛ foli kɛ “I greet”). This is the case with any verb is underlyingly transitive.

The issue is that one doesn’t in theory know if it’s ka fo kɛ or if it’s ka foli kɛ.

Normally, I try to keep the vocab lists (and the linked flashcards next to them) as simple and “flat” as possible.

But if I were going to make a special deck, I could do something like this:

k’à fo [foli]
: to greet sb

k’à kalan
: to study sth

NOTE: The lack of anything after kalan would tell you that the “light-verb construction” with kɛ wouldn’t require any change of kalan. You just say ka kalan kɛ.

But then what do you for verbs like this (which are “ambitransitive”):

ka don
: to enter

k’à don
: to put on sth

Should it be two cards or should it be one card?

Traditionally, myself and most other teachers, I think take the approach of having a bunch of distinct vocab terms or “cards” that are in a single set. Like this:

  • k’à fo = to greet sb
  • ka foli kɛ = to greet
  • k’à kalan = to study sth
  • ka kalan kɛ = to study
  • ka don = to enter
  • k’à don = to put sth on

But I guess that you could do something like this (if you knew that all of the cards were verbs only)

  • fo [foli] = to greet sb
  • kalan = to study sb
  • don = to enter; to wear sth

But I’m not sure that’s better :thinking: It’s weird because it is missing the transitive/intransitive information that comes with ka vs k'à when you learn the verb by itself.

Maybe this is better:

  • k’à fo [foli] = to greet sb
  • k’à kalan = to study sth
  • ka/k’à don = to enter; to put on sth

(In any case, I guess what would be helpful is if I put up a little explanatory note before/after the list so that my convention is clear for lists like Adjectives [which you asked about before] and Verbs)

One question for you, why do you find it helpful to have “taara” listed on the card for “to go”?

ka taa, taara = to go

I ask because the form taara is predictable. If you know that it’s an intransitive verb then you know it becomes taara in the perfective form. Even the variant endings -la (e.g., for ka wuli) and -na (for ka na) are predictable so you don’t really need to have on the card.

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In hindsight, once you pointed out the ka vs k'a distinction, I think the way you have it is really good! I also like your idea of:
ka/k’à don = to enter; to put on sth
or maybe even
ka/k’à don = to enter || put on sth

My logic of having the taara in the mix was because even though it’s predictable, it would remind the learner “oh this isn’t a kɛ verb”, but upon reflection it seems redundant.

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I ni ce @gregorio ! Cool :slight_smile: I will look into likely making an update so that the vocab list and cards for verbs would look like something this convention-wise:

  • k’à fo = to greet sb
  • ka foli kɛ = to greet
  • k’à kalan = to read/study sth
  • ka kalan kɛ = to read/study
  • ka/k’à don = to enter || to put sth on; to wear sth [clothing]
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