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How fast can you learn 2500 words? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6753 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes  Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 9 of 66 28 August 2012 at 4:31pm | IP Logged | |||||
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You can find out by performing an experiment. Start with 10 words per day, do that for a week. If it seems easy enough, increase to 20 per day for the next week. Keep doing it until you reach the daily rate that seems excessive, then drop back to the rate that feels right and stay there for a while.
I had a phase of two to three months with English when I was going through a graded reader and copying the words on flashcards as I met them while reading. At times I reached something like 100 words per day, but that was too much and only half of them would stick, but something like 50 per day worked better. I was intermediate at the time, as a beginner I would have had to go slower. Edited by frenkeld on 28 August 2012 at 8:00pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 4940 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 10 of 66 28 August 2012 at 5:13pm | IP Logged | |||||
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One thing nobody's mentioned yet is the difference between your first 2600 words and
further increments. The first 2000-3000 words should come relatively quickly, as they'll all be new to you and will be often used words. Even the second set of 2000-3000 or so words should be fairly easy. But once you get past 6000-8000 words, it's increasingly difficult to pick up new vocabulary in daily speech, in my opinion. You'll have to rely more on literature to increase your vocabulary, which isn't nearly as quick (or spontaneous) and takes a bit more effort via other memory techniques, such as drills, SRS, etc. R. == 9 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5072 days ago 2237 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 11 of 66 28 August 2012 at 5:34pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I wonder how much more mental energy it takes to count words and choose which ones to learn rather than to just learn the language without worrying how many words you learn. Apparently, I'm doing this whole language learning thing wrong. I don't count my vocabulary words. I don't use anki or flashcards. Edited by iguanamon on 28 August 2012 at 5:34pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6753 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 12 of 66 28 August 2012 at 5:54pm | IP Logged | |||||
The total is not important, although Anki will likely just tell you the deck size. The main number of interest is how many words I recorded today. It's a form of a whip - if I recorded five, I am probably slacking off, if I recorded fifty, or whatever, I am being serious about increasing my vocabulary fast.
There are three main approaches: (1) look up and record, (2) look up, don't record, (3) don't look up, don't record, i.e., learn from context. One can also mix and match at will and use different ones at different stages of learning or with different materials. I have used all three and in my experience the crack the whip Approach (1) takes you far quickly. If you ever hit a plateau and need a boost, crack the whip. Approach (3) alone can be slow, but if it works for you, by all means use it. Approach (2) is in between. One would just have to see how well it works in one's case. There are some practices that seem to be a bad idea for most learners, but using flashcards to help with the vocabulary seems common enough among successful learners to be an acceptable approach when not misused. Edited by frenkeld on 29 August 2012 at 5:26am 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5240 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 13 of 66 28 August 2012 at 6:12pm | IP Logged | |||||
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There's another thread about the utility of counting words, although it seems to have quietened down lately. I'm of the school of thought that it's basically useless, but it can be a tool for motivation and self-discipline. I really have no clue about the number I words I know in any language and I don't see the point of counting. Edited by s_allard on 28 August 2012 at 6:13pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Heavyweight Diglot Newbie Sweden Joined 4375 days ago 12 posts - 19 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 14 of 66 28 August 2012 at 9:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
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MAYDAYADAY, what do you mean when you're saying "head word"? I've never heard that before.
I think I'd take me about one year to learn 2500 words. 50 words a week, that's doable for sure. At the moment I try and learn about 30 new words a week and it's going alright. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| patuco Diglot Moderator Gibraltar Joined 6825 days ago 3795 posts - 4268 votes Speaks: Spanish, English* Personal Language Map | Message 15 of 66 28 August 2012 at 10:16pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I wonder if the answer to the question posed by the OP is the same as the famous "How long is a piece of string?" (to which the answer is clearly "double half its length"). Edited by patuco on 28 August 2012 at 10:20pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6407 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 16 of 66 28 August 2012 at 11:44pm | IP Logged | |||||
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If the language isn't completely alien, I prefer to learn the first 2500 words naturally, via exposure, as they're so common. I might SRS something but I never feel like I have to, I just want to and it's normally more about the usage, ie I look at a sentence and think: nice way to put it, I'd not have come up with this.
The timeframe depends on the language and on whether I'm going for active or passive. It sure takes quite long to absorb them into your active vocabulary, I would say at least a year but maybe more. But my passive vocab is much larger by the time my active one has 2500 words. And in most European langs, the deeper you go into passive vocab, the more words will be obvious - but you still need to hear them a few times before you can understand and use them without second thought. 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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