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How fast can you learn 2500 words? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5239 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes  Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 57 of 66 12 September 2012 at 6:21pm | IP Logged | ||
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I guess we should make a distinction between learn to recognize and learn to use when we talk about learning words. Some people here know that I have a very jaundiced view of this whole question of counting words and learning words by themselves. I think one could easily spend a day or even a week learning how to use just one word like a verb with many ramifications. Or one could learn to recognize 30 words in a day but not be really able to use them properly.
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| Rob Tickner Senior Member New Zealand Joined 4297 days ago 126 posts - 158 votes Speaks: English* Studies: GermanB1, French, Swedish | Message 58 of 66 13 September 2012 at 12:18am | IP Logged | ||
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I guess some language learners like to learn new words completely and intensively
before moving on to the next, e.g. spending one week to learn one verb, its conjugations and different literal and idiomatic uses, while others choose to learn a large swathe of words and their most common meaning(s) in a broad sweep. My justification for the latter approach is that it gives me the confidence to jump into native materials as soon as possible, where a very high percentage of the words are either known or familiar, and in the spots where they don't make sense (e.g. idiomatic usage), I can recognize that, look up the idiom and familiarize myself with it, then continue to move on. I'm not saying this is the best way to do it, simply another way, that doesn't get me trapped in analysis paralysis from the get-go. I certainly respect anyone's persistence to become deeply intimate with foreign language words consistently over the long period of time it must require. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4477 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 59 of 66 13 September 2012 at 2:42am | IP Logged | ||
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You can learn many words very fast, but you can forget them even faster if you don't use them in context. ;)
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| Sandman Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5217 days ago 168 posts - 389 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Japanese | Message 60 of 66 20 September 2012 at 9:51am | IP Logged | ||
This is something somewhat lost in this discussion. I gave a pretty conservative estimate of how many words I could "learn" (while hopefully defining "learning" a word as purely a definitional "memory" thing, rather than as a functionally useful way, recognizing the difficulties of this question) but part of my number included a full repetition of all of those words. I think anyone here could claim to "learn" 40 words a day, yet most would likely find themselves drowning in an attempt to review those words pretty quickly. In Japanese I would never even bother to try to learn that many words so quickly, as I'd spend a month just trying to get the words I "learned" over the first few days to actually stick in something resembling a real way (while likely still not recognizing or being able to use most of them if any real way). Edited by Sandman on 20 September 2012 at 9:55am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Rob Tickner Senior Member New Zealand Joined 4297 days ago 126 posts - 158 votes Speaks: English* Studies: GermanB1, French, Swedish | Message 61 of 66 20 September 2012 at 11:07am | IP Logged | ||
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I don't mean to provoke or insult anybody on this forum, but I'm curious to know how many
of the posts in this thread are based on a scientific probing of the practical upper threshold of one's capacity for new vocabulary, rather than on a theoretical basis. Once one brings a repeatable definition to "learning" a word, the original question "How fast can you learn 2500 words?" becomes instantly quantifiable and quite trivial to answer, given the recorded data from say, a language learning log. An experiment to determine one's upper threshold would take relatively little time to perform, and could provide some useful benchmarks for comparing strategies and approaches. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| petteri Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4741 days ago 117 posts - 208 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: German, Spanish | Message 62 of 66 20 September 2012 at 11:37am | IP Logged | ||
Anki does not let you to forget anything. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6391 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 63 of 66 20 September 2012 at 11:51am | IP Logged | ||
Well, you also need to choose how to measure time. Say I memorize a hundred words by working half an hour a day for a week, and you do it by working for four hours in a single stretch. Which one took longer to memorize the hundred words? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| petteri Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4741 days ago 117 posts - 208 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: German, Spanish | Message 64 of 66 20 September 2012 at 12:02pm | IP Logged | ||
Retention rate as a function of time is also an important aspect. It is hard not to forget quickly learned words. Edited by petteri on 20 September 2012 at 12:02pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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