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95% Fluency with 3000 Words Possible? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6207 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 25 of 67 16 May 2010 at 4:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
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My own gut feeling is that you would need more like 8,000 to 10,000 vocabulary words for real fluency. Normal spoken language for most people rests on about 2,000 words, but you still need to know words well out of that range. As for reading, only quite simple texts use a vocabulary as restricted as 3,000.
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| GREGORG4000 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5458 days ago 307 posts - 479 votes Speaks: English*, Finnish Studies: Japanese, Korean, Amharic, French | Message 26 of 67 16 May 2010 at 4:24pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Yeah, once you learn the basic 3000, then you'll have to learn 400-ish words for each different topic of conversation to actually talk about something in particular >.<
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 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6638 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 27 of 67 17 May 2010 at 10:15am | IP Logged | |||||
And think I did ... but it isn't as easy as that. If I took a dictionary of Danish and tried to give a translation for each ... oops, then I have already made the first two or three errors: 1) I have assumed that there is just one translation 2) I have overlooked that the same word might pop up as the translation for another Danish word, 3) I have probably overlooked a number of words or simple word combinations which I know, but just haven't coupled to a Danish word (I know many technical words and animal names better in English than in Danish). Trying to count the number of actively or passively known words in one language through another is doomed to failure. Counting the words I actually have used is theoretically possible (and I have long time ago made such a count for my messages during 3 months in this forum), but it would only give a lower limit - the true active vocabulary must include not only words actually used, but also all words that I could have used if the occasion had presented itself. And there is no way to measure that. So basically I would tend to give up any pretense of objectivity and just make a rough estimate about the percentage of my passive vocabulary that I could see myself using. And there I have found a simple rule: the more fluent I am in a language, the higher this percentage will be. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5365 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 28 of 67 25 May 2010 at 4:35pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I beg to disagree with the very premise that there is a relationship between size of vocabulary and fluency. It is my view that vocabulary has little to do with fluency. I know well that the term fluency is constantly bandied around in this forum and that many people are anxious to know how long it takes to become fluent in their target language. The problem, in my opinion, is that we are confusing two very different concepts: proficiency and fluency.
Proficiency, in my opinion, is a general mastery of the various language skills: reading, writing, understanding, speaking and social interaction. Generally speaking, the various measurement systems such as CEFR attempt to measure proficiency. Vocabulary size and proficiency are correlated. No doubt about that. If we were to substitute proficiency for fluency in this thread, I would have absolutely no complaint. Fluency, however, technically speaking, refers to characteristics of oral production. Basically, one looks at two quantitative variables: number of syllables per minute and length of run between pauses. Of course, this is a narrow definition of fluency, but it is something that is perfectly measurable. In addition, one could factor in grammaticality and pronunciation. In other words, fluency describes the flow of reasonably correct speech. This idea has various implications. The most important, of course, is that fluency has nothing to do with size of vocabulary. Is a university professor with an active vocabulary of 10,000 words more fluent than a manual labourer with a vocabulary of 1,500 words? No. More proficient and more sophisticated, yes, more fluent, no. Actually, I have heard interviews of professors full of pauses, hesitations, false starts and stammers. The people who speak a language most fluently are language professionals such as actors, journalists, broadcasters, politicians and people who speak a lot in public. Many readers here are probably familiar with a group called Toastmasters that cultivates the art of speaking in public. How is fluency developed? That's the million-dollar question. Not really, what we do know from working with language professionals is that you have to develop some sort of mental image of an entire phrase rather than speaking one word at a time. You also must learn to think ahead. Actors are good at this because they memorize lines. Salespeople and politicians get good because they repeat the same pitch all the time. Radio broadcasters are trained to not create any "dead air". So all of these people develop a sense of "patter" or what we call in French "le bagoût". For those of us who are not in those professions, our speech is still fluent; it's just not as polished. But, to come back to our concerns here, I strongly believe that one can be fluent with a small vocabulary. This where I have had clashes ever and anon with other members of the forum. Do not misunderstand me. I am not saying that a small vocabulary is better than are large one. I am not saying that word lists are not important. What I am saying is that, if fluency is paramount, then the learning strategy must concentrate on developing the flow of speech with the right techniques in addition to building a sound vocabulary foundation. Edited by s_allard on 25 May 2010 at 11:00pm 10 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6638 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 29 of 67 25 May 2010 at 8:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
So a high level in everything but oral production only demonstrates proficiency, and fluency can only be tested on oral production? I don't subscribe to that. If you can write without looking words up all the time then this also is a way to demonstrate fluency. The main difference is that with writing you have time to correct your errors before you let the public see your creations. Even passive skills can prove some kind of fluency: being able to read hermetic poetry or tax legislation on the fly is an indicator of passive fluency, and so is the ability to eavesdrop on people in a bus. However it is relevant to separate fluency from proficiency: you can know 50.000 words and be able to recite all the rules in ten thick grammmar books, but still be unable to participate in a conversation about the weather. Or you can live happily in a country for years without discovering that the local language has a subjunctive. But with a comprehensive and multifacetted study program it should be possible to escape these undesirable extremes. Edited by Iversen on 25 May 2010 at 8:27pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5365 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 30 of 67 25 May 2010 at 9:53pm | IP Logged | |||||
I have concentrated on oral production because that is the usual scientific interpretation of fluency. Could one speak of reading or writing fluency or even hearing fluency, as suggest Iversen? I guess one could. Again, I would prefer proficiency for these situations and reserve fluency for oral production. The real point is that spoken fluency is not a related to size of vocabulary. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6878 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 31 of 67 25 May 2010 at 10:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
Does one factor in the comprehension level and production errors in the definition of fluency you are referring to? According to my own notions of fluency, I would expect fluency to imply being able to understand the replies to what one is saying, and not have excessive grammatical and usage errors present in one's speech, however fluid it may be. I don't know if these notions agree with the usual scientific interpretation. If understanding replies is actually included, it requires adequate passive vocabulary, considerably in excess of one's active one. That's what makes me most suspicious when I see claims of "fluency with X words". Edited by frenkeld on 26 May 2010 at 4:52am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5365 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 32 of 67 26 May 2010 at 1:34pm | IP Logged | |||||
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As I point out, fluency refers specifically to oral production (with correct grammar and good pronunciation) but not to comprehension.
People may think that I have nothing better to do than split semantic hairs. I'm not trying to be difficult. Actually, I'm simply trying to answer a very basic question: What do we mean when we say we speak a foreign language? The term speaking a language is often used rather loosely and usually encompasses a whole range of skills that I have grouped under proficiency. I may be nitpicking, but if I say I speak a language, that's exactly what I mean. I open my mouth and out comes (hopefully) a stream of well-formed utterances. I'm not talking about reading or writing. The reason I'm so adamant about this issue is that in my observation many people who claim to speak a foreign language don't really speak it that well at all. Where I live in Montreal, Canada, I meet people who, despite having lived here most of their lives and studied French for years, can hardly carry on a basic conversation. How many times have I met people who say to me: "I can understand it, but I can't speak it." Speaking is for me the central issue. Fluency, as I define it here, is then of utmost importance. Since I believe that the number of words does not determine fluency, my learning strategy for developing fluency does not concentrate on learning as many words as possible. Words are the building blocks. Grammar is the glue that binds them. Phonetics tells me how to say the words. Fluency is the ability to combine all of this and produce proper utterances. Obviously, it goes without saying that "95 % fluency with 3000 words" is a meaningless statement for me. Well,how does one develop fluency? Unfortunately, I have a busy day ahead of me and don't have the time to go into the details of a strategy for acquiring fluency. In a nutshell, it is an approach based on the observation that much spoken language is formulaic, rich in collocations and based on rather simple syntactic patterns. By emphasizing pattern recognition through memorizing a number of set phrases, we can quickly produce meaningful utterances. There's a lot more to this than these few words. Maybe I'll get a chance to go into greater depth at a later date. 5 persons have voted this message useful |
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