|
 |
Is counting your vocabulary size useless? | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| atama warui Triglot Senior Member Japan Joined 4701 days ago 594 posts - 985 votes  Speaks: German*, English, Japanese | Message 97 of 210 21 August 2012 at 12:40am | IP Logged | |||||
|
Those two issues are disconnected, lingoleng.
Fluency is the product of output practice. What do you need for that? Basic grammar, basic vocabulary. What'`s the result? You can speak without hesitation, without thinking much, in a primitive way on a limited amount of topics. So if that's why people want, why not learn a phrasebook by heart? We're not the first people to get to this conclusion. Many of this type are around, claiming they "speak the language". Many, many more problems haven't even been mentioned here, which all are part of the problem: No comprehension -> no discussion. OF COURSE you only have to only know 160 words to understand a discussion with only 160 unique words in it. But they have to be EXACTLY THE ONES USED. Now, I take it, a lot of those reading this forums are lottery fans. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| lingoleng Senior Member Germany Joined 5298 days ago 605 posts - 1290 votes | Message 98 of 210 21 August 2012 at 12:51am | IP Logged | |||||
Mastering the basics is so totally different from learning a phrasebook by heart that I don't know the appropriate vocabulary to express my disgust ... Edited by lingoleng on 21 August 2012 at 12:52am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Peregrinus Senior Member United States Joined 4492 days ago 149 posts - 273 votes Speaks: English* | Message 99 of 210 21 August 2012 at 12:54am | IP Logged | |||||
You will note from reading my previous posts, that I agree with s_allard that stopping at a certain point to learn usage, primarily through sentences and phrases, is highly desirable for conversational ability. The dispute is over at what point one can properly learn such usage, i.e. not only the idiomatic phrases in themselves, but also the ability to know which are patterns that can be altered and which cannot. Now while I will concede that an expert could teach learners those changeable phrases (which are NOT conveniently available in one place nor ranked by frequency), and those learners accept that on faith, those learners would still lack the ability, with only the limited knowledge a 300ish vocabulary gives them, to make such distinctions on their own. Which means that they are in fact still just "parroting". The point of this forum, to me at least, is to teach learners methods that they can use successfully in learning large and complex languages, i.e. teaching them to fish and not just giving them a fish. Edited by Peregrinus on 21 August 2012 at 12:55am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| atama warui Triglot Senior Member Japan Joined 4701 days ago 594 posts - 985 votes Speaks: German*, English, Japanese | Message 100 of 210 21 August 2012 at 1:16am | IP Logged | |||||
|
Let's think about this systematically.
Language mastery consists of 4 different skills: - Listening comprehension - Oral production - Reading comprehension - Written production You can not learn all of these at once. What all of these need are: - Listening comprehension: (grammar: medium. vocabulary: high) - Oral production: (grammar: medium. vocabulary: fair) - Reading comprehension: (grammar: fair. vocabulary: fair) - Written production: (grammar: medium. vocabulary: fair) I assumed people use tools for written conversation, like grammars and dictionaries. For comprehension, the level one needs is generally different from what they need for production. Grammar is more important for output. Let's analyze these four skills one by one to show what it actually means to "master a language", and what to "learn a language". Listening comprehension: If this is a conversation you're involved in, you have no time to react and no time to think for long. You either get a sentence or you don't. You may be able to ask for certain words, but do this repeatedly, because you lack too many words, and it will put strain on your conversation. In reality, this means, your partner will likely dumb down their speech tremendously, or pull the magic weapon SwitchToEnglish(TM) and shoot you down. Bam, conversation dead. If you watch a show on TV or listen to a podcast, you may be able to pause, rewind, re-listen. If you play a visual novel, you might be able to scroll up the journal and click the sentences to listen to them again. But this is tiring and troublesome. Some people might call it "intensive learning", with a weird, masochist smile on their faces, but come on. For the normal language learner, this is not fun. And if it sucks to do, only the M-type learners will pursue this route. With a medium understanding of grammar and a high enough vocabulary, you will not suffer comprehension problems due to the "language being weird" (grammar), because in spoken language, grammar used is usually simple, compared to written language. Since words you don't know have to be isolated and successfully entered into a dictionary, or correctly guessed from context, vocab plays a huge role. Oral production: In order to express yourself clearly and get a point across in a more complex situation than A: "Where's the toilet?" B: "Second door on the right side." A: "Thank you." B: "Don't forget to flush!" A: "Yes, ma'am!" you need some medium level grammar skills. Expressions of time, place, at least the common inflections, conjugations and so on are necessary to say what you want to say in a manner that's understandable, or you won't be able to hold your own in a conversation like A: Thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy schedule. B: No, no. It's no problem at all. After all, it's my job. And actually, I'm not that busy. A: I see. B: Alrighty then, let's go and see the first one. A: Yes, please. B: This is the 500€ appartment. A: Really? Isn't it a bit different from the photo? Look! Roaches! This place is damn dirty, even though it's expensive! This apartment is definitely not for me. To hold such a conversation, you also need the appropriate vocabulary. And imagine the guy going to get something to eat after that in a shop, then visit a client, then drive home and talk with his friend on the phone. All that with less-than-huge vocab pool? Not possible. (Initially, you can circumlocate a lot, so you may get away with less, but don't gamble too much, it might hurt) Reading Comprehension: You can look up everything, from words to unfamiliar structures. With all the time in the world, it's really not a problem to tackle everything but a select few texts and work with them. This might also be the reason why so many people to prefer learning from texts: It's convenient. You also don't spend much time with anything else than the language itself (like rewinding, scrolling around etc), so you can maximize your input. You alone dictate the pace. So, what do you need to start with this? Basic grammar, basic vocab. Theoretically, you wouldn't even need that, you could start from day 1, but that would be a PITA. Doing a proper course has much better returns for time and energy spent. Written Production: Like oral production, you need more grammar for this to work, because you can't say that "the dog may have been sleeping under the table on the second floor of the house next Wednesday evening", if you all you can actually express that "the dog will sleep" or even "the dog will sleep in the house". Tools like Lang-8 are great to improve this skill, so it's really a no-brainer following this route to get really good. Personally, I just chatted tons and improved over time, naturally. So you lack a word? Look it up. You don't need SO many for this to work, but some are needed. You'll sound awkward using words you're not sure about, because they will miss the nuance. Your electric dictionary spits out 500 different words for "to run"? Well, may be because English "to run" has 200 meanings. Ha, fun times! But the people on Lang-8 will get that fixed for you, so you'll learn what to use the word for you put in, and the word that's really being used in this context. Now... tell me again that a tiny vocabulary will make you speak well. It won't. Your typical Moroccan trader guy on the market is not only perfect at communication, but can also read your body language, has tons of experience and can make you believe he understood you perfectly when he really didn't. No wonder, if he'd do his job bad, he'd starve. Now, back to reality. Learning languages is tough shit. But it's also fun, so let's continue watching our soccer matches and enjoy the flow of your beloved TL, because, even if you don't get it all, it sounds f**king cool. Keep it up long enough, mix in a documentation about the pyramids or watch a hentai porn, and you'll get there. Edited by atama warui on 21 August 2012 at 1:27am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| atama warui Triglot Senior Member Japan Joined 4701 days ago 594 posts - 985 votes Speaks: German*, English, Japanese | Message 101 of 210 21 August 2012 at 1:43am | IP Logged | |||||
|
By the way, have you ever listened to something like Stephen King's The Dark Tower or Tolkien's Lord Of The Rings audiobooks in your mother tongue?
You are not trained to understand complex grammatical structures by ear. You automatically enter some kind of dream state where your concentration is focused on the text, to enable you to pick it all up. After a short while, you are "tuned in" and can multitask again. The more difficult the stuff you listen to, the more time it will take you to do that, but a native can do it quickly enough. If a native speaker needs to focus on such things, you might run into a problem as a language learner, too. That's why I'm not a fan of listening to Harry Potter in Japanese. Since holding a conversation is such an evil thing ^^ and you need 2 of the 4 skills, and one of them is the toughest of them all... ...why worry about it in the beginning? When you're far enough in your studies to achieve a comprehension of naturally spoken material by and for native speakers, you'll know a LOT of words. s_allard unfortunately picked the hardest set of skills to apply his theory to. I'd have agreed if he talked about "how chatting enables you to learn naturally" or "how intensive reading makes you learn at a sexy pace". Alas, he didn't. Too bad. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| lingoleng Senior Member Germany Joined 5298 days ago 605 posts - 1290 votes | Message 102 of 210 21 August 2012 at 1:57am | IP Logged | |||||
You've lost me, I am the proud owner of a collection of Stephen King audiobooks in 20 languages, don't know about the dream state, maybe people are different there, and don't see how a fantasy novel is anything like a simple conversation. I am out, gl and thx for the fish! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| atama warui Triglot Senior Member Japan Joined 4701 days ago 594 posts - 985 votes Speaks: German*, English, Japanese | Message 103 of 210 21 August 2012 at 2:02am | IP Logged | |||||
|
I'm not talking about 30 minutes of standing around drooling while desperately trying to get it. I'm talking about gathering your resources and concentrating for a few seconds.
It's all right if you leave the discussion. IMHO your responses were not the most interesting reads so far in this thread - you 20-foreign-languages-genius. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| lingoleng Senior Member Germany Joined 5298 days ago 605 posts - 1290 votes | Message 104 of 210 21 August 2012 at 2:08am | IP Logged | |||||
At a second thought I don't have SK in all of these languages, maybe 10 only, sorry for boasting. 1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
