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Is counting your vocabulary size useless? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6703 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 201 of 210 27 August 2012 at 3:51am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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It may come as a surprise, but I actually live on this planet and I even interact with other human beings - although statistically mostly with Danes, but I remedy this deficiency by listening to quizprograms, discussions and interviews in other languages on TV and through the internet. And when there are foreigners around (or more likely: I'm around foreigners) I communicate fairly succesfully with them, so claiming that I don't know what spoken language really is seems to me to be a joke. I know what it is, but I prefer some variants of spoken language over others, and those I prefer are characterized by a fairly high lix number, a comprehensive vocabulary and a polished grammar. If I discuss a theme I don't want to do it on a level much below the one we use for our written discussions here at HTLAL, and it is obvious that I can't do that before I'm fairly advanced in a language.
For me it seems logical to learn the spoken languages from sources which are wellorganized and clearly spoken, just as I prefer learning the written language from printed books and magazines instead of handwritten postcards or slips of paper from a dustbin. If I'm travelling I may have to speak in situations where I don't really feel that I'm master of the situation, but even then I use the skills and the knowledge I gained from the more orderly sources - and this includes the vocabulary I have amassed through formal methods. However much informal speech between native speakers isn't of this kind. S_allard himself corroborates my description of informal discussions with this description: "People change their mind in mid-sentence; they use fillers and all kinds of discourse markers. They make mistakes and backtrack to correct. And of course they make all kinds of sounds: interjections, grunts, guffaws and laughter. They use intonation extensively. They also make all kinds of gestures with parts of their body." Let me add that they sometimes also make errors and speak slurredly. I hear that kind of language daily in the bus and at my job from native Danish speakers and in the bus and other places also from native speakers of other languages. Do I have a corpus? No, but I hear that kind of broken speach just about every day so I know it exists. The problem is that I don't feel attracted to messy speech about the weather and other people's love life, and the pressure to react on (or ignore) interruptions and attempts to steer the discussion away in unwanted directions are also factors which I prefer dealing with at a later stage where I'm better armed. I will get there, but I prefer taking the route through the written language and spoken sources which are fairly close to the written language. Others may have other priorities, but this is how I function best. Edited by Iversen on 27 August 2012 at 4:24am 8 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5430 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 202 of 210 27 August 2012 at 6:15am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Just as I was going to visit my aunt in the hospital today, I had a little interaction along these lines with some Scottish visitors:
--Excuse me, do you know where the main campus of McGill university is? --Sure, it's not far. I'll show you on the map. --Oh, I didn't see the map. --Here is where we are. See, we're right here in front of the Royal Victoria Hospital. --Oh, I see --The Leacock building is just down the road. I should know I studied there. --Thank you very much. In reality, if you were to listen to the recording of this interaction it would not be so clean as it would appear. There were all sorts of extra noises and things inserted in to the conversation. This is what small talk is all about. It seems to me that @iversen dislikes, not small talk per se, but a certain kind of small talk. He doesn't like talking about the weather and people's love lives; he doesn't like slurred speech and listening to mistakes. Nor does he like grunts. Why should he? Nobody is saying that one has to love this. But to characterize small talk as this is plainly wrong. It's not a choice between speaking in slurred speech about the weather or talking like a book. It's really a question about accepting that spoken language is different from written language. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6943 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 203 of 210 27 August 2012 at 6:32am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
What are the implications of this fact for a learner? The exchange you reproduce actually sounds like pretty standard English. Of course, an information request as a kind of a 'transaction', so perhaps it's not surprising. I observed my daughters' speech over dinner, and the younger one, who is 12, would be any learner's nightmare. I plan to keep this up for a while, it's quite interesting. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5430 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 204 of 210 27 August 2012 at 7:10am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
To quickly answer the question, I would say that learners must accept the fact that spoken speech is not as "sanitized" as written speech and that sound plays an important part in conveying information. The big problem learners have when listening to real speech is making out the words. There is so much other stuff going on that you don't always know what to keep and what to discard. Native speakers don't have this problem because they can "fill in the blanks" and separate the wheat from the chaff. This is exactly why as learners we get stuck on certain things in recordings where we can't understand what somebody has said. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5430 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 205 of 210 27 August 2012 at 4:02pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Although @peregrinus may see eye to eye on a few things, I really have to disagree about what this thread comes down to. If we go back to the OP the question is whether counting vocabulary size is useless. Other than for reasons of personal motivation and curiosity, I think most people would agree that counting words serves no purpose. But more importantly at this point in the debate is this idea of a base vocabulary for learning usage well. I just can't seem to understand this concept of learning usage separately from learning vocabulary or grammar. For me to learn vocabulary or grammar is to learn how they are used. I don't understand how one can learn usage well earlier or later. What is the alternative to learning usage? Could one learn lists of words and not how to use them? For example, could I memorize the list of the 50 most important verbs in Spanish and then learn how to use them at a later date? Edited by s_allard on 27 August 2012 at 4:04pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6943 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 206 of 210 27 August 2012 at 4:59pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I meant to ask what the implications were for the materials to be used and the learning techniques. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5430 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 207 of 210 27 August 2012 at 5:11pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Sorry about my misunderstanding. I tend to emphasize the use of lots of audiovisual materials or materials that approximate the spoken language, like comic books and cartoons. And this includes songs, of course. At a more advanced level, I use a lot a television materials with transcripts so that students see and hear what the language really sounds like. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6943 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 208 of 210 27 August 2012 at 8:15pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Thanks. What about someone just starting a new language? As a more specific example, what materials do you recommend to those starting out in French? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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