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How many words to speak? | ||
Tags: Number of words | Speaking | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4705 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes  Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 177 of 309 18 September 2014 at 6:14pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
No, that's to sail, and a boat on dry land isn't sailing anywhere. S_allard is trying to tell us that if you're a very good rower, you could survive a storm in a rowboat. And you could. But most people don't want to row in a rowboat in a storm. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5428 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 178 of 309 18 September 2014 at 6:24pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
People complain that I repeat myself all the time. I also get tired. After all the discussion that we've been through, we now have a quote that "And the common sense tells us that there is no way anyone can speak using 300 words.These 300 words would be mostly abstract and functional, thus wouldn't enable you to talk even on basic topics." All I can say is read the thread. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6595 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 179 of 309 18 September 2014 at 6:39pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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You too. You'll see many statements that you never responded to, and maybe you'll notice that nobody thinks you've proven all that much so far. Specifically, you don't provide any kinds of lists, which would make this kind of threads far more useful for most independent learners. You basically say, "get a tutor, convince them that you can speak with 300 words and make them find those 300 words for you". This won't start a HTLAL revolution the way LR or Prof Argüelles' methods did.
Also note that Maecenas said "basic topics", not "any basic topic". You did provide examples of conversations, but each of them only showed how 300 words can maybe somehow be enough for one topic. How about taking the same words and using them for a conversation on a different topic? Edited by Serpent on 18 September 2014 at 6:41pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6701 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 180 of 309 18 September 2014 at 7:00pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Noah sailed around on a sea and hit upon the only mountain in the area that stuck out of the water. It's like the sad story about the most lonely tree in the world (according to Guinness). It stood proudly in the middle of the Sahara desert, until some jerk ran into it with his car.
OK, 'nuff tales from the seven seas. Maecenas23 seems to suspect that some learners inadvertently might start out with 300 abstract words if they wanted to try out a severely limited vocabulary. In my opinion it would be more logical to start out with the most useful grammar words: auxiliary verbs, conjunctions, pronouns and prepositions plus a sprinkling of very concrete words, like the words for hello, goodbye, thanks, gimme and toilet. And I think those who try to speak very early are aware of this. You won't need any abstract words before you are advanced enough to discuss complicated things in your target language. Edited by Iversen on 18 September 2014 at 7:05pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5260 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 181 of 309 18 September 2014 at 7:30pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Surprised that no one has mentioned Benny Lewis' latest guest post on Fi3M by someone named Frank Fradella who runs a commercial language course site called "lingvo interactive": What You Can Do With The Most Common 300 Words In A Foreign Language?. The post has little practical depth and the comments reflect that.
The post links to a kickstarter campaign the poster is running to promote this method with the audacious and disingenuously hyped name of Learn a new language in just 60 days. Interestingly, if you donate at the $65 level you get access to the course for a year. I thought you only needed 60 days! Here's what Mr. Fradella promises:
The ultimate question is, will buying and doing this course leave a learner feeling satisfied and with a good, solid base upon which to build, or dissatisfied with, and hobbled by, the artificiality of circumlocutions? I've been on the forum long enough to see a few logs of people who decided to "learn" languages through Swadesh lists who failed miserably, because that's all they did. They didn't learn how to use the words. It sure looks tempting- learn the most common 300 words and gain 2/3 of the language, but is this "fool's gold"? Mr. Fradella makes some good, legitimate points. Most courses do wait to (or never bother to) "give you the good stuff". The question remains, is the "good stuff" he promises useful or just snake oil? I'm always open to a new way of doing things, but I am not open to spending my hard earned money to try something unproven. Time will tell if this start up will be successful and become the next "beloved" language-learning program. As President Harry Truman said "I'm from Missouri. You have to show me". Edited by iguanamon on 18 September 2014 at 8:30pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5530 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 182 of 309 18 September 2014 at 8:37pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
This is actually a pretty plausible claim. If you want good coverage of ordinary, day-to-day conversation, you really do need a pile of pronouns, adverbs and whatnot, and it adds up quickly. Once again, looking at my numbers:
Let's say we go for 98% coverage of the smaller categories. This gives us, very approximately (with some prepositions and a couple of adjectives filed under "Adverbs", for mysterious reasons):
Now, we can throw out a handful of these 202 words for whatever reason. These lists are based on computerized parsing, and so they contain a few weird artifacts like "l'", which is basically the definite article before a vowel, which the parser treats as a separate word because the gender is ambiguous. But even once we throw out some words, we still have over 150 words here. There are no nouns or verbs, and only a few adjectives. And yet, it's hard to imagine a B1 student who doesn't know nearly all the words on this list. Are we going to give up directement "directly"? Or au "to the"? Or puis "then"? Or vers "towards"? Or maybe ceci "this"? And yet these are all either at or near the bottom of their respective lists, and everything before them is even more common. I'm perfectly happy to believe that students using a "Speak from Day 1" method can do quite well with 300 to 400 words if they get to learn 20 new words before every conversation they attempt. But I see no evidence whatsoever that a monolingual Japanese speaker could learn only 300 words of French—no matter how well—and somehow pass the DELF B1 exam. Well, if their tutor broke into the testing center a week before, photocopied the tests, and let the student review them in advance, they might be able to cheat their way to a passing score. So here's the evidence we have against a B1 student with a 300-word vocabulary: - Researchers typically say actual B1 students have vocabularies much larger than 300 words (estimates range from 1,100 to 7,000). - Nobody has actually produced a 300-word list for students sitting B1 exams. - We can easily blow half of our 300-word budget just covering adverbs, articles, conjunctions, prepositions and pronouns. - 500 words provide only 83% coverage of native French films, and 75% of native French books. In other words, roughly 1 out of every 4 or 5 words is unknown. Taken together, this evidence convinces me that a total vocabulary of 300 words is almost certainly insufficient for passing an honest B1 exam. And given this weight of evidence, I don't think it's unreasonable to ask for an actual, written list of 300 words. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5428 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 183 of 309 18 September 2014 at 11:25pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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How many times do we have to go down this road? We know that a dataset of a large sample of texts such as
native French films and native French books will produce statistics showing well-known percentages for text coverage for certain categories of words. We know for example, as emk has shown, that to get 99.5% coverage of all the nouns in all the French films of the sample, you would have to know 13347 unique nouns. With similar figures for all the other parts of speech, if we want 99.5% coverage of all the words in all the French films we need 20631 words. Nobody disputes these figures. Suppose you don't intend to look at all the French films; you only want to look at one film, Qu'est-ce qu'on a fait au bon Dieu?. How many words do you need for that particular film? It may only be 4,000. So it's all a question of what you want to do. Do you want to see all the French films in the sample or just one. What is quite striking is how small numbers can give rather large coverage. I see for example that 500 words provide 83% coverage of native French films. That's not bad. In fact, I find that very good. Some people might say that you still don't understand 17 out of 100 unique words. Therefore you won't understand anything. That's not true. 17 of 100 unique words is not the same at 17 out of every 100 words on the page. It's much less. And considering that we have the picture and the sound, that 83% coverage is probably enough to enjoy the movie. I think that even native speakers probably don't hear or make out every word spoken in most movies. If now we look at the question of how many words are needed for a B1 exam, the traditional approach is exactly what emk has proposed. What sort of minimum coverage do we need based on a sample of film subtitles? I should point out that we don't have dataset of B1 answers. Instead we have all these well-known estimates based on word frequency tables. My approach is very different. First of all, let's look at some typical questions from the exam. I've already given them. I'll just remind people that in part 1, the candidate is asked to talk about one of a number of topics, such as one's hobbies or family. Just talking generally. Nothing complicated. How many words are necessary to do this? emk doesn't answer this question. His approach is that 1,100 to 7,000 words will cover this topic and any other. This is certainly true, but how many words do we need to speak about a hobby or one's family? Secondly, I say let's look at an actual conversation of people talking about family. Again, I include at the end of this post a transcription of such a conversation of people talking about triplets in a family. This is from that wonderful site France Bienvenue. If we look at, for example, the adverbs actually used in this conversation and the long list of adverbs that emk has given for 99.5% of French film subtitles, we see that this conversation uses just a small number of all those adverbs. That list is overkill for this conversation. I haven't done the word count for this conversation, and I have to admit that I'm getting tired of doing this because the results are always similar. I would say that it's around 150 unique words because it is very repetitive So, that takes care of part 1 of the speaking test. Now let's look at part 2 where the examiner plays the part of a teacher who confronts a student who has been coming to class late. The examinee plays the student. How many words do we need to do this? Now the questions that emk will inevitably raise, and rightly so, is will the vocabulary needed for discussing family life with triplets be entirely suitable for talking about being late after school. Probably not, but do we throw out the entire set of words? No, we don't need the terms related to having triplets, but there's a lot of general stuff we can keep. How many new words do we need to talk about being late. Let's say 50 new words. Now we're up to 200. Now for part 3 of the test. You are given a choice of two short texts to read. You have 10 minutes to prepare a short presentation and answer questions. Again, the same question. Will the 200 words you know for talking about triplets in the family, arriving late at school be enough for you to handle your choice of topics? Well, it depends on the topic and, above all, your skill in handling the vocabulary you know. What is it about these questions that would require a large vocabulary. Let's add another 100 words. There we have 300 words. emk and others keep asking for a list of 300 words. I don't think there is a unique list. One could take the words for the conversation below and others that I've given as a starting point. I'm not sure what that will prove. Should we compare such a list to the dataset of French film subtitles? And conclude that the coverage is only 43,5% What does that prove? But the real elephant in the room here is the quality of the language in the conversation. This is not B1 level conversation. The speakers are not stuttering. There are no mistakes. Excellent fluency. Many examples of idiomatic French. How many HTLAL speakers of French as a second language can speak like this? This is the major difference between emk and myself. emk says you need between 1,100 to 7,000 words to pass the test. Not a word about the quality of the French. I say you need to demonstrate quality and mastery with whatever vocabulary you can muster. Maybe it will be 150 or 300 or 500. The real issue is can you speak well. We see in fact what native speakers can do a lot with less than 150 words. This is the real deal. But many people write here that this is impossible. It can't be real. 150 words probably gives an very low word coverage on the French film subtitle dataset. Nobody can have a conversation with so few words. And if they do, they can't talk about anything else. I have given conversation after conversation in French and English that use around 300 unique words, some even much less. Only one other poster has made the slightest reference to this body of evidence. Nobody has presented a conversation that uses 1000 unique words or even 500. A : Alors, bonjour à toutes les trois. C,S,V : Bonjour. A :Trois filles. Et donc…, bon, il y a d’abord… V : Véronique. C : Claire. S : Et Sophie. A : Et alors, vous avez un point commun en fait. V : Oui. On est triplées. A : Oui, c’est ça. Vous êtes pas seulement sœurs, vous êtes… S : Triplées. C : On est triplées. Donc on est nées toutes les trois le même jour, comme des juneaux, à part qu’on est trois. A : D’accord. A part que (1) vous êtes trois ! A part que ! Je sais pas si votre maman, elle a dit ça quand elle a su ça ! C : Non ! V : En plus, à la base (2), il y en avait que deux. A : Comment ça ? (3) V : Bah ils en avaient vu que deux. A : Ah ! C’est ça, à l’échographie, on voyait que deux ! Waouh ! Elle a découvert… V : Oui, plus tard. C : A l’échographie du troisième mois, on lui avait dit… Vous êtes pas… enfin, il y en a pas trois… Il y en a pas deux, il y en a trois. V : J’étais cachée. A : C’est vrai ? C : Du coup, ça a été le choc. Et puis en plus, ils lui avaient dit : Vous avez deux garçons, sûr, et une fille peut- être. Donc à la naissance, elle a découvert, le jour J, sous césarienne… A : Qu’il y avait trois filles ! C : Qu’il y avait une, deux et trois filles. A : Quelle aventure ! S : Voilà ! A : J’aimerais bien interroger votre maman, là, parce que elle doit avoir des tas de trucs à raconter ! Ah ouais, non c’est rigolo (4), ça. Mais alors du coup, donc trois filles, mais il y en a quand même deux qui se ressemblent. V : Oui. A : Alors, qu’est-ce que c’est, cette histoire-là ? V : Bah en fait, c’est deux vraies jumelles et moi, je suis une fausse triplée. On était dans deux poches différentes. A : Oui, oui. V : Et donc… A : C’est incroyable, hein, ce que la nature peut faire ! C’est vraiment… Bon, et donc, toutes les deux, Claire et Sophie, vous vous ressemblez, mais finalement, pas tant que… enfin… Si, vous vous ressemblez. Vous êtes des vraies jumelles. C : Oui, on est des vraies jumelles, 100 % vraies jumelles. Et après, ça dépend des gens. Des gens nous disent qu’on se ressemble énormément… A : Bah, au début, moi j’ai… C : Et d’autres, non. A : J’ai eu du mal (5), quoi, vraiment, je me disais : J’arriverai jamais à les différencier. Bon, Véronique, c’était bon, pas de problème, mais… Et puis en fait, maintenant, en vous regardant… enfin, à force de vous côtoyer, je me dis… J’ai déjà eu des jumeaux, et vraiment, une année, c’était des jumeaux, mais alors (6)! S : Deux gouttes d’eau (7). A : Vraiment ! C : Copie-collé. A : Ah ouais, copié-collé (8)! C’était impressionnant. Alors que là, je sais pas, c’est quoi ? Peut-être, comme vous disiez, le maquillage, ou… C : Le maquillage aussi. On fait une nuance au niveau de la coiffure. Elle a la mèche (9) sur le côté, moi, non. A : Mais quand même, il y a quelque chose qui fait que c’est pas tout à fait ça. Bon et alors, qu’est-ce que ça fait d’être, comme ça… enfin… je veux dire au niveau des rapports entre vous et… Parce que souvent, toutes les deux, Claire et Sophie, vous êtes assises ensemble et puisVéronique, elle est derrière. V : Oui. Moi, je suis toujours à part. A : Trois, c’est un petit… C’est un nombre pas facile, quoi, dans une famille. V : Beh… A l’école, il y a toujours des bureaux de deux. Donc du coup, bon bah mes sœurs sont à côté, vu que… S : Ça s’est toujours passé comme ça. A : Oui. V : Tout le temps, quand il y a eu deux, bah mes sœurs se sont mises à côté et moi, j’étais avec un copain ou une copine. A : Et vous vous sentiez différente ou… ? V : Non. Non. C’est que je… S : On est quand même légèrement… C : Un petit peu plus proches. Voilà. S : Légèrement. A : Ça se sent, ça ? V : Du coup, je savais que… V,F,C : Oui. Après… C : Donc pour nous… V : Elles avaient besoin d’être assises à côté (10). C : Voilà. C’est plus naturel que je sois assise à côté de Sophie qu’à côté de Véro. Après… Enfin, voilà… A : Vous êtes vraiment des sœurs. C : Voilà. Enfin, on aime nos sœurs… enfin, j’aime mes sœurs autant l’une que l’autre, mais c’est vrai que… A : Mais des vraies jumelles, c’est quelque chose de spécial. C,S : On est plus… V : Il y a un petit plus. A : On peut expliquer ça ? Comment… Qu’est-ce que vous diriez ? S : Je sais pas. C : On arrive à se comprendre sans qu’on se parle (11). C’est vrai que Sophie, si elle est mal, pas besoin qu’elle me dise : « Claire, je suis mal ». Je sais qu’elle est mal. Je le sens, je le vois. Et elle aussi. S : Et on se connaît vraiment par cœur (12). Il y a pas de… C : Et souvent, quand elle est mal, je lui dis : « Sophie, tu es mal ». Elle me dit « non ». Je lui dis : « Sophie, arrête de me mentir », parce que je sais que c’est pas vrai, quoi. C’est l’inverse quand c’est moi pour… Voilà ! Et du coup… A : Ouais, c’est fascinant, ça, hein ! C,S : Oui. A : Et est-ce que vous pouvez vous séparer ? V,C,S : Ah oui. C : On peut se séparer. V : On peut faire chacune notre vie (13) de notre côté. Après, bon, c’est vrai que pour les études, c’est plus arrangeant (14). Et puis malgré tout, c’est vrai qu’on a eu les mêmes goûts dès le départ. A : C’est ça quand même, parce que finalement, c’est quand même… S : C’est vrai qu’on a les mêmes goûts, le même profil intellectuel. A : Heureusement, parce que sinon, vous auriez pas pu faire les mêmes études. Mais… mais, bon, en même temps… Moi j’ai des amis aussi qui ont des jumeaux. Mais alors les garçons sont vraiment dans des choses totalement différentes. Bon, c’est pas des vrais jumeaux, hein, c’est sûr. Mais vraiment, ils font des études qui n’ont rien à voir (15), et depuis très longtemps. Ils ont… En fait, très vite, ils n’ont jamais été ensemble en classe. Ils étaient séparés, et tout. Mais vous, vous… S : Ah nous, on a toujours demandé à être dans la même classe. V : Et les professeurs nous disaient qu’ils nous laisseraient ensemble tant qu’ils [voient] (16) que tout se passe bien et que il y en a pas une qui se repose sur les deux autres, ou deux qui se reposent sur une. Et vu que bon, on a toujours travaillé chacune quand même au même rythme, de la même façon… A : Mais alors par exemple, bon, OK, les études, vous avez choisi, vous êtes ici, tout ça. Mais par exemple, un travail, des fois, enfin, ça va pas être évident. Ils vont pas vous prendre les trois dans la même entreprise ! S : Bon bah ça, on s’y prépare. C : Déjà, même pour le stage (17), on est dans trois entreprises différentes. A : Mais est-ce que par exemple, vous pourriez… je sais pas… vivre dans trois villes différentes ? C,S,V : Oui ! S, V : Si c’est pas trop loin ! A : Pas trop loin ! S : Pas trop, trop loin quand même ! V : Une heure maximum de route, hein ! C : Voilà. Je pense qu’on s’appellerait quand même très souvent. V,S : Tous les jours, c’est sûr ! C : Si c’est pas deux fois par jour (18). On verra, mais… Voilà ! V : C’est vrai que même dès que… enfin, moi, je sais que dès que je m’ennuie, si je suis pas avec mes sœurs, que je suis ailleurs, bah forcément, je vais de suite (19) les appeler. Je me dis pas : Bon, bah je vais rester là à rien faire. Non, non. J’ai besoin de les appeler. Vous faites quoi ? Ah vous faites ça. Ah bah alors je vais faire ça aussi moi de mon côté. A : Oui, oui , oui. C’est marrant, hein ! Et alors justement, quand vous étiez enfants, par exemple, c’est ça, vous aviez toujours quelqu’un pour jouer ! C,S,V : Oui ! Ça ! Alors là… ! V : C’est sûr qu’on s’est jamais ennuyées. S : On était… Ça, c’était super, super. Toujours une avec une idée donc… A : Oui oui. Et l’autre qui enchaîne. Ah ouais, c’est génial, ça, hein ! Et est-ce que ça… Est-ce que ça remettait pas un peu les autres à l’écart ? V : Non, bah… A : Ça a pas empêché ? S : Non, parce que… V : On a toujours été très… S : … sociables. V : Voilà. C : On parle beaucoup aux gens. Même si on les connaît pas, on fait rapidement connaissance. On n’est pas à ne pas parler (20). A : Ça vous isole pas. S : Voilà. C : On aime bien avoir beaucoup de monde autour de nous. A : C’est… c’est ce que j’ai remarqué. Parce que c’est vrai qu’on se dit, bon, bah des fois, voilà, si vous êtes autant fusionnelles (21), ça pourrait peut-être mettre les autres un peu à l’écart, et tout. Et en fait, c’est pas du tout le cas. S : Ah non ! Non ! A : Et puis ils vous apprécient beaucoup, et tout… tout ça ! C,S,V : Oui ! A : Oui, oui. Ça se voit (22). D’accord. (à suivre…) Edited by s_allard on 18 September 2014 at 11:29pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4705 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 184 of 309 18 September 2014 at 11:43pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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It's not the only criterion. People aren't just judged on how well they use vocabulary,
but also what kind of vocabulary they use. The fact that you are only ever going to use a subset of your vocabulary during any type of exam setting (as if the exam determined that we spoke a language?) doesn't really matter. Yes, you only need a couple hundred words for a good dialogue, but you need to be prepared to deal with a VARIETY of tests at an exam using relatvely idiomatic French. Nous voilà. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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