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How many words to speak? | ||
Tags: Number of words | Speaking | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5428 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes  Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 281 of 309 23 September 2014 at 5:33pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I like wagers myself, but I don't see the point here. If we want to see what can be done with a set of words, the way to prove that is to have people use the set. Isn't what this is all about? And we already have a number of conversations. I don't see what looking at word coverage brings to the table. We have seen already that 5000 words from French film subtitles are not enough to cover the words of a 130 word conversation here. Why make things so complicated? One test would be to take a set of 300 words built from four conversations here and ask two native speakers to have a conversation using only these words. And also ask two native speakers to have a conversation using the first 300 words from the French film subtitle dataset. Actually, it probably could be done. Since so many people are skeptical about what can be done with a few words, I'll give an example. Here are the first lines of a conversation from France Bienvenue and Google translation: L : Alors Joran, j’ai entendu (1) que tu faisais de la musculation. J: Oui, c’est ça, donc ça fait trois ans maintenant que j’ai commencé la musculation. L : Oui. J : J’avais dix-sept ans. L : Ah, quand même jeune ! J : Oui, oui, on peut dire ça comme ça, oui. Et donc j’ai commencé donc à en faire dans une salle à côté de chez moi. L : Tu habites où ? J : J’habite à côté du centre commercial "Grand Littoral". L: So Joran, I heard that (1) you were doing weight training. J: Yes, that's right, so it's been three years now since I started bodybuilding. L: Yes. J: I was seventeen years old. L: Ah, still young! J: Yes, we can say it like that, yes. And so I started to do so in a room next door to me. L: Where do you live? J: I live next to the shopping center "Grand Littoral." This is very simple French but there is a ton of grammar details in there. The subject is musculation or bodybuilding. Maybe you're not interested in musculation. So, substitute the topic you're interested in and continue on. Or change something else. What we have here is a set of micro-structures that allow you to use the language in different ways. You don't learn these by heart, You learn how they work. Everything is not bound to musculation. You can use the same words and even the same phrases to talk about another topic with minimal changes. 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 282 of 309 23 September 2014 at 6:01pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Your method/model is overfitting for teaching English/French in Canada ;)
1 person has 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 283 of 309 23 September 2014 at 6:07pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
That was a fun test! I only took the passive test, and I had to stop a few minutes early for a plumber, so I couldn't go back and check my answers. But aside from some weird mistakes in the 2,000 band, I did OK: 
I liked this test because it really tried to measure what I think of as "automatic" or "consolidated" vocabulary. It didn't just test me on vaguely understanding the words in context. Instead, it felt almost like a crossword: I had to match up clues with words, and some of them were a little tricky. Oh, and it felt like whoever designed the test made an effort to defeat English users who were relying heavily on cognates. Unfortunately, I'm still scoring 29/30, 30/30 and 29/30 in the top three bands, so I can't estimate my passive vocabulary size with any accuracy. It's another ceiling effect, just like with Milton's vocabulary studies.
Serpent, you rule. I think we've established the DELF B1 reading samples are too hard for people who lack the Romance cognates.
To be honest, it was a little bit awkward. I would have loved to have had that conversation in French, but: 1. There was a line of 4 people standing behind me waiting to be served. 2. My listening comprehension is still pretty shaky for native-speed, informal Quebec French. 3. My opinions about Werber's science fiction are… complicated, and require upper-level vocab. 4. I'd previously overheard the same bakery employee speaking native-level English. So in reality, as much as I would have loved to talk about science fiction, I wasn't going to hold up the whole line of customers. Maybe someday, when I can understand native-level, full-speed Quebec French without problems? Oh, and when I can reply fast enough that I don't feel like I'm being a jerk by using French with somebody who obviously speaks English as well as I do? Montreal is glorious city for somebody with good French and English. But you need to be a little bit sensible about which language you use when. There are customs and social conventions for that stuff, and everybody is so terribly polite about it that I always want to respond with equal politeness. 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 284 of 309 23 September 2014 at 7:23pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Well, that rather spoils the fun. :-/ 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| rdearman Senior Member United Kingdom rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5234 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin | Message 285 of 309 23 September 2014 at 8:31pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Ages ago... in a time far in the distant past back when this horse may or maynot have been freshly killed. I said you only need one or two words to be able to speak at someone. Hello in English, Bonjour in French, 你好 in Mandarin, etc.
So s_allard has now said his point was that you only need a few words to start speaking. Can we now all concede he is correct; you need less than 300 words to start a conversation. Let's put away the flogs and whips and leave this particular equine corpse in peace. 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 286 of 309 23 September 2014 at 8:40pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
But I have a new woodchipper and I didn't get to try it yet! :-) No? A bad idea. OK, I suppose. *sobs quietly in the corner* One of my favorite conversational activities is the flogging of of conversational dead horses. It's fun to make charts and graphs and stuff. :-) (Edited for clarity for non-native English speakers.) Edited by emk on 23 September 2014 at 8:52pm 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 287 of 309 23 September 2014 at 8:41pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Now that I've finished knocking some sense into the heads of the poor students, I can look at the issue of how to
estimate speaking performance with small vocabularies. As iversen pointed out, he felt extremely constrained with a small vocabulary in Swahili. That's normal because he doesn't know much Swahili. Someone who knew Swahili well could do a lot with 300 words. Here the problem how to prove that a set of 300 words is enough to debate a given topic at a high level of proficiency. Something like "Is the Ebola virus a threat to western society?" in 300 words of C2 level French or less. I don't see that a problem if I can choose my words freely. If I'm given a set of words such as those from four conversations of France Bienvenue, it's certainly more challenging. It may be a bit awkward because the words for virus, epidemic, quarantine, etc. are not there. In which case I'll just have to add them. I'll still use less than 300 words but I'll have to substitute some of the previous words with more topic-specific words. So now the total pool may stretch to 320. The other side of the equation is how to construct C2-level French given the raw materials that I have. I think it would be a piece of cake but I may not be a fair judge because I am a native French speaker and I debate in French very often. On the other hand, doing this in Spanish would be definitely more challenging. I would really have to think about some of the technical vocabulary and how to construct the arguments. How do I come out of the starting gate with a high enough level of Spanish to wow the examiners and put them in a good mood? This is going to be difficult. But I've written a paper in Spanish on Alzheimer's disease so, I decide to cannibalize that. That would give me some of the medical jargon that I could transfer to this subject. Then there would be the question of the grammatical construction and the delivery. Not easy. 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 288 of 309 23 September 2014 at 10:24pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Ah I see, I somehow missed the fact that this was in Montreal too. Which brings us back to the original point that Montreal is different :-) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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