|
 |
Is vocabulary really necessary early on? | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| TrentBooks Triglot Groupie United States TrentBooks.com Joined 4853 days ago 43 posts - 98 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Guarani Studies: Biblical Hebrew, Japanese | Message 9 of 30 20 August 2011 at 5:20pm | IP Logged | |||||
It seems I did. I view listening as a method for acquiring the content I listed, so listening and reading are just ways to get the information in our brains. I was thinking more of what content to study in the foundational stage of language study, not specifically how to acquire that content. I do appreciate you bringing that up, though, as listening is indeed important for fluency - unless the language being studied is dead, such as biblical Hebrew or ancient Greek. I'm glad to see everyone's input. As I am more interested in the process of language learning itself, the varied perspectives help me to broaden my approach to language study in general. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6010 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 10 of 30 21 August 2011 at 11:53am | IP Logged | |||||
Building a vocabulary gradually doesn't necessarily mean learning from context. It's perfectly possible to buikd your vocabulary gradually by looking up words in a dictionary. But I would say it's always easier to learn vocabulary when you know a good amount of grammar, and this is for a very simple reason: the best way to learn a word is by using it. The more tenses you know, the more you can use a verb. The more cases you know, the more you can use a noun. The more connectors you know, the more you can use any word at all. There's little point in cramming 300 verbs when you only know the first person present, because you're not going to be able to use any of them unless you want to say "I do" or "I'm doing". You can't talk about someone else doing it, you can't say that your going to do it or that you used to do it. It's a waste of your time.
The point is simple: We are more likely to say things like: "I'll do it tomorrow" or "I want to do it tomorrow" than things like "The boy is eating an orange". When people advise learning X words to begin with, it's usually justified by saying X words allows you to read Y% of the language. But it's not just any old X words, it's a specific set of the most common words: each grammatical feature of a language introduces certain "functional" vocabulary, and a most of the top 100 words* in any language are these function words. But you can't learn these function words without learning the grammar rules they are linked to. So if you learn 500 words without grammar, you'll have to learn "lexical"/"content" words -- buy, eat, wash, car, orange, fast etc. What you won't learn is words like "ago" (481 on the list linked below), "yet" (467), "between" (226), possibly even "me" (122 -- I wasn't properly taught this in French until my fifth year!), "than" (91), and if you're really not doing any grammar, then you wouldn't even learn the number 1 word: the. But you do learn how to use "the", don't you? So you must be learning grammar. * A significant proportion of the rest of the top 500 is still function words. This list, for example, puts "yes" at number 486! 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| misslanguages Diglot Senior Member France fluent-language.blog Joined 4845 days ago 190 posts - 217 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: German | Message 11 of 30 21 August 2011 at 6:45pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
Saying that vocabulary isn't necessary is like claiming that being able to communicate in your target language is an option.
As a very wise man once said, "Without grammar, little can be conveyed. Without vocabulary, nothing can be conveyed." So yes, do learn vocabulary. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6908 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 12 of 30 21 August 2011 at 9:44pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
Nobody's suggesting that one should ignore vocabulary, but with a bag full of words but no instructions on how to use them will result in Tarzan speech (which however was suggested some years ago on this very forum....).
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| amethyst32 Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5648 days ago 118 posts - 198 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, French | Message 13 of 30 21 August 2011 at 10:00pm | IP Logged | |||||
I agree with you and I gave you a recommend for this post. Studying vocabulary would be inefficient for me anyway because it's grammar that I find difficult to assimilate but easy and pleasant to study. On the other hand, vocabulary I can pick it up easily but studying it outside of any meaningful context bores me rigid. Edited by amethyst32 on 21 August 2011 at 10:02pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| misslanguages Diglot Senior Member France fluent-language.blog Joined 4845 days ago 190 posts - 217 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: German | Message 14 of 30 24 August 2011 at 6:52pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
Still, using Tarzan speech is much better than not having a conversation at all.
With my approach on learning languages (see German in 10 minutes) I'd be better off speaking a very ungrammatical but understandable German than getting bogged down in details. It depends on the person though. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5129 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 15 of 30 24 August 2011 at 7:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
I would argue that Tarzan speech is not having a conversation at all, rather a monologue. You might get a person's attention initially with broken up words or even phrases and may even get some correction, but you won't hold that attention for long. A conversation is bi-directional with a good bit of improvisation thrown in. R. == 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5055 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 16 of 30 24 August 2011 at 7:35pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
If you can't master a grammatical rule (for example, English articles), you can leave it
but you can't go on without learning vocabulary. 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. |
