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Online book on vocabulary size | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4994 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 1 of 17 05 January 2012 at 10:59am | IP Logged | |||||
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I found a book on Scribd called "Vocabulary Size and Exam Performance".
I've skimmed several of the chapters and found it quite interesting, especially chapter 10, "Vocabulary Acquisition and Informal Language Input". This chapter looks at four ways students may informally pick up vocabulary: reading comics, singing along with songs, watching DVD's with subtitles, and learning from wordlists. I found it interesting that the author concludes that all four methods are approximately equal in value, with test cases learning about 30 words per hour spent on the activity. The chapter states that frequent repitition of the item (e.g. the same comic, same CD, same film) aids in vocabulary aquisition. The only problem with this conclusion is that the test cases were based on the student doing this very thing, and it was not tested against students using a variety of materials rather than repeating materials. However, I have read a study elsewhere comparing vocabulary acquisition of children reading the same book 10 times versus children reading 10 different books (all with the same set of unknown words). The conclusion was that repeating the same book was more effective. The method for watching DVD's was to have the audio in English, and read subtitles in the target language, pausing as necessary to read the whole text. It never occurred to me to do it this way, but when I think about it, it seems like it would be more effective than the other way around. This book has given me a lot to think about, and I'm sure many of you will enjoy browsing through it. 9 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6096 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 2 of 17 05 January 2012 at 3:15pm | IP Logged | |||||
One of the properties of subtitles is that they are usually written in "unmarked" language -- ie. with neutral word order and common vocabulary. They are by nature both "authentic" (in that they were written for native speakers and "simplified". Also, fluent readers are naturally drawn to the written word -- it is very difficult not to read subtitles when presented onscreen. So objectively, subtitles should be ideal learning material. However, I'm not sure of the value of having the native language audio playing. Why not have the target language as both soundtrack and subtitles? 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4994 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 3 of 17 05 January 2012 at 5:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
The book didn't really say why they did it this way, or justify it in any way. However, if the purpose is vocabulary acquisition, it would make sense to use the English soundtrack, to give some way of understanding unknown words. It was shown to be effective in their test, although it was not a full scientific experiment, and did not trial other methods. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5515 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 4 of 17 05 January 2012 at 7:19pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm not surprised that repetition of the same material is more effective for vocabulary acquisition than superficial exposure to a wide range of material. What I think happens is that in-depth repetition is conducive to memorization and therefore acquisition of words in context, i.e. with meaning. We must also keep in mind that given the highly repetitive nature of spoken language, a sample, e.g. one television episode, can easily provide high coverage of the target language. In other words, one movie can give you the equivalent coverage of many movies. So, it makes sense to concentrate on the one good sample to acquire target vocabulary and then move on to other samples for variety and extra vocabulary.
In passing, the author of the study points out that in the current CEFR model there is very little discussion of specific vocabulary sizes for the various proficiency levels. The designers of the CEFR did start out with specific targets but seemed to have given up after further thought and research. Edited by s_allard on 05 January 2012 at 7:20pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| fiziwig Senior Member United States Joined 4950 days ago 297 posts - 618 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 5 of 17 05 January 2012 at 7:40pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Every morning I read the daily comics in Spanish at http://www.gocomics.com/explore/espanol
When I first started out learning Spanish I was picking up a dozen or more new words every day. I printed out all the comic strips, 8 to a page, so I could review them later to refresh my memory. I found it very effective, and a pleasant way to boost my vocabulary every morning. 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| s0fist Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5131 days ago 260 posts - 445 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: Sign Language, German, Spanish, French | Message 6 of 17 05 January 2012 at 8:09pm | IP Logged | |||||
Now if only I could automatically syndicate those directly into anki. :)_ 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6788 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 7 of 17 06 January 2012 at 12:07am | IP Logged | |||||
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I thought I was going to study languages this evening, but Jeffers made me study linguistics instead!
I haven't read the whole book yet (and somehow I fear that the authors forgot to describe three column wordlists with groups of 5 to 7 words and repetition the day after, which makes the whole thing rather pointless). But I have read enough to believe that it can teach me a thing or two which I have overlooked during my own word counting episodes. And at page 7 I learned a word (or rather a word combination which deserves to be considered a lexeme in its own right): Hapax Legomena !! And there is one funny thing: as long as I don't repeat it here at HTLAL it is an example of itself, hehe (it means a word that only occurs once in a given corpus). And a peculiar detail about Greek (p. 67): the frequency of the-thing-which-name-for-obvious-reasons-shall-not-be-repeat ed-here in the Greek Hellenic National Corpus is 49,4 %, against a mere 30 % Carroll et al.’s (1971) corpus of English. How the .. can you learn a language where half the words are used just ONCE??? 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5515 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 8 of 17 06 January 2012 at 4:49am | IP Logged | |||||
I'm sure Iversen knows the answer to this question. Such is the nature of human language that a very small number of words are used a lot and a large number used rarely. As the book pointed out, a vocabulary of around 2000 words in most European languages will allow you do very well. Of course, you might need specialized technical vocabulary for certain professional activities. That would have to added to the core vocabulary. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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