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Building Up Active Vocabulary | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| JiEunNinja Diglot Groupie United States Joined 4203 days ago 64 posts - 115 votes  Speaks: English*, Korean Studies: Spanish, Japanese | Message 1 of 19 10 September 2013 at 1:27am | IP Logged | |||||
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So I have a question. I'm not sure if someone has brought it up here, but hey.
So I have a really nice sized passive vocabulary in Spanish. I can understand just at least the jist of pretty much anything I read, but I can't say anything beyond greetings. I must have around 20 words in my active vocabulary. I feel like it would take a really long time for "words that I understand" to become "words I can use." Is there a way to speed up the process? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4143 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 2 of 19 10 September 2013 at 2:11am | IP Logged | |||||
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My number one recommendation: talk to people! The best way to build your active vocabulary is to actually use it.
Writing in your target language also helps - although it's very easy to use dictionaries as a crutch when writing. Try to free-write without double-checking every word. It helps if you can develop the skill of "talking around" a word that you don't know - for instance, "cage" could become "casa para los animales en el zoológico". I also build my active vocabulary with anki. Instead of studying from Spanish to English (which would help build passive vocabulary), I study from English to Spanish. I say the Spanish word out loud, then check my answer and say it again. While a lot of my anki vocab comes from input (novels, articles, etc), a lot of it also comes from output. When I find myself searching for a word in conversation, or looking up a word when writing an email, I add it to my anki deck. Edited by Stelle on 10 September 2013 at 2:12am 10 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| BaronBill Triglot Senior Member United States HowToLanguages.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4688 days ago 335 posts - 594 votes Speaks: English*, French, German Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Persian | Message 3 of 19 10 September 2013 at 5:36am | IP Logged | |||||
Yes, yes yes. To move words from passive to active, you need to use them and use them often. Talk to people as much as you can. If you don't have access to many native speakers, use self-talk. A great way to start this is the concept of "islands" which are pre-formulated chunks of conversation that you learn so well that you can recite them without really thinking about it. Stuff like introducing yourself, your hobbies, how your day is, your favorite book(s), etc.
This as well. I always use ANKI from L1 to TL. This helps me think in terms of active vs passive. How to Improve Your Foreign Language Immediately by Boris Shekhtman is a great book for improving your active vocabulary. It goes in depth into the "islands" concept as well as many other great tools. I recommend it to anyone and everyone I can. In summary, talk, talk, talk. Even if it is to yourself. Use it or lose it. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7204 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 4 of 19 10 September 2013 at 10:25am | IP Logged | |||||
How did you get to where you are? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| BlaBla Triglot Groupie Spain Joined 4128 days ago 45 posts - 72 votes Speaks: German*, English, French Studies: Nepali, Spanish, Dutch, Mandarin | Message 5 of 19 10 September 2013 at 11:07am | IP Logged | |||||
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While I can zip through my SRS collections, read, listen to or even shadow anything half
asleep, no matter if L1>L2 or vice versa; creative, free talking and writing forces me to wake up !. I've started to create (=active) my own little bilingual Assimils some years ago - mainly imaginary dialogues!, reports or essays of all sorts. I print them on A6 sheets (2 columns, 32 lines per side) that I keep in compact Moleskin style binders. Then I do my own mp3 recordings of the L2 parts, sometimes with a little help from some friends and start shadowing the stuff, mostly L1>L2 toward an imaginary partner or audience until it's assimilated AND activated beyond doubt and there's no more need for the L1 part. To me this works much more efficiently than anything else I've tried - I just keep creating those little texts and mp3s; one after another. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Theycalme_Jane Diglot Newbie United Kingdom theafrikaanschalleng Joined 4124 days ago 28 posts - 48 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 6 of 19 10 September 2013 at 2:34pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I agree with everyone else ...talking to people is great. And in addition to that...I'd like to add: record yourself. I make videos of myself for a blog. The blog's about challenging myself to become fluent in Afrikaans within a year, so I got to produce results. For that, I make videos twice a week - currently thinking about doing it even more frequently. I sing. I listen to podcasts and videos and repeat after the speakers. All that helps a little. I only get to talk to people on chats, so it's not the same as talking to people in real life. I still have a bit of delay to look words up. So the videos are basically all I've got at the moment and it's definitely getting me to become better. I've only been doing it for a month, but my native speaking followers have been remarkably supportive and keep telling me I make great progress, so I suppose to a certain degree it works.
2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4143 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 7 of 19 10 September 2013 at 2:42pm | IP Logged | |||||
Your blog's really interesting! Good luck learning Afrikaans! I think that recording yourself speaking is actually a really good idea. It's not going to be the same as Skyping a native speaker, but at least you'll get used to saying the words out loud. I also record myself reading aloud on a regular basis. Again - doesn't really help with active vocabulary, since I don't have to pull the words out of my head. But it helps with pronunciation and with actually forming the words out loud. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ScottScheule Diglot Senior Member United States scheule.blogspot.com Joined 5227 days ago 645 posts - 1176 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Latin, Hungarian, Biblical Hebrew, Old English, Russian, Swedish, German, Italian, French | Message 8 of 19 10 September 2013 at 4:22pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Actual speaking the language is the best means. I also use Anki extensively and find this to greatly amplify my active vocabulary (be sure to make both cards and their reverse).
Also, after you've defeated your enemies, be sure to consume their brains. This will allow you to acquire all the words in their active vocab. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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