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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 5429 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes  Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 65 of 309 02 September 2014 at 4:38pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I'm not a big fan of counting words in general because I think the definition of a word is too difficult. The reason
this whole debate started, readers will recall, is that I observed this video of hyperpolyglot Emanuele Marini speaking 15 languages very briefly and I remarked that it demonstrated that one could speak a language with a few words. The debate has since morphed into a running battle between minimalists (myself) and maximalists (nearly everybody else) over how many words one needs to speak a language. But the fact remains that we don't know how many words Marini knows in 30 languages. And who cares? 1 person has 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 66 of 309 02 September 2014 at 5:31pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I don't understand why you would have expected a lot of different words in a 13 minute video that covers 16 languages. 7 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5429 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 67 of 309 02 September 2014 at 6:22pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Since it would be unfair for everybody else for me to repeat much of the discussion just for people who have
come late to the party and don't know what we are talking about, I'll move on to a topic raised earlier about how and why examiners are able to judge a candidates in just a few minutes. As a matter of fact, in the following document from the University of Cambridge. Examples of speaking performance levels A2 to C2 there is an Appendix A: Global Oral Assessment Scale. At the bottom of the page, it is written: "Use this scale in the first 2-3 minutes of a speaking sample to decide approximately what level you think the speaker is. Then change to Table 5.5 (CEF Table 3) and assess the performance in more detail in relation to the descriptors for that level." In other words, examiners are encouraged to make up their mind in 2-3 minutes and then use the rest of the time to confirm their initial judgment. As I pointed out earlier, this works because there is a certain consistency of speaking proficiency from beginning to end. Experienced examiners have seen everything and can easily detect if a candidate knows their stuff or not. Can one cheat on the speaking proficiency test? I know that cheating has another definition around here. I'm not using it in the sense of preparing or studying for the test. Cheating is used in the more common sense of receiving some illegal information about the test beforehand. Let's say you get a chance to read in advance the articles one of which have to choose for a presentation and discussion. This is certainly an advantage for the formal presentation but what happens when time comes to have a discussion with the two examiners. Now, you're on your own. All those pretty phrases that you had rehearsed for the presentation go out the window. You're asked a pretty sophisticated question about the topic. Maybe you don't really understand the question. But you start anyway with a great sentence that you think will do. Not a good start. In fact, you don't answer the question, and the examiner duly takes note. Another question comes, and you start stuttering as you try to figure out the right verb conjugation. And it's downhill all the way. This may be a bit exaggerated but the point is that it's very difficult to cheat in oral performance. You either know your stuff or you don't, from the very beginning. This actually makes the examiner's job relatively easy. Edited by s_allard on 03 September 2014 at 2:10am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5531 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 68 of 309 02 September 2014 at 7:03pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
My French improves dramatically within the first hour of speaking. Of course, that just means I make sure I'm heavily immersed for a few days before an exam. But in general, there are lots of ways to bamboozle examiners. Sfuqua mentions a few based on his experience with trainee FSI examiners:
If you can control the topic of the conversation, you can fudge at least half a CEFR level and maybe more. If you watch me interacting with young children, my French is really solid, because I've listened to a French speaker do that for over half a decade. So of course, on a test, if I can change the subject to children and child-rearing, my French will get better. Of course, good exams go to a lot of trouble to defeat these tricks. The DELF B2 and DALF exams pick random topics out of a hat (mine was congestion charges for drivers in Paris), and if you change the subject, you're going to get hammered on points. The best strategy for managing this is to link the official subject to another subject you can discuss more easily—"Well, I think that congestion charges are good for the environment" or "They're bad for the working class." And anybody who walks into a European B2 exam without being able talk about the environment for 5 minutes is being very foolish. Other useful subjects: language learning, school and problems of adolescents. Oh, and thank you for the list of 600 words. I'll get back to you on that. Edited by emk on 02 September 2014 at 7:04pm 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6596 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 69 of 309 02 September 2014 at 7:40pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Doesn't it include detecting whether the candidate has a sufficient vocabulary for the level in question? I know it's not in the guidelines, but obviously if you're offered to choose a topic from the list, you're supposed to know the thematic vocabulary for at least one of the topics. (I was to choose two topics at my Finnish exam) And let me note again that CEFR exams vary greatly. In Finland, the teachers only work as conversation partners, the interview is filmed on video and the grade is given by a completely different person who doesn't interact with you, nor with the examiners. There's also a task where you need to speak into the microphone, which is obviously also recorded and evaluated - for the A1/A2 and B1/B2 exams, that's the only speaking task, in fact, in order to make them cheaper and more accessible, I suppose. Edited by Serpent on 02 September 2014 at 7:41pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5429 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 70 of 309 02 September 2014 at 11:25pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I think the strategy of taking control of the conversation is a good one for dealing with these CEFR exams
because you will be dealing with a more familiar topic. But let's look at the assessment criteria again: Range, Accuracy, Fluency, Interaction, Coherence. I don't see how changing the topic really makes a big difference when interacting with the examiners. Note that the reference to FSI examiners spoke of FSI trainee examiners. As I mentioned, we're looking at the top of the line C2 exam level. A more familiar topic might make certain elements of vocabulary easier but I don't see any major overall effect. Will your French become more idiomatic? Maybe a bit. If your grammar is weak, I don't see how changing to a more familiar subject will make your grammar suddenly improve. Will your fluency improve because of the topic? Will the interaction with the examiners be very different? The way I look at a test at this level is that the examiners are basically expecting a level of performance that approximates that of a native speaker. At this skill level, you are somewhat close to the level of the examiner. This is what you have to demonstrate. I don't think it would be wise to come with a whole subject prepared with a list of idiomatic expressions that you want to squeeze in, some pithy lines all well rehearsed and some really sophisticated questions to ask. I don't think this will work. If your French sucks, it will show. I don't think changing to a more familiar subject will turn bad French into good French. Edited by s_allard on 02 September 2014 at 11:34pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5429 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 71 of 309 03 September 2014 at 2:57am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Poor Marini. His ears must be ringing. But just to get back to his video, I think it's interesting that we can form
some judgment of his proficiency after listening to him speaking for around 50 seconds in each language. I didn't count how many words he spoke in each language. Maybe 100 to 150, if that many. After hearing so few words, can we truly say that he speaks all those languages? This is a bit of a trick question. We don't really expect him to speak all 29 languages just as well as his native Italian, but we are told that he works in these languages in some sort of customer service job. So, he uses the languages regularly. We only hear a short snippet of him speaking, but, like our oral proficiency examiners, we are able to quickly form an opinion of Marini's overall ability because we believe there is a general consistency in speaking ability. It all looks very good to me. I think that there are probably some limitations with technical vocabulary or specialized topics, but there's no reason to doubt that Marini can do his job in all those languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| robarb Nonaglot Senior Member United States languagenpluson Joined 5058 days ago 361 posts - 921 votes Speaks: Portuguese, English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, French Studies: Mandarin, Danish, Russian, Norwegian, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Greek, Latin, Nepali, Modern Hebrew | Message 72 of 309 05 September 2014 at 8:11am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I don't use all those words in my daily life, and certainly not regularly. The claim, however, was not that everyone uses all of these words each month, but rather, that over the course of multiple years, taking all situations together, most people use at least a few thousand words. People in word-heavy professions might use most of the Common 5000, plus thousands more rare words. So 3000 is unreasonably small as an upper limit. Similarly, 500 is unreasonably small as a lower limit. Even people in word-light professions use a decent chunk (i.e. more than 10%) of the words on the Common 5000 list, plus some rare words depending on their automobile/bicycle/job/hobby/children/diet status.
2000-2500 is a reasonable off-hand estimate for your active vocabulary in the context of HTLAL. If English is your primary everyday language, then the number will just grow as you add all the other contexts you use it in.
We are counting in two different ways. 1000 words is not enough in the sense that, if you have to pre-select 1000 words to have in your active vocabulary, then try to use just those words to talk about various things, you'll find it insufficient. There is no list of 1000 words that will cover everyday adult English conversation without resorting to paraphrasing the words for less common things like 'grapefruit' or 'spokes' or 'cardigan.' Yes, I'm aware you may not use the words 'grapefruit', 'spokes', or 'cardigan.' But according to the topic, it's necessary to use hundreds of similarly uncommon words. Each time you use a new topic, you introduce more such words. You can't get by in a year's worth of 30-minute conversations about different topics with just a single set of 1000 words. With few words, you can use the language. You can buy gasoline, no problem. It turns out developmental psychologists measured that a 500-word used vocabulary is typical of 2.5 year old children (Source: Bates, E. et al. (1994) Developmental and stylistic variation in the composition of early vocabulary. Journal of Child Language 21 p.85-123). So it turns out that you can in fact communicate with so few words. In conclusion, we should not worry too much about counting words and trying to build a sufficient vocabulary. We can be resourceful and communicate with the words we have. There's no need to be afraid of trying to speak early. If you learn to interact fluently, you can probably get your message across. However, we should not delude ourselves into thinking we can sound like a typical native speaker in all aspects of our lives with nothing but 500 or 1000 basic words. Anyway, sorry for being confrontational and long-winded. I think it's great to show people how they can communicate with few words. If you do it well you might even be mistaken for a heritage speaker, but I think it's clear it won't match the expressive range of a typical native speaker. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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