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Article: Students fall short on Vocabulary | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| 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 81 of 319 10 April 2014 at 11:39pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Erik Gunnemark published lists like that too.
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 DavidStyles Octoglot Pro Member United Kingdom Joined 3939 days ago 82 posts - 179 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Latin, French, Portuguese, Norwegian Studies: Mandarin, Russian, Swedish, Danish, Serbian, Arabic (Egyptian) Personal Language Map | Message 82 of 319 10 April 2014 at 11:48pm | IP Logged | |||||
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And many others also. When it comes to the modern era, Bodmer was perhaps the main exponent of that, in the 1920s-1940s.
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| schoenewaelder Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5558 days ago 759 posts - 1197 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 83 of 319 10 April 2014 at 11:51pm | IP Logged | |||||
I think you might have just added a bushel of enrichment to the English language there. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4663 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 84 of 319 11 April 2014 at 12:00am | IP Logged | |||||
I don't imagine that many successful test candidates plough through 10,000 or 20,000 of the most common words in their TL. OTOH I can imagine that they may well use some form of SRS to work through the articles and books that they are reading. They might then check the breadth of their passive vocabulary to see if they are in the right ball- park, so to speak. Now I don't know what those tests involve, but if an active vocabulary or 1500 words is what I'm going to have to produce on the day, then I'd expect to need a passive vocabulary of 5x or 10x that. If I test myself and find that I only know 5,000 words passively then I might be concerned. I wouldn't seek to fix that by memorising word lists though, I'd hit the books and the magazines and the web and read voraciously. I would certainly seek to practice as many different topics with my tutor as possible. That would provide much more valuable feedback about my chances in the exam that a raw vocabulary power index. In practice I think it would be hard to find a candidate who can pass C1 but has only a passive vocabulary of (say) 3,000 words. My French is appalling. I've usually made myself understood on holiday but not with any particular ease and sometimes even having to resort to hand waving. But I've survived. So maybe I'm a B1 on a good day. I can, and have, however, read a number of French novels. I don't have the list to hand, but at least a dozen, none of them ridiculously short. So I'd guess at least 1,000 pages. I'm sure my passive vocabulary must be (or have been ... I've not read any in two years!) in the 3000+ range (if anyone knows of a suitable online test, I'm all ears ...). I'm years off a C1 and yet I think I have twice as much passive vocabulary as these C1 candidates demonstrated of their active vocabulary. I'd be very surprised if their passive vocabulary in their TL wasn't quite a lot higher than mine in French. 2 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 85 of 319 11 April 2014 at 6:51am | IP Logged | |||||
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I have no objection to the use of whatever learning tool that is helpful. Anki, flashcards in whatever medium, word
lists, you name it. If it works for you, go for it. As for measuring vocabulary, I personally feel it is a total waste of time for the foreign language learner. And this for two reasons. First, I think the results are misleading because of major methodological issues. Second, I don't see the usefulness of measuring one's vocabulary, especially with such imprecise tools. Do I need to set specific goals of vocabulary size? Non of the CEFR tests mention vocabulary size. Why should I bother? 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 86 of 319 11 April 2014 at 7:41am | IP Logged | |||||
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Okay so I found out I was one of the last people who got their Finnish grammar and vocabulary certified as C2. This part of the exam was removed a few months after I passed it.
But note how they also removed explicit grammar testing, not only the vocabulary. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| shapd Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6147 days ago 126 posts - 208 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Italian, Spanish, Latin, Modern Hebrew, French, Russian | Message 87 of 319 11 April 2014 at 11:41am | IP Logged | |||||
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In the article of Nation's posted by s allard, he actually recommends learning the most common 3000 words as fast as possible so that after that stage extra vocabulary can be picked up by exposure to real language. This is what he has calculated as the takeoff stage (roughly B1). To do this, he encourages the use of directed teaching, including frequency derived word lists. Contrary to what many of us think, he claims there is no hard evidence that learning from context is more efficient. After the takeoff level, he states that formal vocabulary learning is inefficient, as there are just too many possible words.
Be careful at taking his estimates of the number of words needed for general use at face value. He tends to quote word families, which include derivatives of head words eg he would include govern and governor under the same heading. So many of his estimates should be multiplied by a factor of 2 or 3 - not such a small number. In one of his more recent studies, he looked at the number of word families required to understand the film Shrek and came up with over 6000. This was consistent with what he found for other similar films and less than for literary works, about 8-10000 families ie possibly as many as 20000 lemmas (head words). Where I would agree with s allard is that learners should not obsess about the number of words they know. Once the bare minimum is known (?Nation's 3000) they should expose themselves to as much real language as they can cope with. Common words and expressions will be reinforced and less common ones will be learnt from context or directed study. Very idiomatic expressions using common words can be learnt as set phrases in the same way as any other vocabulary. If a wide variety of topics is read/heard, the breadth of vocabulary will come naturally. But a very large amount of input is needed. 4 persons have 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 88 of 319 11 April 2014 at 1:20pm | IP Logged | |||||
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But here on HTLAL many should also remember that no matter how much we enjoy grammar, accuracy and precision come with time and require exposure. We shouldn't get obsessed with making our grammar perfect either. Or we should just admit to ourselves that we like learning grammar and do it for fun. Similarly, those who enjoy learning loads of vocabulary need to acknowledge this. That includes many "formal" learners. Edited by Serpent on 11 April 2014 at 1:34pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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