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Article: Students fall short on Vocabulary | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5007 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes  Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 177 of 319 22 April 2014 at 2:10pm | IP Logged | |||||
Well, I loathe the one side only propaganda in the courses, which is not something that should be there in my opinion. I've noticed several times tasks like "discuss" a topic but the whole context suggests quite clearly which side you are supposed to take. I'm not against ecology, multiculturality, quite the opposite. I am just against the ways they are presented. A language textbook makes an important part of getting to know the culture as well, especially when it comes to courses aimed at children and teenagers. And the industry knows it and follows the "social demand". Actually, I am used to such. My first French textbook (which I used in 1999) still had articles about "friendship" of the USSR and Czechoslovakia :-D. And I use some older materials even now. I just don't think exchanging one propaganda for another is healthy. 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 178 of 319 22 April 2014 at 2:39pm | IP Logged | |||||
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IDK, I'm not against textbooks that actually teach you something beyond the language and culture. That's exactly why I love GLOSS so much. The real problem is that the shiny-fluffy presentation creates a bad reputation for these things. It's like the EU or the USA cares more about showing how awesome they are for fighting racism and other defaultism than about explaining that it's still a real problem.
Another issue is the focus on "showing what you learned", by being forced to actually talk about this, write essays etc. (Reminds me on how after enough "rest" I discovered that I actually love analyzing literature - I just don't like being forced to share my observations and make them coherent when in a real conversation I'd rather just make a few remarks here and there) Even many TAC challenges have this focus :/ Edited by Serpent on 22 April 2014 at 2:42pm 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 179 of 319 22 April 2014 at 3:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I don't want us to get bogged down in a debate on French grammar for CFER exams, but I'm curious as to why
this interpretation that I said one should avoid using something like the subjunctive. Here is what I wrote: "Could you pass the French C2 exam without using the subjunctive mood once? It seems unlikely, but why not? You won't lose points if you don't use it. But you'll certainly lose points if you use it incorrectly." In other words, I'm asking, Will you fail the C2 exam because you do not use the subjunctive mood at least once? For heaven's sake, if you know something and want to use it, by all means go ahead. I have given a number of examples in French grammar that one could throw into the pot. My only advice is to use them correctly. Similarly, if you have some nice big words or juicy idioms in your vocabulary that you want to place in the discussion, go right ahead if you think it will impress the examiner. The funny thing about this debate is that I'm a great fan of learning vocabulary. Who can be against virtue? I diligently study my flashcards and pore over dictionaries. The only nuance I make, albeit a big one, is that measuring vocabulary size is useless most of the time because it is meaningless. This brings me to my next point.
Like emk, I'm astounded that a student can graduate with a degree specializing in French and know what seems to be a minuscule number of words. What exactly did the students do all during those years? Indeed, what did the teachers do during all those years? I poked around the French concentration programs at various British universities. The usual stuff. Language classes, literature, media, literature, etc. And often a year abroad in France. I don't see how anybody can go through all this at a university like Oxford and score 3300 on a test when it seems, judging from what I see around here, that 10,000 should be more like it. I think the problem lies with the idea of measuring vocabulary. Frankly, I question the significance of this number 3300. I think it is meaningless. I believe it is impossible to complete a degree in French and not have a significant receptive vocabulary. Is that 5000 or 10000 or 20000 words? I don't know. But if I had written here that all you need is 3300 words to speak French, I sure the sky would have fallen on me. Instead of bashing the students, we should be asking just exactly what does vocabulary size mean. Edited by s_allard on 22 April 2014 at 3:04pm 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 180 of 319 22 April 2014 at 3:18pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Everybody seems to agree that you have to learn vocabulary, even me. The problem is how. Should you study lists?
Should you just pick it up in the communicative approach? I don't agree with all this bashing of modern textbooks. A lot of research has gone into developing this material. Books age and that's why we have new editions that reflect new realities. If you use a 1980 book, you have to expect some dated material. The problem isn't whether lists are good or bad but how do you become skilled in using those words. The real issue is whether you can use them properly to convey meaning? How you get there is your business. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4666 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 181 of 319 22 April 2014 at 3:22pm | IP Logged | |||||
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It might be, that in languages other than English, the vocabulary size is less important.
I'm sure my active vocabulary in English is larger than my active vocabulary in Croatian. I never ever use slang words in Croatian, idioms etc. The only thing productive in my Croatian are dialectalisms. Edited by Medulin on 22 April 2014 at 3:24pm 1 person has 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 182 of 319 22 April 2014 at 3:29pm | IP Logged | |||||
Good question. I have no idea how to answer this. There's a lot of frequency lists in various languages but I'm not aware of much work on vocabulary size in French or Spanish. I think that this obsession with vocabulary size in English is related to the importance of the teaching of English as a foreign language. I'm more familiar with the situation in French, and it seems to me that vocabulary size for native speakers or foreign learners is just not on the radar screen. Edited by s_allard on 22 April 2014 at 3:35pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5530 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 183 of 319 22 April 2014 at 3:59pm | IP Logged | |||||
I would prefer to avoid a political debate on HTLAL, because it never ends well. :-) But I think I know where the environmentalism, etc., is coming from in the textbooks, especially for students studying for B2 exams. According the CEFRL documents, one of the key skills for B2 is to be able to express and defend abstract ideas, that is, things beyond travel and socializing. In theory, a solid B2 student should be able to call up their cable company and argue why they deserve a refund, or explain to a professor why they deserve an extension on their homework, or make a short presentation to a school class or a group of co-workers. In short, a B2 student should be able to stand up for themselves and for their views, even if they make some mistakes and lack the richness of an advanced student. But at the same time, I've never heard of a CEFRL exam that actually discussed partisan electoral politics—"Say, how do you feel about Hollande's tax policy?" Or even, "What's up with FTQ Construction, anyway?" (Please do not answer either of these questions on HTLAL; they're examples of wildly inappropriate exam topics.) So you want students to be able to take a position and argue it. You want something a bit impersonal and abstract so they can't rely on purely social language skills. And you want to avoid raw, unfiltered politics. Oh, and at the B2 level, you also want to avoid purely academic debates about literary criticism or whatever. When I was preparing for the DELF B2, I gave a lot of presentations on typical DELF B2 topics. And after a while, the pattern becomes clear: There are about 10 or 20 topics which turn up over and over again. The environment, language learning, life in the office, relationships between men and women, problems faced by youth, etc. Now, there's a lot of variety: "The environment" may mean "deforestation and bush meat in Africa" or "congestion charges for driving in downtown Paris." So I think all those not-quite-political topics are simply a consequence of trying to find something that fits in the gap between B1 travel/survival topics ("I'm sorry officer, I didn't see the no parking sign. Please don't give me a ticket.") and C1 academic topics ("Maupassant divides literature into two primary schools: that which is fantastic, exaggerated and moving, and that which is more strictly realistic.")
I can't speak about the C2 exam. But let's look at the DELF B2 scoring grid I posted a few pages back, if only because I once discussed it with a trained professional, making me slightly less ignorant than I usually am. :-) The grammar-related parts are: Choice of forms: 4 points Degree of elaboration of phrases: 2 points Morphosyntax: 5 points So that's 11 total points for grammar out of a total out of 100 points (and another 8 for vocabulary). But the key thing to remember is that this is not an American exam, where a moderately diligent and intelligent student is expected to score around 90 points without much trouble. Here, the passing score is 50 out of 100 points. 60 to 80 is considered respectable, and you'd need to read the examiner's minds to score 95. In other words, the French exams ask you to do lots of hard challenging things, but it's OK to actually fail at some of the tasks: You might bomb a reading passage about an unfamiliar subject, or be weak in grammar, but you can make it up speaking exceptionally fluently or by having good listening comprehension. So if you take a DELF B2 exam, and you don't use the subjunctive, you don't use en and y idiomatically, you avoid reflexive and -re verbs, and you suck at the concordance des temps, you won't necessarily fail the exam. But you might sacrifice most of the 11 grammar-related points. But if your listening comprehension is amazing, and your word choice is excellent, that may not matter. I actually really liked that aspect of the French exams. They demanded more than most exams do in the US, but they allowed you to occasionally fail. US exams are often optimized for a homogeneous student body, where everybody knows the same facts and has the same skills. But French exams throw lots of surprisingly hard stuff at you, and as long as you can find your way through and occasionally shine somewhere, you can pass. I actually think that this is excellent news for people who learn French on their own: You're not required to fit into a narrow textbook curriculum, and you can use your strengths to balance out your weaknesses. Edited by emk on 22 April 2014 at 4:01pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5007 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 184 of 319 22 April 2014 at 4:06pm | IP Logged | |||||
I agree it is shocking how little is obviously needed to get the degree. You mention the content the university programs promis but the point of the research is that the students no longer go through "the usual stuff" you listed. The universities are dumbing down their programs. The students obviously are required to read less books in original, don't have lectures in French any longer and aren't fully using their year abroad. Really, where is the logic of that? Imagine any Faculty of Medicine going the same way: "Our students are struggling with chemistry at high schools and complain there is too much anatomy to be learnt. Yeah, they are not as good as we used to be so let's dumb it down and not teach the central nervous system anatomy and half the biochemistry from now on so that they can succeed again." It's the same logic. I don't blame the modern textbooks, many of their features are great (even though I'd say most research is about the best marketing,not best teaching), I blame the attitude they participate at creating. I think you should learn vocabulary through any and all the means that can help you. The trouble is not that there are too few tools available. The trouble is that most learners don't know they need to use them. The textbooks aren't giving lists and try to look like you could learn all the vocabulary needed just from the few small articles and game like exercises. Most people can't. They need more but they aren't told it. Even the language teachers often fail completely at recommending the proper tools, especially when it comes to native input. I agree with emk that a large vocabulary could be gained only from a few books like HP but I've met so many people who were surprised by the information they should read in the language. Or even better, their teacher recommended them something totally not suitable to their level and interests. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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