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Article: Students fall short on Vocabulary | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4663 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes  Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 281 of 319 28 April 2014 at 7:35pm | IP Logged | ||
The OED lists various usages. The two obvious ones are the fibre produced by certain moths and the material produced from that fibre. Then there's silk as QC as above and also a similar usage for jockeys. Then there are various mostly obvious usages as an adjective and two further usages as a verb (I didn't know that maize produced something called silk). I presume if you knew of silk as the fibre and as the cloth then you knew two words. Now you know at least three. They're all related though. As long as you are consistent in your methodology then all is well isn't it? 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 282 of 319 28 April 2014 at 10:33pm | IP Logged | ||
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This idea of words having multiple meanings is nothing new, of course, but it has considerable for word counting.
Firstly, it means that a supposedly small vocabulary is not necessarily that small after all. Words like "up"and "down" in English can have so many different uses according to the context and the combinations with other words. Secondly, it's the combination of words in context that drives meaning. We can say that someone is a good bat in cricket. You hit the ball with a bat. Bats come out to feed at night. And you can even run like a "bat out of hell." When you take that all this into consideration these vocabulary size based on counting some form of reduced graphic unit, i.e word families, lemmas, is at best a very crude indicator of the ability to use the language well. Other than restating the truism that a bigger vocabulary is better a smaller one, there is not much point in counting words. Edited by s_allard on 29 April 2014 at 1:10pm 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 283 of 319 28 April 2014 at 11:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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You lumped together homophones, polysemy and metaphors/metonymy.
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 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6701 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 284 of 319 29 April 2014 at 10:53am | IP Logged | ||
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If you count words you haven't got time to distinguish between homophones, polysemy and metaphors/metonymy. Leave that to the lexicographers. The important thing is that you do your surveys on similar sources if you try to compares figures across time or across languages. Then you can at least see whether there is any progress, or whether you have much more vocabulary in one language than in another. Seen in this light the most interesting figures are therefore not the absolute numbers, but the estimated percentages: if I know 33% of the headwords in a Russian dictionary (according to my recent estimates) then you can compare that to knowing 33% in a dictionary in for instance English, even though the latter isn't using derivations and one-word compunds to the same degree. And if you know 33% percent of the all headwords then you probably also know 33 % of the headwords minus homophones.
One thing I have learned from my own word counts is that there is a tremendous amount of variance due to factors like your current mood, recent bouts of activity in a certain language and unwanted bias in small samples. And there isn't much you can do about it. For instance I counted my Russian words a couple of days ago, and I just had time for 6 pages, 3 of which happened to hit pages dominated by prefixes. This meant that my percentage of guessable words rose and the numbers for both known and unknown words fell. And during my counts for Romanian in 2013 I remember that I was bogged down by page after page dominated by auchtoneous vocabulary. If I had hit upon pages dominated by French or Greek loanwords instead my score would have been considerably higher. But to keep down the time expenditure you have to live with such fluctations caused by small sample sizes, and they aren't so bad that you can't see the main tendencies in the material. Edited by Iversen on 29 April 2014 at 12:56pm 4 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 285 of 319 29 April 2014 at 1:59pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think that Iversen is right in terms of calculating vocabulary for personal satisfaction, using whatever metric that
one finds useful. I also believe that Professor Milton's work on French vocabulary size of UK students is to be seen in the light of an effort to draw attention to the parlous state of language education in the UK. This is all good, but how does all this stuff about vocabulary size help you prepare for a C level oral proficiency exam? Not much, I'm afraid. Instead of getting all worked up about how many words I know, I would use the following strategy to prepare for an oral test: 1. Get a good experienced tutor. If time permits, even work with different tutors to get used to different accents and speaking styles. 2. Keeping in mind that at the C level you are starting to approach native-like speaking performance, you have to be sure that the basics are rock-solid. The examiner is thinking: "OK, so you think you can speak somewhat at my level; show me." This means that the grammar has to be impeccable. Now is not the time to stumble over verb conjugations, plural noun forms, gender agreements, etc. You can make mistakes, but you should be able to spot and correct them yourself. This is exactly what natives do. The examiners will be very impressed. 3. Make sure you own those key verbs. We know that in all languages a very small number of verbs represent a disproportionately large percentage of verb usage. In languages like French, Spanish and English, five to ten verbs will cover around two-thirds of all the verbs you will use in the test. You have to know them in depth. Know these verbs is not a matter of knowing the conjugations. It's more how they are used. They come up often, in different forms, contexts and meanings. 4. Identify and work on areas of pronunciation weakness with your tutor. Maybe certain vowels are giving you a problem. Long words are often a problem. Cognates are also often problematic because the tendency is to pronounce them like your first language. 5. Work on creating complex constructions with various logical connectors such as "however", "yet", "that said", "on the other hand", "because", "since", etc. You should use counting forms like: "firstly", "in the first place", "finally", etc. 6. Work on techniques for keeping the conversation flowing with filler words and flow markers. If there's a word you don't know, you should have a way of paraphrasing or working around it. You shouldn't have to stop, grab your chin and start wondering aloud how to say something in the target language. 7. Read widely and make vocabulary notes, paying attention to idiomatic expressions. I would emphasize contemporary non-fiction rather than heavy literature. Use whatever mnemonic tool works for you. 8. Use lots of audio and video material, emphasizing content with debates on contemporary subjects. Observe the body language and look at the devices that people use when debating. 9. If possible, find some high-level conversation group where you can speak as much as possible. Edited by s_allard on 29 April 2014 at 2:00pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| sillygoose1 Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 4634 days ago 566 posts - 814 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish, French Studies: German, Latin | Message 286 of 319 29 April 2014 at 2:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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s_allard, according to #7, are you referring to non fiction as in academic manuals or something like Le Parisien or El Pais? Anything in specific?
I do agree with you when you say focus on non fiction materials rather than literature. I think I've learned more vocab and expressions in one copy of El Pais than in a whole Haruki Murakami novel who uses a lot of imagery. 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 287 of 319 29 April 2014 at 3:09pm | IP Logged | ||
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Depending on the exam, impeccable grammar can be less important and debates can be completely pointless.
#3 is tricky too. If you want to show off your phrasal verbs/idioms, only those that are consideed advanced will count. I'd say the advice should ideally be much more simple: -get a lot of input -work on making your output better -use your strengths and learn to showcast them. hide your weaknesses or eliminate them -find out more about the test and prepare for it specifically i'd recommend spending 25% of your time on each of these. the more you inflate the last one, the lower your true level will be. grammar is the most common weakness but not necessarily among htlal'ers. Edited by Serpent on 29 April 2014 at 4:43pm 4 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 288 of 319 29 April 2014 at 3:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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@sillygoose1, rather than academic manuals, newspapers and magazines are probably better because they can
cover a wide range of subjects. Edited by s_allard on 29 April 2014 at 3:40pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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