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Trying to be too clever | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4620 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 41 of 74 26 October 2013 at 10:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
Correct. I think it's best to learn to walk before you try to run. Edited by beano on 26 October 2013 at 10:37pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4442 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 42 of 74 27 October 2013 at 12:44am | IP Logged | |||||
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Once I was travelling in Houston in the US. At the airport a couple came up and asked in Chinese about taking the
shuttle into town. They (presumably from Taiwan) probably visited the US for the first time and had trouble with their English. Although I normally considered myself more fluent in English, I told them in Mandarin roughly the dollar amount to get to town. It was my first time to Houston on my own. I only paid for a shuttle bus ride 5 minutes earlier. If you ask me whether it would be cheaper to take the shuttle or a taxi I wouldn't know. The only thing I'm better at is asking for directions in English. Edited by shk00design on 27 October 2013 at 12:46am 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 43 of 74 27 October 2013 at 6:17am | IP Logged | |||||
Try as much as I can, I have difficulty wrapping my head around this sole and somewhat marginal contribution to the present debate. If I understand this correctly, all or any one of my posts contain examples of so-called irregular usage of low frequency vocabulary. Does irregular usage mean incorrect? This very ambiguous. When we speak of irregular verbs or irregular plurals in languages we usually mean that the morphology in question does not conform to certain common or regular patterns. But how can one make irregular usage of words, especially if they are somewhat rare? I think the author really meant incorrect usage. Then the question is what constitutes low-frequency vocabulary. Since no examples were given, I reread all my posts in this thread in search of rare words. I didn't see anything that a first year university student would not understand. I've avoided using words like adumbrate, ratiocinate, egregious, redound, etc. I did use some longish words like sophisticated, rarefied, grammatical, gibberish that for some people might be of low frequency, but I don't think I used them incorrectly. So, I'm puzzled as to what are my irregular or incorrect low-frequency words. Some examples would be helpful. I'll be the first to admit that many of my posts contain spelling mistakes and typos that may make some words look rare. This I think is the problem here. I certainly apologize for the inconvenience. 2 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 44 of 74 28 October 2013 at 10:54pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I think the phrasal verbs are a totally wrong exemple. Most people don't begin from the
phrasal verbs ("look how many different things I can say with just five or six verbs! hurray!"). Vast majority of ESL learners encounters the "proper" words first and, at some point, they are told to learn phrasal verbs on top of that ("why? there is already a perfectly suitable word. and the used preposition makes no sense!"). What kinds of words you tend to use is a highly individual matter. We have already discussed how different are various vocabulary tests on the internet. I once got an incredibly high score (more suited to a native speaker whose novels get regularily published) just because the test makers put there a lot of latin based and medical vocabulary which they considered advanced. I think you should strive to improve no matter how good or bad you are at the moment. Of course it doesn't always end up well to go out of your comfort zone. And you make unnecessary mistakes and your skills look less shiny than had you stayed in a lower league. But that is the purpose of leaving the comfort zone. I don't like the tone used in some posts basically implying that people shouldn't strive for too sophisticated speech because they might fail. And a few more posts with similar aftertaste. It's like: "Don't pretend you aren't stupid, you are only embarrasing yourself." What the hell? So, please: Do try to be "too clever". Learn the basics well, it will help you. Get a lot of input in order to place your "clever spots" correctly in the speech. Work on your vocab and everything and stay humble (and realistic) about your skills. But never stop aiming higher. After all, people don't get usually executed just for using an academic word incorrectly. :-) 3 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 45 of 74 29 October 2013 at 12:46am | IP Logged | |||||
Awesome post as always!
Edited by Serpent on 29 October 2013 at 12:46am 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 46 of 74 29 October 2013 at 6:39am | IP Logged | |||||
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Let's see what I really said and what others claim or pretend that I said. Let me quote myself.
"Phrasal verbs are extremely common. Shouldn't one learn at least something about them while learning about football and umbrella?" (I've added the correction "Shouln't one..") Since some people have difficulty interpreting my writing, let me clarify this. Learners of English will encounter phrasal verbs as soon as they meet authentic speech or writing. I am not suggesting that one begin English by concentrating on phrasal verbs. I said learn something about them. For example learn to at least recognize that in English verbs may be made up of one, two or three words. I don't have time to do an entire course on phrasal verbs but I should point out that they are much more than verbs and prepositions. As the name suggests, phrasal verbs are multi-word verbs. Students don't have a problem learning that "get by" is a two-word verb meaning to make ends meet. Students quickly learn that "get over the hill" and "get over the divorce" both use "get over" in a similar fashion. People tend to mix up phrasal verbs with idiomatic expressions, and it is true that many phrasal verbs are highly idiomatic but they are not the same thing. I have found in my teaching that phrasal verbs can be introduced very early as long as one does not introduce complex idiomatic expressions. Most simple phrasal verbs can be derived from their component elements. "Prices are going up", "The candle went out" and "The bill came up to 100 dollars" are not particularly difficult to learn. But "I'll make it up to you" is considerably more difficult. The reason for introducing simple phrasal verbs relatively early is simply to introduce the students to a construction that they will hear very quickly. The result is that students are able to produce natural sounding speech quite quickly. And they learn that by just recombining a few elements they can make new verbs. Go out, go by, go over, go under, etc can be acquired quite rapidly and put into use immediately. Substitue the verbs get and come and a wide world of new meanings is acquired very simply . That is exactly why one can speak fluently with relatively few words. When I read here at HTLAL that one has to learn thousands of words in order to beging to speak, I have to laugh. Just one lesson on the verb GET will give a huge boost to speaking proficiciency. I'm not sure that learning football and umbrella will have the same effect. 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 47 of 74 29 October 2013 at 6:50am | IP Logged | |||||
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Just to avoid any misunderstanding I am not saying that one should not learn the words football and umbrella. If
they are the first things you want to learn in a language, then that's what you should learn. The problem is that as course designers we have to think in terms of an average audience. I think that all beginner materials start with basic greetings and introductions before teaching football and umbrella. I shouldn't have to explain why. Certain key building blocks or connected speech are thus introduced. And of course football and umbrella can be introduced anytime. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4705 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 48 of 74 29 October 2013 at 8:55am | IP Logged | |||||
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Which is why beginner materials suck. There is nothing more annoying than someone
pretending he knows the words I need to learn. Beginner material needs to give me lots of texts, lots of audio, maybe bilingual texts, NO ROMANIZATION SCHEMES (learn to read the bloody alphabet if you're doing Russian, Korean, Hebrew, Arabic), except for Chinese where pinyin is necessary. For Japanese I would learn the kana but I am not sure about kanji. I don't need an order, I need the texts to be... interesting. If someone made 200 lessons in a textbook that consider only humorous anecdotes I would use it as a textbook. Edited by tarvos on 29 October 2013 at 9:00am 5 persons have voted this message useful |
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