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Language Skills Correlation | ||
Tags: Evaluation | Activating a Language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6152 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 1 of 7 05 April 2013 at 10:52am | IP Logged | ||
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During my Spanish learning, if I read a word and remembered it's definition, I could use that word in conversation, and recognise it when I heard it. The same applied to grammatical concepts. When I learnt how to use a particular construct, I could subsequently use it in speech, and would mostly recognise it in conversation. This meant the correlation between the four main skills was quite high, perhaps 90%.
On the other hand, with French, the link is quite low. If I read a word, it'll be a hit or miss affair, if I recognise it in a conversation. Similarly, words I've learnt via audio, I won't always recognise in writing. The disconnect is even worse with some grammar concepts. In writing, I can easily use double pronouns in the various tenses. However, if I try to conjugate on the fly in conversation, it's much more difficult. I reckon the correlation for my French skills is about 50%. The situation is similar with my Russian and I reckon the correlation is also around 50%. Have close is the correlation in your various language skills, and does it differ much between your languages ? As you progess in a language does the correlation improve much ? Edited by DaraghM on 05 April 2013 at 10:55am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4708 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 2 of 7 05 April 2013 at 11:39am | IP Logged | ||
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This correlation improves. Sometimes these things work out and sometimes they don't and
it's a flighty thing. But nine times out of ten I get it right. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7206 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 3 of 7 05 April 2013 at 12:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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For French versus Spanish, one of the things in favor of Spanish as far as corelation of skills is that Spanish is phonetically much simpler. If you hear an unknown word pronounced carefully, there is only a small set of choices for how it could be spelt. When reading, even that set of choices vanishes. For the most part, one can tell how to pronounce a word in Spanish by looking at it.
French is more complicated in that regard. Lots of potential spellings for an unknown word. Many words, particularly verbs are pronounced the same but spelt differently for different conjugations. French has a more complex gender system. One can't know by seeing a word by itself if it is masculine or feminine in a lot of cases. For Spanish, the ending of a noun gives one a high confidence in the gender of a new word. Although both languages have irregular verbs, to me, the number of cases of irregularity is much lower. E.G., more irregular verbs share a similar pattern in Spanish than in French. To me, Spanish has a lot of clues in the spoken language with noun/adjective and pronoun/verb agreement. This helps when listening, particularly if your hearing isn't as good as it once was. I'm sure the things that I currently find challenging about French will gradually diminish, but I think the Real Academia Española has made many intelligent choices with regards to Spanish over the centuries. It's not so clear to me that the Académie Française has been quite as effective in simplifying the language where it may have been sensible. I think the skill corelation question may vary a lot depending on the language, just as it may also depend on the student. Edited by luke on 05 April 2013 at 7:43pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 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 4 of 7 05 April 2013 at 3:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have noticed that the proportion of my passive vocabulary which also is active in any given language depends very much on my level in that language - which again is reflected in the amount of words I know, but not in an automatic way. Passive and active exposure also play a key role.
In Danish I know practically all the 70-80.000 words in a standard dictionary (although not necessarily in such a way that I would be able describe each flower or butterfly whose name I know). And I rarely feel that I couldn't see myself using those words. For instance I'm not quite sure what a "levkøj" looks like, but I know it is some kind of flower which you could find in the Danish nature - or rather, maybe you could, but I can't because I don't know what it looks like. But I just used the word so by inference it must be part of my active vocabulary. In English my passive vocabulary is at least 35.000 words, and sometimes I see a word or expression which I recognize and understand, but I had forgotten all about it. And the longer we go down the list the more frequently I experience this. In Greek Dhimotikí my passive vocabulary must have passed the 10.000 items mark by now, especially after the special training it got during my Cuba stay this January. But I'm fairly often unable to recall the precise word for some thing or activity, even though I know that I once upon a time have learned it and could understand it if I saw it. I also make more silly mistakes where I use a words wrongly or even 'invent' one (witness my troubles with the Greek word for 'training' in the otherwise glorious Maybe production). However one single week where I use a language actively may push my general 'activeness proportion index' up - at least for a time. If I give a certain language enough attention then it seems that it benefits all words in the language, as if some kind of general recall mechanism has been oiled and trimmed - the effect isn't confined to the few words I actually happened to use. And when I then get back home again the mechanism may get rusty again, but it will still function better than before, and the next time it will be easier to get back into the state where I actually can remember the things I have learned. Edited by Iversen on 07 April 2013 at 12:01pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tanya b Senior Member United States Joined 4779 days ago 159 posts - 518 votes Speaks: Russian | Message 5 of 7 06 April 2013 at 2:49am | IP Logged | ||
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To reach the 85-90% threshold in Armenian and Russian, it took 2-3 years of daily study of at least an hour and extensive parrot-like repetitions of words and phrases which I considered the most useful. Impossible without a dictionary of course.
You mentioned the 4 main skills of which I think comprehension is by far the most difficult and demanding because there is no way a learner can anticipate in advance what he will hear, whether in conversation or watching TV. The other skills like grammatical concepts and verb conjugations can be cultivated more easily. So Russian and Armenian are definitely languages a native English speaker's ears would have trouble adjusting to, even with massive doses of passive learning. The fact that Russian has lots of international words doesn't help if they aren't immediately recognizable to the learner. Obviously it's a much bigger leap from Spanish to Turkish than from Spanish to English, so familiarity is a big factor. In terms of correlating and developing skills in "unfamiliar" languages, which is usually very challenging, the one exception seems to be Farsi, for me at least. It's really nice to study an "easier" language for a change, quite a departure from my study of Russian and Armenian. Farsi has a repetitive, rhythmic, even hypnotic quality to it which makes it a real pleasure to hear, speak and study. Thanks to some passive exposure, it had already become kind of a subliminal soundtrack for me before I started seriously studying it. What is striking about Farsi is that words are almost immediately distinct and recognizable. And furthermore there are no complicated grammatical concepts like cases or gender to worry about. Arabic plurals and verb conjugations present the biggest problem for me, but it's not overwhelming in terms of skill development. Are we talking about an exact science here? Nyet. Would someone from Greenland have the same experience with Farsi? Maybe not. But for me Farsi seems to stand out as being more learner friendly. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5767 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 6 of 7 07 April 2013 at 1:56am | IP Logged | ||
It's a spring/early summer flower with a light purple blossom, and it's called Levkoje in German. I'd say I'm about 70% sure on the German term, and another 40% less for the translation from a language I don't know. Normally, I wouldn't be able to use a word with such a low percentage. I can recognize them, and as long as the context fits I don't worry too much about how unsure I feel about whether I know that word or not. But it depends on the language, my current mood and the circumstances I learnt the word in. I find it easier to remember words that have a simple (V)-CV-CV(C) structure. Spanish words are easier for me to remember than French ones, and so are native Japanese words when compared to Sinojapanese. The more words I know in a language, the easier it gets to remember new ones, because usually they just fall into place and I know what to search for when trying to express myself. As for mood, I can access words I don't know well yet either when it's very important to communicate the matter at hand, or when I am relaxed and feel safe making mistakes. The circumstances of initial learning play into my recall so far, as that I generally have better recall when words and grammar points when they are connected to non-linguistic information like episodic memory and situational memory. (I make use of situational memory to keep my language separate, too.) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4445 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 7 of 7 09 April 2013 at 11:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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For someone to be fluent-enough in Chinese to go shopping or ask for directions it probably takes less
than a year. To learn enough characters to read and write fluently it would take at least 5 years or longer. In the media (newspapers, TV) you get all sorts of 4-character (4-syllable) expressions being used. Some are more common while others are less used. In the old days the educated would use various expressions in their speech to show they are in the privileged class. There are phrase books (not dictionary) that list specific 4-character Chinese expressions. And then there are kinds of short-forms such as: 奧林匹克運動會 Àolínpǐkè Yùndònghuì for Olympic Games shortened to just 3 characters: 奧運會 Àoyùnhuì. In English some short-forms are widely used and acceptable like US for United States. Try shortening the term Olympics to just the acronym OG and see how many people will understand you. The other day while listening to a radio discussion in Chinese how the Mainland government influences the media. Came across a term: 馬列主義 Mǎlièzhǔyì. The discussion was about government censorship in the media which is understandable. Just couldn't figure out the 4-syllable term and looked it up in the dictionary. 馬 is the short-form for Marx, 列 is the short-form for Lenin and 主義 is for ideology. So the phrase means: Marxist-Leninism. In English you wouldn't say ML ideology but in Chinese shortened expressions are used all the time. You need to use specific short-forms a few times to get it into your head. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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