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95% Fluency with 3000 Words Possible? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6878 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes  Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 33 of 67 26 May 2010 at 9:56pm | IP Logged | ||
I see now where you are coming from. When learning a language without immersion, depending on the approach, it is not uncommon to have the opposite problem of being able to say a few things, but not always understanding the reply. In the cases you mention, they already have listening skills and some passive vocabulary, but can't yet say much. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5365 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 34 of 67 27 May 2010 at 1:01am | IP Logged | ||
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Since I have a moment, I would like to expand a bit on how to enhance fluency. Let me first say that this is not a method destined to compete with all the products out there. In fact, it is more of an approach to practicing effectively for speaking fluency. I would also add that we are talking about intermediate level learners who have a basic understanding of the functioning of the language.
Although I emphasize the word speaking, I should point out that there are various speaking situations. The most common is the conversation. Then various kinds of speeches. Also there is storytelling; sales pitches, jokes, etc. Each genre has its particularities. Conversations are based on the question and answer format and are heavily influenced by the relationship between the speakers. Let's concentrate on the simple conversation. It could be over the meal in a restaurant or maybe I am answering questions for a form in a government office. All of these things have been studied by sociolinguists, and what has been always noted is how much these verbal interactions are formulaic, in the sense that users tend to use certain fixed patterns of phrases or word combinations. I should also point out that the context, in the sense of implicit or shared knowledge, plays a very important role. Just for laughs, here is a quote from a short story by the master of English comic writing, P. G. Wodehouse, in which he describes a conversation: "At the luncheon-table conversation proceeded fitfully. Rodney said that this morning he could have sworn it was going to rain, and Jane said she had thought so too, and Rodney said that now it looked as if the weather might hold up, and Jane said Yes, didn't it? and Rodney said he hoped the weather would hold up because rain was such as nuisance, and Jane said Yes, wasn't it? Rodney said yesterday had been a nice day, and Jane said Yes, and Rodney said that it seemed to be getting a little warmer, and Jane said Yes, and Rodney said that summer would be here any minute now, and Jane said Yes, wouldn't it? and Rodney said he hoped it would not be too hot this summer, but that, as a matter of fact, when you came right down to it, what one minded was not so much the heat as the humidity, and Jane said Yes, didn't one." This delicious passage--one single sentence-- relates a conversation that we can easily imagine. Why do we conclude that these are native speakers of English even though we can't hear the real conversation? It is because each of the reported speech items just seems completely natural (e.g. ..summer would be here any minute now) and they all fit together in the conversational give and take. For the word counters out there, you will notice that the conversation does not use many words. How do we take this observation and derive a learning strategy? First of all, the conversation is task-oriented. We're talking about the weather. There is a specific purpose at hand. If I go into a store, I will be most likely greeted by someone who wants to sell me something. So, they will say something to that effect, something along the lines of: "Hello, can I help you?". If I call the customer service department of the telephone company in French, I will get a response like: "Ici Marie, comment puis-je vous aider?". So, we must think tasks and what are the typical conversational requirements of the task at hand. What are the common formulas used in these situations? Of course, you do not know what the person is going to say, but you can learn common patterns or ways of saying things. Initially, you can memorize entire phrases or dialogues. This serves two purposes. First, you have something to say; so, you start speaking useful phrases very early. (In passing, we apply this principle when we learn greetings as our first step in a new language). The second, and very important, idea is that we are speaking correctly without having to laboriously think out the grammar of what we are saying. If you have to stop and think about the conjugation of a verb, you obviously will not get very far in terms of fluency. So, you study those conjugation tables and also, repeat and use phrases that illustrate those tables. Repeat the example 25 or 50 times or even more until it rolls off your tongue. This way you will begin to develop that sprachgefuhl or intuitive feeling for correct usage. As your knowledge of grammar and vocabulary increases, you can take basic patterns and modify them ad infinitum. Let's take a simple example in French. We memorize the following very useful phrase. We repeat it maybe 30 times until we get the pronunciation half decent: Je suis content(e) de vous voir. (I'm happy to see you.) Now, you go out and deliberately use it as is. You can use it nearly everywhere. There's a lot you can do with this basic pattern. Change the end verb: Je suis content(e) de vous parler. (...speak to you) Je suis content(e) de vous suivre. (...follow you) Change an object pronoun: Je suis content(e) de te voir Je suis content(e) de le voir Use an indirect pronoun with the verb parler Je suis content(e) de lui parler Let's play with the predicate: Je suis ravi(e) de vous voir Je suis heureux / heureuse de vous voir Now the subject: Nous sommes contents (es) de vous voir On est contents de vous voir (Note, on is more common than nous in spoken French) Now, let's change nearly everything: Elle était ravie de leur parler. Note how the underlying pattern is still there. Now for advanced users, let's get fancy: Je suis content(e) de vous avoir vu. (I'm happy to have seen you) Now let's throw in a subjunctive that will impress listeners. Je suis content que vous soyez venu. (I'm glad that you came). Let's give the whole thing a literary embellishment: Il va sans dire que je suis content que vous soyez venu. (It goes without saying that I'm happy that you came) Or let's use it in reported speech: Elle m'a dit qu'elle était contente de me voir. (She said to me that she was happy to see me) As you can see, a simple little pattern can be reused in many ways and embedded in more complex structures. There's much more to all this, but I don't want to keep this post too long. Edited by s_allard on 27 May 2010 at 8:10pm 10 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| zerothinking Senior Member Australia Joined 6307 days ago 528 posts - 772 votes Speaks: English* | Message 35 of 67 27 May 2010 at 11:44am | IP Logged | ||
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Fluency is such a flimsy term. You might understand 50% of the words on a page in terms
of the number of words you know but you won't understand 50% of the meaning. You may know the words that make up 95% of the words on any given page but that won't make you 95% fluent. And it doesn't mean you know 95% of the words in the entire language. There are simply way too many important keywords that make up the other 5%. You can't read a novel and understand what is going on because although you know the character is a something doing something with a something on a something having a something dreaming about getting a something, you don't know what all those somethings are. Ten percent of words on a page in terms of word count may make up 80% of the meaning. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5365 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 36 of 67 27 May 2010 at 2:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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I totally agree with zerothinking. Fluency is a flimsy term, as it is currently used. That is precisely why I proposed defining it in a more precise way.
I would like to make a couple of remarks on the strategy for enhancing fluency that I outlined in my previous post. First of all, it is important to see how conversational language, a subgenre of spoken language is very different from the written language in general. Of course, written language has many types or genres; fiction, academic writing, legalese, technical writing, advertising, newspaper copy, etc. are all variants with specific features. Most language learning materials are heavily biased towards the written form for the simple reason that it is by definition visible, permanent, easily measurable (for testing purposes) and often what the students want and need to learn. Although, I'm not really familiar with them, all-audio methods such as Pimsleur and Michel Thomas may owe some of their success to the fact that the emphasis is on the spoken language. The point of all of this is that written documents are generally speaking very poor guides to the spoken language. This is where much of the confusion about vocabulary size arises. Reading a newspaper requires a vocabulary and a mastery of grammar that are much greater than what is required for conversations. The truth of the matter is that conversational language uses short sentences, simple grammar forms and limited vocabulary. Interestingly enough, conversational language is really much simpler or less complicated than written fiction. Reading a novel in a foreign language will do wonders for your vocabulary but will not help your conversational skills very much. On the other hand, comic books tend to be good sources of spoken language for obvious reasons. Conversational language has its own complications, chief of which is probably the high formulaic content. As I have stressed in the previous post, in the constant to and fro of conversational exchanges, natural sounding speech is achieved by use of idiomatic expressions, collocations and very common grammatical patterns. The learning strategy I've proposed here is to imitate these common patterns relatively early in order to develop a feel for idiomatic speech. One advantage of this approach is the decreased likelihood of speaking grammatically but awkwardly. Mastering the grammar of a foreign language is difficult enough. An additional problem is how to choose the right words. This is an area fraught with the danger of literal translations. Let me give an example. A common exhortation in spoken English is: "Have a good/nice day". In French, the equivalent is "Bonne journée" or "Je vous souhaite une bonne journée" (in Quebec one will hear "Passez une bonne journée" as well). What you do not want to say is "*Ayez un bon jour" which would be grammatically correct but idiomatically incorrect in this context. The problem for the learner is how to acquire the good form and not acquire the incorrect one. The complication here is that French makes a an important distinction between jour and journée where English uses one word "day". When do you use one and when do you use the other? That's the problem. A similar distinction obtains between soir and soirée, matin and matinée. And then there is nuit and nuitée where the usage of the two terms is not exactly along the same lines. It's actually quite complicated when one tries to explain the fine rules and distinctions of usage. The simple way to learn the proper usage is to basically repeat the correct forms often enough until the pattern just falls into place. Edited by s_allard on 27 May 2010 at 8:24pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6878 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 37 of 67 27 May 2010 at 4:05pm | IP Logged | ||
Novels can be helpful if properly selected, and if one temporarily suspends one's literary standards for a good cause. For example, the so called "chick lit" thrives on lively dialog. Reading doesn't quite work like listening, of course, but you still get a sample of modern spoken language with this type of genres. Some reputable modern authors also occasionally produce works with a considerable amount of realistic dialog. Edited by frenkeld on 27 May 2010 at 5:09pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6638 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 38 of 67 27 May 2010 at 7:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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S_allard's argumentation above is basically correct, in the sense that you can communicate orally using a small number of fixed formulaes and words - provided that your discussion partners stick to the same level and don't overwhelm you with technicalities or fancy expressions which you haven't learnt yet. On the other hand not all speech happens in situations where the social impact is the main reason for speaking. Fixed expressions are important in all registers, but they aren't enough if you discuss some technical subject or your discussion partners start playing around with the language.
Still, learning "chunks" (as they have been called in earlier discussions) is a good idea, and I totally agree when you advocate using small changes of those expressions. If you want to internalize how the mechanics of a language work then it is much better to see two sentences with one crucial difference than two totally different sentences. I remember that I commented favorably on a language guide for Cebuan in January 2009 precisely because it consisted of sentences with only slight variations. This meant that I could start reconstructing the grammar of Cebuan, - and when I continued to Manila shortly after I was really in the mood for continuing the exercise on Tagalog. If this happens then you won't be bored, contrary to expectations. I understand that writers of textbooks and language guides are tempted to use as varied sentences as possible in order to 'cover the ground', but when it comes to teaching languages it is the wrong strategy. When it is comes to extensive reading or listening a varied language is one of the most important qualities, but that's a totally different situation. Edited by Iversen on 28 May 2010 at 9:29am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5365 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 39 of 67 27 May 2010 at 8:34pm | IP Logged | ||
This excellent observation from Iversen raises a key point I really hadn't thought of. Using this approach of small or "incremental" variations of a structure, users are in fact probably reconstructing and internalizing unconsciously the grammar of the target language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6878 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 40 of 67 27 May 2010 at 8:55pm | IP Logged | ||
Variation and substitution drills may be a related technique. Also, Berlitz Self-Teacher courses seem to make use of it. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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