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How long does it take you to learn words? | ||
Tags: Number of words | Memory | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6264 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 17 of 40 18 February 2011 at 12:20pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I would say learning 500 words a month is feasible. Ten to twenty a day. I do not believe claims of the "learn 5,000 words a week" type.
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| stargrl2 Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5022 days ago 6 posts - 5 votes | Message 18 of 40 18 February 2011 at 1:34pm | IP Logged | |||||
How many hours to you spend studying those words, and what technique(s) do you use? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| dearwanderlust Newbie United States youtube.com/dearwandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5263 days ago 38 posts - 39 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, French | Message 19 of 40 18 February 2011 at 7:51pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I have put myself on a "diet" of 25 words per day. It's manageable for me and the words
seem to "stick" better than if I try for a larger amount. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5373 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 20 of 40 18 February 2011 at 8:01pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I can't help feel that instead of devoting X time to rote vocabulary learning, I'd be better off devoting that time to an internal monologue and looking up any and all words I don't know. This way, at least, I'd be learning words that are directly relevant to what I'd like to be able to express.
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| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5373 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 21 of 40 18 February 2011 at 8:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
In any kind of language combination? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5661 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin | Message 22 of 40 18 February 2011 at 8:21pm | IP Logged | |||||
It is certainly a great recommendation, and one I share. However, once you reach a basic level of speaking ability it becomes very easy to become stuck in a rut using the same words without much focus on boosting your active vocabulary. For example: "I went to the shop", "I went to the university party", "I went out with a woman to a good restaurant". You can express pretty much everything without having to stretch yourself - and when having internal dialogues I have noticed my own tendency to fall back on the easiest way of saying something. Forcing yourself to learn more "advanced" words, and then later forcing yourself to use them is good training for having a richer active vocabulary, For me, at least, it has been the only way to get out of the "comfort zone" of a "good enough" vocabulary. It has helped train my brain to be able to re-express the above as: "I strode over to the shop", "I attending the faculty celebration", "I wined and dined a woman in a fine restaurant". This has been a major part of my ongoing process of moving from "intermediate" to more advanced fluency: forcing myself to learn and use synonyms, or sets of words with relatively subtle differences in their meaning. Without doing this deliberately, the tug of natural laziness holds my active vocabulary back. Edited by Splog on 18 February 2011 at 8:24pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6695 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 23 of 40 18 February 2011 at 11:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I can't quite compete with Stu Ray and his 3000 words/week, but using my worldlist method (described here) I regularly learn 240 words in one go + one repetition round, and the tests I have done seem to indicate that most of these words stick in my longterm passive memory - more in my best languages, less in my weakest ones. But 120 or even 60 words in one session are more normal, and then I can spend the time I save on another language or activity.
The reason I can give so precise numbers is that the layout I use has 2 triple columns on each halfpage (I always fold my A4 sheets), there are around 30 words (with translation) in each column and there are 4 halfpages to a sheet, each with 60 words. Of course I also learn words directly from texts, but I suspect that this is just a fraction of those that pass through my wordlists - if I take notes while working intensively with a text I normally reuse these words in a wordlist. Wordlists über alles... However if you read my log thread you find relatively few references to those - the reason is of course that it is more entertaining to write (and read) about other things. But if I really should indicate what I'm spending my time on then each daily post should mention wordlists. I do them almost every day. Edited by Iversen on 19 February 2011 at 12:08am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6264 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 24 of 40 21 February 2011 at 9:36am | IP Logged | |||||
Various techniques, including keeping a vocabulary notebook and making flash cards or using pre-printed ones. Daily, I aim for at least an hour for this work. There may be room for learning more words, but the more you learn the more you are likely to forget. Although I do not want to get into the relative difficulty of languages, a subject that is overworked on this forum, I would say that for a native speaker of English learning 20 words of Spanish is not the same order of effort as learning 20 words of Arabic, or indeed 20 words of Turkish. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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