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How many L2 words when starting out? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5122 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes  Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 9 of 18 23 February 2011 at 12:05pm | IP Logged | ||
And these opinions are important why? For every opinion you find that sounds like the truth, you're going to find 10 more that are different. R. == 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 10 of 18 23 February 2011 at 1:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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A certain number of words in any language can be called 'grammar words' (prepositions, pronouns, auxiliary verbs etc.). You need most of these, but they occur in almost any text and they are explained in your grammar. Besides they may be involved in many different construction and they may have an irregular inflexion, so it wouldn't be enough just to learn one form in one context - you need to see each word many times. You can't study a language without meting the words, so will perforce learn them. Maybe a few hundred words in this cathegory, maybe less.
Then there are some extremely common words - things like house, sleep, TV, chair, hope and language. Because they are so common you will meet them again and again, so you cannot avoid learning them at a fairly early stage. The limits are more elastic here, but let's just say 1000-2000 words. Beyond this limit there is an immense number of words (and expressions!) which you need, but you may not encounter them every day or even week. Ok, what then? It is for this group of words things like flash cards and wordlists can be relevant, but at least in the beginning you will probably use these tools on words which you have met in texts - so there you have your context. At a later stage I personally like to add words directly from dictionaries, but this may not be to everyone's liking. Finally there are those words which are so rare that even if you see them you may not care whether you remember them or not. We have had several discussions about 'the necessary number of words'. Some have suggested very low numbers, and it is true that for a turist a mere 1000 words may be enough. However you will soon discover that you need more words even to read a simple newspaper - i.e. you need words from the third cathegory above. In principle you can absorb them just by reading and listening, but only from 'comprehensible' sources - and sources only become comprehensible when you already know a large number of words. In this situation bilingual texts may help, but on top of that most learners can benefit from using some kind of organized vocabulary memorization techniques. And the more words the better. You can probably get through a newspaper on 5.000 words, but if you don't want to look words up all the time when reading ordinary novels you probably need a minimum of 10.000 words - and it takes time to absorb all those words. I have a fairly good idea about my own (passive) vocabulary in different languages because I made a count some time ago, but knowing a number is really irrelevant. If you can't understand ordinary texts without looking half the words up then the number is too low whatever it is. And then you have to do something about it. Edited by Iversen on 23 February 2011 at 2:14pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| polyglHot Pentaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5058 days ago 173 posts - 229 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, German, Spanish, Indonesian Studies: Russian | Message 11 of 18 23 February 2011 at 1:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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One doesn't start out by learning words. This is silly. One learns them organically. How
would you use said words if you knew no grammar? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| t123 Diglot Senior Member South Africa https://github.com/t Joined 5603 days ago 139 posts - 226 votes Speaks: English*, Afrikaans | Message 12 of 18 23 February 2011 at 1:20pm | IP Logged | ||
They're not even opinions on how many words you should learn. The 1st is an approximate number of words people know at different levels, the 2nd how many words more or less a 3 year old knows and the 3rd makes no sense. How on earth can 2000 kanji be the same as 2000 words, you'd have to go out of your way to only know 2000 words if you knew 2000 kanji. 1 person has 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 13 of 18 23 February 2011 at 1:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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To Polyglhot: you need to learn those words before you can use them, and while you learn them you can also learn some grammar. If you want to learn a language by sitting down somewhere and expecting organical growth to happen then that's your choice. I prefer a more direct approach where I do something active to learn words (plus some essential grammar) and when I know enough words and enough grammar I start using those things - not before. Edited by Iversen on 23 February 2011 at 1:30pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| polyglHot Pentaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5058 days ago 173 posts - 229 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, German, Spanish, Indonesian Studies: Russian | Message 14 of 18 23 February 2011 at 3:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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I mean if one starts from 0. One should learn one piece of grammar and 10 words. Not just
1000 words. How would one use them sans grammar? 1 person has 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 15 of 18 23 February 2011 at 4:51pm | IP Logged | ||
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With 10 words or fixed word combinations and no grammar you can barely survive as a turist ("Cocacola", "toilet", "no", "how much?", "go away" "help" "doctor" "bread", "hotel X"... ), and even the rule that "please" + something is polite is in a sense a grammatical rule. Grammar is there from the beginning.
Besides I have never advocated learning words without grammar. The controversial points are whether you can/should learn words systematically through flashcards/SRS and grammar with the help of books about grammar, and whether you should start speaking before you are ready. Long before I have learnt 1000 'general' words in a language I have read my first grammar book through and learnt at least the main forms of "to be", a number of pronouns and several other 'grammatical' words. I doubt that I would ever end up in a situation where I knew 1000 words and no grammar - except maybe in my youth when I started out learning Latin animal names without Latin, or in music where you can learn a number of Italian words without having a clue about Italian grammar. 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 16 of 18 23 February 2011 at 5:09pm | IP Logged | ||
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If your goal is to optimize your vocabulary acquisition, then concentrate on your daily needs and learn the words you need to express your reality. Of course, the words of another language may not directly match those of yours, so a certain amount of exposure to that language is necessary. As you acquire that vocabulary, make sure you learn how to use it and how to integrate it into proper sentences. Finally, make sure you are comfortable using them in such sentences.
Do that, and you're fluent. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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