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Is counting your vocabulary size useless? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5430 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes  Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 177 of 210 23 August 2012 at 2:45pm | IP Logged | |||||
I think this point is well taken. Many of us here are not in a situation where we have any kind of immersive contact with the language we are learning. I should point out that in most large cities of the world many languages can be heard and even spoken. And in many cases with a little travel, especially in Europe but even in North America, one can experience a different language. But it is certainly true that many of us cannot easily walk to a store or get on the bus and practice the language. The Internet has helped tremendously for obvious reasons. Still I can't help thinking of the situation in the city of Montreal where French is omnipresent and we still see people who have been living here for years and do not speak French because it is "too complicated," they are "too old" and "every time they attempt to speak French, people respond in English." Excuses, excuses, excuses. If you do not have any kind of access to contact with the language, then you have to make do. You have no choice but to delay speaking. You'll be doing lots of listening. If you don't have the Internet, then you have a very serious problem. In my post, I explicitly said "where feasible" when speaking about talking from day 1. When it is not feasible, we do what we can. Could you get the same results? Maybe--although I doubt it--but actually speaking early is probably a lot more fun. Edit: I changed "every time they attempt to speak French, people respond in French" to "every time they attempt to speak French people respond in English" Edited by s_allard on 23 August 2012 at 2:58pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5430 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 178 of 210 23 August 2012 at 3:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
There is no defect in @emk's brain. We are all confronted with gaps in our target language's vocabulary and even in our own language. The point raised here in the quote from the movie is actually quite interesting because it raises the issue of how comprehension works and the law of diminishing returns. When you look at words in real use, you realize that meaning is supported totally by context. We can get a general sense of what is going on by the surrounding words. We do this all the time in our native languages when we can "fill in the blanks" or complete another person's sentence. There are times where the precise wording is crucial. If I say "You have $250 in your savings account," the "$250' is essential. But if I say "You have $250 in your...." you can add the rest. In @emk's example, we get a general sense of what is going on with rebutant and tarabiscoté just from the context. How important is it to know the exact dictionary definition of those words in the context of a movie? "Rebutant" and "rebuter" are somewhat common literary words, but "tarabiscoté" is extremely rare in speech. I may be wrong but I would guess that @emk's French wife, like most French people, has never used this word in speaking. On the other hand, she has probably used "pompeux" and "rebutant." The other question is how important is it to know these words. It would certainly be great to have them at the tip of your tongue or to at least recognize them. So, go ahead and learn them. But, maybe there are words that are more useful to know because they are more commonly used. Or, because of my own biases, I would spend some more time on a particularly feature of French grammar that I never really mastered. Or, maybe on a neat idiom like "et j'en passe" for "there's a lot more I could say about this." What I'm saying basically is that maybe we should let "tarabiscoté" and possibly "rebutant" go by without worrying about them because the "return on investment" is really negligible. And we should spend our time on more important stuff. Edited by s_allard on 23 August 2012 at 4:52pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5430 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 179 of 210 23 August 2012 at 5:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
I know that @iversen and I seem to be always at loggerheads on this issue. So, I'll try to address it without repeating some tiresome arguments. For @iversen speaking is an endproduct and not as I called it a byproduct. Be that as it may, he does say "Being able to read and understand in principle all written and spoken sources intended for native speakers is more relevant for me than being able to buy a bread in Polish - I could do that with less than 300 words if need be." OK, my use of byproduct rather than endproduct may be an exaggeration, but it seems to me abundantly clear that for @iversen speaking (with natives?) comes way after reading and writing in the target languages. My goal is not to buy a loaf of bread in the target language. It is to be able to interact naturally with native speakers in their language. I may start off with little more than "hi" and "how are you" after two hours of study. After a day I can buy that bread, but my goal is certainly way beyond that. I deduce that @iversen and I have reversed priorities. For him reading and writing come first; for me understanding and speaking come first. Therefore our approaches are different. Not surprising. What does this mean? There's a strange and silly idea floating around here that all I want to do is speak some simple but perfectly formed phrases limited to those infamous 300 words that somehow have become my only target for speaking the language. Although I think one can do more than buy a loaf of bread with 300 words, that's not the issue. The real issue is what do you want to do and how do you get there. I have simply suggested that a strategy based on speaking as soon as possible with a small lexical set--oh, how I rue the day that I said only 300 words; make that whatever figure you like--can be effective. Nothing more. I really don't see what the fuss is about. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5532 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 180 of 210 23 August 2012 at 6:53pm | IP Logged | |||||
Of course, for me, the problem is that if I miss tarabiscoté and rebutant in full-speed native dialog, I'm probably going to miss the context, too. If I'm unfamiliar with 10% of the words in French speech, things start breaking down badly at high speeds. But if I'm only missing 2%, there's a good chance that I can get the context and assign provisional meanings to the missing words. Right now, my listening comprehension difficulties seem to fall into 3 categories: 1) Outright failure to decode full-speed, heavily-reduced speech between natives. I work on this by intensive, repeated listening, during which I try to hear every reduced speech form. 2) Failure to recognize a word I know perfectly well in print. This tends to be caused by words where I have a strong written representation, but a weak or non-existent phonetic representation. Solution: Rewind a couple of times until I can hear it. 3) Complete listening breakdown because I'm missing too many words. Solution: Learn more words.
Yeah, I don't understand why people choose to be monolingual in Montreal, and especially not why they choose to be monolingual anglophones. From my perspective, a young, ambitious English-speaker in Montreal has at least two obvious choices: 1) Spend maybe 150 hours working through a course (if they like courses), and then start talking to people, getting better as they go. Or skip the course, if they prefer. 2) Spend the rest of their lifetime locked out of bilingual jobs and isolated from half the surrounding community. The cost of (1) is trivial compared to the consequences of (2). Sure, 150 hours is a lot of time if you're learning French as a hobby. But if the lack of French actually limits your professional or social options? Just dive in and get it over with. To put my earlier comments in perspective, when I say that I prefer to avoid speaking before A2, that doesn't mean I want to spend four years in a classroom. It means I want at least 150–200 hours of listening, shadowing and quiet reflection before being put on the spot. In French, that was enough for me to learn a serviceable vocabulary, three verb tenses and enough grammar to survive. Once I reach that point, sure, throw me in an immersion environment. I can survive having the vocabulary of a toddler. But less than that, and my frustration level is way too high. Edited by emk on 23 August 2012 at 7:01pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5430 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 181 of 210 23 August 2012 at 9:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
It looks like @emk is doing all the right things. The sense of my comment is essentially to draw attention to the fact that when one's time and resources are limited, there may be some decisions about what to focus on. If decoding and understanding every word in that movie is important, then there is no choice. If I go to see a play by Molière or Shakespeare, I personally like to read the play before to familiarize myself with the language used because there are some major differences between the language of the these plays and contemporary language. What happens if I didn't have the time to read the play beforehand? I'm certainly going to miss a few things. But how important are they? That's the question. To really get 100% out of Molière or Shakespeare, I should know 100% of the words. But maybe I'll settle for 92% or 94% or 98% because in the grand scheme of things, I can still really enjoy the play with less than 100%. Or if I go to an opera sung in Russian. sure, I'll read the English synopsis in the program, so, I have a sense of what is going on. But I can't follow the dialogues. While it would be nice to have, I can settle for the beautiful singing and the music. Edited by s_allard on 24 August 2012 at 1:19am 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6597 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 182 of 210 23 August 2012 at 11:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Randomly realized: is it just me, or are you (s_allard) suggesting that, as both the simple verbs like take, get, do and the prepositions are on the 300 Important Words List, you have to "learn the usage" as early as possible, including combinations of these two groups ie phrasal verbs??? For English learners, I mean. I personally don't think there's a reason not to learn phrasal verbs in the order in which most textbooks present them, ie only a handful in the beginning, then some more later like "look forward to" and most other phrasal verbs much later.
Some reasons NOT to learn too many phrasal verbs in the beginning: -their single-word synonyms are more productive and might be more international -you develop a feel for them eventually, and you'll see some sort of logic when your overall skills (and Sprachgefühl!) are better. And more generally, I really don't think you have to learn all the meanings of verbs like get before acquiring more words. There are some semantically heavy words that you should come back to again and again. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5430 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 183 of 210 24 August 2012 at 1:16am | IP Logged | |||||
I would certainly agree that it's not necessary try to cram everything in to 300 words. The idea isn't to try to do in 300 words what you would do with 500 or 1000. If I can repeat myself one more time, my position is that a relatively small number of words--300 for sake of argument--are enough to help a learner make meaningful statements and start using the language in a real setting. So I don't think you have to learn every combination with "about" but I think you should learn pretty early to decode and use "how about?", "what about?" and "think about." because they are quite common. Edited by s_allard on 24 August 2012 at 1:20am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6943 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 184 of 210 24 August 2012 at 3:22am | IP Logged | |||||
That was my experience with English and Spanish - it came as a surprise that I could speak them at all, and do so without experiencing intense physical and emotional pain, once I landed in a TL country. Yet, pleasant as such surprises are, they don't always point to one's speaking skills being high-level, merely higher than anticipated. :) In the end, for me the question is whether speaking early results in better long-term results. I wish I knew the answer to that. Edited by frenkeld on 24 August 2012 at 6:40am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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