|
 |
Is counting your vocabulary size useless? | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Peregrinus Senior Member United States Joined 4492 days ago 149 posts - 273 votes  Speaks: English* | Message 41 of 210 18 August 2012 at 1:27am | IP Logged | |||||
Iversen, This is a separate issue not really dealing with the topic of this thread, but I myself intensely dislike the use of literary works in language learning (except perhaps for *very* short snippets). This is also probably why I have not been able to make L-R work for me. You get not a literal translation in L1, but rather a literary one meant to echo the author's "feeling" or something. I would much rather see non-literary examples used, and that is why I myself stick mostly to non-fiction writing for extensive reading, though on a variety of subjects. 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 42 of 210 18 August 2012 at 3:04am | IP Logged | |||||
ER relies on CI, of course, but CI doesn't have to rely on ER. She talked about the 95% because that's what research at the time indicated, but she said on another occasion that she tended to end up looking up most of the new words. I had experimented with extensive reading on a fairly large scale, and found the progress to be quite slow. I am quite convinced now that simply looking up every new word would have been more efficient. The big objection to that has always been the low speed of lookup in a paper dictionary, but with electronic dictionaries, including ones built into devices like Kindle, one can do that quite a bit faster. Now, ER has an extremely important role to play because it helps internalize the language one has already learned, but we are talking about it as a source of new vocabulary here. These days I alternate between ebooks, with which I look up most of the new words, and paper books, which I read without a dictionary, but I wouldn't want to do just one or the other. Also of interest is the fact that A. Arguelles used to quote the 95 percent figure as well, but is now quoting 98 percent. It is really not a trivial process to acquire new vocabulary from context while reading. Edited by frenkeld on 18 August 2012 at 3:11am 3 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 43 of 210 18 August 2012 at 3:45am | IP Logged | |||||
As we are talking about the most effective way to acquire grammar and usage --although I don't distinguish the two--, I would like to make a few suggestions. Since my focus is operational or performance-oriented grammar, I would emphasize using as early as possible materials that focus on the spoken language. This would include things like comic books, lots of TV, DVD's, etc with closed-captions or subtitles. Plus plenty of recordings of natural speech with detailed transcripts. Then as much one-on-one work with a language tutor focusing on pronunciation and interaction skills. Yes, I would study lots of grammar but with a specific orientation toward grammar for speaking. I should point out that little material is designed specifically for learning to speak. The common assumption is that the grammar and the vocabulary are all the same in reading, writing, listening and speaking. This is not true. There are major differences. For example, I have in front of me Barron's 501 Spanish Verbs by Christopher Kendris. It's an excellent reference work that I would highly recommend. But like the vast majority of reference works, it is not designed for users who are focusing on speaking. It is a comprehensive reference work of verbs grouped in alphabetical order and with all the possible tenses, moods and persons. But it does not distinguish between what is very common, less common and rare in speech. There is a chapter on how to use the various forms, but again it does not really distinguish between what is really important and what is secondary in spoken Spanish. And it barely touches on regional differences like the voseo in Latin America. It's a good book, but do you need all that to speak Spanish? Of course not, you actually need only a small part, but such is the nature of reference materials. For something that looks specifically at spoken Spanish, I would recommend Francisco Motte Bon's Gramática comunicativa del español. I must say that I'm not really up on the latest materials for learning Spanish, but I'm sure that there is more and more material specifically aimed at teaching the spoken language. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Peregrinus Senior Member United States Joined 4492 days ago 149 posts - 273 votes Speaks: English* | Message 44 of 210 18 August 2012 at 5:13am | IP Logged | |||||
I too take a modified approach and do in fact look up words with the aid of a pop-up dictionary. And if there are too many words looked up, I will often skim the article again and see if the new ones stuck at all, and look them up again if not. Then I move on. Naturally I am not doing this with words that can be learned from context, or even if they don't seem to impede meaning. Still, if I didn't know 90%+ of the words as well as the grammar, it would really bog down the process. Hence the emphasis on getting to the point of being able to use ER fairly efficiently. The reason to emphasize 2000-2500+ words as opposed to 300ish, at least for reading, is to get to that point of being able to use ER as a faster method than drilling vocabulary in isolation. But Linguamor did not oppose drilling to get to the point of being able to use ER. You are right that CI does not depend on ER. But the problem is the lack of resources, as in graded readers, after a certain point. As has often been discussed in the past, a lot of that lack probably has to do with so few people even reaching the low to mid intermediate level which means not enough demand for such resources to justify making them. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Peregrinus Senior Member United States Joined 4492 days ago 149 posts - 273 votes Speaks: English* | Message 45 of 210 18 August 2012 at 5:23am | IP Logged | |||||
|
@s_allard,
I think the problem with listening/spoken resources is that they don't stop at the 2500ish vocabulary mark and then intensively try to teach usage for spoken purposes, but instead move on to even more vocabulary intensive resources if they exist and covering more usage a little at a time. Which is the same process as dribbling in the grammar slowly earlier on. I think a lot of the reason for different results among different learners, in accordance with studies on learning styles, is how much ability one has to abstract grammar rules. Thus for some learning a grammar table and the tense stems allows them to know fairly quickly the conjugated form of a verb heretofore only encountered in the infinitive. But for others, they need to have actually seen that conjugated form itself. Thus for them, perhaps tediously reading and pronouncing all the conjugated forms of each verb in one of those 501 books might actually prove useful. The same input that is comprehensible to one is not necessarily to another. 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 46 of 210 18 August 2012 at 5:56am | IP Logged | |||||
I am not sure what exactly the experts mean by the term usage and how it may or may not differ from grammar, but my own use or misuse of the term is based on the mundane issue of where I can learn what. If por versus para or ser versus estar are covered in a typical grammar book or workbook, I tend to think of the nuances of their use as grammar. If my concern is not sounding unnatural, but in an area that is not to be found in a grammar book, I think of it as usage. On the other end of the spectrum, it is quite possible that some of what I designate as "usage" is just vocabulary. What's not covered in a grammar workbook can take more effort to acquire, since you often get to figure it out entirely on your own. Edited by frenkeld on 18 August 2012 at 5:59am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Peregrinus Senior Member United States Joined 4492 days ago 149 posts - 273 votes Speaks: English* | Message 47 of 210 18 August 2012 at 6:10am | IP Logged | |||||
|
@frenkeld,
I think you make a good point, in that "usage" is somewhat of a vague term, just like lexical "chunk". And as you did intuitively, the best way to find what it is, is via a process of exclusion. So what is not: -vocabulary in isolation -finer points of grammar -prepositions in isolation -non-figurative uses of phrasal verbs What it is (to me): -discourse markers -prepositional phrases where the meaning cannot be derived literally (can overlap with discourse markers) -figurative uses of phrasal verbs -non-idiomatic but also non-literary phrases whose meaning cannot be derived literally (can include any part of speech other than prepositions already covered) -literary idioms and proverbial sayings Since even academic sources don't agree on terminology or classification schemes for discourse markers and lexical chunks, nor from my reading on what is included, it appears there is just going to always be a degree of fuzziness. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Peregrinus Senior Member United States Joined 4492 days ago 149 posts - 273 votes Speaks: English* | Message 48 of 210 18 August 2012 at 6:46am | IP Logged | |||||
|
Since we have been discussing Linguamor's methods, I thought it would be useful to give a couple links to her postings in the very valuable Super-fast vocabulary learning thread.
Page 9 but see page 10 as well Page 13 but see page 14 as well Also the whole thread especially Iversen's postings is worth reading. Now let me give a quote from Linguamor in response to a question by Iversen:
Edit: It looks like the forum software won't let my links show up properly due to being a new forum member. So one will have to copy and paste into the address bar I guess. Edited by Peregrinus on 18 August 2012 at 6:47am 1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
