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Learning Only Vocabulary

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Random review
Diglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 5775 days ago
781 posts - 1310 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German

 
 Message 17 of 25
14 December 2010 at 1:54am | IP Logged 
OlafP wrote:
Random review wrote:
Actually it's worse even than this!!!! Even learning a language by just learning the Vocab AND the Grammar does not work.


Vocabulary and grammar are visible to the eye, therefore they cannot be essential:
"On ne voit bien qu'avec le cœur. L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux."


I love that book! What a wonderful quote!

Edited by Random review on 14 December 2010 at 1:55am
1 person has voted this message useful



Desertbandit
Groupie
Netherlands
Joined 5092 days ago
80 posts - 104 votes 
Speaks: Arabic (Iraqi)*

 
 Message 18 of 25
14 December 2010 at 3:44pm | IP Logged 
I see, I thank everyone for their input .






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Sierra
Diglot
Senior Member
Turkey
livinginlights.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 7116 days ago
296 posts - 411 votes 
Speaks: English*, SwedishB1
Studies: Turkish

 
 Message 19 of 25
14 December 2010 at 5:51pm | IP Logged 
When I study Turkish, I put a strong emphasis on vocabulary- to the extent that most
days, my only "active" studying is vocab-based. That is, I read books, blogs, articles,
whatever I can get my hands on, and chuck all the words I don't know in Mnemosyne,
reviewing each morning. I hardly focus on grammar at all.

I was stressed out about it for a while. "Ugh, I should really sit down and study some
grammar one of these days..." "Gotta make time for grammar today..." etc etc, but I
never really got around to it, and all of a sudden I'm finding that it hasn't really
mattered that much. Through hours and hours of reading in Turkish, I've internalized
way more of the grammar than I ever expected to. I think that vocabulary requires much
more active study than grammar does, because there's just so darn much to know.
Grammar: okay, it's not super easy either, but it's more finite than vocabulary in a
lot of ways, and your mind will grow to accept the foreign constructions eventually if
you just expose yourself to them over and over.

Not that I study no grammar at all, though. I did a lot of grammar work in my first
month or two of study, and now that I'm at an intermediate level and have grown
familiar with most constructions at least in a passive way, I do look up the occasional
point.

I have no particular love for grammar in specific terms (that is, I find it endlessly
fascinating how different languages put things together in different ways, but I don't
have much patience for memorizing subjunctive endings or whatever), so I minimize my
active study of it in favor of vocab. It's working better than I really expected. If
you don't care for grammar either, I don't think there's any harm in giving yourself a
bit of a break from it and going the osmosis route for a while.
3 persons have 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 25
14 December 2010 at 6:28pm | IP Logged 
Desertbandit wrote:
Is it possible to master a language by only memorizing voculubary ?

No.

Desertbandit wrote:
I mean think about it, a language is just one big collection of words.

Grammar is something you can learn afterwards , but I believe if you know what most words mean understanding a sentence should be very easy.

Sounds like learning how to paint by only studying the name of colours and supplies. Does that teach you how to use them? Will that allow you to paint beautiful landscapes? I think you'd achieve nothing.




3 persons have voted this message useful



Desertbandit
Groupie
Netherlands
Joined 5092 days ago
80 posts - 104 votes 
Speaks: Arabic (Iraqi)*

 
 Message 21 of 25
14 December 2010 at 9:22pm | IP Logged 
Sierra wrote:
When I study Turkish, I put a strong emphasis on vocabulary- to the extent that most
days, my only "active" studying is vocab-based. That is, I read books, blogs, articles,
whatever I can get my hands on, and chuck all the words I don't know in Mnemosyne,
reviewing each morning. I hardly focus on grammar at all.

I was stressed out about it for a while. "Ugh, I should really sit down and study some
grammar one of these days..." "Gotta make time for grammar today..." etc etc, but I
never really got around to it, and all of a sudden I'm finding that it hasn't really
mattered that much. Through hours and hours of reading in Turkish, I've internalized
way more of the grammar than I ever expected to. I think that vocabulary requires much
more active study than grammar does, because there's just so darn much to know.
Grammar: okay, it's not super easy either, but it's more finite than vocabulary in a
lot of ways, and your mind will grow to accept the foreign constructions eventually if
you just expose yourself to them over and over.

Not that I study no grammar at all, though. I did a lot of grammar work in my first
month or two of study, and now that I'm at an intermediate level and have grown
familiar with most constructions at least in a passive way, I do look up the occasional
point.

I have no particular love for grammar in specific terms (that is, I find it endlessly
fascinating how different languages put things together in different ways, but I don't
have much patience for memorizing subjunctive endings or whatever), so I minimize my
active study of it in favor of vocab. It's working better than I really expected. If
you don't care for grammar either, I don't think there's any harm in giving yourself a
bit of a break from it and going the osmosis route for a while.


You are a briliant person, I appriciate this post allot .
2 persons have 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 22 of 25
15 December 2010 at 4:44pm | IP Logged 
I have never gone as far as learning only vocabulary, but I have often tended to stress vocabulary more when learning languages, although I pay some attention to grammar too. My reason is that with bad grammar but a large vocabulary, you can still express yourself fairly well and understand much of what you hear in the L2. With brilliant grammar but a tiny vocabulary, there is not a lot you can do.
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 23 of 25
15 December 2010 at 5:18pm | IP Logged 
William Camden wrote:
With brilliant grammar but a tiny vocabulary, there is not a lot you can do.

I wouldn't say that. I think you can either use a lot of precise words with imprecise grammar, or you can use more precise grammar with less precise words.

I meet a lot of people with large vocabularies who make sentences that are hard to understand. On the other hand, I tend to be quite adept at expressing lots with a smaller vocabulary and I always put a lot of emphasis on grammar (and internalizing it) when studying.

A very high percentage of words used in languages stem from a fairly small subset of words. For instance, out of the verbs used 80% of the time, there are probably less than 100 verbs.
1 person has voted this message useful



CaucusWolf
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5264 days ago
191 posts - 234 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Arabic (Written), Japanese

 
 Message 24 of 25
15 December 2010 at 6:19pm | IP Logged 
William Camden wrote:
I have never gone as far as learning only vocabulary, but I have often tended to stress vocabulary more when learning languages, although I pay some attention to grammar too. My reason is that with bad grammar but a large vocabulary, you can still express yourself fairly well and understand much of what you hear in the L2. With brilliant grammar but a tiny vocabulary, there is not a lot you can do.

I'm not quit sure if that's what the posters who said to study only Vocabulary implied though. They probably meant to say If you study just the vocab but also while reading and listening to texts and shows etc you can learn everything later. The only problem is you basically are learning Grammar this way as well because eventually even by doing this you'd start to notice patterns in speech etc.


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