|
 |
ESL Article: Myths about vocab learning | ||
Tags: Language Teaching | Vocabulary learning | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5012 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes  Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 9 of 17 13 August 2012 at 6:09pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
|
I forgot to write that in my opinion it is not so important that the author speaks only
about ESL because the rest of the world usually follows the ESL style with shorter or longer delay. Both the good inventions and the bad ones. Go to a bookshop and leaf through nearly all the french published French courses meant for classes. Or most of the Spanish published for Spanish ones, some of the German ones etc as the plague of modern communicative approach without wordlists and grammar explanations spreads. When we are at the wheel reinventions, next time he might find out that most of the better students in classes are better because they supplement the course with a grammar book :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5229 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 10 of 17 13 August 2012 at 6:55pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Because that is pretty much anathema in the ESL world. Only the oddballs like Decoo, Mondria, or that guy, have the guts to take the bull by the horns and shout that the emperor is naked. They often end up marginalized in ESL-land because of that, too.
I have a ("Mickey Mouse") certification as an ESL teacher. The only requirement to get it was to be an English-speaking native or close enough, and doing as you were told, whether it made sense or not. As a non-native, I was the only person in the school (besides our students) who was an active learner of foreign languages (others might have been in the past but didn't seem particularly interested then). So... no, they mostly don't [probably].
SLA (for, as you say, all SLA mostly follows the ESL path) is like any other industry devoted to 'fixing' matters: there are those who are honest about it and actually help, and then there are those who work to keep the status quo... Not that they do so necessarily on purpose, though. Sure, some of them will be afraid of being out of business someday if too much people actually learn instead of being forever stuck, but most will probably regard the whole machinery as profitable enough as is so they needn't care about 'improvements'. As often is attributed to Napoleon, never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence ;) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5433 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 11 of 17 13 August 2012 at 9:27pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
|
I think that much of this debate is useless because we are not comparing oranges with oranges and apples with apples. If you want to debunk a myth, you have to at least be sure what the myth is about. Let me refer to the so-called myths in Mondria's article (my apologies to the OP).
I'll look at two so-called myths that have been debunked by Mondria: 1.Myth 1: “Knowing a relatively small number of words takes you far.” Mondria purports to show that to understand an article you need you need a relatively large number of words. That is true, but that is not what the so-called myth is about. Nobody has claimed that a small number of words will allow you to read a large number of texts. The people who say that knowing a small number of words takes you far--and I'm one of them--say that in a given situation, especially for the spoken language (and not for the written language)--a very small number of words is sufficient for everyday uses. What does this mean? It means for example that you can spend three hours--as I have just done--having a conversation with a relative in the hospital all while using a vocabulary of less than 300 words. I didn't talk with the doctor; I didn't read any technical articles; I just chatted about family and ordinary subjects. How large a vocabulary do I need for this? Could I do this in Spanish? Yes. I even have conversations with a Spanish patient. Could I do this in Russian? Not really, but would I need a huge vocabulary to chat with a Russian patient? No. The whole question about necessary vocabulary size boils down to what your needs are and how well you can use the words. I think that 100 words can get you very far, if your needs are limited. Frankly, if I had 300 words of Russian and a good command of the grammar, I believe I could do very well in the hospital. Myth 4: “Words should always be learned in context.” The idea behind learning words in context is pretty simple: the meaning of words in many cases depends on context. The context may be linguistic, but it can also be the physical environment. When we speak, we use words in context. We don't speak by reading words from a list. We take those words from the list and embed them in structures that give those words meaning. What is the major problem that all people have learning languages? It's not really lack of words, it's knowing how to put the right words in the right form and in the right order. Does learning the 1000 most common words in French mean that you can speak French? Of course not. You can't do anything with that. When people are learning a language, they will trip up on the simplest of things. Why does a Spanish speaker say in English? My son, he goes to the bed at 9 hours. There is nothing really wrong with this sentence except that it is not what most English speakers would say. They would say: My son goes to bed at 9 o'clock. The problem of the Spanish speaker is not lack of vocabulary, it's how to put it all together properly. He has to learn that we usually say "go to bed" and not "go to the bed" but we say "go to the park" and not "go to park." But I hasten to say that there may arise contexts in which these "incorrect" forms may be appropriate. Let me give a last example. The word "police" is familiar to everybody. In French it can have three distinct and totally unrelated meanings: 1. la police nationale ou municipale (the police force) 2. la police d'assurance (the insurance policy) 3. la police de caractères (the typography font) How do you know which one is which? It all depends on the context. If someone screams, "appelez la police," you know what they are talking about. Could one learn the word "police" without reference to the context? I guess you could, but why would try to do this when learning with context is so useful? What happens when you do not learn in context? You end up using the words in the wrong context. The argument usually made against learning in context is that the learner will only know the word in a single context. Therefore the word must be decontextualized. This is rubbish. What is the point of learning the word "police" without some reference to context? I think the discussion should be what we mean by these so-called myths and not whether they have been debunked. Edited by s_allard on 13 August 2012 at 9:32pm 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Juаn Senior Member Colombia Joined 5348 days ago 727 posts - 1830 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 12 of 17 13 August 2012 at 10:05pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
|
I look up every single unknown word I encounter, either during language study or when I'm reading academic books or literature in languages I'm already proficient at. For a long time I avoided use of a dictionary, and despite extensive reading my command of the two languages I used then grew at a negligible pace. My progress since I adopted it has been robust.
Learning through context leads to poor understanding of reading texts and imprecise, deficient and defective usage. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Swift Senior Member Ireland Joined 4611 days ago 137 posts - 191 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, Russian | Message 13 of 17 14 August 2012 at 12:02am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Can you elaborate on what you mean by this exactly? By extensive activities, do you mean the real world application of the language when you aren't sitting down with a book? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5433 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 14 of 17 14 August 2012 at 12:52am | IP Logged | ||||||||
|
Just to avoid any confusion, learning words in context does not mean learning through or by context.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5012 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 15 of 17 14 August 2012 at 1:09am | IP Logged | ||||||||
|
Swift: On the forums, there are often two kinds of reading mentioned (and it could be
applied to listening as well): extensive-you read a lot. you don't bother looking up everything, you take in masses of input. you see the pieces of language in many contexts, your passive skill gets more fluent. this is usually more fun for people (for exemple me) intensive-you read slower and look up every tiny bit, every word. the goal is not to get so much of input but to be precise. For both, you need to sit down with a book (or spend time with your audio player, if it is listening instead of reading). 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5229 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 16 of 17 14 August 2012 at 1:44am | IP Logged | ||||||||
|
Learning words through context and in context...
Meaning CAN be deduced from context. The problem is, context doesn't necessarily offer an adequate amount of information. Example: "his eyes were as **** as the sky". Sure enough, **** must be a colour. But which one? Blue? What if it were "his eyes were as **** as the sky on a rainy day"? Gray? Why not something like 'dark' or 'colourless'? Now that I think of it, '****' in the first example could have been 'luminous', i.e. not a colour at all! And I don't think that's a particularly pathological example. Conclusion? How reliably and accurately meaning can be deduced from context is completely unpredictable, and it heavily depends on *actual* context, i.e. different contexts will be varyingly useful. The same goes for any other 'context information'. Can grammatical categories be deduced from context? Does 'I am ****.' say a lot about '****'? Not really. Now what other information can context give about a word? There's not one answer, but for every one that can be given, there's no guarantee whatsoever that seeing that word in one particular context (what I understand by 'learning words in context') will deliver that piece of information. Valid usage examples? That's the first thing I'd expect to find in a dictionary that's any good. What's more, each time you see a word in a useful context, so you can accurately deduce the meaning or learn something else, there are surely many other valid and potentially useful contexts you're not seeing it in. How many times (in how many contexts) do words need to be learned? What reason could there be to say "words should always be learned in context" other than the assumption that context information is somehow better per se than the alternatives? I see none. Since there are alternatives as good as dictionaries that give a list of precise meaning, grammar categories and good usage examples, or even better for foreign language learning, multilingual dictionaries providing more or less the same plus translations to a language you're strong in, saying that context is better than all of those that is a bit of a stretch to say the least. Whatever may be missing from a good dictionary will quickly pop up if it's important. 'always learn in context' implies you'll always miss something important if you don't. That's complete nonsense. Edited by mrwarper on 14 August 2012 at 1:45am 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. |
