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Knowing which words are worth remembering | ||
Tags: Reading | Vocabulary learning | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| IronFist Senior Member United States Joined 6438 days ago 663 posts - 941 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 1 of 12 04 February 2012 at 8:44am | IP Logged | ||
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I know you can never know everything. My native language in English and even at 31 years of age I still have to bust out the dictionary sometimes (actually I use dictionary.com because it's faster, but still).
For example, the other day I came across the word "escutcheon" while I was reading something (probably an article on some news site, I really don't remember). I've never heard/seen that word before in my life, so I looked it up on dictionary.com and then promptly forgot it. Pretend I was a beginner/intermediate English learner and I'm keeping track of all the words I encounter because I want to be as good as possible at my new language. How would I know that I shouldn't even bother with that word because I'll never see it again? Even if there was a common, easy word in my native language for escutcheon, I'll never use it in English. How do I know? I don't want to waste my time memorizing that word when I'll never use it, and if I do use it no one will know what I'm talking about. Are there like "2,000 most common words" lists based on frequency analysis for language learners? Edited by IronFist on 04 February 2012 at 8:45am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| eggcluck Senior Member China Joined 4702 days ago 168 posts - 278 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 2 of 12 04 February 2012 at 9:10am | IP Logged | ||
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There are frequency lists, though from what I understand many need to be taken with a grain of salt. This is due to how it is sampled. As I understand it, many are done via the scanning of news articles and such. There would have the effect of declaring certain types of words as more common than they actually are.
It was my local paper that made heavy use of " not withstanding" though I can not recall this phrase ever being a part of regular every day speech despite its relatively high frequency within said news paper. Scanning of gossip magazines while I am unsure can have a similar sqewing effect. Personally I think the best option is to look at what you use on a daily basis and have you own internal frequency list from that. Enough exposure to native things will eventually show you what comes up time and time again. Edited by eggcluck on 04 February 2012 at 9:17am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6910 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 3 of 12 04 February 2012 at 11:18am | IP Logged | ||
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Just the other day someone posted a link to this old thread from 2009:
What is your reading process? (I find Cainntear's post on top of page 2 particularly good) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| clumsy Octoglot Senior Member Poland lang-8.com/6715Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5179 days ago 1116 posts - 1367 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, Japanese, Korean, French, Mandarin, Italian, Vietnamese Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swedish Studies: Danish, Dari, Kirundi | Message 4 of 12 04 February 2012 at 3:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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When I was reading the book by Van Helsing on kanji, I came across the same word -
escutcheon. I was thinking about, if natives can read it, and... now I have the proof! I generally like the Idea of the book, but the fact that the guy uses so many rarely used words makes it hard to read - especially to non natives. Going back to the question - well, I don't think you have to worry, in order to remember a word you need to forget it 29 times, according to one website. Moreover many advanced words are translated 'in the run' : like in this sentence: 'many Pingos play kapunga, which is a kind of Pantavian flute'. the word 'kapunga' is already explained to you in the text, so you don't have to worry, it's the same with many textbooks, and things like this. 'kapunga' is not a real word, of course. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Warp3 Senior Member United States forum_posts.asp?TID= Joined 5536 days ago 1419 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese | Message 5 of 12 04 February 2012 at 5:23pm | IP Logged | ||
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For Korean, it helps having two vocabulary books based on the "6000 Essential Vocabulary" list on hand. If I come across a word I don't know and it is in one of those books, it always gets added to my SRS. If it isn't in there, then I just have to make a judgment call based on whether I *think* it is important or not. If you really aren't sure about a word, then I say toss it. If you toss it as unimportant and it turns out it was important, then it will, by definition, come back up later. If that happens, grab it then. If you never see the word again (or it takes so long that you don't even remember seeing it the first time) then you've not really lost anything and have spent your efforts on more useful words in the meantime.
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| nimchimpsky Diglot Groupie Netherlands Joined 5612 days ago 73 posts - 108 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English | Message 6 of 12 04 February 2012 at 6:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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I skip most concrete nouns because there are so many of them. I only learn the generic word and a representative member. To give an example, I would learn fruit, apple and banana but if I ever came across the word 'pomegranate', I would just categorise that as a type of fruit without any further specification.
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| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5010 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 7 of 12 04 February 2012 at 9:44pm | IP Logged | ||
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For a beginner or intermediate level, there are often vocabulary textbooks which work
better than pure frequency lists. It's a combination of frequency and tematic lists made especially with a learner on mind. The disadvantage is that you cannot find such resources for most languages but you can always try to search for them. I've seen such books for French, Spanish, English, German, and Polish. And at intermediate level, a learner starts to divide words he or she encounters in the basic groups "I've already seen it", "I might use that" and "nah, that doesn't seem useful". Such independency is a valuable skill because any "prechewed" sources are drying up. A few days ago, I saw a Czech frequency dictionary in a bookshop. Of course I opened it. And i nearly ran away screaming. If most frequency dictionaries look that way, I admire anyone who is able to use them for language learning. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Warp3 Senior Member United States forum_posts.asp?TID= Joined 5536 days ago 1419 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese | Message 8 of 12 04 February 2012 at 11:20pm | IP Logged | ||
How was it sorted? Most actual frequency dictionaries are sorted by frequency which, while useful information, doesn't seem like it would work particularly well as a vocab source. The two Korean "6000 essential word" books I have use very different sorting setups. Both split the importance level into 3 groups (A, B, C in one book and **, *, no marking in the other), but give no other indications of frequency beyond those groupings. However one book is sorted alphabetically and the other is grouped in chapters and sub-chapters based on the topic. The latter has proven to be far more useful for vocabulary learning (both due to the topical grouping and due to the inclusion of examples and tips for differentiating words with similar meanings). Edited by Warp3 on 04 February 2012 at 11:22pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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