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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4907 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 121 of 217 26 May 2015 at 12:00pm | IP Logged | ||
I love a good debate, in fact I think I was one of the first people to start questioning what others were saying on that thread. But it was the polarization that got me out. People drew a line, and if a poster seemed to be on the other side of that line they argued against them, even if that person actually wrote something they had agreed with previously. Some people polarize themselves, others get polarized, and some can't help bringing up the same issue again and again. Sigh. But what bothers me the most is people who respond without actually reading. Speaking of procrastination, I wonder how much good study I could have done instead of being involved in that thread? EDIT: rather than derail your log with my philosophy of vocabulary, I wrote a post about it on my own thread. I'd gladly hear your feedback Cavesa. http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?T ID=37873&PN=1&TPN=20 Edited by Jeffers on 26 May 2015 at 1:43pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4531 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 122 of 217 27 May 2015 at 10:38am | IP Logged | ||
What got me out was the simple aggressiveness of some of the discussions, which was combined with an unwillingness to consider other points of view. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5007 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 123 of 217 27 May 2015 at 2:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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Oh, so many reactions. Well, the first thing first, I am cured of any need to
participate in the doom threads. :-) Garyb, it is a shame so many thread on such an important issue, like vocabulary learning, go to hell on our forums. This one thread was awesome at the beginning. I read the first five/seven pages and got really intruiged especially by smallwhite's approach. Smallwhite is someone I've known only from 6wc and similar ladders with impressive amounts of time an impressive list of languages. And her/his (no idea) anki routine, numbers and logic quite make me consider returning to anki in a manner more similar to hers/his. As well, the moderate views tend to be very interesting, like garyb's experience, that's why I hate the stupid battlefield the doomthreads turn into. Tarvos, I am always trying to somehow survive, even without the vocabulary (as you describe). I just tend to feel so dumb in those situations! I get the thing at hand done but I am quite hating myself :-D Comprehension isn't always vocab but vocab is my number one trouble in comprehension (and later active skills). I have yet to try an extremely demanding and different language (like the tonal ones) but so far, the other parts of comprehension have been coming very easily, just with exposure and time. I guess I can theoretically hope for any Germanic/romance/slavic language I might be learning in future (sorry, sounds like boasting but there are reasons for this theory.I am likely to have much more trouble in other areas), that one season of a tv series will get me pretty far in comprehension and majority of the trouble afterwards will be vocabulary. Well, we'll see after I do such a thing with German. That's gonna be the test of my theory. As well, I am not for learning jargon as a beginner instead of useful things. But I've seen far too many people fail at progressing (and fail in real situations) just because they hadn't consider words like "heating" important. It's not just our 300 words guy, many students consider their courses too vocabulary heavy. Yeah, you might not need all those words right away but expecting to "pass a C1 exam" or to get by for half a year in the country, that just requires lots of vocabulary. Tarvos, yeah, I was basically talking about s_allard and I know you can do quite nothing about people like him. I just find some of his habits very arrogant, useless, and seeking out too much attention. He often treats people disagreeing, including some polyglots who have obviously got tons of experience (much more than learners like me or s_allard), like the average joe dreaming to learn his first language by using "learn perfect X in a week and a hundred pages" course. You know, I've been desperate a few times already but never enough to just keep changing all the discussions in one and only, hoping to annoy people enough into agreeing with me by the attempt no.2OO. His real life must really suck. Well, mine sucks too, ok :-D The Russian exam sounds great! Why does hearing about it make me tempt to try Russian? :-D Jeffers, thank for your thoughts on polarization. You are right. I just think that the polarization in the doom threads is something over the top and that is so much wasted potential to turn all those good questions (from the top of my head: how much time to study vocaubulary regularily, how many words does one need to learn as a base fo speaking well, how many to read with high comprehension, how many can one learn in a year, what are good ways to study vocabuary etc) into the same annoying, unpleasant waste of time. Well, I started reading as a way to procrastinate. I managed like five pages from the beginning and five from the end backwards and I couldn't more. Suddenly, pathology seemed less boring. Thanks for the link, Jeffers, I'm looking forward to reading your thoughts. ;-) Patrick, you are very correct. There have been numerous heated debates on htlal. And in most of them, people let their thoughts (and emotions, that is actually a good note for the ykyaaln thread) out and convinced each other on some points while letting other points displayed as various alternatives that do not require an overall unisono acceptance. The Doom threads are very different. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4705 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 124 of 217 27 May 2015 at 3:19pm | IP Logged | ||
Do you hear everything else clearly? That's the litmus test. If you don't, it's not vocab. Or at least not just vocabulary. About Russian, I don't know? You're seeing the fruit being picked after a lot of toil trying to seed the damn plants. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5205 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 125 of 217 27 May 2015 at 3:58pm | IP Logged | ||
OK, in that case I'll give those first few pages a read :) Another reason I've not paid much attention is that I don't really see vocabulary learning as a focus, more as something I do as a part of other learning, like putting phrases from TV/books into Anki. So a 30-something page discussion on the subject hardly enthuses me. But I might learn something useful, as I have in the past! I agree that it's sad that potentially useful discussions get bogged down by arguments. I thought the original 300 word kernel idea was brilliant, if taken with a pinch of salt, which is the whole point since it was introduced as an idea rather than a prescription. I have my doubts that 300 is the right number, or that it's sufficient for a C1 test, but still I think it raised very important points about learning the basics well as opposed to trying to cram every last word. The idea influenced my own studies, where I now worry less about learning lots of vocab and instead spend more time on revising the simple stuff. Unfortunately, people seemed to take the idea completely at face value, dismissing it and arguing against it, with its proponent then arguing back and descending into the arrogant and insulting behaviour that you describe. Which in turn provokes others to respond in kind. Some people just like to argue and deliberately see things in black and white, which doesn't help, I see the same sort of thing on social media etc. all the time. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5007 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 126 of 217 27 May 2015 at 5:19pm | IP Logged | ||
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The limit test are old muttering crying people and those I often fail even in Czech :-
D Usually, vocabulary is the single biggest issue of any of my skills. Sure, some speakers are harder than others and that is why I don't say I am absolutely awesome at comprehension after one season of a tv series. But vocabulary is the main issue because I can even hardly tell you whether I "understand the rest clearly" when the only words I know in the sentence are the prepositions and personal pronouns. That's my situation with German tv series usually :-) garyb, as you see, it is not a 30 page discussion on vocabulary, it is like 7 pages of discussion on the inticial subject and than the goold old doom we've seen before and unfortunately are likely to see again. And again. And again and again. Doom still rules Old Valyria and the vocabulary threads :-D I'd say the 300 words would be a good idea BUT: 1:Unlike others, I don't think you need to drill the inicial basic vocabulary much. The really basic words get repeated all the time no mater what resources you use. It is the rest of the vocabulary that is to be actively learnt if there is no more pleasant way. 2.300 is really not much. Learn the personal pronouns, some prepositions, learn to tell the time and ask for basic alimentation politely and you are nearly done. You can communicate some things after that, sure. If that's what you are after, I am glad you're happy. But don't expect it to suffice for most situations you are gonna get into. 3.300 being enough for a C1 exam, that is pure bullshit. 4.Learning basics first is a sensible choice but the attitude of not having to learn much more or expecting the basics to take you all the way, that is stupid, in my opinion. And 300 is a stupid number. Some of my favourite resources work with 2000 as a good, useful vocabulary, others 1500, others 3000. 300 wasn't a sufficient number at the Thermopyles, why should it be now. :-) If you want the barest minimum to get speaking at all, many people try with 10 and still call it speaking the language. 5.I feel sorry for any accidental inexperienced newbie who reads the theory and acts on it. It sounds like a nice way to get disilusioned and burn out. Let's hope anyone new gets scared by the length of the thread just like some of us ;-) 6.You can speak well with smaller or bigger vocabulary. Some people begin to really speak when they are low B1, some way in C levels. There are personality traits that come into play as well. I don't think most people can trully speak and enjoy it with such a small vocabulary. The Irish Benny surely can, I suppose, but we are not all him. I agree you can focus at other things at first when beginning a language. You can learn the grammar with limited vocabulary, you can get down the pronunciation on fewer examples and so on. But as soon as you want to get further from the beginner stage, you just cannot do that without vocabulary, from my experience. About the Russian temptation, Via Diva has already said a few tempting things, so have you. Russian is one of the Fantastic Four I am gonna pick my next language from and one of the reasons is that Russian shouldn't be that hard. I am not a native Dutch or Norwegian speaker, I can even get the gist of many conversations I happen to hear without ever having studied it (of course not all). It would be an adventure but of a different kind than that of a speaker who finds Russian as similar to their native language as Klingon ;-) To my favourite cultural notes here on the log: I am halfway through the eurovision youtube list. Edited by Cavesa on 27 May 2015 at 5:20pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6595 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 127 of 217 27 May 2015 at 5:23pm | IP Logged | ||
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The problem with the 300 word idea is that it was designed for a specific environment. Canadians who've been trying to learn French all their life but still struggle. It's perfect for 1) false beginners 2) multilingual locations 3) languages with a lot of transparent vocabulary, especially related.
I honestly wish I had done this before my Malta trip. But for many learners the idea is useless or even harmful. And it's simply much harder to learn the advanced usage of basic words as a raw beginner, rather than eternal beginner or shaky intermediate. edit: you've missed a huge debate with smallwhite, who's met a lot of scepticism. really s_allard only jumped in when I revived the thread to clarify some more things with smallwhite. Edited by Serpent on 27 May 2015 at 5:25pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5205 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 128 of 217 27 May 2015 at 6:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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I agree with your criticisms and can see why it could mislead beginners. I view the "kernel" thing as a complement to other studies, not an either-or thing of learning the basics well versus building a large vocabulary. Ideally we want to have a very good grasp on the basic 300 (or whatever) words and a good knowledge of vocabulary beyond those. My case for drilling the basics is from seeing myself, as well as other learners at meetups etc., continually making basic mistakes with verb forms etc. in speech despite having studied the language for years and knowing relatively advanced vocabulary. And my case for doing more of that and less advanced vocab-building is simply that time is limited so doing more of one thing means something else has to give.
That's just my "boring moderate view", and I hope I'm not being hypocritical and continuing to beat the dead horse after complaining about the same thing happening in another thread. And this is as someone who prefers to speak early; maybe focusing on input and leaving speaking for later results in less need to drill the basics. I don't know, I don't have that experience. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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