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Picking up words from the dictionary | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5559 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes  Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 9 of 60 21 June 2009 at 8:37pm | IP Logged | ||
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Once you have down the most frequent vocabulary items with the help of your textbook, you could pick a topic every couple of days, first do a brainstorm to see which target language words you already know that are linked to that topic (like - fishing, for example, if you like that; maybe you know the words for some fish species or the word for rod or ...), then hunt down the French translation of all the words you came up with in your first language.
And then read about the topic, watch a documentary or if you find one listen to a podcast or radio show on that topic. Add new unknown words to your topic-specific vocabulary list. In the end pick out the words on your list that actually seem useful to you and add them to your flashcards, SRS or vocabulary book complete with a sample sentence. Rinse and repeat. (Of course this is not OMG!enlightenment but just an idea how one may combine learning from context and a halfways structured approach.) I have no idea how many words I know in my first language, neither do I know it for English. Especially as there are a lot of words I understand in context but wouldn't be able to give a definition without the context. And there also are a lot of words I would count as passive vocabulary but I actually am able to use them spontaneously when talking about the topic they belong to. Edited by Bao on 21 June 2009 at 11:49pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6496 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 10 of 60 21 June 2009 at 8:54pm | IP Logged | ||
I use word lists for learning words batchwise, and I have written about it in many places in this forum. However to the precise question there is a simple answer: I get my words from the things I read (jotted down on a piece of papir with a translation), and then they are random. Or I get them from a dictionary, and then they are roughly alphabetically ordered. But learning 30 almost identical words in a row is not necessary and not a good idea. Pick out some of the groups that actually are semantically and etymologically related within the 30 words and skip the rest, - you can learn those later. Learning a dictionary from A to Z is mind-numbing and ineffective, but learning a lot of words on d- while you are at it is a quite sensible thing to do. For me it is easier to memorize and recall such a pile of words than a list of totally random words. Edited by Iversen on 21 June 2009 at 8:56pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Toufik18 Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Algeria Joined 5537 days ago 188 posts - 202 votes Speaks: Arabic (Written)*, Arabic (classical)*, French, English | Message 11 of 60 21 June 2009 at 11:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thank you Bao for you input, very interesting approach you got there, I like the idea of building you target language vocabulary from you native one, very neat.
And to Iversen, you are always very helpful but I have a question please, how could you build up advanced vocabulary in German for instence, or French or English, I can benifit so much from your approach, like how did you select which words do you intend to learn? Thank you and soory for my unending questions :). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Hencke Tetraglot Moderator Spain Joined 6687 days ago 2340 posts - 2444 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Finnish, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 12 of 60 22 June 2009 at 12:39am | IP Logged | ||
Oh, I'm glad if it was useful to you. But don't take anything I say, or anybody else, as gospel, we could all be wrong, and your learning style could be different. All the input you receive in a thread like this one are just suggestions and ideas for things you can try, and food for thought on what kind of things to watch out for. Then you experiment and find what works best for you personally and make your own decisions, whether it is in line with everybody else's advice or not. It's OK to make mistakes. The trick is to detect them in time and change tack before wasting too much time. Edited by Hencke on 22 June 2009 at 12:42am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Toufik18 Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Algeria Joined 5537 days ago 188 posts - 202 votes Speaks: Arabic (Written)*, Arabic (classical)*, French, English | Message 13 of 60 22 June 2009 at 4:11am | IP Logged | ||
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Exactly, I put this thread to hear from experienced people and there is no better learning then a tip from experience, and I like to keep my mind open for suggestions. but I was so keen to achieve advanced fluency in French that I let my own enthusiasm mists my vision of realistic goal, you can't scan a dictionary! it's boring !
Now I've decided to go for about 6000 words taken from newspapers, websites, articls, novels...etc meaning words with a context, it's better to let them penetrate into you brain than letting them installed pasively in your memory, so 6000 active words is fine by now. Thanx again 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Lizzern Diglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5702 days ago 791 posts - 1053 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 14 of 60 22 June 2009 at 5:56pm | IP Logged | ||
No idea :-) The point I was making about the visual dictionary was that it contains a lot of words I have never learned and will likely never need (and as far as I can tell it doesn't have a single verb in it so it is by no means complete anyway) so it makes more sense to discover the words we need from context, and just keep at it until we can 1) understand everything we hear and read, and 2) express everything we want to say in the most appropriate way for our target language. On a related note, recently I've found that looking words up in a dictionary, though it can be helpful, sometimes gives really incomplete information about the word I'm looking up, that it feels like I'm only hearing half the story - but from the context it's clearer what they meant to say. I guess it's the same thing as when we hear somebody speak our native language and they use a word that the dictionary probably told them was correct, but is just... not. Even in a synonym dictionary very many supposed synonyms will have slight differences in meaning that can be slight nuances only but very important, but using your average dictionary you could just never know that. So the more I get into the details of things the more I feel like we really need massive amounts of input to stear us in the right direction. Liz 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| TheBiscuit Tetraglot Senior Member Mexico Joined 5716 days ago 532 posts - 619 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Italian Studies: German, Croatian | Message 15 of 60 22 June 2009 at 7:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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I like reading dictionaries but not necessarily to memorise words. I read them kind of like novels and what I learn from doing this is the possibilities, how words are formed, word patterns, word functions, concepts etc.
I do also memorise/learn words but in a more synaesthetic/associative way and not alphabetically. At the moment I'm reading a Spanish - Italian dictionary, noting the above whilst learning mainly words I know and use in Spanish. Most would find this tedious I admit but each to his own. I find Assimil tedious. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Toufik18 Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Algeria Joined 5537 days ago 188 posts - 202 votes Speaks: Arabic (Written)*, Arabic (classical)*, French, English | Message 16 of 60 22 June 2009 at 7:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thank Lizzern for you good points :)
@ TheBiscuit : I admire your approach to a dictionary as a novel, so you just read and pick up interesting words, right? I used to do this with the Oxford English Dictionary, it's quite interesting how many useful words you come across. I also like to learn words from the Babylon dictioanry which gives about 6 or 7 synonymes for each word, but I should agree with Lizzern about the fact that there are some nuences the dictionary doesn't mention, and only a good ol' dictioanry with all the archaic meanings can differ between these words . Thanxk you all 1 person has voted this message useful |
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