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Frequency vocab method | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Lingua Decaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5364 days ago 186 posts - 319 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Danish, French, Norwegian, Portuguese, Dutch | Message 9 of 55 26 September 2009 at 2:34pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
By using several language courses you should be able to learn at least 2000-2500 words. When you have this many words you should be able to start reading, listening, and conversing. These activities will steadily and surely increase your vocabulary. With 2500 words you will still come across many words that you don't know, but increasing the number of words to 4000 does not reduce the number of unknown words by more that a few percent. Learning enough vocabulary to read easily requires a lot of reading. The sooner you get started reading, the sooner you will acquire that vocabulary. 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6060 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 10 of 55 26 September 2009 at 2:46pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I think you can learn words in order of frequency. For example, Nicholas Brown's Russian Learner's Dictionary, one of the best textbooks out there, lends itself to this approach, and you are learning the vocabulary you need to learn first that way.
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| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5799 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 11 of 55 26 September 2009 at 3:00pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I disagree. It's not really stated enough, but there are common patterns in learner vocabulary errors. Basically, and this may seem obvious, but the more similar two words are, the more likely they are to be confused in the learner's mind. Words can be similar in three main ways: in meaning, in how they are used and in form. "In meaning": If two words describe similar concepts, they can interfere with each other. The result, you'll want to talk about a raspberry, but all you can think of is the word for a strawberry. "In how they are used": If two words can be used in the same place in a sentence -- if they have a similar grammatical function -- then you can mix them up. I know a lot of Spanish people here in Edinburgh who mix up "he" and "she". "In form": This is the most obvious. If two words are spelt/pronounced similarly, then it's dead easy to confuse them. This can be quite amusing -- most Spanish learners will at some point said that they're married (casado) instead of tired (cansado). Some even ask for "polla" (I won't translate) when they want chicken "pollo". I've heard it proposed that as well as these three basic sources of confusion, there's a fourth that is frequently overlooked: confusion by co-occurrence, that is to say that two things that occur frequently together can be confused. If you look at the idea of the "idiom principle" or "the lexical approach", it is suggested that we learn language as "bundles" of words that occur frequently together in the language we hear and read. If this is true, then it follows that learning vocabulary from lists risks making unnatural links between the members of the lists. If the contents of the list are already easily confused, this makes it worse. In a thematic list, when you read "strawberry", the very next thing you read is "raspberry" -- every single time. The association between the two gets stronger and stronger. In a grammatical list, when you read "he", the very next thing you read is "she" -- every single time. The association between the two gets stronger and stronger. In an alphabetical list, when you read "polla", the very next thing you read is "pollo" -- every single time. The association between the two gets stronger and stronger. So if you're making lists, I would rather have a list of completely random words, but when I want to learn vocabulary, I go with individual flashcards every time, as they get rid of the co-occurrence problem. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| tommus Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5654 days ago 979 posts - 1688 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish | Message 12 of 55 26 September 2009 at 5:32pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Well, I think grouping them thematically, with descriptive sample sentences, is a very effective way to learn them, because you can learn them as a related group while easily seeing how they are different.
Very true. I find some Dutch words have two opposing meanings, which is disconcerting. The best example is "voorkomen". It means both "occur", and "prevent from occurring". Spoken, there is a difference, with the first having the "voor" stressed, and the second having the "ko" stressed, and some other small differences such as spacing between the syllables. Of course, in context, the meaning is usually obvious (but not always). Maybe a native Dutch speaker could comment. I can't think of any English words with opposing meanings. But there are well-known English words that should have opposite meanings but don't. The best two are flammable and inflammable, both meaning "subject to bursting into flames". In general, I find learning words in context, and within standard phrases, far more effective than trying to learn from word lists. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Glendonian Bilingual Diglot Newbie Canada Joined 5505 days ago 26 posts - 37 votes Speaks: French*, English* Studies: German, Italian | Message 13 of 55 26 September 2009 at 8:38pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I already listen to German radio and read websites. It's just that I don't see the use of learning lists of words
related to gardening, or farm animals, or shoe-shopping, when I havn't even hit 2,000 words yet. In my courses of course that's what we did, and I would learn all the words for household furnishings (der Kleiderschrank, die Wände, das Landschaftsbild), and then promply forget them (this was before my SRS). I *am* tempted to try a list of "news words" - explosion, bank robbery, monetary policy, election - so that I can listen to the radio a bit better. I'm partly persuaded by these arguments from polyglots much more experienced than me. Maybe I should temper my original plan by working in far more verbs, and include more sentences for context. Originally my scepticism was because I thought it would take forever to get to the most frequent 2,000 words if there are sentences and yet more (less frequent) words for each one. This doesn't have to mean that there isn't a place for my frequency list. I became very very interested because we know that 90 or so percent of comprehension comes from the first few thousand words, and the most rational thing to do seemed to be to learn those words right away as a sort of "scaffolding" to learn other things. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| tommus Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5654 days ago 979 posts - 1688 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish | Message 14 of 55 26 September 2009 at 10:54pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Then make lists and theme words that you are interested in. Try Google Sets. You put in a few similar words. You were interested in news about bank robbery, etc. So put in robbery, extortion, theft, fraud and bribery. Google Sets will then give you: bribery, fraud, robbery, theft, extortion, embezzlement, burglary, forgery, assault, domestic violence, murder, arson, money laundering, rape, larceny, counterfeiting, kidnapping, homicide, insurance fraud, identity theft, bankruptcy fraud, securities fraud, manslaughter, conspiracy, perjury, insider trading, tax evasion, battery, sex crimes, shoplifting, wire fraud, bank fraud, sexual assault, drug possession, healthcare fraud, stalking, antitrust violations, child abuse, mail fraud, economic espionage, computer crime, sex offenses, financial fraud, drug offenses, prostitution, internet fraud. Put those into Google Translate to get a nice group of theme words in your target language. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5653 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 15 of 55 27 September 2009 at 12:39am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Maybe I am alone in this, but I found it very helpful to go through the Routledge "A Frequency Dictionary of Spanish" book. Even learning them without context, words I wasn't sure about sorted themselves out when I started to encounter them reading as I had at least a general idea of what they meant. It was much easier than encountering them all for the first time, to say the least.
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| Glendonian Bilingual Diglot Newbie Canada Joined 5505 days ago 26 posts - 37 votes Speaks: French*, English* Studies: German, Italian | Message 16 of 55 27 September 2009 at 3:32am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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That's why I wanted to do it - I like to read about several different subjects, so I thought that I should first
recognize the words that I'm very, very likely to encounter, even though it obviously won't preclude adding lots of words that interest me! Words like pharaonic, five-year-plan, drag queen, etc. I'm glad to hear that in your case Crush, words "sorted themselves out" even though though you started out a little vague about them, because that's something that I thought might be a disadvantage with such an intense rote- memorization method. In any event, I can always be a mule about this and call it experimental, then report back either with "it worked after all" or "most of you were right, this wasn't really the best way." 1 person has voted this message useful |
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