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How many words for conversation? | ||
Tags: Number of words | Conversation | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| petteri Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4730 days ago 117 posts - 208 votes  Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: German, Spanish | Message 73 of 100 19 August 2011 at 2:26pm | IP Logged | ||
That phenomenon is not uncommon. I am pretty fluent (close to C2) when discussing about areas of my interest like politics, economics, some eras and phenomenons in history, some fields of technology, sports, music and dancing. But I have huge gaps in everyday communication vocabulary in fields like cooking, food, clothing etc. It is contradicting that I can read The Economist with ease but can struggle in simple daily communication. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5179 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 74 of 100 19 August 2011 at 3:04pm | IP Logged | ||
That has got to be the most elitist definition of fluency I have ever encountered. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5228 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 75 of 100 19 August 2011 at 3:23pm | IP Logged | ||
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I really wish people would stop misusing the word fluency and speak of proficiency instead. Actually, truth be told, when used in its technical sense of 'fluidity of speech', fluency has absolutely nothing to do with size of vocabulary. That said, what most of us are talking about here is conversational proficiency and size of vocabulary. As the latest posts show, the range of subjects engaged determines the overall size of the necessary vocabulary. By the same token, a limited range, i.e. a soap opera, does not require a wide vocabulary but still demands high conversational proficiency.
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| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5179 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 76 of 100 19 August 2011 at 3:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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I doubt anyone is really puzzled as to how they could improve their vocabulary. However, a lot of people have no idea how to improve their fluency. The way you describe things, proficiency is the result of good fluency and good vocabulary. It's the fluency part of it that people struggle with.
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| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5228 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 77 of 100 19 August 2011 at 4:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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Good point, Arrekusu, I don't want to go into a lengthy discussion about improving fluency because it is not the subject of the thread. But I do think that one key strategic option is to memorize and USE common set phrases that can be adapted to various situations.
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 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6501 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 78 of 100 19 August 2011 at 4:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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Actually neither fluency nor proficiency is enough. You can speak like a machinegun or one sentence per decade (fluency), and you can speak as correctly as the grammar on your shelf or as a drugged second-language learner on a bad day (proficiency), but above the first couple of thousand words your vocabulary is a consequence of the things you are interested in and the things you have had to deal with as a consequence of the way you live.
It is not a dichotomy, it is a tricotomy. Edited by Iversen on 19 August 2011 at 4:24pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5564 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 79 of 100 19 August 2011 at 5:39pm | IP Logged | ||
He might just have thought you were a show-off and that it would be the easiest way to avoid topics he didn't want to talk about if he just ignored them. Either way, you are missing out on one very important aspect: Given that he actually had some knowledge in those fields and just lacked the vocabulary, it would have been an easy task to talk to him using terms he understood or explaining the ones he didn't, and he would have picked most of them up and would have been able to use them correctly in your conversation. That's a large part of what working fluency is about. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5228 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 80 of 100 19 August 2011 at 6:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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Although this is off the thread a bit, I think it might be useful to revisit the notion of conversational proficiency in order to clarify a few issues. Let me first remind everybody that this topic has been examined in depth in the development of the CEFR model of language proficiency.
Let's also go back to our soap opera briefly. The dialogs are excellent examples of informal spoken conversational language. It's not real unscripted speech, but it is somewhat realistic. Although the vocabulary is relatively limited to the typical everyday subjects of all soap operas, the characters are talking endlessly. What are the features of this kind of verbal interactions? What skills would be required of you if you were one of the characters? Here is a basic list: 1. Phonological accuracy i.e. a good level of pronunciation 2. Fluency or fluidity of speech. No searching for words, stuttering unless this is part of the character 3. Mastery of the question - answer exchange format. 4. Mastery of the imperative mode: give orders, instructions, tell people what to do. 5. Ability to produced connected speech, i.e. using the right connective devices 6. Grammatical accuracy. For example, the verbs may be few in number, but you have to know verb morphology very well. 7. Knowledge of exclamations and expressions of emotional states like anger, joy, sadness, etc. 8. Mastery of social register and expressions of politeness in speech. 9. Mastery of common idioms and metaphors. I'm sure I've forgotten a few things. But let me illustrate how this works. As I write these lines, the Spanish soap opera that started this whole discussion is ending. One of the main female characters has died following a car accident. The episode I watched today centers on the preparations for the funeral. Actually, it was quite interesting to not only see the associated customs and rituals but also to hear how the Spanish language is used in these circumstances. All the things I detailed above were there. Lot's of people crying and expressing sadness. All sorts of comments on life and tragedy. People exchanging ritualistic expressions of condolences and sympathy. Although there were of course some new words related to dying and associated customs, there really wasn't very much new vocabulary. The circumstances have changed but the basic words are exactly the same. Edit: Addition The reason I harp continuously on this issue of using proficiency and not fluency as a general term is simply that the term proficiency allows us to concentrate on the component skills that make up conversational proficiency. Now, if conversation is not a priority because, let's say, you will rarely have the opportunity to converse in the language, then much of this material is not important. You would probably want to focus on developing the widest reading vocabulary. On the other hand, if conversation is paramount, you may want to focus less on vocabulary and more on grammar for speaking and working on fluency. Edited by s_allard on 19 August 2011 at 9:17pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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