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Spanish Course, few words taught | ||
Tags: Number of words | Spanish | ||
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| Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5581 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German | Message 9 of 51 01 September 2012 at 7:38pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Well, rather than getting caught up in semantics, let's just say that you can probably speak Spanish at an A1 level with 300 words (as long as they're well chosen).
Everyone is free to decide for themselves whether that constitutes speaking a language or not. Speaking personally I don't consider that I speak a language if I'm at A1 (though it's tempting because I'd be a tetraglot [English, Spanish, German and Portuguese] and could quickly become a heptaglot within a few weeks by activating my old school French, practising a bit of Greek speaking via Skype and revising a bit of Italian). This synergy Spanish sounds quite similar to Michel Thomas, btw. Edited by Random review on 01 September 2012 at 7:42pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| dbag Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4820 days ago 605 posts - 1046 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 10 of 51 01 September 2012 at 11:06pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Actually, it does remind me very much of an audio "Madrigals Magic key", more so then
MT in fact as it is more drill based. 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 11 of 51 02 September 2012 at 4:36am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
As the person who started that thread on the utility or futility of counting words, I do want to take exception with this idea that you can't really speak a language with 300 words or that you are confined to A1 level. I don't want to rehash the debate of that thread, but I just want to clarify what is meant by the idea of this so-called 300 word minimum. First of all, that figure is a sort of arbitrary threshold and could be just as well 350 or 400 or 500. Second, the key idea is that many people, and depending very much on their daily activities, use a rather small number of words. In other words, if you were to record every word you spoke during a month, it is very likely that many people speak use less than 1000 different words. If you are university professor with 200 students you would certainly use a larger vocabulary, but if you are a retired accountant you certainly use fewer words. Third, the idea that a small vocabulary restricts you a limited forms of speech, i.e. not really speaking the language, is patently not true because all of us can and do have long conversations with relatively few words. What is true is that a small vocabulary will limit the range of subjects you can talk about. Obviously, you are probably confined to simpler subjects but that does not mean that you are not speaking the language. And if 300 or 400 are not enough, what exactly do you need? 2000 or 3000 or 5000 or 10000. Most people just pull a number out of thin air. Or they cite studies that say that a American junior high school student knows 20,000 words. Just exactly what is meant by these studies is another question. Fourth, and as a bit of a corollary of the last point, the real heart of the debate is that this whole idea of counting the number of words is rather futile other than for reasons of personal motivation because vocabulary will expand as necessary. Edited by s_allard on 02 September 2012 at 4:38am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5581 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German | Message 12 of 51 02 September 2012 at 5:41am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Well, perhaps it was unjustified to say you'd be confined to A1 with a few hundred
words, but if it was then I'm missing a trick because I was confined to A1 with more. Let's look at the next level up (A2):
Now I only started Platiquemos when I went to Spain, so when I arrived I had done MT (so I knew all the verb tenses), all 3 levels of Pimsleur (I think that's about 300 words, right? But they're absolutely burned into your brain so that they come out with no effort), Teach Yourself Spanish, Colloquial Spanish, Madrigal's magic key to Spanish (which covers all the transformations needed to form cognates) and William Tardy's Easy Spanish reader (I'm not counting the gramnmar books I studied). I had also studied vocabulary from a vocab book using paper flashcards. All in all I had an active vocabulary which must have been more than 1500 words plus the ability to form many more from English cognates. I could in fact do the things described for A2. I could not have done the things described in B1.
Now, if with 5 times (at least) the vocabulary of someone with 300 words I was A2, then I confidently assert that with 300 words I would have been A1 at best. Anyone who has developed strategies to function on an A2 level with 300 words is deserving of a great deal of respect. I believe you, but *I* couldn't do it and I doubt that most people could either. Now with the B1 level I don't think it's possible to function at that level with 300 words. I'm open to being proved wrong, but for now I don't see how. Edited by Random review on 02 September 2012 at 5:45am 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 13 of 51 02 September 2012 at 4:54pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Again, without wanting to redo the arguments of the other thread, I do want to try to clarify the key point in the argument. The fundamental argument of the word counters, as I call them, is that the more words you know the more proficient you are in a language. Therefore the key to learning a language is to learn more words. So if 300 words gets you to A1 and 1500 to A2, does that mean that you need 5000 for B2, 10000 for C1 and 15000 for C2?
My position is that learning a language is not as simple as learning a lot of words. In my opinion, how you use the words you have is just as important as the number of words. First of all, all spoken language uses a very tiny of core words in many different ways. Second, the words have to be organized in sequences with all sorts of agreement rules. And third, there are often ways to work around words one does not know or simply ask for them if the other person does not supply them spontaneously. What this says ultimately is that the fewer words you know, the better you have to know how to use them. I firmly believe that someone with a knowledge of 1500 words in Spanish, a good grasp of Spanish grammar and particularly the verb system and impeccable pronunciation could talk circles around someone who knows 10000 words but has a shaky hold on Spanish verbs. Now a big question here is what words are we talking about. If I look at the description of the B2 active proficiency requirements, I see no reason why someone with a 1500 word vocabulary could not do anything there. 1500 is a lot of words. And remember we're talking about word families. Let's say we have about 200 grammar or function words such as articles, prepositions , conjunctions, pronouns, etc. Then 200 verbs at the tip of your tongue in all the important conjugation forms. That leaves 1100 nouns to name things. That's a lot. What this means is that you can talk very well about some things. I see no reason why you cannot "..describe experiences and events, dreams, hopes & ambitions and briefly give reasons and explanations for opinions and plans." It also means that you probably cannot talk about other things very well or at all. You will probably not be able to talk about bullfighting with the right terminology. You probably will not be able to discuss Spanish cuisine. And so forth. What is also true is that in a test situation, you need a large passive and even active terminology because you do not know what will appear in the test. So, you may have to know some bullfighting terminology or a something about Spanish cuisine. It's like those school tests where you have to prepare 20 questions of which only four will be asked. The analogy I give is that of a newspaper. If you want to read the entire Guardian or the New York Times or El Pais, you need a huge vocabulary. But suppose you're not interested in business, politics, automobiles or fashion and that you're only interested in sports, then the vocabulary requirements are much lower. And you can still talk all you want about sports. Edited by s_allard on 02 September 2012 at 4:56pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5581 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German | Message 14 of 51 02 September 2012 at 5:42pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
I totally agree with you. 100%.
Depending on what you mean by tiny I totally agree with you.
I doubt many people ever study hard enough to reach 10,000 words without bothering to pick up the grammar, but for those few who do I totally agree with you again.
Here is the first place I totally disagree, my experience with that level (around 1500 words) of vocab and good grammar knowledge was one of operating about an A2 level. Currently my productive vocabulary is much larger than 1500 words. Much larger, more like at least 4 or 5 thousand to judge by the vocab books I have (and my receptive vocabulary is much bigger still). I have studied grammar in far more depth than any course I know of (even FSI), yet I consider myself borderline B1/B2.
Really? Again, that isn't my experience I feel a very noticeable lack of vocabulary in Spanish when I try to formulate my thoughts, even though my estimate is that I can produce at least 4 to 5 thousand words.
That's B1 not B2. I was about A1 with 300 words and A2 with 1500. I'm prepared to believe that someone more skilled than I am could function at a B1 level with 1500 words (or, as I said earlier, at an A2 level with 300); but I struggle to see how you could function at a higher level than that.
Well, at the B1 level you don't really have to, I guess. At the B2 level that you seem to be talking about above (though I'm now wondering if that was a typo as the rest of your post seems quite carefully argued) you have to be able to discuss a wide range of topics.
This is absolutely true, but I was talking about CEFR levels in a bid to get away from subjective ideas of what does and doesn't constitute "speaking" a language and one of the definitions of B2 is being able to cope with a reasonable range of subjects
Now, as I said, with just 300 words I don't think you'd have the necessary vocab to function at a B1 level and I'm certain that I couldn't even function at an A2 level. It's not that I think vocab is somehow primary or more important, I agree totally with the top half of your post; it's just that I think that whatever you're weakest at (be it vocab, grammar, listening skills, fluency or whatever) will be the bottleneck that restricts the level at which you're able to function. Moreover, if you are trying to function at an A2 or B1 level with 300 words, your lack of vocab is likely to be your main restricting factor (though I think a few people can, with a lot of skill, manage to deal with this restriction for A2 but not B1). I don't think we disagree as much as all that! Edited by Random review on 02 September 2012 at 5:49pm 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 15 of 51 02 September 2012 at 7:12pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
I certainly believe @randomreview when he says he feels a "noticeable lack of vocabulary" with an active vocabulary of 4000 to 5000 words and feels that he is a borderline B1/B2. Nevertheless, I feel that there is something wrong here. Let's use the midpoint figure of 4500 different words. Let's be generous and say that that figure includes 300 function words and 700 verbs. That now leaves 3500 words for pure content. What can we do with that? How about 350 words per field of interest? How many words do you need to cover the basics of the human body and personal hygiene? Food and food preparation? Basic human emotions? Forms of transportation? Housing and forms of accomodation? Geography and travel? Well-being, fitness and illness? I'll be the first to admit that one can go into great depths in any of these subjects, but I would think that many native speakers in any language do not actually use 4500 words in their daily lives. Actually, just the other day I watched a cooking YouTube video in Spanish. It was an enlightening vocabulary experience. I had always thought that my Spanish was very good because I feel at ease in certain subjects. But here all of a sudden I realized that I had never used certain words for things like "chop", "cut up", "slice", "mix", etc. I even learned the word for "celery" (apio.) Two points here. One, I didn't know these words because I had never had cause to use them. Second, it only took me a few minutes to learn them because I now had a need. But to come back to the key issue, how can one feel "a noticeable lack of vocabulary" with 4500 words? I wonder if the issue isn't elsewhere. Is it not having the right words for the topics at hand? Or, could it be that it's more a question of not being able to get full usage out of the existing resources? Or could it be that we're not counting the words in the same manner? I'm not saying what it is. I'm just saying that in my mind a productive vocabulary of 4500 words in Spanish seems big to me and should be adequate to feel very much at ease in the language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5581 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German | Message 16 of 51 02 September 2012 at 7:59pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Well my estimate of 4-5 thousand words was based on the fact that I can cover up the
Spanish word in my main vocabulary book (= 5,245 words), look at the English and give you the Spanish nearly every time. As a way of estimating productive vocabulary it has it's problems; but I think that for the purposes of this thread it can stand as it's no more dubious than the claim that you'll have "learned" x number of words after finishing course Y. Nevertheless, I do still feel a noticeable lack of vocabulary. It's because I can get the message across, but I'm used to being able to make quite fine distinctions and be extremely precise in English. You might be surprised, but I usually choose my words very carefully to exactly convey my meaning. I can't do that in Spanish and I feel kind of naked. Now you can take part in conversations without that precision, I know from experience, but usually the conversation is not really fruitful IMO. The other person understands you and you understand them, true, but so much of what makes communication worthwhile is in the exact choice of word IMHO. I don't really know how to explain this. Of course I do expect to have that kind of command when I reach C1 and I don't disagree that this greater command will involve a greater knowledge of more than just vocabulary. At any rate, I think it is valuable to learners for me to show that my personal experience has run contrary to the idea that you can communicate a lot with a little (in fact I even started out with this belief, which I got from Michel Thomas' courses)- albeit that others have had different experiences (which I do acknowledge). Edited by Random review on 02 September 2012 at 8:15pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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