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Spanish Course, few words taught | ||
Tags: Number of words | Spanish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6741 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes  Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 49 of 51 06 September 2012 at 4:56pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
What are "active words"? If it means drilling flashcards from the TL to the BL, that's not what one usually means by "active skills". Active skills is precisely the art of putting words together into meaningful sentences, and that is how I meant it.
Vocabulary is certainly not a non-problem, you yourself wouldn't be using such a clumsy tool as flashcards if it was trivial to memorize. The problem is that having the words memorized is not enough, and I think everyone agrees with you on that. Edited by frenkeld on 06 September 2012 at 6:16pm 2 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 50 of 51 06 September 2012 at 8:16pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Well, maybe we basically agree. No one is saying that vocabulary is not important or that acquiring vocabulary is easy. Of course, you have to learn vocabulary with whatever tools necessary. BTW,I don't consider flashcards, paper or electronic, a clumsy tool. Quite the contrary, I think they are a great invention. I also love a notebook and a pencil. But they are not for everybody.
What seems clear here, if we agree, is that one learns whatever vocabulary that is necessary. I prefer to learn "as I go." I learn words as I need them. This is the meaning of vocabulary expanding as necessary. On the other hand, there are certainly people who believe in learning entire lists of words mechanically and then waiting to see what sticks. If that works, fine, but I don't see the point of learning things that one never uses. That in essence is the argument for starting small and expanding to whatever size you need rather than aiming for a specific figure as some sort of magic breakthrough point. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6741 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 51 of 51 06 September 2012 at 9:49pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I am pretty sure we do agree on many things. As an aside, I have used notebooks and paper flashcards far more than the electronic ones, so we even seem to have similar tastes in this regard. Oh, and when I said "clumsy", I probably meant something like "time-consuming".
For the most part, I meet new words and expressions in context, while reading or listening. When writing, I try to employ the words and expressions I already know, looking up and bringing in a new word only when I just can't find another way to get the meaning across, and then I try to avoid erroneous usage by googling up sample sentences first. This slows down the process, but also provides the incentive to keep the use of new words to a minimum when writing. Given that you have mostly talked about conversation, I am not sure how all this relates to what you might do. With different goals, one can't always compare directly.
I have always been concerned that memorizing too many words that I haven't met in context would result in non-idiomatic production, although I don't know how true this really is. It so happens that I find pre-made lists excruciatingly dull anyway. Edited by frenkeld on 07 September 2012 at 5:55am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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