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What does "basic fluency" really mean? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6740 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes  Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 9 of 106 23 July 2006 at 10:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
Malcolm's requirement was a 10,000-word active, not just passive vocabulary. While a native will recognize 50,000 words, he won't be able to use that many in his own speech or writing. I am not sure an average educated native will have even a 10,000-word active vocabulary. Edited by frenkeld on 23 July 2006 at 11:23pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6740 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 10 of 106 23 July 2006 at 11:14pm | IP Logged | |||||
Reasons for choosing to limit oneself to only a subset of the four language skills can vary from individual to individual, as can the choice of which skills to eliminate. In my case it's the fact that linguistic "wanderlust" came to me in the ripe middle age, so rather than follow the pattern of taking several years to master a language before moving on to the next, I want to "upload" the basics of several languages of interest as quickly as possible, and then work on improving them for the rest of my life, which may involve speaking for some of them. Reading and some listening are the easiest things to start with, and are the skills I am likely to use the most anyway, so that's where I start. I do want to put in a plug for reading. Even if all one does is reading, it does eventually result in some ability to speak and write. Nor can one learn to read with precision without eventually reading up a fair bit on grammar, so I wouldn't necessarily characterize reading as "not studying", if one does take developing one's reading skills seriously. For example, my Spanish writing sucks, but if pressed, I can probably get myself understood in written form at some level, despite having had hardly any writing and speaking practice, nor having done any grammar drills in either written or oral forms. This can only be due to whatever reading I've done in Spanish. Coming back to the main topic, if one were to choose to master only a subset of skills in a given language and has indeed mastered them to an advanced level, should he put down basic or advanced fluency for that language or must he forever claim to be an intermediate learner? Edited by frenkeld on 23 July 2006 at 11:57pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Malcolm Triglot Retired Moderator Senior Member Korea, South Joined 7112 days ago 500 posts - 515 votes 5 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Korean Studies: Mandarin, Japanese, Latin | Message 11 of 106 23 July 2006 at 11:28pm | IP Logged | |||||
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@frenkeld:
Every native speaker should have an active vocabulary of well beyond 10,000 words. A 10,000 word active vocabulary doesn't necessarily mean that you will use all 10,000 words on a regular basis, but you should know them well enough to use them should the need arise. Passive vocabulary, as I understand it, consists of either previously unencountered words related to ones you already know, or words that you've learned from context that still have foggy an imprecise meanings for you. @Farley: I stand by my 5,000 word claim, but I think our difference in opinion stems from different standards for what Basic Fluency means. As for the text you quoted, I don't think it's referring specifically to active vs. passive vocabulary, but rather daily vs. passive vocabulary. By "daily vocabulary" I mean the amount that you actually use on a daily basis. However, if you have a 15,000 word passive vocabulary (as mentioned in the text), you may only use 1,500 words on a daily basis, but chances are you are capable of using far more than this should you choose to. Your true active vocabulary would probably be more like 7,500. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6740 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 12 of 106 24 July 2006 at 12:00am | IP Logged | |||||
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Malcolm,
I am afraid I have a rather dimmer view of the writing skills of an average person with a college degree, but as I don't have any data to back up my suspicions, I will take your word for it for now. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| fredomirek Tetraglot Senior Member Poland Joined 6703 days ago 265 posts - 264 votes Speaks: Polish*, EnglishC1, Italian, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Japanese | Message 13 of 106 24 July 2006 at 12:47am | IP Logged | |||||
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Quite an interesting discussion has developed, I must say. Thank you all for your ideas. However, as it was Francois who made up this term for our purpose "Basic fluency" maybe he should, having some time, try to specify what he meant by creating it? Maybe a lengthening of the decriptions next to each term (that is 'basic fluency', 'advanced fluency' and 'intermediate') would come in handy?
What do you think about comparing these levels with well-known certificates? Example: Advanced fluency - CPE (Certificate of Proficiency in English) etc. I believe it would really faciliate the problem of matching the languages with their levels. Edited by fredomirek on 24 July 2006 at 12:48am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sinfonia Senior Member Wales Joined 6541 days ago 255 posts - 261 votes Speaks: English* | Message 14 of 106 24 July 2006 at 2:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
I think it's pretty obvious the two of you grew up in a different kind of area to me! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sinfonia Senior Member Wales Joined 6541 days ago 255 posts - 261 votes Speaks: English* | Message 15 of 106 24 July 2006 at 2:29pm | IP Logged | |||||
Of course, a lot depends on what you mean by 'know'.
WHere do you stand, in that case, on "I would *of* gone", a very widespread 'ungrammaticality'? How about "I seen", also very widespread? I could give dozens more examples, needless to say. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7002 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 16 of 106 24 July 2006 at 5:15pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm curious of what each person is counting as a word. For instance, how many words are there in this list?
am, are, is, was, were, will be, have been, has been, used to be We discussed something similar in a thread about how many words do you need to know? Edited by luke on 24 July 2006 at 7:30pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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