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How many words do we actually need? | ||
Tags: Number of words | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5224 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes  Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 65 of 115 30 January 2013 at 6:00pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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To address @emk's valid concerns we have to look at two fundamental questions. a)What is the optimal receptive or passive vocabulary size for a given CEFR test level. b) What is the optimal productive vocabulary size for a given CEFR test level. We can take as a given that more is better.
There are a host of major methodological issues about what constitutes a word and what to do about multi-word units like idioms, phrasal verbs and collocations. But let's forget those for the time being. No where do the CEFR specifications define optimal vocabulary levels. In fact, the CEFR specification does not measure vocabulary size at all. Here is the C2 specification for oral expression: "Can express him/herself spontaneously, very fluently and precisely, differentiating finer shades of meaning even in the most complex situations." As I pointed out in a previous post, the CEFR tests are not designed to assess your knowledge of a technical field but how you can express yourself when confronted with a given situation. You will not be asked "What is genome sequencing?" or "What are the consequences of untreated high blood pressure?" but rather "How does the development of new approaches in medicine affect the treatment of diseases?" To answer this question you have to muster all your general knowledge about current trends in medicine and your linguistic resources in your target language. So you don't know how to say MRI, DNA, genome, spinal tap, etc. in L2 so you have to work around that. But the jury is not looking specifically for those terms, the jury is looking to see how you can deal with the situation. What do you do? You talk about fundamental research, new technologies and computers, new areas of knowledge, genetics, personalized therapies, the fight against heart disease, cancer and Alzheimer, the history of the battle against HIV/AIDS, new vaccines, the importance of prevention, etc. You speak to your strengths. You know the words for nanotechnologies, non-invasive surgery, robotics in the operating room, imaging, genetic profiling. If you don't know the exact term. you handle the situation elegantly by a phrase such as "si le terme est exact" or "si es que cabe la palabra" and keep going. What are the examiners looking for? Fluency, precision and differentiation of meanings, elegance of expression. They are not looking for specific words like "péage" but they are sensitive to grammatical and lexical mistakes. And you don't want to jam up while searching for the proper term. Of course you have to be widely read and cultivated in the target language, but how many words do you have to have on the tip of your tongue? I believe that you can do well with less. That's all I've been saying. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Juаn Senior Member Colombia Joined 5139 days ago 727 posts - 1830 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 66 of 115 30 January 2013 at 6:29pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
On the contrary, isn't this precisely what you're suggesting, that it is possibly to substitute a rich vocabulary with a more limited set and still be able to discuss the complex subjects are are usually voiced by employing the former? One can device a simple test for this. Would you be able to define all other words and concepts using just the ones belonging to your "limited" vocabulary? 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5224 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 67 of 115 30 January 2013 at 6:47pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
As I have endlessly repeated here, the OP refers to a challenge (not by me) to explain complex subjects with the 1000 most common words in English. This is not saying that a vocabulary of 1000 words is a substitute for a larger one. This is simply a contest to see how creative people can be with 1000 words. Why is this so hard to understand? What is a completely separate topic is how large a passive and productive vocabulary does one really need for certain tasks. But that debate is perhaps left for another day. Edited by s_allard on 30 January 2013 at 6:48pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Juаn Senior Member Colombia Joined 5139 days ago 727 posts - 1830 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 68 of 115 30 January 2013 at 6:47pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Now that I think about it, there is an even more interesting question: do you exhaust the meaning of a word by producing a definition of it? Would replacing a word by a definition of it inevitably incur a loss of meaning?
I'm inclined to answer no, and yes, respectively. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Juаn Senior Member Colombia Joined 5139 days ago 727 posts - 1830 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 69 of 115 30 January 2013 at 6:53pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
But this is exactly the same thing!! Using 1000 words (limited vocabulary) instead of (substituting for) more words (a larger vocabulary). This is precisely what I have been addressing. I really fail to see what you're objecting to, but let's leave it at that. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5224 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 70 of 115 30 January 2013 at 7:14pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Lest people get confused, the quote attributed to me included the following line: "This is simply a contest to see how creative people can be with 1000 words." It's an intellectual exercise. Nobody is suggesting replacing technical terminologies with ones limited to 1000 words. What we can learn from this exercise for our purposes here is that instead of stopping dead in our tracks while searching for a word in L2 we can try to be creative and use a work-around. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5326 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 71 of 115 30 January 2013 at 7:28pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
It's important to keep in mind the CEFR specifications are a deliberately vague framework, and that the individual national exams will define more specific standards. For example, the CEFRL doesn't say much about pronunciation, but the French exams actually include it in the scoring criteria. Similarly, the Goethe Institut is apparently quite fond of detailed grammar questions. Here's the scoring grid for the DELF B2 production orale (taken from here). The criteria are listed on the left, and the number of points available is indicated by the boxes. 
This portion of the exam is scored out of 25 points. To pass, you need 50% across the entire exam. As you can see, the second-largest number of points is for vocabulary:
As I understand it, there's a separate training document for graders which gives examples of what 2-point, 3-point and 4-point vocabularies look like at the B2 level. And the vocabulary standards go up for the DALF C1:
So if you walk into a C1 or C2 exam and start sounding like the xkcd example:
…the examiners are likely to notice that you lack a "vaste répertoire lexical," and I strongly doubt you would pick up the full 4 points here. Of course, if you max out the other scoring criteria, you don't necessarily need any vocabulary points at all. Now, you're absolutely right that there are a hundred ways to cover lexical gaps without getting caught. For example, I'm a bit of a story-teller, and so I would always try to support my arguments with stories taken from my own experience. This allowed me to stay away from tricky intellectual rhetoric and mostly talk about concrete stuff. I doubt I fooled either of the examiners for a minute, but I'm told they won't ding you too hard for subtly changing the subject at B2, as long as it ultimately adds up to an on-topic argument. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5224 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 72 of 115 30 January 2013 at 8:36pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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An excellent post, @emk. I'm familiar with the material but it's good to see it written out. We see that vocabulary represents 4/25 points and there is no specified size. We read "good variety of vocabulary" and "vast lexical repertoire and does not commit significant errors".
The obvious question is what constitutes vast lexical repertoire. My own experience is that examiners are looking for variety and precision. At the same time, you are not expected to talk about every possible subject under the sun like an expert in the field. It's all in your approach to the topic. Look at it from the perspective of a native speaker. You can be asked to talk about any topic and answer questions. The purpose of the exercise is to see how well you can talk and engage with the examiners and not how much you know about the topic. So, the questions are formulated accordingly. Do I think you could do the C2 using only the first 1000 words in French? Probably not. What about 2000 or 3000? I tend to look at the big picture and say that it depends of how well you can use the words. In a similar vein, could one do a C level exam without using the subjunctive or the conditional moods once? Of course you could. Native speakers can not use the subjunctive at all. What you don't want to do is try to use it and screw it up. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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