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The three dictionary technique | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5057 days ago 2237 posts - 6731 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 9 of 17 15 April 2013 at 1:26am | IP Logged | |||||
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Thanks DaraghM, it's always good to switch things up now and then.
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| Julie Heptaglot Senior Member PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6698 days ago 1251 posts - 1733 votes 5 sounds Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, GermanC2, SpanishB2, Dutch, Swedish, French | Message 10 of 17 15 April 2013 at 3:10am | IP Logged | |||||
I couldn't agree more... once spent two weeks of my life reading a phone book :) (OK, not exactly for fun, but still) 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 5946 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 11 of 17 15 April 2013 at 10:21am | IP Logged | |||||
I generally spend between ninety minutes and two hours using this technique. In that time, I'll generally cover about six pages from the smallest dictionary, seven to eight from the medium, and between eight and nine with the largest dictionary. The dictionaries page size increases so the number of pages doesn't increase that much. This roughly equates to 150 words from the small dictionary, 250 from the medium sized dictionary, and around 350 with the largest. I haven't tried L2-L3, but I've done variants of L2-L2 and L2-L1. The small dictionary contains around 10,000 words in total. I'm not sure how early on this technique could be used. My current active French vocabulary size is about four thousand words. My passive vocabulary would be a bit higher due to cognates with Spanish. I started using this method to catch the less frequent words that would still be useful. I like learning words in context, but I'm not interested in reading articles or books about just anything. This means I might miss out on some good vocabulary simply because the topic doesn't interest me. The other advantage with this method is discovery new shades of meaning to words you already know. This tends to happen when reading the largest dictionary as it'll give the most idiomatic constructions. You tend to notice these idiomatic usages more as you've already learnt the basic word from the previous two dictionaries. This method isn't obviously suitable for everyone, and my partner thought I was just a little odd reading three dictionaries. However, when I asked her to challenge me with any French word beginning with the letters 'da' a week later, she conceded it must work somehow. I'd only used the method once on this range of words. 7 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6498 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 12 of 17 15 April 2013 at 11:25am | IP Logged | |||||
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SteveRidout does indeed sound like a programmer with a programmer's logic, and I do appreciate that (I also do application programming as part of my work). However the revised method he proposes is simply too complicated for human beings. DaraghM's original proposal took frequency into consideration by using a microscopic dictionary as the first of the three in the series. And that should be enough. If you really want to learn the most common words in a language then they should all be in even the smallest dictionary.
But there is one angle more to this: many of the most common words are function words, which you will learn when you study grammar (I venture the guess that those who might use a dictionary based method also are the ones who use grammars) .. and there you will also get the morphological and syntactical background for those words. Those words which are extremely common without being irregular words or function words will come almost automatically from your reading and listening precisely because they are so common.
There is a logical answer to this. The kind of purely linguistic 'context' I described in my first post in this thread presupposes that you already know a fair number of words in your target language - or that it is closely related to another language which you know well. Otherwise you won't get the associations which are fundamental for learning words directly from a dictionary. Maybe it can be done with less than 4000 words in your passive vocabulary, but not with for instance 40 words. As a rule at least some of the words you see in the smallest dictionary should be wellknown - otherwise you have started too early. Edited by Iversen on 01 May 2013 at 11:48am 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6067 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 13 of 17 19 April 2013 at 12:20pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I tend to carry cheap pocket dictionaries, underlining or highlighting obviously common words or words I have encountered. For building up over time an at least passive vocabulary in a language, I find this a helpful method. I like reading dictionaries but accept not everyone would find them more interesting than, say, reading the phone book. Ultimately, whatever method you use, you will need to accumulate an L2 vocabulary from somewhere.
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| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6067 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 14 of 17 30 April 2013 at 4:56pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Good-quality pocket dictionaries already do a fairly good job of presenting the more
common vocabulary, while the less common words might not be present in them. I have experimented with learning vocabulary page by page, but as has been noted by some here, the words gathered in such a way tend to sound or look similar and this gives little in the way of memory hooks, unfortunately. But do what works for you is my advice. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Lone_Wolf Groupie United States Joined 5101 days ago 60 posts - 117 votes Speaks: English* | Message 15 of 17 29 May 2013 at 9:21pm | IP Logged | |||||
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My methodology of looking up words is very, very similar to your idea DarghM. I use multiple dictionaries for looking up new words that I come across (in Arabic) in a spoken or written context. But instead of using only 3 dictionaries I use about 5 or 6 including Hans Wehr, Lane's Lexicon and Al Mawrid. And I also use google translate, naturalarabic.com's online dictionary and a couple of other online dictionaries.
I find that looking up words in this way with words I come across through a CONTEXT helps tremendously in memorizing the words without having to do flash cards or other repetitious drilling method. I think it is the fact that they are words that I Need To Know (in order to fully understand something that I am reading or listening to) as opposed to random words from a word list type situation that helps to anchor it into my memory. That along with the contextual sample sentences in some of the dictionaries that I'm using. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4804 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 16 of 17 01 June 2013 at 3:55am | IP Logged | |||||
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Thanks, DaraghM!
How comes I hadn't notice the thread before? It sounds like I've been waiting for this for looong time. I will surely try this method for my French. I have quite a broad vocab (at least the passive one) but I have gaps that books, articles etc. just won't fill. Why? I would like to do a C1 exam in future and be able to function fully in French but I am not going to read many articles on economy. Or fashion. Or many other things. I might combine it with anki and put there all the words that don't stick and are obviously important (or because I just want to make my life more complicated :-D) And I will most likely start from several points in the dictionary because learning only A words for a month or more, that would boring for me :-) I agree with DaraghM and Iversen that this sounds to be an awesome method for an advanced learner, preferably with tons of context and connections to other languages and in between words hidden somewhere inside the brain. I wouldn't choose it for example for my German. I need to learn the beginner vocabulary first and I haven't hoarded the context to make such dictionary use efficient and fun. But I could try for Spanish or for another Germanic or Romance language should I start one. Thanks a lot! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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