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Article: Students fall short on Vocabulary | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5215 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes  Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 169 of 319 22 April 2014 at 4:48am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I wouldn't put the subjunctive in French on the same footing as the infinitive and gerunds in English. And the idea isn't to avoid the subjunctive; it's simply there is no obligation to use it. I've just finished reading 5 pages of a novel where there are two imperfect subjunctives in French that would today be replaced by the simple imperfect and not the subjunctive. Let's say that in your exam you never use the pronoun "on" which has nearly completely replaced "nous" in the spoken language. Your French will sound stuffy and textbookish but it is perfectly correct. Will you lose marks for not using "on"? I doubt it. Will you gain marks for using "on"? Maybe. As for failing the English test in order to immigrate to Canada, the answer would seem to be you're not allowed in. But I wouldn't worry about this. Edited by s_allard on 22 April 2014 at 9:28am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5215 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 170 of 319 22 April 2014 at 9:53am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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The move to task-based or "can do" statements of language proficiency instead of complexity of language
structures has made the task of language examiners much more complicated. Actually, it is quite interesting to see that the IELTS organization has produced a lot of interesting research on many aspects of proficiency testing including vocabulary size. I highly recommend this IELTS research material. One of the reasons IELTS can produce such research is that all their spoken tests are recorded, unlike the CFER tests. This provides a wealth of material for English that does not exist for the other languages. Here is an interesting guide CFER exam development If you read any of this material, you will see that a lot of thought goes into preparing the right materials, and it is not any easy task. And certainly not a matter of vocabulary size or using or not using a grammatical feature. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4794 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 171 of 319 22 April 2014 at 11:25am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I've read most of the thread before the forum crash and had a draft of reply writen (it was too long, as usual) so I am catching up (sorry for possible inconsistency and accidental skipping of posts etc) and have a few notes:
I believe the British students may fall short on vocabulary and a lot of the paper makes sense (like observation of skills of those who come to study languages at university). However, why does the author compare ESL and FLE students? Had she taken the British, Greek, Hungarian,whatever else FLE students, she would have had a much more precise research. The reasons are quite clear. After all, she would have found a large gap in vocabulary of ESL and FLE students in one country. Despite the need of europeans for more languages than just English (large % of population would be actually better off with one foreign language that is not English for their purposes), English has got the most space in schools and media. English is being forced on people as a must and students know the advantages of learning it. Do British (or any other) students know the bonuses of learning French as much? I doubt it. The vocabulary is probably one of the most difficult things to grade in an exam but there are various methods. As EMK pointed out, your vocabulary will be evaluated at the DELF B2 exam even though there is no specific vocab test. I got excellent advice for CAE (from an examinator emong others): Don't use words like "good" and "interesting" more than once or rather not at all. These "first unit of any textbook" words stand out as a red flag telling the examinator "she doesn't know better vocabulary". It is just one of many signs the examinators notice but it is one of them. I think a better discussion topic than the usual "what is great and wrong about various exams" would be "what are the roots of this situation and what to do against it". I think more focus on vocabulary in the mainstream language learning industry (mostly language schools and coursebooks publishers) would be helpful. As long as every other language school advertisement screams "fun learning without vocab drilling" and most good looking textbooks avoid wordlists so that the more reasonable learners need to buy a separate wordbook, the situation won't change. I think one of the best points the research we discuss makes is this one: people are not taught enough vocabulary and they miss it. Focus on fun and "communicative approach" without getting the vocabulary base leads to poor results. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5317 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 172 of 319 22 April 2014 at 12:27pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I'm going by what my tutor said, and she said that the DELF B2 graders are looking for a certain level of grammatical complexity. And she said that I'd be fool not show off the subjunctive, concordance des temps, and a bunch of other things that a B2 student should have mastered. And I'm inclined to trust her, given her degree in FLE, her time working for the Alliance Française, and the excellent record of her students on DELF/DALF exams. So I suspect Cavesa has the right idea here: Using too many common, simple words—or entirely avoiding the subjunctive when you should know it—sends up giant red flags for the grader.
Honestly, I detest vocabulary lists, and I absolutely loathe textbooks with a big list of "this chapter's vocabulary to memorize." At least in a Romance language, it's possible to build a very respectable vocabulary by reading ~10,000 pages, or the equivalent of 40 books. A little bit of occasional focused vocabulary work may be needed to get started, and to fill in some gaps. But honestly, an ebook reader with a popup dictionary and a stack of trashy-but-fun novels will take you most of the way. And that's what strikes me the most about this study: How on Earth can an English speaker get a university degree in French and only know 3,300 word families (out of the top 5,000)? They could sit around all day blowing off their classes, reading Harry Potter, Tara Duncan, fashion magazines and newspapers, and they'd wind up knowing far more words than that over the course of a university degree. I'm a total slacker when it comes to French, and not even an epic, 24-hour-a-day slacker like Khatzumoto. I'm too lazy to watch TV and idiotic YouTube videos in French as often as I should. How sad can you get, right? And even I think that an English-speaker with a university degree in French should be expected to read adult books with very few unknown words. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6382 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 173 of 319 22 April 2014 at 12:39pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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To play the devil's advocate, I agree that English speakers learning French can pick up a lot of vocabulary naturally. If it happens in Canada, under the right conditions it can happen outside it too. A lot of serious learners would benefit from properly learning about the Romance words in English in the context of historical linguistics. There's a great book about this that focuses on Spanish.
All too often, the alternative to the modern lazy courses is the "tried and true" boring ones. But not all modern courses are sнit. And there's not enough focus on the individual differences between students. The problem is that relaxed learning usually goes with relaxed testing. Learners should be allowed to learn stuff in their own way, but they should still be tested properly. To some extent that's what happens with ESL teaching in Russia. Many take private classes just to do well at school, and even more do so because despite doing well at school they know that they don't have enough knowledge to enter university. Now, I'm obviously not saying everyone should take private classes, but students need to have more options, more control, more excitement. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4794 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 174 of 319 22 April 2014 at 12:40pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I think something in between is needed. The books are awesome and I read a lot but there is a lot of everyday vocabulary that is just easier and faster to learn from some kind of a list (ideally something with context like the Vocabulaire Progressif exercise books). Without those, there are many gaps you'll find out when it is "too late" and you need the words.
While I dislike some of the wordlists as well (most courses turn first or second lesson into a geography course and more stupid among the teachers force people to learn that, just an example), the currently favored approach just forces people to think hard "what vocab might I need" and look it up one by one or to buy a separate book. That is not a learner friendly approach in my opinion. A nice approach is in my Swedish course (Švédština nejen pro samouky). THere is a shorter list of the most important words and you can do all the exercises with just those. But should you want to learn more terms related to food or anything the lessons serves you, there is a second wordlist as a reference. It's awesome because 1.there isn't a whole shelf of Swedish vocab resources in czech bookshops usually 2.I can easily practice further by simple substitution in the exercises even when I am on the go and I have only the book with me 3. It's easy and efficient to just put the list into anki. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4794 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 175 of 319 22 April 2014 at 12:46pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I agree. I think it might be great if the "boring" ones just got a new design to make them easier to use and not an eyesore. From my experience, just adding colourful frames to sort various kinds of information makes the use of a book much more comfortable. And not all modern courses are sнit, I agree. But many of them are. People buy them for the better design and than fail becuase there aren't all the needed tools. Sure, you can learn vocab without any lists or textbooks. But you need lots of input. Do most learners get lots of input? No, they don't. They've got a few small articles + their audio per lesson. And noone, especially not the coursebook author, tells them it is certainly not enough. That's why so many fail. They are promised modern, input based learning but they aren't getting enough input and they don't know why,where and how to get it alternatively. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6382 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 176 of 319 22 April 2014 at 1:27pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Hm not only. You loathe the focus on multiculturality, ecology and whatnot, but for me that's better than the boring old stuff. And I assume you've not used a textbook that thinks the USSR still exists...
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