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Article: Students fall short on Vocabulary | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4452 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes  Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 201 of 319 22 April 2014 at 11:10pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
This is true. I'd also say that while the amount of material you need to master to pass with an A* in (say) maths and (say) French is probably roughly the same (at least measured in study time) the end result is really quite different. With an A* in GCSE maths you'll find yourself able to comfortably fend off the majority of maths questions from random adults. With French you'll find there are many more people who can run rings around you - simply because they've spent more time with the language than you have.
Actually, compared to what I remember of my O-Level, things are probably much better today. My daughter had to do all sorts of things that were almost unheard of in my day: speaking, for example :-) There was a short oral component to the old O-Level, but it wasn't very challenging and not much work went into it. My daughter put far more work into hers than I did with mine. She also had to produce much more writing than I ever did. So, at a comparable stage, her active vocabulary was probably greater than mine.
Agreed. It's only a short while ago that the government dropped the requirement to take at least one foreign language. It was quietly re-instated when the (entirely predictable and predicted) sharp decline in foreign language students came to pass almost immediately.
You must be watching different lips to the ones I see :-)
I don't think you should hold your breath - you might do yourself a mischief! My youngest will be transitioning to secondary school soon so I'll be able to see how seriously they treat languages now. Nothing that I hear so far (second hand) fills me with any confidence. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4452 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 202 of 319 22 April 2014 at 11:13pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
The Bill and Porridge were both prime time TV series in the UK, so I'd be surprised if many people here weren't familiar with those phrases. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6992 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 203 of 319 23 April 2014 at 12:25am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
I'm not a crime show buff and I'm not fan of UK TV, but I don't recall hearing them. Do you say, "I smell bacon" when a cop is sited? Do you call prison, "the big house"? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4452 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 204 of 319 23 April 2014 at 1:20am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
In editing before pressing "Post reply" I removed the "in the UK" part. I expect that in other parts of the world, different slang applies.
Any general "pig" reference would be understood here.
Nope. That would be the "slammer" or "Her Majesty's pleasure" or various other epithets, but I've not heard "big house". 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4796 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 205 of 319 23 April 2014 at 1:37am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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I am not saying the examinators aren't natives, they are just not the usual natives for the purpose of the exam. Their goal is not to communicate with you, they are there to evaluate you, including the grammar and vocabulary. That's different.
Emk's experience compared to mine (my only staying examinator was basically a stone face who didn't ask anything until the last two minutes or so, didn't communicate non verbally and I can't rememer any terrifying or other note making) proves one thing that gets us back to the original topic. The Cambridge exams are much better organised and standartised than the DELF/DALF ones. The CAE and other Cambridge exams have a clearly set format that all the centers follow and the examinators all act professionally enough to stick to it. No matter which examinator you get, where on the planet you take the exam, you are going to spend the exact amount of time on the each subpart of the speaking part, you are going to get the same kind of tasks, you are always going to have two people grading you. DELF B2 is obviously different in Prague and in Canada and, from what I've heard, different in Prague depending on who you get as examinator. Or it may even depend on the examinator's mood. And some of them are obviously not acting as professionals (leaving should be a reason to postpone the exam for the needed few minutes, not for proceeding while the standard conditions aren't met). So, how on earth can anyone compare FLE and ESL learners when the whole chain between the country (it's language, culture and economy primarily) and the individual learners is different? Given the common circumstances (at least in most european countries), the average Joe learning two languages for the same amount of time will be likely to have better results with English, including larger vocabulary. There is much more competition, so the overall quality of teachers is better, there are more learner aimed sources than one could go through in a lifetime, the anglophone culture is everywhere, the importance of English can't be stressed more and the exams are more standartised (and in some ways better thought out) so it is easier to prepare for them. No other second language can compete with that, even though a few try really hard. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5343 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 206 of 319 23 April 2014 at 3:29am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Maybe I'm missing something here (and feel free point out my oversight), but I have a simple question about Milton's (2006) conference paper...where is the original source for university graduates of French only knowing 3,300 words?
[Milton, 2006, p. 3] Milton (2006) cites another of his articles ("Language Lite: Learning French vocabulary in school", Milton, 2006b) as the source for Figure 1 above, which illustrates that university graduates of French in a UK university scored only 3,300 words on average in a vocabulary test. However I couldn't find this table or any results pertaining directly to this result anywhere in the paper he cited. On the contrary, the tables and figures I found in Milton (2006b) only went up as far as Year 7 (i.e., the end of 'A' Level), and the three additional categories in Figure 1 (i.e., uni1, uni2, graduate) seem to be missing altogether. 
[Milton, 2006b, p. 192] Is it possible that Milton has just extrapolated the results on an assumption that "presumably only the best learners select languages at 'A' level and they appear to add 500 or so words per year" (Milton, 2006, p. 3)? Or is this assumption grounded instead on a PhD thesis about students in a "Greek low level EFL classroom": "the progress recorded by Greek learners of English, for example, indicates that on average 500 words out of the most frequent 5000 were learned every year for 7 successive years" (Milton, 2006b, p. 195, referring to Vassiliu, 2001)? If either of these are the case, then it troubles me greatly. Milton's article presents this incredible 3,300 word statistic for university graduates (+ 1 year abroad) as a bona fide test result and not an extrapolation based on loose assumptions for what seems to be a very different group of students altogether. I hope I'm wrong in this and that I've missed something along the way here? And one final thought... The test scores reported for graduating 'A' Level students in Milton (2006, 2006b) has a mean of 1,930 words, but more interestingly, a range of 650 to 3,100/3,250 words with a standard deviation of 475 words. This large spread and high variability amongst students' scores forms part of a much larger and more informative picture, but where is this addressed further in his article? 
[Milton, 2006b, pp. 193-194] For example, it seems that some students already know well in advance of 3,000 words by the end of their French 'A' Level and start of university, whilst others, who have closer to 650 words, know less than the average GCSE graduate in this study. Those who wish to study for a French BA at Swansea University (the university where Milton most likely recruited his participants), generally require a grade B at 'A' Level in a modern language. This means that out of the 69 'A' Level students in Milton's (2006b) study, around 61% (42/69) achieved the minimum grade or above, and may have started university with a higher grade on average than his initial prediction anyway. References: Milton, J. (2006). French as a foreign language and the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. In Proceedings from the Crossing Frontiers: Languages and the International Dimension Conference (pp. 1-6). Milton, J. (2006b). Language lite? Learning French vocabulary in school. Journal of French Language Studies, 16(2), 187. Vassiliu, P. (2001). Lexical input and uptake in the Greek low level EFL classroom (Doctoral dissertation, University of Wales Swansea). Edited by Teango on 23 April 2014 at 4:09am 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4455 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 207 of 319 23 April 2014 at 3:48am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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Langenscheidt's Basic German Vocabulary lists 4K most common words in German.
In the foreword authors state these themed lists are sufficient for the preparation of Test Deutsch als Fremdsprache (which is a level between B2 and C1). Edited by Medulin on 23 April 2014 at 4:01am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| jpmtl Diglot Groupie Canada Joined 3789 days ago 44 posts - 115 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Spanish, Russian | Message 208 of 319 23 April 2014 at 7:59am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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Don't English native speakers already know more than 3000 words in French even before they start studying it, as so many words are the same or very similar?
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