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Article: Students fall short on Vocabulary

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luke
Diglot
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 Message 225 of 319
23 April 2014 at 6:49pm | IP Logged 
emk wrote:
Iversen wrote:
At any rate: 3300 passive words for a university graduate seems very low compared to the number of words I have found for myself even in my weakest languages. Until somebody comes up with a better explanation I'm inclined to see it as an artefact of the research methods used.

Yeah, this number is based on a 5,000 word dictionary. But even so, it seems low—out of the top 6,000 French words, there's something like 2,500 or 3,500 transparent cognates, according to a list in Essential French Grammar (this is from memory; I don't have the book at hand).


The Routledge Frequency Dictionary of French was built from a 23 million word corpus. The top word, "le" and it's various forms constitutes over 1% of those 23 million. In the 3300 word frequency range, those words make up only about .17% of the words in the corpus. Around the 5000 word range, they make up only about .087%

An underlying question in this thread is, if one knows 3300 of the 5000 most frequent words, how does that translate into, say the 25,000 most frequent words? I would suspect one might know several thousand more of the 5001-25000 most frequent words. That is, if you know about 1/2 of the 4001-5000 most frequent words, you probably know only slightly less than 1/2 of the 5001-6000 most frequent words, etc. Are there any math geniuses here?

I have the Resnick's Essential French Grammar handy. Of the French cognates in the book it says:
Quote:
The twenty-five hundred words in this list are the most frequently used words that English and French have in common parallel forms.


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dampingwire
Bilingual Triglot
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 Message 226 of 319
23 April 2014 at 7:11pm | IP Logged 
Serpent wrote:
I still think that Cavesa was right that being a native speaker
of English is a much more important factor than age.


This certainly I'd agree with. I think I've already written elsewhere at HTLAL that
when my daughter did her year in Siena she only had one fellow student with her. In
addition, the chosen Italian host universities were mostly (or all, I forget) in areas
considered to be not the English tourists' main destinations. So no Rome, Milan or
Naples, for example.

Serpent wrote:
edit: and the "positiveness" of the comment is somewhat akin to
benevolent sexism. Women or old-wrote-an-angry-letter-to-the-times-about-how-t">teenager s are not a different
species.


Well, at least in the UK, the overwhelming majority of university students start out as
teenagers (although an even higher majority presumably have left that group by the time
they graduate).

As for teenagers and species, I'm sure I've seen a paper somewhere that argues that, in
some respects at least, they do differ quite significantly from us older folk; but
that's so off topic I'm not going to go there ...

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s_allard
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 Message 227 of 319
23 April 2014 at 7:54pm | IP Logged 
Cavesa wrote:
s_allard wrote:
And, frankly, put a bunch of 20-year old kids in an environment far from
home and parents and watch the hormones at work. I don't buy this idea that after a year abroad most kids learn
nothing.


Now this is just plain wrong and offensive. I know dozens of people who went for a year abroad at the age
between 15-25. And all of them used the opportunity well. Most studied, some partied more, that is true but it's
not as common as older people think, some worked the whole time. All of them learnt the language really well.
Those who didn't learn the local language were those who went for a study program in English which is still a
foreign language for them.

The trouble is not the age and I hate when someone talks about young people the way you do, it's just the same
as saying the same derogatory thing about women, blacks, jews or whoever else.

The trouble is that English natives in general have a harder time with immersion, unless they are stubborn
enough, because many more people in the target country become language bandits when it comes to English
than when it comes to Czech or Swedish. That is simple logic. It has nothing to do with age.

Gosh, where did I go wrong? I know that my English is not always easy to follow, but I had no idea that I was so
off the mark as to be offensive. I thought my English was at the C level; obviously, it's more likely a low B. I
definitely need to hit that Anki deck more often.

All facetiousness aside, I want to thank the other posters for clearing up the misunderstanding here. I don't know
why all this weird stuff about age and gender entered into the discussion about a university year abroad. Many,
if not most university language programs, at least in North America, have the option to spend a year - an
academic year, mind you, (8 months) abroad - studying the language in it's native context. From what I have
seen, most students benefit highly from this. That's all. I certainly did not want to imply that these students sit
around picking their noses or partying all the time. Neither do I want to imply that other people can't benefit
from in-country immersion. C'mon, folks, lighten up and read what I write.
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Serpent
Octoglot
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Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
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 Message 228 of 319
23 April 2014 at 7:58pm | IP Logged 
Gemuse wrote:
Cavesa wrote:
I think you won't see the same approach in any technical, medical or
other "serious" field.
The curriculum is not being dumbed down to make it easier to pass.


It is starting.
http://qz.com/192071/how-one-college-went-from-10-fe male-computer-science-
majors-to-40/
What? That's just making the programme more appealing for women, a reversal of an intentional stereotype. And the division was not by gender but by experience. Programming is not a school subject so prior experience can't be mandatory. Especially as the class was basically making up for the lack of encouragement that most girls and some boys experience in their childhood and teenage years.

Also, the UK university situation sounds excessively commercialized to me. Nobody wants to pay for university and then fail to graduate. People want value for their money. Med schools make up for that by organizing pre-schooling for those who can't pass, but it can be harder to justify for other areas.
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s_allard
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 Message 229 of 319
23 April 2014 at 8:26pm | IP Logged 
emk wrote:
...
So the French graduates, with their supposed "3300 words on average", do not appear to be terribly comfortable
with B2-level tasks, and their professors actively avoid challenging them with C1-level tasks. This makes the
3,300 number much more believable: It may seem shocking that French graduates have such a small vocabulary,
but it's no more shocking than the fact that they apparently read French works in translation or that their lectures
are mostly given in English.

Now, I'm usually a big proponent of the idea that "B1 language skills are awesome, and should be appreciated!"
But that's because B1 language skills allow you to almost completely immerse yourself in your L2, as either a
tourist or a house guest, and to function independently in most situations.

But if you spend years in a university, focusing the major part of your efforts on French literature, French culture,
and the French language, you should certainly get more out of it than B1 tourist French. You should at least be
able to follow a discussion on Bibliothèque
Médicis
, or comfortably read Voltaire in the original. This is not too much to ask—and this level of
competence is pretty much the bare minimum if you want to engage with French culture first-hand.


Although I believe this whole thing about measuring vocabulary is a rather useless exercise in academic navel-
gazing, it's quite interesting to see this debate about what seems to be a shockingly small number for receptive
or passive vocabulary of students majoring in French.

I wonder what their productive vocabulary is like. Normally, I would take a contrarian position in this debate and
say that this figure of 3300 words just confirms what I've always said, that is, you don't need a big vocabulary to
speak French. But that is another debate, I'll leave it at that.

What I find intriguing here is that four years of uni including an academic year in France produces such mediocre
results. I would think that the French department, including professor Milton, should be ashamed. What are they
teaching? What kind of French department does not require their students to read at least some books in French,
or at least write something in French? Do they teach French in the department?

Is this situation peculiar to Professor Milton's university? I took a look at the French department undergraduate
program at the University of Cambridge. We all know that it is very difficult to get into this university. And that it
costs a pretty penny to study there. I don't think many students waste their time.

As a matter of fact, before even entering first year students are told:

"It is vital that you do some preparatory work on the following two areas before you arrive in Cambridge to start
the course:
French language
French literature, thought, film and linguistics.
This preparation is likely to make your first year much more enjoyable and successful since the Cambridge
workload is demanding."

And the website goes to list a number of things that students should study before arriving at Cambridge. Nothing
that I see leads me to believe that French instruction is being dumbed down. It seems quite demanding to me. It
may not produce students at the level of an educated native that Professor Milton would like to see, but I really
don't see students leaving with 3300 words of French, whatever that means.




Edited by s_allard on 23 April 2014 at 9:37pm

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Elexi
Senior Member
United Kingdom
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Speaks: English*
Studies: French, German, Latin

 
 Message 230 of 319
23 April 2014 at 9:22pm | IP Logged 
I generally agree with what you say, but I do not think that Milton's study is a
useless study in academic navel gazing (if that is indeed what you are saying). Whilst
the discussion here has descended into navel gazing, the motive of Milton's study is
aimed at curriculum change in the UK education system. Given that so much of secondary
school language teaching in the UK is still about grammatical accuracy (as in filling
in verb endings) rather than communicative competence (which is the foundation of
CEFR), I rather think that what he is doing has deep importance for the future of
language teaching in England and Wales.

As to Cambridge (which as it happens doesn't cost any more to study at for a UK student
than any other English university) - Until very recently, I taught (history) at that
institution and, just before I moved on, I had a student who had done prelims and part
one (i.e. the first two years) of her French degree, before being told that her French
wasn't good enough and that she should do an English based subject for part 2. Now
this student was not a dumb student with 3000 words, but had perfect bilingual French
due to the fact that her mother had spoken French exclusively since birth and she had
lived in Paris for 6 years of her life. What she lacked was the sufficient
philological skills to progress to an academic degree in French.   As you say, French
at Cambridge (and I suspect Oxford, UCL and other UK 'Russell Group' universities) is a
demanding course and you need more than colloquial skills to get through it. It also
shows that the comments about arts vs science (nesciently put as 'serious' degrees)
degrees expressed earlier is largely without foundation.       

Edited by Elexi on 23 April 2014 at 10:12pm

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Gemuse
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Germany
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 Message 231 of 319
23 April 2014 at 9:47pm | IP Logged 
s_allard wrote:

What I find intriguing here is that four years of uni including an academic year in
France produces such mediocre results.


Isnt it three years, including the year abroad?

Serpent wrote:
Gemuse wrote:
Cavesa wrote:
I think you won't see the same
approach in any technical, medical or
other "serious" field.
The curriculum is not being dumbed down to make it easier to pass.


It is starting.
to-40/">http://qz.com/192071/how-one-college-went-from-10-fe male-computer-science-
majors-to-40/
What? That's just making the programme more appealing for
women, %E2%80%9Ccomputer-geeks%E2%80%9D-replaced-%E2%80%9Ccomputerg irls%E2%80%9D">a reversal
of
an intentional stereotype.


By making it seem more fun and requiring less intense solitary work than is actually
the case in the real world? It is not an intentional stereotype, it is what it is.


Edited by Gemuse on 23 April 2014 at 9:57pm

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Elexi
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 Message 232 of 319
23 April 2014 at 9:59pm | IP Logged 
It is 4 years - a language degree includes an extra year.


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