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Article: Students fall short on Vocabulary | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6385 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 265 of 319 26 April 2014 at 11:45pm | IP Logged | |||||
Almost nothing? 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6993 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 266 of 319 27 April 2014 at 12:08am | IP Logged | |||||
That's a good one, and my first thought too. Trying to be a bit more open minded, I speculated that since FSI Basic French covers about 2000 words and drills them in a variety of ways, one might conclude that was sufficient preparation for a proficiency exam. Thinking more realistically, I think a lot of real world practice would be necessary as well. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| daegga Tetraglot Senior Member Austria lang-8.com/553301 Joined 4309 days ago 1076 posts - 1792 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Swedish, Norwegian Studies: Danish, French, Finnish, Icelandic | Message 267 of 319 27 April 2014 at 12:29am | IP Logged | |||||
We can conclude that 400 different words should be enough to talk about greetings/pleasantries and 1 specific topic for 15 minutes. The problem is that you don't know which topic you will have to talk about beforehand. Let's assume 100 different possible topics. How many different words do you need to know in order to make sure you get band 8 no matter which of these 100 topics gets selected? That's the interesting number, not the 400 words for 1 topic. Edited by daegga on 27 April 2014 at 12:31am 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5218 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 268 of 319 27 April 2014 at 12:54am | IP Logged | |||||
This objection keeps coming up all the time, and I've answered it on many occasions. First of all, these are not tests of content. There are different topics certainly but it's not the topic that is the central focus but how you treat it. In fact, we know for all these tests the kinds of questions that will be asked. They are always generic questions that you are supposed to use to display your language proficiency. In the case of the IELTS a typical question would be: What did you do last weekend? Remember that the IELTS is an achievement test. Everybody gets basically the same questions. It's the nature of the response that determines the score. Secondly, there is no doubt that the average candidate knows how to use more than 400 words, but how many more are actually necessary? This is the question. I've always said around 1500-2000 and I stand by those figures. The reality is that only a very small number will actually be used. Now, the other question is why does the IELTS limit their oral test to a 15-minute interview. Is that enough time to assess a person's speaking proficiency? They think it is, and they have been in this business a long time. My guess is that they believe that in 15 minutes they can see how a person performs. What difference would it make to have the person speak for 60 minutes? Edited by s_allard on 27 April 2014 at 12:56am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5218 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 269 of 319 27 April 2014 at 2:33am | IP Logged | |||||
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Most examiners will tell that they can assess a person's speaking ability within 5 minutes. We all do this
spontaneously. A person answers the telephone and within a minute we get a sense of that person's overall proficiency. We hear this immediately in terms of the three parameters that linguists use: fluency, precision and complexity. The A level person struggles, searches for words, makes big mistakes and uses simple phrases. At the other extreme, the C level person can use longer and more complex phrases with few mistakes and do this smoothly without hesitating. This doesn't change from topic to topic. Sure the C level person may be less comfortable in a certain technical domain, but the examiner isn't counting words. The examiner is looking at how the person approaches the topic. The CFER tests are different from the IELTS in that they are achievement tests, i.e. they test for a specific level. Unlike the IELTS, a typical oral proficiency test at the C level is to have the candidate choose a text, present a summary to the examiners and then discuss and debate the subject. The technical vocabulary to be used is provided in the text. The candidate can take notes and even use a monolingual dictionary. The examiners are looking at your ability to argue, agree, disagree, express an opinion, rebut an argument, narrate, understand complex questions, etc. How wide a vocabulary do you need to do this? I don't know. What I do know is that it seems that many if not most people actually don't use more than 2000 words. In fact, it's probably a lot less. Sure, they probably know a lot more, but that's not the question. How long does it take for the C2 examiners to make up their mind? If you come out of the starting blocks with great grammar. complex constructions, no mistakes, a bunch of idiomatic expressions, great pronunciation and the ability to engage the examiners at their level, the whole thing will be decided in five minutes. Do they really have to discuss with you for 30 minutes unless there is some doubt or you are a borderline case. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6993 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 270 of 319 27 April 2014 at 10:56am | IP Logged | |||||
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Here's a brilliant leosmith post on vocabulary and CEFR level at http://ploydog.org/. Edited by luke on 27 April 2014 at 2:57pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6385 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 271 of 319 27 April 2014 at 1:31pm | IP Logged | |||||
I think for most of us that's exactly the question, though. How many words you need to know, not how many you'll actually use. Also not all CEFR exams are achievement-based. I don't know how common it is but in Finland you only choose a range, which is much easier for a casual learner. And if your speaking is B1 but your reading is B2 you'll get recognition for both. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5218 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 272 of 319 27 April 2014 at 4:10pm | IP Logged | |||||
The article quoted above gives the following table for CFER levels and vocabulary size for English: "I have heard the 20,000 passive word figure for C2 from several sources. I used that number and cut it in half for each step on the CEFR scale, and I assumed active vocabulary is about 50% of passive to come up with the following very rough table: A1: 300 active 600 passive A2: 600 active 1,200 passive B1: 1,200 active 2,500 passive B2: 2,500 active 5,000 passive C1: 5,000 active 10,000 passive C2: 10,000 active 20,000 passive" Aside from the cryptic mention of "several sources", there is no justification of these numbers. This is a typical example of what I would call hocus-pocus or pseudo-science. Where are the studies of actual vocabulary sizes of candidates who have passed these tests? At best, we have guesstimates with figures all over the map. It hardly needs repeating that the only study of actual test results for the IELTS shows that Band 8 - approximately C1 - candidates only used 400 words. "Ah, they only used 400 but they knew 5000", screams the crowd. That may be true, but the fact of the matter is that they only used 400. How do we extrapolate from 400 words used to 5000 words known actively? The whole thing smacks of very dodgy science. As Leosmith says, "I used that number and cut it in half for each step on the CEFR scale, and I assumed active vocabulary is about 50% of passive to come up with the following very rough table:" Why for example does C2 vocabulary size have to be twice the size of C1? There is no rationale for this other than some person's hunch. The situation can be summarized as such? How many different words do successful Band 8 candidates use in the speaking test? 400 How many words can they actively use? Unknown How many words can they recognize or understand? Unknown I think that most of these estimated figures that we keep hearing derive from the studies of reading and listening vocabulary sizes done by Paul Nation, among others. I don't question the scientific validity of this body of work, but I think people should look carefully at the methodology before jumping to conclusions. What a lot of people don't seem to understand is that a given sample text will use a relatively small range of distinct words but a corpus of many different sample texts will have a large range. Therefore, if you want high text coverage over the entire corpus, you need high vocabulary sizes. This is totally true, but the fact remains that you may only need a small vocabulary to read a given text. When is comes to actual productive vocabulary, it is exactly the same reasoning. Nation's study of the popular children's movie Shrek counted 1100 word families out of 10000 total word or tokens. Again, we can assume that the writers of the movie know more words than 1100 but this is the number they used here. Nation looks at D. H. Lawrence's novel Lady Chatterly's Lover and concludes: "The novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover is just over 121,000 tokens long, and it uses a total of just over 5,000 Level 6 word-families." You only need to know 1100 words to enjoy the film Shrek and 5000 words for Lady Chatterly's Lover. How many words you need to know to enjoy ten different films and ten different novels is another story. This is where I agree totally with Nation. But how many words do you need to write a film or a book? The figures are not the same as those required to enjoy a range of films or books. Let's transpose now to our C2 level speaking exams. We're not talking about the lofty levels of Lady Chatterly's Lover. We're talking about being able to sustain a discussion or sophisticated conversation for around 20 minutes. How many words do you need to do that? How many words will you actually use? I need hardly remind people that this is not a vocabulary test. The examiners will not thrust a picture of an automobile in front of you and ask you to name the parts. Nor will they ask you to name the various types of neuro-degenerative diseases. On the other hand you may get into a discussion on the impact of Ahlzeimer's and similar diseases on society. How much medical terminology do you need to do this? You're not an economist or a sociologist. Maybe you didn't prepare a speech on the impact of Ahlzeimer's disease. So, do you excuse yourself and tell the examiners that you are unable to discuss this topic? And there goes your $400 exam fee down the drain? Let's not be silly. The examiners want to see how you can handle the topic in a sophisticated and elegant manner. Do you have to be up on the latest findings of Ahlzeimer research to do this? Of course not. There are lots of things to talk about: the burden of families and on health care systems, the aging population, possible ways to delay the onset of this disease, etc. You may add a personal note. The point of all this is that the examiners are looking at how you handle the language and make sense. How many you words do you need to do this? I'm not talking about how many you should or could know. I'm talking about how many you will use. Probably a lot less than 1000. So a 1500 - 2000-word working vocabulary should do the trick. We're not expected to perform like D.H. Lawrence. Shrek only uses 1100; the IELTS Band 8 candidates used 400. You'll do fine with 2000. Edited by s_allard on 27 April 2014 at 6:04pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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