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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 6378 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 33 of 319 07 April 2014 at 2:58pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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In the Nordic countries the English originals are often cheaper than translations and of course there's less of a wait.
Ari, I think the question was about the second foreign language. Like whether there's a clear winner between German/Spanish/French. Edited by Serpent on 07 April 2014 at 2:59pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4988 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 34 of 319 07 April 2014 at 4:30pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I've met quite a few graduates from French programmes at UK universities at meetups and so on, and I hate to say it but their general level is indeed quite low, perhaps B2 at best, so this study doesn't surprise me at all. Although I have also met a few exceptions like the ones Tastyonions described who speak extremely well. For example a while ago I met a French and Italian graduate who I'd say was easily C1 in both, and with a great accent; it was quite obvious that she had a passion for it and she had made the most of the time abroad. I think it just comes down to the same conclusions we reach here over and over: classes and immersion on their own aren't enough to reach a very high level, even several years of them. And from what I gather, when you study abroad, you can pretty much use the local language as much or indeed as little as you choose. And also, I've heard the University courses are much more focused on literature and culture rather than speaking competence. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4446 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 35 of 319 08 April 2014 at 12:12am | IP Logged | ||||||||
This is very true. It's probably true of most subjects, but with a language it's just so much more obvious. Any proficient speaker of language X will be able to judge the speaking abilities of a student of language X in perhaps just a short exchange: 15 minutes should be enough. That's probably hard to do in another subject unless you are a specialist ("Oh you read geography, so shall we chat about the canals in Birmingham?")
Indeed. When my daughter went abroad for a year, her year group were split into twos or threes and the Italian universities they were assigned were, for the most part, chosen so as to avoid areas with known populations of English speakers. She ended up in Siena, but despite the large numbers of tourists, it was rare to hear an English voice. Her housemates varied throughout the year but none of them spoke English (at all, apparently) so the conversations were perforce in Italian.
I'm not doing her course so I can't comment on "more" focussed but they certainly do include quite a lot of cultural studies. That's a good thing though as it will give you some common points of reference when you do encounter a native speaker. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5211 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 36 of 319 08 April 2014 at 7:21am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I want to take exception with how vocabulary size is tested on these free Internet sites, and particularly
http://testyourvocab.com/ When I hear figures such as 20,000 or 30,000 words for an educated speaker of English, I really wonder how that is measured. None of these tests actually count how many words you actually can use. They estimate how many words for which you know one definition based on a sample derived from a frequency list. This means that if you know word number 100 on the list, the assumption is that you know the 99 preceding words. If you know word 2000 then you know the previous 1900 words, etc. What this means is that with relatively few questions you can guestimate how many words a person "knows". This is not the same as answering a question for every word. At best these are words that people can recognize, not what they use. In spoken everyday English, people use a very small number of words. It has been shown right here at HTLAL that a prolific writer like Iversen uses less than 2400 words (I might be slightly off). Then there is the question of how one defines a word. There are also words with multiple meanings, idioms and set phrases. And finally there is the huge question of how one uses these words. We know for example that in all languages a tiny number number of words make up the bulk of usages. In French for example, of the 12,000 verbs, three verbs make up around 24% of all verbs in everyday conversation. The problem of course is that these three verbs are used in a vast myriad of ways. All these issues come to a head when one is preparing for language tests. There is this idea that the higher the level the bigger the vocabulary. This is true in a sense but when I see figures such as one should know 20000 words to pass a C2 exam, I think this is totally wrong. The essential language skills that examiners are looking for, especially in spoken proficiency, is the ability to use the language in more and more complex ways. Mastery of grammar is paramount here. Native-like and idiomatic constructions are what the examiners are looking for; it's not rare words. The argument that people always make is that although it is true that you will never encounter 20,000 words on a C2 test, you don't which one will occur so you have to know them all, just in case. There is some truth in that I believe that these tests do not go out of their way to test for vocabulary and that the number of words you have to recognize is much smaller, more in the range of around 5,000. The others you can guess. As for words that you have to actually use, the number is even smaller. In French for example, I believe that you can deal with any situation right up to C2 with 100 verbs. The assumption, of course, is that you can use them well, which is another story. I'm not arguing that a big vocabulary is bad. If you believe that you have to know 30,000 words for that C2 exam, go for it. My point of view is that a small number of words well mastered will always trump a large number poorly used. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6484 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 37 of 319 08 April 2014 at 10:50am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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The number of words reported by just about any test I have ever seen indicates the size of the passive vocabulary, and only that. The active vocabulary is a fraction of this number and very hard to measure and even hard to estimate subjectively, but my own feeling is that the proportion of passive words I could see myself using without preparation is a good indicator of my fluency in the language, i.e. the ease with which I can speak or write, and in this respect it would probably be a better indicator than the sheer size of the passive vocabulary if it just wasn't so frightingly hard to measure. Edited by Iversen on 08 April 2014 at 10:51am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6378 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 38 of 319 08 April 2014 at 12:27pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I'm not saying you're only C2 if you know as many words as Prof Argüelles does, but 5000 is too low even for the active vocabulary needed. Sure, we all have our "favourite" words and phrases in L1, and we start to develop them in L2 too. And it's important to know the idiomatic usage of the common words (though this varies per language - Russian and Finnish are different from your English/French/Spanish in this regard). But there are countless specific words that should be retrieved effortlessly when you need them, and no matter how eloquently you attempt to replace them, it will still be obvious that you forgot or never knew a specific word. And of course globally most learners don't have the same luck with cognates and loan words as you do. In Finnish or Korean you don't automatically add a large chunk of international vocabulary to your list. Even in Russian or BCSM the chunk is smaller than in Spanish. And then there are languages where many "educated words" come from, say, Sanskrit or Arabic. Or both, like in Indonesian (along with European ones). Since you're so passionate about CEFR, why don't you find out more about the various exams all over the world? FYI, some of them have a vocabulary part along with stuff like speaking, reading etc. For example, my Finnish exam had a grammar&vocabulary section, and I got C2 in this area. Edited by Serpent on 08 April 2014 at 12:44pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| shapd Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5930 days ago 126 posts - 208 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Italian, Spanish, Latin, Modern Hebrew, French, Russian | Message 39 of 319 08 April 2014 at 12:46pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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There seems to be some confusion about how the vocabulary sizes in the original paper were derived. The paper itself is ambiguous, but as emk said, James Milton has developed a standard test using the first 5000 words in a frequency list. Part of the reason for this cut off is that it is very difficult to derive accurate frequencies above this number without huge corpuses of the right kind of material.
The test is a recognition ie passive test of a sample of the full list, so it is expressed as number of words/5000. A score of 3000 does NOT mean that the subject only knows 3000 words. The test has been shown to be reliable and reproducible, so can be used diagnostically. Ir will be less accurate as the level of competence increases, as a native speaker will presumably reach the 5000 limit, but it is useful for the lower levels. All the figures in the paper are from Milton's work, so his comments are all internally consistent. As regards s allard's comment, it may not be necessary to use a large vocabulary to pass tests, but a good correlation has been shown between CEFR level as assessed in standard exams and the vocabulary size, as shown in Milton's paper. The number of words known is not irrelevant. A C level speaker would be expected to know the bulk of the 5000 word list. Knowledge of how to use the common ones properly is of course also expected. Paul Nation uses larger lists in a similar way, and I recommend his personal web pages for full discussions of the factors to take into consideration when counting vocabulary size. Most of his papers are available there.Instead of dismissing the project as impossible, he has spent decades refining his techniques and now comes up with sensible estimates. Just trawling a dictionary is not a reliable method. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| day1 Groupie Latvia Joined 3673 days ago 93 posts - 158 votes Speaks: English | Message 40 of 319 08 April 2014 at 12:47pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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CEFR is a strange animal indeed. The more I try to look into what each level actually means, the more confused I get. It has been said before on this forum, but I'll just join in - the actual abilities needed to pass a test on a certain level rarely matches the verbal descriptions of each level.
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