Register  Login  Active Topics  Maps  

Article: Students fall short on Vocabulary

 Language Learning Forum : General discussion Post Reply
319 messages over 40 pages: << Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ... 26 ... 39 40 Next >>
dampingwire
Bilingual Triglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4678 days ago

1185 posts - 1513 votes 
Speaks: English*, Italian*, French
Studies: Japanese

 
 Message 201 of 319
22 April 2014 at 11:10pm | IP Logged 
montmorency wrote:
For the first 5 years of their school life, and particularly
focusing on the 4th and
5th year of secondary school (years 10 and 11 in the current school year naming
scheme), bright kids will be expected to take 10 or more GCSE's, and so will have only
1/10th at best of their school time available for (say) French.


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.

montmorency wrote:
Because increasingly children are "taught to the test", and in any
case, human nature
being what it is, even the brightest of kids will only learn what they have to learn
under those conditions.


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.


montmorency wrote:
I would say that it's not entirely surprising, especially as, sadly,
I don't think
"foreign languages" are actually valued highly within the UK


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.

montmorency wrote:
in spite of much lip service to the contrary.


You must be watching different lips to the ones I see :-)

montmorency wrote:
I think things could be, and should be, vastly improved, but I'm not
too hopeful at the
moment.


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 4678 days ago

1185 posts - 1513 votes 
Speaks: English*, Italian*, French
Studies: Japanese

 
 Message 202 of 319
22 April 2014 at 11:13pm | IP Logged 
montmorency wrote:
Similarly "The (old) Bill" (the police), "felt his collar" (arrested
someone) "done
porridge" (served time in prison). etc, etc.


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 7218 days ago

3133 posts - 4351 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: Esperanto, French

 
 Message 203 of 319
23 April 2014 at 12:25am | IP Logged 
dampingwire wrote:
montmorency wrote:
Similarly "The (old) Bill" (the police), "felt his collar"
(arrested someone) "done porridge" (served time in prison). etc, etc.


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.


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 4678 days ago

1185 posts - 1513 votes 
Speaks: English*, Italian*, French
Studies: Japanese

 
 Message 204 of 319
23 April 2014 at 1:20am | IP Logged 
luke wrote:
I'm not a crime show buff and I'm not fan of UK TV, but I don't recall
hearing them.


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.

luke wrote:
Do you say, "I smell bacon" when a cop is sited?


Any general "pig" reference would be understood here.

luke wrote:
Do you call prison, "the big house"?


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 5022 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 
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 5569 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 4681 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 
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 4015 days ago

44 posts - 115 votes 
Speaks: French*, English
Studies: Spanish, Russian

 
 Message 208 of 319
23 April 2014 at 7:59am | IP Logged 
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?


1 person has voted this message useful



This discussion contains 319 messages over 40 pages: << Prev 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40  Next >>


Post ReplyPost New Topic Printable version Printable version

You cannot post new topics in this forum - You cannot reply to topics in this forum - You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum - You cannot create polls in this forum - You cannot vote in polls in this forum


This page was generated in 0.4688 seconds.


DHTML Menu By Milonic JavaScript
Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved
No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization.