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Article: Students fall short on Vocabulary | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Gemuse Senior Member Germany Joined 3877 days ago 818 posts - 1189 votes  Speaks: English Studies: German | Message 25 of 319 07 April 2014 at 12:19am | IP Logged | |||||
According to their table, EFL vocab is good at B1 in Greece (3000 words). But then the growth slows down dramatically. Only 500 words extra per level after that. Only 4500 words at the C2 level. It leads me to believe that the vocab level at B1 for EFL in other countries is not due to better education, but due to something else. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Retinend Triglot Senior Member SpainRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4103 days ago 283 posts - 557 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish Studies: Arabic (Written), French | Message 26 of 319 07 April 2014 at 12:49am | IP Logged | |||||
Is this the fault of the communicative approach? I don't know much about what came before it so I'm happy to be taught something. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Elexi Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5360 days ago 938 posts - 1839 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 27 of 319 07 April 2014 at 1:12am | IP Logged | |||||
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FSI style methods came before communicative approach, that or BBC course driven evening classes ;-)
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 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5327 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 28 of 319 07 April 2014 at 2:39am | IP Logged | |||||
The last time I saw this "4,500 words at C2" number, I actually dug up the original research paper and read through their methodology carefully. It turns out that they only checked the most common 5,000 words. So all that number means is that C2 students knew 4,500 of the 5,000 most common words. But they may have also known a lot of words which aren't in the most common 5,000 as well. If I were going to test the vocabulary of C2 students, I'd use a dictionary with 30,000 to 40,000 headwords and test them on a random sample, then extrapolate from there. If the research at testyourvocab.com is to be believed, well-read adult native English speakers often know 30,000 to 35,000 dictionary headwords. According to IELTS research page, a C2 diploma is equivalent to an IELTS score of 8 or 9. According to testyourvocab.com, that corresponds to an average vocabulary of 13,000 to 26,000 words. This seems roughly right, based on the DALF C1 and C2 practice exams, and my scores on French vocab tests. Certainly it's much more plausible than that "4,500 at C2" number that keeps getting thrown around. Edited by emk on 07 April 2014 at 2:40am 7 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7000 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 29 of 319 07 April 2014 at 2:55am | IP Logged | |||||
Cognates? 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Gemuse Senior Member Germany Joined 3877 days ago 818 posts - 1189 votes Speaks: English Studies: German | Message 30 of 319 07 April 2014 at 6:43am | IP Logged | |||||
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Thanks EMK on that check.
With such an egregious error, can the article I posted be trusted as all? Perhaps it is all nonsense. My apologies. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6377 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 31 of 319 07 April 2014 at 7:02am | IP Logged | |||||
Any comparison between EFL learners and learners of any other language is pointless. English is the language of everything and most kids actively want to learn it. Any European citizen is constantly exposed to English via movies, advertising, music, computer games and the Internet. Most songs in the Eurovision Song Contest are in English, and the ones who sing in their native language never win (except when their native language is English). I know continental Euro kids don't get as much exposure to English as Swedes do, but it's still a helluvalot more than UK kids get to French.
The second language is English, of course, but I wouldn't say English is a "foreign language" in Sweden. If anything, one would expect third language learners in Sweden to proceed faster than second language learners in the UK, since we already have two languages under our belts. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4417 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 32 of 319 07 April 2014 at 9:13am | IP Logged | |||||
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Do Swedes actively choose to read in English? I remember being in a large bookstore in Oslo (ok, not
Sweden, but close enough) and I would say the books were a 50/50 split between English and Norwegian, just mixed together on the shelves. In other countries, there might be a small corner section with English titles. In places like Italy and Germany you would rarely see a native reading an English book on the bus or train. I guess if Scandanavian people are reading English materials, even if it is just standard novels, this will help shoot up their vocabulary levels. Edited by beano on 07 April 2014 at 9:16am 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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