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How much time studying vocabulary? | ||
Tags: Time to learn | Vocabulary learning | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Ezy Ryder Diglot Senior Member Poland youtube.com/user/Kat Joined 4142 days ago 284 posts - 387 votes  Speaks: Polish*, English Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 241 of 350 21 May 2015 at 5:14pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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As I've said a number of times in this thread, you should not treat amassing vocabulary
upfront as a method on its own. It's but a step. I may not know how to use each and every word I've memorized, in each and every context; but that's not the point. I'll acquire that from extensive reading and listening. EDIT: This is the last time I say this in this thread. From now on, I'll just quote the above paragraph.
Not for me. We all need words. You cannot argue with that. It's just how many of them, that is the source of dispute here. Say, I memorize 5k words. I try to read a book. Soon, I find I can't. Without knowing how big a lexicon will I need, all I know is, that "I need more." So I memorize another 5k words, doubling my vocabulary. Shall I try to read again, I'll soon find I can't. Again. Most likely, at least a part of the problem, will be my lexicon. So, how many more words will I need? Without an estimate, all I know, is that "I need more." So, twice the work, and yet the same answer. Don't you consider that discouraging? Moreover, have you heard of the Parkinson's law? Quoting Wikipedia: "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion." So for example, if I've got two years to get to a satisfactory level, and I underestimate any of the factors (including the lexicon), I'm more likely to "fail." Edited by Ezy Ryder on 21 May 2015 at 5:30pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| chaotic_thought Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 3335 days ago 129 posts - 274 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Dutch, French | Message 242 of 350 21 May 2015 at 7:49pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
This was also mentioned by Professor Arguelles in his extensive reading video series. You can see here for some tools of how to analyze a text and see which words you might want to try to memorize if you want to do this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbYMZZISPrU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N47IlqZX_Qs I've never tried it myself ("front-loading" vocabulary before trying to read). In my experience, I start out with a beginner's learning book and by the time I get done, I learned some percentage X% of those words "for free" simply by learning the material without paying attention to word lists or memorization techniques. Some of the words I learn the very first time I hear them (they "stick"), and others take time. But it's not possible to know in advance which words are going to be easy or hard. If I tried to memorize those X% "up-front" then I would have to spend some effort in trying to memorize words that would have been zero-effort in the natural course of the book. Cognates often fall in this category, but really there's no way to predict what will be easy for /you/ to automatically remember. For example I remember the first time heard 'kirei' used in Japanese it was already transparent to me what was meant, even though that word is nothing like anything I've heard in another language. Front-loading that word would mean that I would have had to spend a nonzero-effort to learn this word before I had ever seen it. But little would I have known that the word would have "stuck" anyway if I had just waited for it to appear naturally. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| rdearman Senior Member United Kingdom rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5029 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin | Message 243 of 350 21 May 2015 at 8:04pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I'm sorry, I'm confused. You're saying that in order to learn a language I only need a small vocabulary of 300 words, but because each of these words has 5 meanings I have to learn 1,500 words, and I have to put them all in perfect order all the time in order to speak to a native? I also have to make sure each verb is perfectly correct with tense and gender, etc? But you know, oddly enough if someone came up to me on the street and said: "Train waiting place is being? I go must to London." I would know what they meant and I would direct them to the train station. But even with a perfect accent, with perfect grammar and intonation if they said something like: "I need to find the errrrr..... Which is to say, I really must endeavour to go to the errrr..... You know the ahhhhhh.... The thing where the errrrr, the... the place with those things... big things... normally they are grey? You purchase tickets for it?" That person with their small perfectly selected vocabulary will probably end up at the zoo looking at elephants. :) 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Ezy Ryder Diglot Senior Member Poland youtube.com/user/Kat Joined 4142 days ago 284 posts - 387 votes Speaks: Polish*, English Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 244 of 350 21 May 2015 at 8:05pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
If you choose "Easy" in Anki, the interval can grow fairly quickly, though... Like in my character writing deck. When I first saw the 漢 card, I remembered how the character looked, but must've made a mistake writing it. Nevertheless, I've spent only 2 minutes and 31 seconds over the last 5 months on reviewing it (and it's a writing deck, so it's a few times slower than a regular one). The current interval is 8 months, and the ease is 265%. Not to mention, you can straight up suspend cards you know you don't need to review. Edited by Ezy Ryder on 21 May 2015 at 8:08pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5223 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 245 of 350 22 May 2015 at 5:58am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I'm now the one who is confused because nowhere in my post quoted above is there the slightest reference to "I only need a small vocabulary of 300 words, but because each of these words has 5 meanings I have to learn 1,500 words, and I have to put them all in perfect order all the time in order to speak to a native? I also have to make sure each verb is perfectly correct with tense and gender, etc?" Where in the world does this come from? English is a foreign language for me but I didn't believe that it is so bad as to be incomprehensible. I never once mentioned the need for a vocabulary of 300 words with 5 senses each. This seems to be some intellectual dishonesty because I"m being attributed things I have never said. Please, if I'm going to be quoted, at least get it right. In a previous post, here is what I did write: What I said in a nutshell was that for a certain style of speaking in Spanish one could define a set of around 450- 500 key words and grammatical concepts that should be studied explicitly or upfront in order to master that speaking style. The list was broken down into various functional categories. For example, there were around 60 key verbs that you have to know inside out. I would certainly encourage an advanced learner to concentrate on studying these words in a very disciplined fashion. In another post, I wrote: Neither is there probably much disagreement about the value of having lots of vocabulary. Even though I've been much maligned as the 300-word maniac, I certainly believe that the more words you know the better. That is a fundamental element of knowing a language and certainly is key to understanding and speaking. Exactly as I said, I have been much-maligned as a 300-word maniac and the post I'm discussing here is a perfect example of this. But this is a red herring that is meant to draw our attention away from the more substantive issues that go answered because they are intellectually too challenging. As for the example of the persons asking for the directions to the train station, I have to say I had a good laugh. In the first part what I surmise is being said is that one can make oneself understood even with imperfect mastery of the target language. We all know and experience this as learners. But at the same time most people here - but not all obviously- strive to speak and write well, approximately the way native speakers express themselves. I strongly doubt that many people here - with exceptions of course - aspire to say "Train waiting place is being? I go must to London." in any of their target languages. I can't speak for Italian or Mandarin, but if anybody from HTLAL speaks French like this, they should be ashamed of themselves. I hope I don't sound like this in Spanish, and I hope I never do so in Polish. As for the second part of the example, it seems to be some crude caricature of someone with perfect accent, perfect grammar and intonation but with a small perfectly selected vocabulary. I wish it were me in Polish. Frankly, if this were the case of someone learning English, I think this person would have simply said: "Excuse me. Do you know where the train station is?" This requires even fewer words than what was presented here. Edited by s_allard on 22 May 2015 at 12:57pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4326 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 246 of 350 22 May 2015 at 11:55am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Having marked both university essays and worked as an editor on high-end general journal publications I have to admit that what scientific authors mostly need to do is master the more common words when trying to communicate professionally. Of course, there is a technical vocabulary, but the best authors are able to write in a very precise and yet seemingly casual style which allows them to communicate to the broadest audience.
One of the great advantages of reading is that you are constantly practising the use of high frequency words. People can talk till they are blue in the face about how most words are simple to pick-up via word lists, but I just don't find this convincing as I have had to spend many hours working to correct the English of people who are presumably C1 at least, and have an approximate knowledge of lots of words, but are unable to communicate their ideas in a clear and efficient manner even when doing so means career success or not. On the other hand, talking about train stations: Yesterday I was asked by (I think) an Italian in very broken English where the nearest train station for the U8-line was. I pointed in the direction of the station, but told him that he needed only go down the stairs behind him leading to the U7 line and then change at the next station. He nodded and smiled and obviously not understanding what I had said walked off down the street in the semi-direction of the U8 line. Which suggests to me that having a small vocabulary is fine for simple questions, but terrible if you actually want to understand the reply. Although I don't believe my lost friend needed a vocabulary of 8000 words to understand "go down the steps behind you and change at the next station" I do get the impression that a lot of the tension coming from the small versus large vocabulary groups comes from emphasising either productive or receptive skills. Edited by patrickwilken on 22 May 2015 at 3:23pm 7 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6390 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 247 of 350 22 May 2015 at 3:15pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Very true, because for example s_allard is from Canada where all English speakers have to study French, and most adults can understand it (but far from all can speak grammatically correctly). He can't get into the shoes of Ezy Ryder who, as a learner of both Mandarin and Japanese, needs to learn a lot of vocab just to understand. 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5223 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 248 of 350 22 May 2015 at 3:27pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Although this post is a deliberate distortion of my thinking and probably done to insult me, it does provide a great opportunity for me to return to one of my favourite topics: the minimum vocabulary size to begin speaking a language. Some of the HTLAL veterans will recall that we had a raucous debate about this topic last year and ever since I have been branded as the 300-word diehard. There were actually two debates that somehow got conflated and all confused, especially in the minds of people who were not present in the debate. The two questions were: 1. How many unique word families does one need to start speaking a language? 2. How many word will one use in the oral production CEFR examination? I'll address only the first question. But if somebody asks, I'll gladly pontificate on the second. I boldly stated that for languages like French, a base vocabulary of around 300 word families will allow the learner to start interacting in simple dialogues with native speakers This is what I called the speaking vocabulary threshold. This simply says that at this point you can start doing basic things in the language on your own. Although I'm not always clear as I should be, I try to think things through before I put words to paper. This number 300 is a bit arbitrary of course but was not picked out of thin air. It is based on the observations of French teachers that at a certain point, the learner has a good enough mastery of the grammar and enough basic vocabulary to get by in simple situations and, very importantly, continue learning IN the language. "Mastery of the grammar" is the operative phrase here. This small number, 300 words, is really a bit misleading because it tends to hide the fact that it really presupposes the solid grounding in French grammar. For example, this list contains the key function or grammar words of French plus around 50 of the most common verbs. This is the tricky part. If you master that material, you know how to work the language. This will not be perfect of course but it allows you to get by. Everything else, such as the nouns and more verbs will expand as you are exposed to them. To illustrate all this, here is small dialogue in a cheese shop: A –Bonjour madame. Est-ce qu’on s’occupe de vous? B - Bonjour monsieur. Pas encore. A – Alors, je vous écoute. Qu'est-ce qu'il vous faut? B – Je voudrais un Camembert pour ce soir. A – Nous en avons plusieurs. Voulez-vous que je vous fasse goûter? B – Non, ce ne sera pas nécessaire. Vous pouvez m'en recommander un? A – Mais bien sûr. Tenez, celui-là est pas mal. C'est mon préféré. B – Très bien. Je le prends. A – Est-ce que ça va être tout ? B – Oui, c’est tout. A – Voilà. Passez à la caisse, s’il vous plaît. Merci et bonne journée. B – Merci à vous et bonne journée. How many unique words are in this dialogue? Around 50. That's not a lot. But underneath those 50 words, there's a huge amount of French grammar. The idea here isn't to memorize this dialogue and then venture out in to the world claiming to the speak French. The goal is to understand how the language works and then transpose it to different situations, including this one. Another key idea is that since those high-frequency words have many uses and meanings, they can be recycled over and over again. For example, the verb faire has over three pages in my big fat Larousse dictionary. If you nail how to use faire well, you can do a lot with it. Some bright person will probably say: "This is fine and good if I want to spend my day in a cheese shop. Suppose I go to the bank to exchange dollars for euros, this dialogue is useless." Well, is this dialogue completely useless? Not so. Parts can be reused at the bank. More importantly, with your knowledge of the underlying grammar, you just have to rework the vocabulary, adding where necessary, and you can get by quite well. You don't need 5000 words to start speaking French. Sure, you'll need all those words to talk about a wide range of subjects but, for the time being, we are talking about beginning to feel that you can make some sense in the language. For some strange reason many people started broadcasting that what I had said was that one does not need to learn more than 300 words in a language. Nothing could be further from the truth. I believe that one has to eventually know a lot more than 300 words. And certainly keep working on the grammar. But I will say that 300 words used impeccably are much more impressive than 5000 words full of mistakes. It's the mistakes that do you in. Quality always trumps quantity. Edited by s_allard on 22 May 2015 at 3:29pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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