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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 |  | |
| 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 297 of 350 27 May 2015 at 12:01am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I'm sorry if you felt anything I said was a personal attack, it wasn't intended to be. If you did feel this way then I apologise.
Sorry, I feel I must restate my position again because I don't seem to be making myself clear. I've never said anyone should learn a list of 10,000 words. But what I have said is that if you intend to learn 10,000 words it would be more efficient to learn them from a list, than to try and learn them via extensive reading.
Nor have I.
Sorry, I seem to have gotten the focus of the discussion wrong. I was under the impression that you were saying it is inefficient to learn words from a list. So I gave a number of references which showed scientific studies giving evidence to the contrary and to uphold my position that it is more efficient to learn vocabulary from a list. I was not discussing speaking, listening, grammar, writing or reading strategies. I'm just saying if you have a list of words in a second language and you want to learn them quickly, make a list, or SRS and memorise them. This isn't an attack. I'm simply requesting if you have any studies which you can point me toward which shows evidence to the contrary of my position that it is more efficient to learn words from a list, SRS, flashcards, then please show me. I would be genuinely interested in reading them. In fact one of the points in the papers I referenced did actually support a portion of your argument. They said (summarizing from memory here) that word pair lists are not as effective for longer term retention of meaning, as when the decontextualized methods are given limited context. Context could be, visual, auditory, or textual. So basically if you add pictures, sound or perhaps a sentence containing the word to your flashcards. EMK's subs2srs experiment was rich in contextual meaning because his cards had a frame from the film, the spoken dialogue and translation and the TL word in a TL sentence (the subtitle). So given these additional enhancements the retention would be of a similar quality as extensive reading, or other contextualized methods. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4702 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 298 of 350 27 May 2015 at 12:18am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
If your goal is to learn X number of words, then of course it doesn't make a difference how frequent or infrequent those words are. But that's not the kind of efficiency Nation & Waring were writing about. Their argument is that it is efficient to learn frequent words because you will also use them a lot. So you learn a word which appears on every page, and you get a big payoff from the time you spent learning it. Learn a word which appears once every five pages and the payoff is a lot smaller. Learn a word which only appears once in a book and the payoff is even less. This is the meaning of "efficient" I was referring to. When it comes to the point of seeing a word more on your SRS study than you ever see it in reality, then it turns out to have been very inefficient (even if in hindsight). If someone set their goal as wanting to learn 6000, 8000 or 20000 words, then I agree that cramming with SRS might be the most efficient way. But since most of us want more out of a language than knowing a lot of words, that efficiency might not be the most best way to advance your language in general. I realize you, rdearman, don't advocate learning vocabulary in isolation, but I'm just pointing out that efficiency in one area may have an effect in other areas. If my vocabulary aquisition method is inefficient, but it gives me other benefits, it may turn out to do more for me in terms of overall goals. 6 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 299 of 350 27 May 2015 at 12:30am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Oh I completely agree with that conclusion. For example you're never going to get more examples of real-life grammatical usage than through reading. Extensive reading will give you probably a hundred other benefits I've never even thought off. I absolutely agree that people should read, watch TV shows and generally jump into native materials as quickly as they can. But one of the benefits I can see with smallwhites method of learning vocabulary (using what are in effect production cards in a spreadsheet) is she is forced to produce output. So while there are hidden benefits to incidental learning through reading, there are also hidden benefits to doing vocabulary retention with production cards. The primary one being the use of words. I don't know about you, but my spelling even in English is abysmal, and the forced production of correctly spelt words is a great benefit. I'm sure with a little thought we could both think of secondary benefits for both intentional vocabulary learning and incidental vocabulary learning. In fact the primary reason for the Output Challenge (shameless plug!) was because while I was seeing the benefits of extensive reading, I couldn't even write an email without looking up the spelling of every other word. EDIT: One thing I wanted to point out, but forgot was an example of an English speaker who wanted to move to France and continue in a medical career that person would do well to cram medical jargon via a list. Because in that instance they need to learn what is in effect a 1-2-1 mapping of word pairs like parts of the body, illnesses, medical technological jargon, etc. This isn't dissimilar to medical students who've posted tons of ANKI decks for other students. This example is more in line with what Nation and the others were talking about after the learner has a proficiency in the language. However I do understand that you are speaking of general usage words rather than specific topic vocabulary. Also my frustration with slow vocabulary acquisition is a personal frustration that I cannot read as fast in my target languages as I can in my native language. Edited by rdearman on 27 May 2015 at 12:53am 2 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 300 of 350 27 May 2015 at 1:40am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Hmm medical vocabulary isn't that straightforward. There are a lot of usage peculiarities, especially if you include generic science words. (Russian lacks a good term for "generic" btw)
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| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5223 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 301 of 350 27 May 2015 at 6:56am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
My fundamental disagreement with this idea of memorization of large wordlists is about the nature of the so- called learning. I have systematically used the term memorization because I believe that this is not actually learning of the word i.e its meaning and its use. This is the result of decontextualization. Instead what we have is committing the graphic form of the word to memory with some cue in the native language. The examples taken from a French frequency list are a case in point. This is what I call a hodge-podge or a jumble of words. What I mean is that there is no thematic of formal connection between the words. They're only together because of statistical proximity. Although this is only a small snippet, I think a person learning French would be absolutely crazy to try to memorize these words from such a list. I know that I'm using strong words but I'll go into some detail as to why this is a very inefficient way to learn improve one's vocabulary. We all agree that these are perfectly formed French words that one will encounter at some point if exposed long enough to French. That's not the problem. The problem is what are you learning when to commit this form to memory with the English cues given above. I want to first emphasize that the French words in the list are not accompanied by definitions in English. Those are not definitions; these are supposedly equivalents. They are not definitions. For example, bourse is translated as "scholarship". But this doesn't tell us what scholarship is. Are we talking about prize money given to a students or are we talking about a form of scholarly method. Only the context will tell us. Let's look at some examples of the problems in this list: 1. tuerai. This is the first person future tense of the verb tuer. It is normally accompanied by the pronoun as in je tuerai. The proper translation should be (I) will kill. The translation here "kills" is totally wrong. What about all the other conjugated forms of tuer? One could argue that the first person future tuerai is a very common form. It may be the case but in the spoken language particularly the futur proche is more common and formed with aller + tuer as in je vais tuer. But this will show up in frequency lists as distinct words and not as a future tense form. If this list were lemmatized, the entry would appear as the infinitive "tuer" to kill. This is fine but again a similar problem of no information about the multiple forms of this verb and how it is actually used. And we see nothing about the morphological transformations into forms like tueur, tueuse, tuerie or the pronominal form se tuer. 2. écouté. This is the past participle of the verb écouter. The translation given is wrong; this is best translated as "listened". This could be used as part of the conjugation of écouter. Or it could be used as an adjective. Only the context will tell us. 3. bourse. Nouns should be less problematic than verbs. One problem here is the lack of the grammatical gender marker la for la bourse. This is extremely important if one wants to use this word properly. This sort of list entry is probably a partial explanation of why English-speakers have major problems with gender in French. The gender is not learned with the word. A second problem with this word is the various meanings. The translation "scholarship" covers one meaning but it is not necessarily the most common or important. Other meanings are "the stock exchange", "a cash prize for a competition", "a handbag, and "scholarly method". The only way to differentiate these meanings is by looking at the context. I'll stop here rather not make this post too long. The point here is that the so-called learning of the word is very imperfect, superficial and above all misleading. It's more about learning. That said, I want to emphasize that wordlists with or without translation can be useful for review and tracking. But that's a different issue. Edited by s_allard on 27 May 2015 at 2:26pm 2 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 302 of 350 27 May 2015 at 8:29am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
To me, learning a word means encountering that word and then understanding it. For example, you may see the word tuerai in a text, on a radio broadcast, in a conversation, etc. Suppose that after consulting the above list, you are able to understand tuerai in the context in which you encountered it. Then that means you've just learned tuerai. You will probably have to learn a word multiple times before you've "learned" it. The exact details of what you put in your word list (or if you have one at all) doesn't matter so much as long as you "get it." For example, you could write the word "tuerai" and then next to that, you could draw a stick figure of a man stabbing a woman with a knife. It doesn't matter as long as you understand the word as it was used. Edited by chaotic_thought on 27 May 2015 at 8:32am 1 person has 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 303 of 350 27 May 2015 at 9:26am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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That's why, for example, the definition on my card for 卡彈 says "to jam (rifle)." So that I
know it's a verb, and not something you buy in a grocery store, and it's not a form of usually group improvisation among musicians. And you don't need to limit yourself to one definition/translation per word. Lastly:
Edited by Ezy Ryder on 27 May 2015 at 2:48pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4326 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 304 of 350 27 May 2015 at 11:07am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I am sorry but this is just wrong. There is no big, or even small, challenge associated either with grammatical gender or case declension when it comes to reading Harry Potter. You also don't need to drill to death verbs like "haben, sein, wollen, machen, müssen, dürfen, kommen". You see these verbs all the time and you'll learn their more subtle meanings from constantly reading them (perhaps that's what you meant by drilling?). I find your comment interesting, as you seem to approach reading in the same fashion as you would approach speaking, but the skills are very different. You read Harry Potter for meaning (i.e., receptive skills) so why would the gender of words matter? If you want to write some Harry Potter fan fiction (productive skills), than you need to know the gender of words, but to read you don't need that. The same goes for case declension. What does matter if you are reading HP is whether you understand what the SPECIFIC words the author uses means (some can be guessed from context but if you know less than <98% of the words in the text this gets difficult). On the other hand if you are writing fan fiction you get to chose which words you use so of course the bigger stumbling block will be grammatical in nature. For reading (and listening) you need a simplified grammar but an extensive vocabulary; for writing (and speaking) you need an extensive grammar, but can get by with a more limited vocabulary. Edited by patrickwilken on 27 May 2015 at 11:12am 5 persons have voted this message useful |
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