How much time studying vocabulary? (Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies) Language Learning Forum

How much time studying vocabulary?
Tags: Time to learn \| Vocabulary learning
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Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies

350 messages over 44 pages: << Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ... 40 ... 43 44 Next >>

Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6390 days ago
9753 posts - 15779 votes

4 sounds
Speaks: Russian*, English, Finnish^C1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish

Message 313 of 350

27 May 2015 at 10:40pm | IP Logged

I hope s_allard was sincere about the desire to bury the debate.

I've written a wikia article about the kernel strategy, including links to past threads, all the common criticism and example kernels. I've done my best to be neutral. I don't think anyone is interested in an editing war, so please don't remove entire sentences or paragraphs. (I could provide citations for everything but I hope nothing is controversial there)

I've done my part. I'm not going to make any of the arguments that are already described there, clearly and concisely. I encourage others to do the same and maybe to reread the article before posting something new on this topic.

(the kernel formatting lacks some spaces and may be generally messed up)
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s_allard
Triglot
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Canada
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Speaks: French*, English, Spanish
Studies: Polish

Message 314 of 350

27 May 2015 at 11:18pm | IP Logged

I usually don't reply to these posts but I will make an exception to say that I think the wikia article is an extremely
poor representation of my thinking, starting with the title: S Allard's kernel method. I have never used the word
method with reference to something that is best called a learning strategy focused on developing speaking fluency
for C2 level exams. This has nothing to do with concept of a 300-word threshold for beginning to speak French. I
would really like to have my name removed from such a travesty of my ideas.

Edit: in the Wiki article, I have replaced s_allard by originator. I wish I could change the title. And I want to
emphasize that I have rarely seen such a poorly written description of my work. I am not surprised.

Edited by s_allard on 27 May 2015 at 11:38pm
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Serpent
Octoglot
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Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
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Message 315 of 350

27 May 2015 at 11:25pm | IP Logged

In the article I mostly used the word strategy. You've certainly presented it as a method, starting numerous threads.
You're welcome to edit the beginning to represent your ideas better. Just don't remove any criticism etc.
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Serpent
Octoglot
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Message 316 of 350

28 May 2015 at 12:27am | IP Logged

It's an accurate summary of those 10+ threads. You're always welcome to explain what you had in mind. It seems like now there's a separate basic kernel and advanced kernel? I think it's still the same method of improving your speaking skills.

I would gladly change method to strategy but even I can't do that anymore, despite being the one who started the page.
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luke
Diglot
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United States
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Studies: Esperanto, French

Message 317 of 350

28 May 2015 at 2:56am | IP Logged

s_allard wrote:

I usually don't reply to these posts but I will make an exception to say that I think the wikia
article is an extremely poor representation of my thinking.

The breadth of your vocabulary in English is excellent.

Do you think the difficulty your readers have understanding your thinking is an issue with your use of those
"kernel" words in English?

Edited by luke on 28 May 2015 at 2:56am
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s_allard
Triglot
Senior Member
Canada
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Speaks: French*, English, Spanish
Studies: Polish

Message 318 of 350

28 May 2015 at 3:37am | IP Logged

Please, I don't think we should waste any more time of this thread on a piece of doggerel written in a brazen and
shameless attempt at self-promotion and self-aggrandizement. Let's get back on track.
1 person has voted this message useful

PeterMollenburg
Senior Member
AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5269 days ago
821 posts - 1273 votes

Speaks: English*
Studies: French^B1

Message 319 of 350

29 May 2015 at 1:12pm | IP Logged

Following quote is from Serpent directed at smallwhite

Serpent wrote:

...but since you keep asking how to be received better, let me just point out that many of your responses have
been snarky and basically saying that everyone is inefficient if they can't (or don't want!) to learn 8000
isolated words in a few months. But you admitted it yourself that you eventually get sick of it and burned out.
Nobody pressures you to change your method, though - just to be honest about its weak points.

I could be poking at exposed nerves here that are already mending and I'm undoing the stitches and
dressings but I've only read to page 10 so far... I did notice that many of the early replies to smallwhite's posts
started with apologetic words along the lines of don't take this the wrong way but...

I think this is due to what appears to be abrupt arrogance on smallwhite's part. People seemed to be
anticipating potential curt replies. We're all inquisitive here and when met with radical new study methods its
only natural for inquiries, scepticism, doubt, praise etc. I found smallwhite's efficient methods very interesting
and its great she shared her methods with us- I could certainly improve my efficiency... but...

Perhaps you have become so good at being efficient in life that you have little empathy for those who either
don't understand your explanations properly first take or simply interpret your words incorrectly. Patience and
empathy are virtues that effeciency need not kill.
5 persons have voted this message useful

PeterMollenburg
Senior Member
AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name
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Studies: French^B1

Message 320 of 350

29 May 2015 at 1:55pm | IP Logged

Jeffers wrote:

rdearman wrote:

Now I realise you are all going to attack my math and tell me it all
depends on the words you learn, or the books you read, or the physics professor who speaks to you at the
bakery. But I'm just saying it wouldn't do any harm for a beginner to know 8000 words in the shortest period of
time. And if you are only spending 15-20 minutes of your review hour on vocabulary, you can spend the other
40-45 minutes on grammar. I wish my tutor had given me one of these spreadsheets each week and told me
to review them and know them all and tested me randomly on the batch of 500 words. I would have quickly
built up a baseline of vocabulary and we'd have spend more time on grammar coverage, irregular verbs, etc.
etc.

I'm not going to attack your math, which I think is correct, but I am not sure that it actually wouldn't do any
harm for a beginner try to know 8000 words in the shortest period of time. For a few reasons:

1. Knowing the 98% or even 100% of the words of a text doesn't mean you can understand it. When I was
studying Greek, a friend of mine wrote the meaning of every word over the Greek words in our reading text.
He then complained that it still made no sense to him.

2. If you learn words in, say, the 6000-8000 range they are unlikely to come up in any particular text. This
means you are spending time learning words that you might actually never come across in a text. Is that
efficient?

3. "Harm" is a an overused word by some language learners. I don't think that the person will suffer brain
damage, and it might actually help their cognitive development. However, the potential harm would be in the
time wasted on this task rather than on actually learning the language. People waste their time on a lot of
things... I could be reading in one of my languages instead of writing this post. But if there is a harm to speak
of, it is that someone will spend all their language study time on that word list rather than more useful
activities. Of course you are recommending 15 minutes per hour reviewing the vocabulary, which is a great
balance.

4. Is it really possible to learn that much vocabulary in 15 minutes per day? The numbers smallwhite
was using were for reviewing vocabulary. There was a lot of discussion earlier on about SRS being for
reviewing. Where is the time in those 15 minutes to learn the words first?

Like you, rdearman, I do believe that a large vocabulary is helpful. I just don't think taking a frequency list
and cramming 8000 words is efficient. I've quoted
this article by Paul Nation a few times on this
thread. Here's an interesting fact about some of the books he studies. To get 98% coverage of Alice in
Wonderland, you would need to learn the 5000 most frequent words in English. However, Alice in
Wonderland only has 1743 different words! If you were planning to read Alice, would it be more efficient to
learn the 5000 words or the 1743 words?

A much more efficient method would be to take a text you want to read, and feed it into text analysis software,
making a list of the 98% most common words in that text. Then you could study the list before reading the
text. When you are done, take the next text you want to read and analyse the vocabulary, learning the 98%
most common words in that text minus the words you already learned for the previous text. Using a method
like this the learner would have smaller sets of vocabulary to learn. But more importantly, the words learnt
would appear in the texts read so they would be reinforced. Conversely, you would never waste time
cramming a word which you wouldn't come across.

Doing something like this, it will take you a lot longer to learn 8000 words, but you will retain them better, you
will understand the words in a more nuanced way by having seen them in use, and you will have practiced
much more of the language by actually reading it. Overall, I think it would be more efficient. Now if only I had
software which would do this with my ebooks and feed the vocab into Anki or something. One of these days
I'll get around to scripting it myself!

Interesting post, tnx Jeffers

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