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Apprendre 2500 mots en 5 mois?

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maurelio1234
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Speaks: Portuguese*, EnglishC2, French
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 Message 17 of 27
19 December 2013 at 2:30pm | IP Logged 
EnglishEagle wrote:

Also, it's not really simple vocabulary, some of it is quite a pain to remember such as
'assiette anglaise' is on the
word list and probably wouldn't come up in a book/magazine I would read.



So we are not talking about the 2500 most frequent french words, but rather 2500 random
french words/expressions, right?

If it is the case, I think word lists AND targeted reading are the best solutions, i.e.
read a lot of texts in the are your words come from and you'll see your words again and
again.

By the way, I've been living in France for 5 years and I guess I never saw the expression
"assiete anglaise" (but I had it already ;))
1 person has voted this message useful



EnglishEagle
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4325 days ago

140 posts - 157 votes 
Studies: English*, German

 
 Message 18 of 27
19 December 2013 at 10:40pm | IP Logged 
Iversen wrote:
I may have caused some of the confusion and wasted some of EnglishEagle's scarce time by
writing in French - sorry about that. But the essence of it was that wordlists can be based on material you have met
while reading or listening (though not in your situation, where a teacher has thrown a readymade list on your table),
and that both wordlists and Anki etc. can be done in different ways, but the worst by a wide margin is rote
memorization of the type where you just repeat words with or without translations until you fall asleep.


Don't worrying about my time, thank you for spending so much time to write that post to me (despite it being in
French). How would you recommend I proceed with this task ahead of me? As previous posts in this thread have left
me a bit confused on what to do.
1 person has voted this message useful



EnglishEagle
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4325 days ago

140 posts - 157 votes 
Studies: English*, German

 
 Message 19 of 27
19 December 2013 at 10:49pm | IP Logged 
maurelio1234 wrote:
EnglishEagle wrote:

Also, it's not really simple vocabulary, some of it is quite a pain to remember such as
'assiette anglaise' is on the
word list and probably wouldn't come up in a book/magazine I would read.



So we are not talking about the 2500 most frequent french words, but rather 2500 random
french words/expressions, right?

If it is the case, I think word lists AND targeted reading are the best solutions, i.e.
read a lot of texts in the are your words come from and you'll see your words again and
again.

By the way, I've been living in France for 5 years and I guess I never saw the expression
"assiete anglaise" (but I had it already ;))


Unfortunately, it's not 2500 most frequent words, its words that are topic specific (such as local area, our health e.g
eating, exercising , drinking, smoking related vocab). I think I'm going to have to try and target my reading but I
think finding content is going to be hardest part. I cannot thank everyone enough for the input and help!
1 person has voted this message useful





Iversen
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 Message 20 of 27
20 December 2013 at 4:23pm | IP Logged 
The members of this forum don't always agree on how to learn languages, but one thing is pretty clear: if your goal is to learn to read then you have to read a lot. If you want to learn to speak then you must at some point start speaking a lot- However it transpires that you have been placed in a situation where you have to know a lot of words - and those words are probably not the most common ones, but somewhat more rare ones. In that situation my advice would be to use formal methods like wordlists and/or Anki etc. - but of course alongside other activities like reading and listening and thinking and speaking. Otherwise you won't be able to retain you new vocabulary.

If you want to try out wordlists then you can try Huliganov's Goldlist method - but I haven't tried it out myself so hopefully other members will chime in with their experiences. My method is described in detail in the link I gave you in an earlier post, but the basic points are:

1) do it as a written exercise, not just in your mind (you can't forget the words and expressions you intended to memorize when they are written down on a sheet of paper in front of you - whereras it is all too easy to forget what it was you were supposed to remember if it just is inside your skull)

2) learn 5-7 words with their translations as a group -all for one and one for all. This will force you not just to repeat one word aimlessly in your mind (which you couldn do for several minutes without learning anything). The learning is achieved in the moment you succeed in dragging an almost forgotten word from the brink ofoblivion - and it is fixated by doing this a few times.    

3) For each block: write the foreign words first and make sure you can remember them all, and only then write all the translations down in the next column. Now make sure that you can rememmber all the original words from the translations, and then cover column 1 and reconstruct the words in it in a third column. You can use all the association techniques in the book - rather that than simple repetition.

4) Do some kind of repetition round a day or so later (and maybe a third time even later if you think you need it). You can do this repetition round by making the same exercise again, but now without writing the first column. Just copy the translations and have a look at the original words - and then cover the translations and reconstruct the foreign words, one group at a time. Or if the words came from a specific text: go back to that text and make sure you know all the words now.

I'm sure somebody will come along to tell you that learning a lot of words and some grammar isn't enough be learn to speak a language, and that's perfectly true. But you need to learn words, and then you willy-nilly have to do something that points in that direction. And apart from that: if you know 2500 words then you are in a better position to learn to speak properly than if you just knew 25 words.

Good luck!

Edited by Iversen on 20 December 2013 at 4:39pm

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geoffw
Triglot
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United States
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Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish
Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian

 
 Message 21 of 27
20 December 2013 at 4:29pm | IP Logged 
Iversen wrote:

2) learn 5-7 words with their translations as a group - which will force you not just to
repeat one word aimlessly in you mind (which you can do for several minutes without
learning anything). The learning is achieved in the moment you succeed in dragging an
almost    


What was the end of this thought? My best guess is you were going to say "dragging an
almost known word from short-term memory into long-term memory" or something of the like?
2 persons have voted this message useful





Iversen
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 Message 22 of 27
20 December 2013 at 4:34pm | IP Logged 
True - I hadn't finished editing this sentence when I pushed the button. And that's the rule and not an exception.

There's a reason why all my messages have "edited by Iversen" beneath them (including this one!)

Edited by Iversen on 20 December 2013 at 4:35pm

2 persons have voted this message useful



EnglishEagle
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4325 days ago

140 posts - 157 votes 
Studies: English*, German

 
 Message 23 of 27
20 December 2013 at 7:42pm | IP Logged 
Iversen wrote:
The members of this forum don't always agree on how to learn languages, but one thing is pretty
clear: if your goal is to learn to read then you have to read a lot. If you want to learn to speak then you must at some
point start speaking a lot- However it transpires that you have been placed in a situation where you have to know a
lot of words - and those words are probably not the most common ones, but somewhat more rare ones. In that
situation my advice would be to use formal methods like wordlists and/or Anki etc. - but of course alongside other
activities like reading and listening and thinking and speaking. Otherwise you won't be able to retain you new
vocabulary.

If you want to try out wordlists then you can try Huliganov's Goldlist method - but I haven't tried it out myself so
hopefully other members will chime in with their experiences. My method is described in detail in the link I
gave you in an earlier post, but the basic points are:

1) do it as a written exercise, not just in your mind (you can't forget the words and expressions you intended to
memorize when they are written down on a sheet of paper in front of you - whereras it is all too easy to forget what
it was you were supposed to remember if it just is inside your skull)

2) learn 5-7 words with their translations as a group -all for one and one for all. This will force you not just to
repeat one word aimlessly in your mind (which you couldn do for several minutes without learning anything). The
learning is achieved in the moment you succeed in dragging an almost forgotten word from the brink
ofoblivion - and it is fixated by doing this a few times.    

3) For each block: write the foreign words first and make sure you can remember them all, and only then write all
the translations down in the next column. Now make sure that you can rememmber all the original words from the
translations, and then cover column 1 and reconstruct the words in it in a third column. You can use all the
association techniques in the book - rather that than simple repetition.

4) Do some kind of repetition round a day or so later (and maybe a third time even later if you think you need it).
You can do this repetition round by making the same exercise again, but now without writing the first column. Just
copy the translations and have a look at the original words - and then cover the translations and reconstruct the
foreign words, one group at a time. Or if the words came from a specific text: go back to that text and make sure
you know all the words now.

I'm sure somebody will come along to tell you that learning a lot of words and some grammar isn't enough be learn
to speak a language, and that's perfectly true. But you need to learn words, and then you willy-nilly have to do
something that points in that direction. And apart from that: if you know 2500 words then you are in a better
position to learn to speak properly than if you just knew 25 words.

Good luck!


Thank you so much again for another helpful post. I will definitely do that. Would it be beneficial to do this a long
side Assimil to consolidate what I have previously learnt? Then I can incorporate the words on my word list into what
I am doing with Assimil as well as reading magazines and articles.
1 person has voted this message useful





Iversen
Super Polyglot
Moderator
Denmark
berejst.dk
Joined 6453 days ago

9078 posts - 16473 votes 
Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan
Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian
Personal Language Map

 
 Message 24 of 27
21 December 2013 at 2:38pm | IP Logged 
You could definitely use the wordlist techniques (or systems like Anki) on words from your Assimil course, newspapers etc. However I understood that you had received a list with specific words which you would have to learn for a specific exam 5 months ahead. That's a hard deal! Let's do the arithmetics: 5 x 30 days = 150 days, and you need to get through 2500 words (including repetition rounds). And there will be days where you can't find time to work so instead of roughly new words per day we may be looking at a need to memorize 25 or 30 new words on each 'working' day. Plus repetitions.

I do think you should do something to remember the words from your Assimil, and there might also be a certain amount of overlap, but you may have to set an upper limit for the time you spend on vocabulary acquisition. There must also be space and time for more recreational activities in your target language - i.e. reading and listening without having to learn each and every new word on your way. Just learning words without using the language in practice will be as frustrating as reading menus instead of eating.

Edited by Iversen on 21 December 2013 at 2:42pm



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