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How many words you learn per year (avg) | ||
Tags: Poll | Vocabulary learning | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4345 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes  Studies: German | Message 145 of 229 12 May 2015 at 9:49pm | IP Logged | ||
It's like some perverse local variation of Godwin's law "that as a discussion on HTLAL grows longer, the probability of s_allard raising the importance of learning a small kernel of vocabulary approaches 1". I would like to call this Allard's law. Edited by patrickwilken on 12 May 2015 at 11:08pm 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6409 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 146 of 229 12 May 2015 at 10:55pm | IP Logged | ||
"Wrong words" and "non-respect of conventions" are basically vocabulary issues. Think of someone who ends a letter with "goodbye" because they don't know the expression "best regards". "Wrong tone" and "spelling mistakes" can refer both to vocabulary and grammar. And here's the breaking news: not everyone's biggest difficulty is grammar. If anything, grammar is more universal, whereas vocabulary nuances have to be learned on a case-by-case basis. Also, instead of writing a bunch of emails and getting corrections, I would focus on reading examples of good emails and reading books/press in the neutral and possibly business register in order to get a feel for all this stuff. If you repeatedly make tons of mistakes, you'll be overwhelmed by the corrections. Either get off your high horse and write simple sentences, or read more of what you're trying to imitate. Edited by Serpent on 12 May 2015 at 10:57pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4102 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 147 of 229 12 May 2015 at 11:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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Ideally a fairly large vocabulary with great grammatical control and mastery is the
balance that is sought. After seeing s-allard's Spanish, I feel that his level is much higher than mine. Despite the emphasis on idioms, I feel that he uses at least a bit more vocabulary in Spanish than I do. But it does not mean that using a low vocabulary with extremely good grammar and high idiomatic mastery is the only way. I have written very formal correspondence to the Spanish consulate tin the city in which I live before. My level is not C2 or native, but I adopt (or at least try to) a balanced high grammar/high vocabulary style, without veering sharply in one direction or the other. In this very moment I am writing a formal correspondence request to the Federación Española de Ajedrez, without anyone checking it. I do my own checking, and regardless if it sounds slightly odd or not, I am content enough that my vocabulary is at least decent and the grammar devoid of both blunders and even small mistakes. I rather not have a limited vocabulary with excellent grammar, or mediocre grammar and high vocabulary. I try a maximalist balanced "I try the best that I can 50/50" type of approach. Edited by 1e4e6 on 12 May 2015 at 11:15pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4821 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 148 of 229 13 May 2015 at 12:02am | IP Logged | ||
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To the original question (the rest of the thread is mostly a deja vu with the same
sides, arguments, straw men, strategies etc.): As it may already be a trouble to decide what are separate words and what are a word family, how does learning related languages affect that? Learning Spanish, with French already in my brain, gives me the advantage of knowing tons of vocabulary passively at first sight from the similarity+context and even using surprisingly lot of it actively (and correctly) with just minimum learning effort. Even if I had a more precise way to get a number of learnt Spanish words than a more or less informed guess, are they trully separate words and word families or should they be counted as new members of word families already counted in? I think it is possible for a very dedicated learner to learn quite all the normally used vocabulary (conversations, newspapers, movies, usual books) in one year. A dictionary, like those Iversen described (thanks for the post, it really resonated with my more limited experience and I couldn't have writen the idea better), a Super Challenge, possibly vocabulary builder books, all that combined with your time and practice could get you there. At least when it comes to mainstream languages. However it would require lots of dedication and time, wide choice of input, appropriate practice/test situations and so on. and I cannot tell how many word families would it make. Next time I start a language (probably Swedish, January 2016), I'll use SRS anyways so I could just count everything and share the number after a year. It is possible we'll still be discussing the topic after all by then ;-) My most relevant and most precisely counted experience: I once learnt approximately 1800-1900 words for an English Medical Terminology exam with use of SRS in a weekend. The exam was based on correct use of the terms in context and I was graded:excellent after such a short time of cramming. A part of the vocabulary was related to vocabulary already known from general English knowledge and Latin terminology (which is similar to my previous example of learning Spanish after French). I forgot active use of some part of the vocabulary afterwards due to never needing and using it, of course, but I had learnt it and I kept passive knowledge of most of it and active knowledge of the more useful half or so. Why I mention it: No, it is not to brag, there is no reason for that. In light of this experience, I have no trouble believing any normally diligent learner properly and trully learns a few thousand words per language per year. Therefore, I believe most htlalers that are now actively studying, not maintaining, (or rather their Guardian Angels, who have counted precisely the number of good deeds, sins and words learnt) could cross one of the last three options, depending on how many languages they study. Edited by Cavesa on 13 May 2015 at 12:04am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5242 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 149 of 229 13 May 2015 at 7:45am | IP Logged | ||
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Let me give an example of what I mean by learning to write e-mails well in the target language. Just today I got
the following e-mail from a friend in a Spanish conversation class. The author is a native speaker of French. Hi Serge, How are you? Sorry for my delay but in this moment the time spend too fast!! Anyway, are you be available Thursday at 13 am or an other day. Tell me when you can. I'm looking forward to seeing you, the Spanish conversations miss me See you soon Have a good evening That's what my e-mails used to look like in Spanish. What's wrong with this e-mail that a little jiggling of the vocabulary can't fix? Is it lack of vocabulary? I'll leave the answers to the readers. The main thing for me is that I don't want my e-mails in Spanish to look like this. I'm sure some people here find this kind of writing cute and wouldn't hesitate to send it off. I am not one of these people. Edited by s_allard on 13 May 2015 at 1:37pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4102 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 150 of 229 13 May 2015 at 8:05am | IP Logged | ||
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It definitely depends on what the scope and topic is regarding the words. I have no
idea how many words I know in any language, but as a rough estimate and guess I would think that it naturally increases whether I want it to or not. Here is an example of one of the few e-mails that I wrote to the Federación Española de Ajedrez yesterday: A quien corresponda, Pregunto sólo de manera general de cómo un jugador que pertenezca a otra federación debería solicitar el cambio de federación de dicha persona a la federación española, es decir, cambiar de bandera. ¿Cuáles son los trámites y requisitos en cuanto a la residencia y los otros factores de tanto la FEDA como de la FIDE para el cambio de federación si dicha persona se decide trasladar a España desde su país en el que reside? Por ejemplo, en mi caso, juego para la federación inglesa (mi bandera es de Inglaterra), pero vivo actualmente en los EEUU. En caso de que en cualquier punto del futuro me traslade, por ejemplo, a Barcelona a vivir, ¿cuáles serían los requisitos que tendría que cumplir para cambiar de bandera de Inglaterra a España? Pregunto también de la igual manera, ¿cuáles serían las ventajas de dicho cambio a la federación española que le pudiera dar al jugador, por ejemplo la Liga Española, torneos de equipo, torneos para conseguir normas (MI, GM), etc.? Le agradezco la información que me pueda aportar. ______ Hopefully no one on this forum is on the board of the Spanish Chess Federation, because that would be awkward. Anyway... I know for sure that I would be unable to both use grammatical constructions contained therein, as well as the vocabulary, when I was for example, A2. I am not sure really how many word or word families are in the e-mail, but I do think that as grammar knowledge advanced, I gained more vocabulary in parallel. How many I do not know, but it surely did not stay static. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| smallwhite Pentaglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5120 days ago 537 posts - 1045 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin, French, Spanish | Message 151 of 229 13 May 2015 at 9:50am | IP Logged | ||
Coming to think of it, only those who learn more than several languages would ever vote 8001+. 'Cos hardly anyone would learn 40000 words in 1 language; that's even better than a native. 10000 is probably the max for 1 language for 99% of us. After that we'd probably learn or do something else. So you'd need ~5 languages to reach 40000 words. Which means, the 8001+ option applies only to the hexaglots up, a minority, and would of course be fewer than the 1-1500 folks, who are likely to be learners of just 1 language, the majority of us. I think OP Jeffers used 5 years in order to demonstrate that few of us can sustain learning 8000/year (after my posts talking about that). But, also coming to think of it, my 8000-word-cramming didn't need persistance. I did it in 4 months (but usually in ~6 months). To reach 40000 words in 5 years, you just go: 4 mths work, 8 mths rest, 4 mths work, 8 mths rest, etc. That's more rest time than work time. The beauty of cramming is that you don't need persistence :D I think Jeffers said something like "but you can't sustain learning at that rate". Well, you don't have to, 'cos if you did, you'd be learning 24,000 words per year, and 120,000 words after 5 years. Who'd need so many words...? Edited by smallwhite on 13 May 2015 at 9:59am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4721 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 152 of 229 13 May 2015 at 10:46am | IP Logged | ||
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Your numbers add up, but my point is, do they match reality? More importantly, when a new member asks the usual, "how many can I learn", what is an appropriate answer? For me the appropriate answer would be something along the lines of, "As many as possible without spending more than 1/4 of your study time on vocab alone." I've seen answers to newbies like "I can learn 300 a day"; of course the respondent never said if that happens once a year or every day.
In one sense I kind of align with s_allard in that a new language learner should not focus too much on vocabulary numbers. I think that it would be useful for them to learn a pretty good core vocabulary in their first year so that they could begin to do things like read, but the size they can manage will vary based on the individual not the technology. What worries me (and part of the reason I started this thread) is that some newcomers will think 8,000 is the expected norm, and when they realize they're not learning at that pace they decide they can't learn languages. I think a newcomer who looks at this poll will both see what is possible with a lot of hard work (e.g. 8k+) and what is "normal" (e.g. somewhere up to 3k). Those are figures a newcomer can work with. I fully accept Cavesa's experience, but I don't think she can expect similar results for the rest of us. I am a diligent and regular language student, and I don't think I learn more than 1500 word families per year between my languages. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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