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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 |  | |
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5074 days ago 2237 posts - 6731 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 161 of 229 13 May 2015 at 2:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
Exactly!!! Well written post, Serpent. My fear, when I first saw this thread, was that learners who are raw beginners (without yet having learned one second language on their own) would read this and think- "Gosh, everyone on HTLAL is learning "X" number of words per year in a systematic way and they are successful- that's what I need to do too!
I think too often when giving advice and talking about language-learning in general, we often forget about what it's like to be a monolingual learning a first second language. Some of us grew up bilingual with an innate, though perhaps unconscious, feel for how languages work. Some of us have spoken a second language for so long we can't even remember what it was like to be monolingual. Would any of you recommend that a monolingual beginner without a life-critical, extremely urgent need, start language-learning by ignoring all aspects of learning a language except cramming massive amounts of vocabulary? I've seen instances here of people who have done that and end up failing at language-learning. The vocabulary and anki statistics most often tend to become more of an end unto itself (almost a game) and consequently much less about actually learning a language. (There are exceptions to every rule or observation.) An experienced learner (one with at least one second language under the belt) can do this successfully because they know that's not all there is, that the vocabulary has to go somewhere and that a second language is not a "cipher code" where foreign words can be plugged and chugged into a native language substrata. Concentrating on learning vocabulary as a massive percentage of a monolingual beginner's study can skew their perspective to such an extent that it can lead to burnout- and frustration when trying to actually use the language. I don't believe that experienced learners who concentrate on vocabulary at the beginning are following the path to perdition. They eventually sort themselves out quite well, because- they've done this before. More power to you if that's what you do! Just try to remember what it was like before you learned a second language to a high level and remember for every Serpent, for every iguanamon, for every tarvos who learned Swedish in 4 months, for every one of us who have managed to learn a second language to a high level on our own, there's a log of sgh78 who learn 9 languages. Edited by iguanamon on 13 May 2015 at 2:19pm 2 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 162 of 229 13 May 2015 at 2:12pm | IP Logged | |||||
Congratulations to @1e4e6 for an interesting post. There are a couple of things in the e-mail that I would not have written, but they are minor details of little importance. The overall quality of the Spanish is excellent. Kudos. I liked this post because it illustrates two fundamental principles that I have repeatedly referred to here at HTLAL. First is that counting the number of different words or word families is a waste of time. What counts is the ability to do the task. Here the poster @1e4e6 wanted to write an e-mail and used the necessary resources - grammar and vocabulary - to do so. And did a fine job, I must add. When I read all these posts full of calculations of the numbers of words learned per year, month, day, week, my eyes quickly glaze over. What's the point of all this? I know that people are well intentioned but I believe the whole thing is ass backwards. First define what you want to do with the language and then do what is required to reach that goal. Now that I think about it, I realize that learning vocabulary is probably the goal for some people. Maybe learning a language means knowing X number of words. I've never thought about it this way. The second thing I like about this post is that it illustrates perfectly how using a language for real means putting words together into meaningful sentences and paragraphs. A lot of work went into acquiring the ability to write like this. It didn't happen overnight - de la noche a la mañana. Choosing the right words is just the tip of the iceberg. I note for example the appropriate use of the various verb inflections. I also note the appropriate tone of voice and formality. Great stuff. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| smallwhite Pentaglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5120 days ago 537 posts - 1045 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin, French, Spanish | Message 163 of 229 13 May 2015 at 2:17pm | IP Logged | |||||
That's what I meant. Newbies are seen as fragile and prone to burnout. Let's protect them from burnout.
Hmmm.... I think it's your profile that's telling them that... 1 person has 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 164 of 229 13 May 2015 at 2:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Being prone to burnout is not a weakness. It goes hand in hand with enthusiasm, which most new members have when they discover they don't need to take classes they can't afford or don't like, that there's nothing wrong with them if a textbook promises fluency in 3 weeks and they don't achieve it, etc etc etc.
My profile also tells people that I'm far from being "done" with my languages and I'm still improving even my English and Finnish. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4519 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 165 of 229 13 May 2015 at 2:49pm | IP Logged | |||||
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The problem is not that you should save them from burnout. They will save themselves or
they won't. There is of course a lot of pressure on people to be efficient, and I am aware we all play into it, especially those of us who are experienced and seem to be able to do things in an almost virtuoso manner (I'm talking the Simcotts of this world). We can inform them, but it's their job to take care of their learning process. Eventually their life decides whether they were or were not succesful. If someone asks me how I learned Swedish quickly, I will show them the full arsenal of tools in my toolbox that I used (and I can - I was extremely disciplined for Swedish and I had loads of cognates helping me out). Edited by tarvos on 13 May 2015 at 2:52pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| daegga Tetraglot Senior Member Austria lang-8.com/553301 Joined 4333 days ago 1076 posts - 1792 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Swedish, Norwegian Studies: Danish, French, Finnish, Icelandic | Message 166 of 229 13 May 2015 at 2:57pm | IP Logged | |||||
I'm interested to see if your learning of Polish will change your perspective on that. Or rather on the importance of vocabulary for reaching common goals. Probably most here have a goal in mind and work towards it - it might just be a different goal than yours. I think my learning of Norwegian roughly matches what you usually suggest, at least on the surface. I imagine French/Spanish have roughly the same distance as German/Norwegian. What I did was: 1. language course + learning the vocabulary introduced in the textbook (about 2500 words, I trilled them L1 --> L2, ie. active, but without any proper SRS) --> ~ 1year 2. reading, grammar work --> ~ 1 year 3. go to university in Oslo and cope with courses in Norwegian in my field of interest So I had a rather small kernel I could use pretty well both passively and actively. Then I spent my time on interesting subjects and expanded my knowledge. No more formal vocabulary learning after the 1st year. It worked quite well. Why? I could guess several thousand words in context on first sight and would then also know them without context. Passive vocabulary wasn't a problem in Norwegian, there was no need to waste my thoughts on it. Can I do the same with Finnish? Hell no. Edited by daegga on 13 May 2015 at 3:05pm 4 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 167 of 229 13 May 2015 at 3:00pm | IP Logged | |||||
I loved your post, it sounds so warm. The problem is, a thread about vocabulary WILL be about vocabulary. If people fear that a thread about vocabulary will make beginners think that vocabulary is all there is to language learning, then they'll also have to fear that a thread about grammar will make beginners think that grammar is all there is, that a thread about reading will...., that a thread about L-R will... I think I mentioned this before, but I can't mention it in every one of my posts about vocabulary (in fact I can if people want), that I don't actually think my approach is vocabulary-heavy; I think it's grammar-heavy. I actually cram grammar before I do vocabulary. But Romance and German grammar doesn't take long to learn. Then what is there left to learn? Vocabulary. Well, and listening and speaking. But we can't talk about listening and speaking in a thread about vocabulary, can we? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5074 days ago 2237 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 168 of 229 13 May 2015 at 3:21pm | IP Logged | |||||
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smallwhite, tarvos, I greatly admire your success. That you do it differently than I do is irrelevant. Your results speak for themselves. :)
1 person has voted this message useful |
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