|
 |
How many words you learn per year (avg) | ||
Tags: Poll | Vocabulary learning | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5232 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes  Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 217 of 229 15 May 2015 at 7:59pm | IP Logged | |||||
I'm not sure what the objection is here. I believe that one shoud focus on the key words and structures that keep recurring and learn what also comes along. Let's say that I start to learn German with whatever method I choose. One of the first all-German books I decide to read is a Walt Disney comic book published by Lustige Taschenbücher. I chose this book because I felt that the language would be easy and represent relatively well the spoken language. Plus the images will help me with understanding the dialogues. The vocabulary will certainly contain some rare words but I think that for the most part the words should be fairly common and easy to understand. The very first piece of dialogue is: Onkel Donald, dürfen wir dich kurz sprechen? My German is nearly non-existent but with Google translate I quickly get the idea that this means "Uncle Donald, can we have a word with you?" As I look up the words in the dictionary, I observe how they are formed, their functional role and their order in the sentence. I also think of how I would say "Can I have a word with you?" by changing the verb form and the pronoun. I go through the entire book like this and notice that certain words and patterns keep coming back. In fact, in this one book I probably will have seen the essential elements of informal conversational German. What is key here is that I have a sense of what is important - grammatically speaking - and what can be considered secondary for the time being, usually nouns for less frequent objects. This kind of reading has to be combined with formal study of course. The fundamental idea is that I'm learning the vocabulary in context as I go along and not by learning a list of words just in case I run into them. Edited by s_allard on 15 May 2015 at 8:16pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| smallwhite Pentaglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5110 days ago 537 posts - 1045 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin, French, Spanish | Message 218 of 229 15 May 2015 at 9:22pm | IP Logged | |||||
I have a lot of information about my progress because I regularly write emails to a family member, and I talk about everything. I wrote 29 emails about my German learning. (But received 0 reply, I must have bored someone LOL). I learned German. Swedish was Rob Tickner. I learned 3 chapters of German back in my teen years, which was decades ago. The 4th chapter was "At the doctor" and I found it too depressing. I do still remember some sentences, eg. Du bist noch immer so schön! Fast forward to a few years ago. I could still understand phrases like Hello and Sorry. I re-started by learning pronunciation and then grammar. I became able to translate "The man who gave honey to the woman I had already given honey to, has to buy more honey", and I borrowed an advanced grammar, ie. I did learn grammar. I wrote "I started learning grammar when I knew very few words, then listened to an audiobook, did not know the words at all, kept having to read the translation and to look for the unknown words; no way!" That's probably what got me cramming vocab. During the first month of re-starting German, I wrote about a song: "I understood the lyrics of the whole chorus". Later that month, I wrote about a DW Top Thema (B1) article: "I understood 70%". Had somewhere between 2600 and 3550 words in my deck on that day (no exact figure). During the second month, I wrote about a news magazine programme on DW radio: "For almost every topic, I'd know very soon what the topic was, would always know roughly what it's about. For every sentence, I'd hear at least several words and understand those words (but not necessarily able to join them together into something meaningful). Never lost. The more international or social the topic, the easier." Day 61 I did the GI online placement test, got 66.6%, and it told me to join B1 classes. Day 149 someone showed me a news article in German where he highlighted all the words he didn't know, so I did the same. I didn't know 6.5% of the words. (I probably mis-stated this figure previously as 96%-known as that's what I remembered). Day 171 got 45/50 in this test. (I'm not sure if that test has changed since). I hadn't been speaking yet. Then I came up with a very effective way of practising speaking, and used it on all my languages including German. Day 190 I wrote that I became able to self-talk non-stop for a long time, albeit not very fluently. I remember self-talking for 10 minutes once in the bathroom. - - - - My 8k words were not carefully handpicked, and were not the 8k most frequent, so they weren't all useful. Back then I had difficulty finding large word lists in electronic form, so I just copied whatever I could find, useful or not. And I just picked the easiest words to learn, not the most useful ones. Usually I'd go through a frequency list to fill in the holes; I don't remember if I've done this with German. - - - - That's me after English and French and a few drinks. Your mileage will vary without my drinks. - - - - What were your first 200 days like? Edited by smallwhite on 16 May 2015 at 8:10am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Mork the Fiddle Senior Member United States Joined 3771 days ago 86 posts - 159 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Norwegian, Latin, Ancient Greek | Message 219 of 229 15 May 2015 at 10:24pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
No one mentions LWT in this thread, though I apologize if someone does and I missed it. LWT keeps track of words learned. LWT counts a "word" as an individual word, so that see, seen, seeing and sees count as four words. Somewhat confusingly, LWT also counts phrases and expressions as individual words, should the user choose to mark them as such. In LWT, "learn" means "passively learn for reading." Marking a word as learned is done by self-assessment. The user of LWT can mark a word as "known" at first sight, or can take a new word through several stages of recognition.
Seeing my vocabulary count grow motivates me, though I do not view the counts as final or as precise and this is not my only motivation. Counting word families or lemmas might be a tougher software issue, I don't know. Watching the count of lemmas grow would be slower, I suppose, but I think such a count would still motivate me. Using LWT for learning Ancient Greek, currently I have "learned" 22,181 words, out of 61,366 words encountered. I do highlight phrases and expressions, but I almost never count them as "learned." I have chosen to "ignore" 4,861 words. This category for the most part covers proper nouns that I never expect to see again. I began studying Ancient Greek in this way January or February 2013, and I have spent on average an hour a day, every day, using LWT to learn Ancient Greek. In fairness, I should add that I studied Ancient Greek in the far distant past as well as a more recent past, but although I retained a working knowledge of a lot of the grammar that I learned, almost none of the vocabulary stuck with me. I am studying Ancient Greek only to be able to read the literature. You can find out more about LWT using HTLAL's search feature. I suppose that I should add that LWT is completely free. 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| smallwhite Pentaglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5110 days ago 537 posts - 1045 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin, French, Spanish | Message 220 of 229 16 May 2015 at 6:39am | IP Logged | |||||
I skipped some questions in my last post... When I read, I can tell that a word is in or is not in my flashcard deck (though as usual one cannot know when one has forgotten something...). I'm not always able to recall the meaning. I noticed that when I do production cards (L1->L2), recognition (L2->L1) is automatic/free in 99% of the cases but not all. But 1 quick round of recognition drill would help greatly. Ie, it's best to do one round of recognition test when I first learn a batch of words, and then do only production tests thereafter. But I never made that a habit, and with insufficient data the above is really just a feeling. The words that I'm not able to recognise when I read, tend to always be the same couple of words, ie. are leeches instead of being the result of a general x% fail rate. I think I kept forgetting what "ähnlich" meant, and maybe some conjunctions, too, I have problem with them in every language. And when I do understand them in the text, I feel that I understand them normally, as if I were reading English maybe, although some not-so-straightforward words may require some mental processing. Sometimes that may be because the definition in my flashcard deck was no good or was a bit different from what's meant in the text. So, like encountering cognates for the first time, I might need to think a bit, but usually there's no comprehension problem or deficiency at all. Now, as to the ability to use the words actively in speech... I don't really get this concept. As a hermit language-learner, I don't get to produce much output, but I honestly feel the ability to do so. (It's not like I crammed 8k words 5 years ago in order to show off or trick people 5 years later on HTLAL...) When I practise self-talk, I try to say "This is the kitchen", I do manage to say "This is the kitchen", and both the words "kitchen" and "scullery" are in my deck, so I can only deduce that I'd be able to say "This is the scullery" should I one day want to or need to. Not sure if this causes your doubt, but my 8k words weren't obscure. They probably progressed from "dog" to "hyena", but hyena is still as concrete as dog. Obscure words wouldn't have made it to "the 10 easiest" words. Indeed I've never actually spoken the words scullery and hyena, but neither have I "vosotros", the Spanish plural & familiar "you", because you drop subject pronouns in Spanish, but I do know that A1-level word! Edited by smallwhite on 16 May 2015 at 8:16am 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5232 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 221 of 229 16 May 2015 at 5:53pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
I think there is a huge difference between knowing how to use a word - what I call available vocabulary - and
having actually used the word - active vocabulary. Not every body makes this distinction of course but for me it's important because the actual speaking or writing forces the user to mobilize all the necessary resources to actually produce good output. This output takes the form of entire sentences or phrases, not individual words, with proper pronunciation or spelling. In the case of conversations, there is also the element of interaction with other speakers. In all languages the challenge is to get all the elements of the output right. This usually means choosing the right words, putting them in the right order, adjusting the inflectional morphology and pronounce the whole thing fluently with appropriate characteristics of connected speech. When all goes well, the interlocutor responds in like manner and the conversation goes on. For these reasons, the ability to produce good output and interact with native speakers in the language is in my opinion the true meaning of to "speak" a language. So, when I hear that someone has learned X number of words in Y days, my question always is: How have they used those words in writing or in conversation? This is where things get hazy. Having said all that, I recognize that some people are not interested in actually speaking or writing in the language. Learning the language means, for example, being able to read and enjoy movies, tv programs and songs in the language. Here passive understanding is more important than actively communication with other people in the language. With active output we can see or hear what the learner says and make our assessment. But with passive understanding, it is very hard to know what the learner really means when they say they understand something. For example, do they understand a newspaper article the same way a native speaker does? Informal spoken language can be rich in idioms, slang and metaphors. But even simple newspaper article can contain all kinds of references and allusions that can be difficult to understand. So, often we simply don't know how much or how well someone really understands a foreign language. Getting the gist is one thing, truly understanding is another. The problem is that for the speaker and for the observer, it's hard to tell the difference. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| smallwhite Pentaglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5110 days ago 537 posts - 1045 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin, French, Spanish | Message 222 of 229 16 May 2015 at 7:31pm | IP Logged | |||||
Then the words in my deck would be part of my "available vocabulary". Or "available active vocabulary"? Passive vocabulary can be categorised the same way, I guess. Calling words actually used "active vocabulary" is very confusing. Another name would be good. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4711 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 223 of 229 16 May 2015 at 8:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
Thanks for bringing this up. I like the idea of learning vocabulary in the process of reading, and any tool which makes this easier is a good thing. I've looked into LWT, and found it to be a lot like what Transparent Language was when it first came out in the early 90s (unfortunately, it's tried to become too many things). I'm curious about using it with Ancient Greek. Do they have texts available, or did you upload their own. The main reason I didn't keep using LWT is that I don't do much learning on a computer. But now that I have a tablet, I will see if it works on my tablet browser. Thanks! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| rdearman Senior Member United Kingdom rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5038 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin | Message 224 of 229 16 May 2015 at 10:44pm | IP Logged | |||||
I fail to see how London Weekend Television helps anyone learn any language other than English? I google searched and LWT = London Weekend Television... so, colour me confused. 1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
