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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 |  | |
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5232 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes  Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 25 of 229 30 April 2015 at 8:55pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Let's clarify a few points here. There is a pretty simple way of defining what a word is. It's any sequence of letters with spaces on either side. This is actually the definition that most researchers such as Paul Notion use. Actually the raw words are called tokens. These tokens are simplified or lemmatized into some basic unit called word families. So "get" is one word and that's it. We count get, gets, got, gotten as part of the word family get and we can get on with counting the number of occurrences in our texts. And sure enough we can calculate all kinds of great statistics. In that sense, the meaning is very clear: a word is a lemmatized graphic unit, basically a dictionary entry. Meaning or usage is irrelevant. Some people disagree and point out that, first of all, get has many uses. We have things like get to bed, get the message, get to it, get off, get up, get going, etc and many of these uses have nothing to do with each other. If someone is a go-getter, what is the connection with an evening get-together? You can tell a child to get down from the chair but that's not the same as "let's get down and boogie" if you grew up in the 70's. And what about idiomatic expressions like "get with it or get out of the way"? Is get really one word or a whole series of lexical units subsumed under one graphic unit? And what about the synthetic languages like German and Russian? Is meaning or usage important or not? If it's not important, then we can count to our heart's content. But as soon as meaning and usage enter into the equation, things become more complicated. This is precisely the problem I see when someone says to me: I know the French verb faire, it means "to do, make" and I can conjugate it in all the tenses and moods. That's great, now let's see how well you can use it. If meaning is irrelevant, a text is reduced to a number of words. We can say that Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone contains 7125 words (I'm guessing here). Is reading a list of those words the same as reading the book? Obviously not. This is not to say that counting words is useless. I have always stated that for teaching and benchmarking, we can work with word counts. The usual method of counting words a la Paul Nation a crude but useful tool even though it must not be seen as the holy grail of science. Actually, I sometimes believe that this word-counting mania is peculiar to English because this language lends itself to counting words. I don't know about other languages, but in French, it is of no scientific concern in the world of linguistics. I've just attended a convention on teaching of French as a second-language and there was not one hint of any interest in word-counting. As rdearman has succinctly put it (albeit with a different focus) this is an irrelevant linguistic tangent. Edited by s_allard on 30 April 2015 at 9:09pm 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 26 of 229 01 May 2015 at 12:28am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
But many things in life are like that, or even worse, completely qualitative. Parameters for mental illnesses. Teachers' evaluation of a students courtesy or potential. Or even in expressions like "half of the time", "most of the time". You don't give up quantifying things altogether just because you can't be exact and perfect. (And you don't criticise word-counting every single time you see someone count words). And measuring vocabulary size isn't even that hard within the purposes we're measuring it for. One example, if I'm measuring it to see improvement, then all I need is to count words in a consistent manner over time. Second example, to compare you and me, we just have to take the same test. How do YOU tell that your vocabulary is growing or not, then? By gut feeling or the fact that you're reading better? If that has worked for you then that's a good way of measuring, too.
Some people argue that since there's a distinction between passive vocabulary and active vocabulary, it's useless to measure vocabulary. Well, just use 2 separate figures, then? With bra sizes you have 2 parameters, too, 80cm around the chest and C cup over the breasts. Sports bra only use the cm size, or even just Small, Medium and Large, and indeed, as with measuring vocablary size with just 1 number, not very useful. (I meant to use trouser sizes but I don't know what unit they use for the length...) Edited by smallwhite on 01 May 2015 at 12:31am 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 27 of 229 01 May 2015 at 6:25am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
If one reads carefully what I wrote or write, one will see that I do not say that it is impossible to measure vocabulary size. We know exactly how Paul Nation and his colleagues measure vocabulary. It's relatively straightforward to count the number of words on a page. Microsoft Word does it automatically. Of course, it's not the same as word-families but the counting is not the issue. It's quite scientific. The real issue is the relevance of this for speaking or writing a language. I actually think there is a place for counting words. If I may be so presumptuous as to quote myself, here is what I wrote:
For measuring individual progress, for teaching vocabulary systematically, one can count words. We all agree. My fundamental disagreement with much of this approach to vocabulary is not with the counting per se; it's with the idea of "knowing" a word. I believe that fundamentally to know a word is a combination of a) having seen or experienced its full range of uses and b) having actually used the word in some range of meanings or uses. In fact, this is what everybody recognizes intuitively when they speak of context. For example to say that one knows the French word blanc "white" but has never really used the word nor experienced how the word is used by native speakers is in my mind nothing more than knowing how to recognize the sequence of letters. That's the problem I have with these statements about knowing numbers of words in a language. I have no clue of the number of words I know actively or productively in my native French, and I don't see the point of even beginning to guess. I know the words I need to know. Interestingly, I have some clue as to my English productive vocabulary, that I define as the number of word- families that I have used in the last 12 months. In the context of a debate here at HTLAL I have been looking at these figures and I figure that I use around 2000 words actively. That's not a lot but I think it's quite typical. Of course, I see many more words than that but I never use the vast majority of them. I believe that most speakers of English will never use 8000 word families in their entire lifetime and many people get along fine with less than 1000 words simply because they have no need for more. I highly recommend that users make a little effort to count the words they actually use in something like posts here at HTLAL. Try counting the different words in a couple of posts and one will quickly get an idea of some of the complications in counting words and also realize how few different words we use. What we see time and time again is that it's not the number of different words that is important, it's the ability to use the words well. Vocabulary expands to meet the need. If one need so-called rare and obscure words to deal with a certain topic, then one will acquire those words. As I have repeatedly pointed out, the CEFR model does not mention vocabulary size once. A few researchers have tried to estimate how many words are needed to pass various exams but the fact remains that the CEFR criteria do not mention this at all. Is this because vocabulary is not important? Of course not, it's simply that the CEFR model is based on the concept of what you CAN DO and not what you KNOW. This may seem like splitting hairs but it's fundamental and even quite revolutionary because prior to this, and even in some quarters today, there is still this belief and knowing a bunch of things, like conjugation tables, in a foreign language means that one can speak or write the language. And we know that this is not the case. For me a vocabulary size number is essentially irrelevant unless there is some indication of the ability to actually use these words. Talking about the difficulty of measuring things, it would be quite interesting to figure out a way of measuring mastery of grammar. That's another debate but it touches on the heart of the matter: What exactly can you do with all those words you know? Even here at HTLAL where French and Spanish are among the most popular languages, there are hardly any posts in those languages in the respective sections. Put all those words to use! What's the point of knowing all these words if they are not in use? 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4509 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 28 of 229 01 May 2015 at 7:20am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
All three. One referred to a medical term. Some referred to less well-known synonyms and definitions. And some words are just reasonably rare. I've used all of them before. And usually correctly. The point is, obscure, technical and scientific can coincide. But if you want to argue pointless semantics instead of trying to understand what is being said, be my guest. :D By the way, according to s_allard, we should all use the Simple English Wikipedia instead. It's got a Simple English word kernel! No need for all those fancy technical, obscure, scientific, medical, slangy words! Only the essentials used to their very best! Hell yeah! S_allard will not go to space today Edited by tarvos on 01 May 2015 at 7:27am 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4246 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 29 of 229 01 May 2015 at 7:44am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I can't really come to an approximate number. In the beginning, you are more likely to learn at least 5 new
words each day until you have a higher proficiency on a language. Otherwise, you would be stuck and not advance further. My Chinese proficiency tend to be lower although I can read most of what is written in a news article. I would pick up more words & phrases in Chinese than English. When you get to a certain level of language proficiency, you tend to run into words you already know. The words / phrase that you don't know tend to be more to do with specific subjects than those you would use in your daily conversations. If I'm reading news from Hong Kong I would come across 泛民主派 (fànmínzhǔpài) or the simplified version 泛 民 (fànmín) referring to a political group who is pushing for more democracy for Hong Kong. This is a term specific to Hong Kong but not to Taiwan or Mainland China. The other day I was watching a documentary on human evolution and came across the term 尼安德塔 (ní'āndétǎ) which is for Neanderthal man in Europe which died out a few hundred thousand years ago. Along the way I picked up the term 遷徙 (qiānxǐ) for migration. The term is frequently used for animal migration and in this case human migration in history. When you talk about somebody relocating from 1 country to another, you would use a more common term 移民 (yímín) instead of 遷徙 which is more appropriately used for large numbers of people out of 1 country or region into another such as migrants from N. Africa into Europe. The other day I was watching a recent video Li Shengwu's eulogy for his grandfather the late President of Singapore: Lee Kuan Yew. The entire speech was said in clear & concise English except that he referred to his grandfather as "Ye Ye" which is the Chinese term for grandfather. The other word was hongbao (紅包) which is money in a red paper pocket as a gift often translated into English as "lucky money". You wouldn't count these as new English words. Singaporeans would often insert English words into their speech when they speak Mandarin and the same when they speak English. In the beginning, even the numbers 1-10 are considered new words & phrases in a new language. After a few months they become so common you don't think about them as such. Edited by shk00design on 01 May 2015 at 8:13am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| smallwhite Pentaglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5110 days ago 537 posts - 1045 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin, French, Spanish | Message 30 of 229 01 May 2015 at 8:20am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
When do you say you know a person? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| daegga Tetraglot Senior Member Austria lang-8.com/553301 Joined 4323 days ago 1076 posts - 1792 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Swedish, Norwegian Studies: Danish, French, Finnish, Icelandic | Message 31 of 229 01 May 2015 at 11:12am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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s_allard, why all the focus on productive vocabulary?
I agree with many a thing you say about productive vocabulary, but in a thread talking about vocabulary size or rather increase, how is this relevant? For receptive vocabulary, size is more important then quality. For productive vocabulary it might be the other way round. I actually want to understand other people, not only give speeches. Size matters for that. As for counting and getting exact numbers - yes, that's irrelevant for practical purposes. But if I also know which vocabulary items I already know (having them in a text file for example), I can make good use of this information as a learning tool, eg. for appropriate text pre-selection like "give me the 10 wikipedia articles best suited for my current vocabulary knowledge". This is not exact science, but it's useful. Edited by daegga on 01 May 2015 at 11:13am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| chaotic_thought Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 3344 days ago 129 posts - 274 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Dutch, French | Message 32 of 229 01 May 2015 at 12:49pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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What is the reason for counting one's vocabulary size? Presumably one wants to estimate one's likelihood of sucessfully reading and understanding a text (or listening to and understanding a spoken discourse, etc.).
Rather than trying to produce an exhaustive list of "all words that I feel I know in the language", why not turn the question around? Whenever you are taking in input in the language (e.g. by reading), count how often you have to stop and ask yourself "what's this word??". As an example, here is an example Lorem Ipsum text. Suppose that I encountered several unknown words while reading this text and have replaced those by a blank line ("________"): Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, ______ adipiscing _____. Maecenas porttitor congue massa. Fusce posuere, magna sed pulvinar ultricies, purus lectus ______ libero, sit amet commodo magna eros quis urna. Nunc viverra ______ enim. Fusce est. Vivamus a tellus. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Proin pharetra _______ pede. ______ et orci. Aenean nec lorem. In porttitor. ______ laoreet nonummy augue. _________ dui purus, scelerisque at, vulputate vitae, pretium mattis, nunc. My vocabulary coverage this text is therefore 69 out of 77 words (89.6%). It's just one text, but if I repeat this test for more samples over a variety of texts, I should arrive at an average coverage figure that can act as a reasonable estimator for my overall vocabulary knowledge in that language. A video blog by Prof. Arguelles suggested that a good coverage level for a given text is 98%. (Arguelles's talk: Extensive Reading and Vocabulary Range). Once you reach that level, you can probably comfortably understand the text, despite not knowing the occasional word here and there. I would set as an ultimate goal to reach a 98%+ level across a wide variety texts/subject matters in my target language. In practical terms this level would mean that I should be able to walk into a library, grab a few random books from several subject matters, sit comfortably in a chair for an hour or so and read those books quite comfortably. There will always be some gaps in vocabulary knowledge, but at this level, my lack of certain vocabulary should not get in the way of my reading and understanding those texts. THIS is the goal. The precise total number of words rattling around in my head is not so important. Edited by chaotic_thought on 01 May 2015 at 12:54pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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