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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 |  | |
| chaotic_thought Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 3343 days ago 129 posts - 274 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Dutch, French | Message 49 of 229 05 May 2015 at 8:01am | IP Logged | |||||
If you want to count your 'overall' coverage in a language, you can also use random sampling. You don't need 1000 pages from a novel. Count about a 'number' of pages from 5-10 different novels, and also count some other samplings of non-novel material such as movie transcripts, newspaper articles, encyclopedia articles. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4334 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 50 of 229 05 May 2015 at 9:45am | IP Logged | |||||
1000 pages!!! Sorry, bad case of new-parent brain. I meant to say I counted the first 1000 WORDS from 10 different novel, not the first 1000 pages. That would be a bit of overkill. :) I counted novels as I was able to find some numbers (in English) comparing vocabulary range and percentage of words known in a text. This older thread is quite interesting: http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?T ID=267&PN=0&TPN=1 Edited by patrickwilken on 05 May 2015 at 10:16am 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5648 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map | Message 51 of 229 05 May 2015 at 9:14pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I have no idea at all how many foreign language words I learn per year, because I use handwritten vocabulary books instead of SRS - systems to learn my vocabulary.
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| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5231 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 52 of 229 05 May 2015 at 11:40pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I did not answer the poll because I have no clue as to the average number of words I learned in the last five years.
As a matter of fact, I think the poll should have a category "Do not know". Actually, there should even be a category "Do not care". Still, I wonder how people arrive at the figures in the poll.. How does one keep track of words learned? As I write this post, I see that the poll numbers are nearly even divided between those who have answered 1500 or less and those who have answered 1501 or more words on average per year for the past five years. If I take the 1500 figure, that's approximately 4 new words a day. I assume that the learner is some how keeping track of these figures, possibly making a flashcard or an entry in a notebook for each new word learned. I imagine that this process involves first hearing or reading the word, figuring out what form to look up in the dictionary, looking it up in the dictionary, understanding the definition,, and, finally, make some kind of note, perhaps a single entry or maybe an entire sentence of paragraph. With every thing online or in electronic form, this can be quite quick but it still is a fair amount of work to be done every single day or maybe in spurts. I think this is quite doable. But if I look at my experience however, I have certainly never been able to maintain this rate for any stretch of time. I imagine that in some kind of intensive course situation, one can achieve very high daily learning rates. Part of my problem with all this word counting business is how to define what is a new word. If I look at the flashcards or notes that I make, I see four kinds of things: 1. New graphic units - combinations of letters that I have never seen before. 2. New meanings or uses for existing words. 3, Idiomatic expressions of two or more words. 4. Particular grammatical constructions that I wanted to remember. My records are not complete enough for me to count the number of entries per year but I'm sure that it is nowhere close to 1500 entries per year. It's probably closer to 200 - 300. I also suspect that as one becomes more advanced the rate of learning new words slows down, also I'm not totally sure. When I see that people can learn over 8000 words in a year, I'm totally in awe. That's 22 words a day. There's no way in hell I could sustain that rate. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4710 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 53 of 229 06 May 2015 at 12:30am | IP Logged | |||||
You vote "Do not know" by not voting, you vote "Do not care" by ignoring the thread. Including those two items would be a bit like a DJ asking the audience to vote for the next song and also giving them the option to vote, "Turn it down" and "Go away".
That's why I asked for an average over 5 years, because while I think possibly many people could hit 8k in a year if they really worked at it, very few people could do that year after year. But there are some people blessed with an incredible ability to memorize lists of facts. I haven't mentioned it yet, but I voted in the 1-1500 category. The nice thing about a range is that it allows for a bit of wiggle room. Did I learn 300 words last year or 1300? I couldn't say exactly, but a rough estimate of my vocab size in French (probably 3k) and the growth I've had in other languages makes me reckon I've learned around 1000 per year. I think 1000 per year is a pretty good rate, and I'd be happy to keep that up if I could. Edited by Jeffers on 06 May 2015 at 12:34am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| robarb Nonaglot Senior Member United States languagenpluson Joined 4860 days ago 361 posts - 921 votes Speaks: Portuguese, English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, French Studies: Mandarin, Danish, Russian, Norwegian, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Greek, Latin, Nepali, Modern Hebrew | Message 54 of 229 06 May 2015 at 5:34am | IP Logged | |||||
Unless they're a word-memorizing fiend, it's from picking up multiple languages that are closely related to those in which one already has a strong vocabulary. There are many thousands of international words and obvious Germanic cognates that I understand in Danish, Norwegian, and Dutch the first time I ever see them. I count all these, since I didn't understand Danish, Norwegian, or Dutch 5 years ago. But even then, I'm not sure about 8000. You could probably count words in a liberal way (e.g. counting headwords in unabridged dictionaries) that would give me more than 8000/year, and you could count words in a conservative way (e.g. no slang or technical words and collapsing word families) that would give me fewer than 8000/year. In any case, the number is unusually high in these past few years as I've added several related languages. I don't plan on adding as many related languages in the next 5 years, so I won't sustain the rate. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5231 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 55 of 229 06 May 2015 at 5:39am | IP Logged | |||||
It's a minor point, but it terms of poll design, not voting is not the same as "Do not know". The idea behind having any category is to count the people in the category. As it is, the poll does not tell us how many people do not know or do not care. But that's not a big deal. What I consider much more important is understanding how people define learning a word and how they go about doing so. I'm really curious as to how someone can learn 10 or 20 words a day for a year. Is this simply memorizing lists of words? Or is it learning how to use these words? Can one learn to properly use 10 verbs in French or Spanish a day for two weeks? I wonder how people do this? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5231 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 56 of 229 06 May 2015 at 5:56am | IP Logged | |||||
I think I have a better understanding of how one can learn so many words a year. The large number of cognates between related languages makes learning many words easier. Now, one could quibble and say that if a cognate is so easy to learn, it's not a new word after all. But on this question of cognates, where people speak of the so-called cognate discount, there is some question as to how important this cognate discount really is. I have suggest that while the presence of cognates is undoubtedly an overall advantage, it also is a source of problems and leads directly to the common syndrome of speaking L1 in L2 because of considerable interference between the two languages. In the case of English and French that I know well, the cognate discount is not as important as one might think because the cognates bring a lot of problems. But this applies generally in the area of actual speaking of the language 1 person has voted this message useful |
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