If You Don't Like Anki or Wordlists, then . . .

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Peregrinus, May 28, 2014.

  1. Wise owl chick

    Wise owl chick Active Member

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    This thread is too complicated for me now. Sorry. I can't concentrate so good for such difficult articles and complicated things.
  2. Iversen

    Iversen Member VIP member

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    I do a lot of word counting and things like that because I want to test my hunches, but I'm keenly aware that not all find numbers that interesting - if they did they might have become mathematiciens or engineers, not language learners. But there are a number of simple facts available which shows you something about the way vocabulary functions.

    The difference between wordforms, words, headwords and wordfamilies can be seen in any dictionary. We accept that "word" and "words" are different forms of the same word because practically all nouns have plurals. On the other hand we consider "wording" as a derivation because not all nouns can be treated in the same way, but some can. And if you take "byword" then you couldn't predict that there would be such a word, so it is just part of the family. If you count "word families" you will of course get lower numbers than if you count words or word forms, so I have chosen to stick with the headwords - which roughly are the things written in bold typeface or different colours in my dictionaries. But even then I have to decide whether I include proper names or not, and I have to choose which dictionary I'll base my counts on. Therefore it is much more informative to say that you know a certain percentage of whatever you are counting.

    It is a well established fact that a small number of very common words (and word forms) make up most of any normal text (or speech) - the precise numbers differ, but if we take the 1000 most common words in English then they make up roughly 90% of all words in 'normal' texts. But what then about the next 1000 words? If all texts had the same profile then you could be fairly sure about which words you had to learn to get 95% coverage - but language doesn't function like that. The next 1000 or 2000 words are much more dependent on the theme and style of each individual text, and the closer you want to the 100% mark the more words you have to know in order not to get nasty surprises. And you can't just be satisfied with, say, 95% of the words. What use is it to read about gardening if you don't know any of the flowers or vegetables which are mentioned in the article? And next time you are reading about politics or cooking or travelling, so you need to know those vocabularies too. That's why passive vocabularies need to be so enormously big.

    What then about active vocabularies? That's harder to estimate. I have a purely subjective gut feeling that I might use most of my Danish vocabulary, a fair share of my English words and progressive lower percentages in my weaker languages. I know from studies of the words I have used at HTLAL that I used around 2600 different headwords in a corpus of 15000 words from 2008, but since then I have tested two samples with more than 70.000 words, and the overlap is so small that I can't se evidence that I use a particularly limited amount of words from the 'second zone' (those about the first 1000) - instead I keep introducing new words all the time. There may be an 'active vocabulary' somewhere between the words I actually have used and the number of words I know, but I can only have vague feelings about the size of this thing - there is no hard facts to underpin those estimates, and it may actually be meaningless to expect a concrete number in this case - maybe there just are degrees of likelihood that you remember any given word in your passive vocabulary.

    And even if I could point to a certain size it wouldn't say much about my ability to speak fluently using whatever words I have at my disposal.
    Last edited: May 31, 2014
  3. Peregrinus

    Peregrinus Active Member

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    We surely come across a lot of our passive only vocabulary in scientific, technical, academic and literary reading/listening. Perhaps the reason some people have higher active vocabularies is simply because they speak and write about such topics, instead of merely reading them.
  4. luke

    luke Member VIP member

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    1) Do you already possess the vocabulary necessary to comfortably read a general interest newspaper (i.e. 98%+ coverage for English)?
    In French, I'm working on it. I read a bit of Le Monde the other day. Newspapers aren't a primary interest for me though.

    2) If not, how do you plan to acquire that vocabulary, assuming you are interested in reading a newspaper in addition to other passive or active activities in a L2?
    I do other extensive reading. With French and Spanish, which have a lot of cognates, one can pick up a lot of vocabulary on the fly.

    3) How long, as in how many hours per day for how many months/years do you think it will take to acquire that vocabulary?
    In 2015, I'm looking to add an Anki slot for the top 5000 French words to help scoop up helpful words that haven't stuck yet. I'm thinking 12 months of hopefully not more than 10 minutes per day, since I should "know" a lot of that vocabulary.

    4) How much time per day on average do you spend on extensive/intensive reading and listening?
    A couple hours per day, but most of it is part-time, semi-distracted. Perhaps a good hour of study time per day, but that's not all focused on reading and listening, although those are two of the skills I hone the most.
  5. Cainntear

    Cainntear Active Member VIP member

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    ...so I bought a pile of DVDs. I've since watched 4 hours of La Piovra (a mafia thriller from the 80s) and I've got two hours left (before I go out and buy the next series or two -- there were ten in total) and I'm picking up plenty of useful vocabulary already -- lot's of little general-use words, and a few more specialist ones.

    But before I go out and buy another series of La Piovra, I've got another series to watch (L'Onore e il Rispetto -- 11 hours for €16) and then two films. I just wish there had been more stuff in the shop that didn't focus so heavily on Sicily and the mafia!!!
  6. Peregrinus

    Peregrinus Active Member

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    @Cainntear: To me, buying DVDs does not seem very efficient, as in the number one would need to actually watch something different everyday. Fortunately for me with German, there are lots of older episodes of Tatort and a couple soaps online for free. I try to watch some every day, along with reading newspapers and listening to radio. For people studying Spanish, there are tons of Mexican soaps online as well. But for Italian or other languages, I guess those resources just are not available.


    @luke: Thanks for your reply. So you are another person relying principally on extensive reading, and also for a Romance language, for which same does seem more effective.

    Re the amount of time per day for Anki, I now have learned or partially learned 9700+ words in the past 12 months. While some days I add no new ones from those waiting on deck (I have about another 4K ready to go right now and add to the future reserve all the time), most days I average 30, whether I actually do 30 or skip a day and then do 50-60. I track both the number of reviews and time it takes each day in a spread sheet. Right now it averages about 400+ reviews and takes me 40 minutes. As one goes on learning new words, the same amount of time is sufficient to maintain an ever growing stock of vocabulary. If the reviews really start to pile up, then I might skip a couple days of learning new ones. And while I could learn even more per day, I try to keep it under an hour so there is time left for other German activities and studying.

    I am liberal in failing cards and conservative in indicating how well I know cards, which makes it take longer for me. Still, unless you already know the bulk of that 5K words when you start, I suspect 10 minutes a day will not be enough. Why not start now and cram 200 every weekend for a month and then see how long it takes you during the week to review. An additional time factor though is making cards, unless you use a ready made deck. Such preparation time can equal actual review time. As long as you are content with primarily passive activities, learning lots of vocab at a good clip is the fastest way to skyrocket comprehension, at least for me in German.
    luke likes this.

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