Selecting Appropriate Texts for Expanding Vocabulary Range Through Extensive Reading

[RollTheDice00]

These programms are useful, but not very user-friendly, I would say. I'm jealous of those who have benefited from them, because it's rather interesting to see it all from a statistical perspective, but for me they appear to kill the mood for learning languages!

A bit offtopic - do you use any programms for learning new words, or do you memorize them otherwise? If you have done a video about methods to memorize words, could you also give a link to it?

[plaidchuck]

Yes it's interesting that no such thing really exists for languages other than english, particularly with the EU and it's attempt to form a multilingual community and repertoire. Vocabulary tests like those mentioned could be used in many contexts, i.e. to test people's "coloquial" and "literary" word knowledge. It would certainly help people who hover around that "proficient advanced" level in a language and provide direction on what they should learn next.

[ChipsOnLanguage]

After watching this video I started reading Pinocchio in the language I'm learning and found I was having quite a bit of trouble. After doing a word count of the few pages I'd read, I found that I know appx. 93% of them. I was very surprised it was that high because I was having considerable trouble with it but it is more evidence what you say is true.

[ProfASAr]

@Imyirtseshem That's the whole point of the video: for now it seems like this is only for English, but it could run just as well for any other language if the lists were compiled, so I am making people aware of this is the hopes that they will do so. Perhaps they already exists beyond our awareness, and in that case I hope we may be informed of that fact.

[blaiseli]

In the end of the video, are you implying that the editor of a peer-reviewed journal can bypass the recommendations of the reviewers on the basis of his personnal interests ? That would not sound very fair to me. I hope I misunderstood.

[ProfASAr]

@blaiseli Yes, you certainly misunderstood. I said quite clearly that I could NOT influence the review process in any way, but that I can select both what articles go out for review and what articles, having cleared review, are ultimately published. Sometimes we receive an article a day, and we can only publish about 24 each year. So, all I am doing is putting out a call for papers in this area of vocabulary acquisition.

[surrected4526]

Some of the points here remind me of the methods used at LingQ, i.e. accurate word count, texts/novels. There they have an extensive library and many sources to find other texts. It's all downloadable, and free.

[Droenixjp]

@surrected4526

I thought LingQ cost money? If not, I'm definitely checking it out again.

[Walshyman]

@Droenixjp They offer a free component but for full service you have to pay.

[surrected4526]

@Droenixjp Yes, it's free for reading and downloading and saving up to 100 links. The Basic Membership is 10.00 a month with unlimited linking, Plus is $39 and the Premium is $79. per month. The great thing about the free membership is that one can still keep a running total of their word count in addition to having access to the entire library. Linking words is a great tool, but not entirely necessary. I have heard from one member keeping a record of their unknown words in a notebook. :-)

[clarinini]

I've made the basewrd lists for about 90 000 words using a list made by Matthias Buchmeier. There are no word families included, so the results are not as precise (for example: Weihnachtsgans) is not so complicated to understand but rates as rare. I've found it to be quite useful anyway so I tought I'd share it! (Kind of a long process to make...) On megaupload /?d=JLPUOE8N

Oh and replace ä ö ü ß by ae oe ue ss ;)

[clarinini]

@clarinini ehm, should have specified: for German that is :)

I'm currently working on making a better word frequency list (i.e. more accurate, the Buchmeier list had been made using movie subtites, I'll be using 15000 random wikipedia pages). I'll post it as well when I'm done!

[silent0watcher]

Professor,

If someone completes Linguaphone, Assimil, etc, he or she will have about 3000 or 3500 words. Yet we need at least 7000 words just in order to start extensive reading at the very lowest level - i.e. with books intended for children.

How do you suggest overcoming the gap between 3000 and 7000 words? How do you personally go about doing this?

(It seems to me that learning those 4000 or so extra words is the really difficult part on the road to mastery!)

[ProfASAr]

@silent0watcher To reply to this in these comments would require far too much space, so I'll try to make another video addressing this.

[SchwarzerMannn]

I can't wait for tests for other languages to come out. I'm sure all of us have goals with language learning, but to be able to track progress with such a test would be so great and also serve as motivational purposes.

[yevonator88]

This is very useful for helping me expand my Japanese vocabulary (I felt a little stuck for a while) thanks!

[Walshyman]

Wow, this has completely changed my perspective on how I will select books for vocabulary acquisition. I previously assumed that there were just two or three major categories divided primarily along age boundaries.

Is it fair to assume that such an analysis of a high-quality English translation of a foreign-language novel will roughly approximate the same number of word families? If only for a ballpark figure...

[Khoasecurse]

Thank you for the work you put into this video.

[Anerammos2]

I find the fact that you have set your Excel to what appears to be one of the Chinese languages very pleasing. Once again another brilliant video.

[heloizyjhenifer]

@Anerammos2 It's Korean, but I found it geeky too :)