Teango wrote:@reineke
Some really interesting articles regarding word recognition there, frater R...bene facis for the breakfast reading!
Folse concedes... victory for the implicit learning people!
If you can catch a new word through listening, you may be able to figure out its meaning through context, you may get a general idea what the word means, and, finally, you may not have a clue what it means. Nothing prevents you from consulting a dictionary. One's natural ability to assimilate vocabulary or simply the perceived necessity to write things down does not invalidate the importance and usefuleness of being able to extricate a new word from a stream of sound.
According to Nation (2001), "knowing" a word involves 18 different types of lexical knowledge. That Folse article sums it up nicely. I don't see the knowledge of polysemy, spelling, pronunciation, usage and collocation developing at once. Can we collect all this knowledge from written records without forming any notions about pronunciation, prosody, etc.? The common sense idea that one first gets up to speed through vocabulary study and reading and then polishes this knowledge through listening is tempting but I find that it creates proficient readers whose pronunciation is poor and who often complain about not being able to follow simple TV programs. It's not all bad news. It's possible to fix and improve things, of course, but I don't care to go that way..
I am not a believer in vocabulary cramming as it creates some really odd results. The best word lists are those collected from reading and listening to meaningful content. While I believe that writing things down could help me push that word or expression into the active category, I rarely practice it. I've always found it sufficient to "just" listen to interesting content. I like to turn things upside down I don't consciously avoid books because of some theory but I have discovered that, in the beginning, I naturally prefer sources that include the core spoken language in some meaningful form. I've learned that this basic approach creates robust knowledge that can withstand many years of abuse.