Oulipo approach to language learning

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reineke
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Re: Oulipo approach to language learning

Postby reineke » Wed Jan 05, 2022 6:42 pm

"Knowing a word entails knowing many things about the word: its literal meaning, its various connotations, its spelling, its derivations, collocations (knowing the words that usually co-occur with the target word), frequency, pronunciation, the syntactic constructions it is used in, the morphological options it offers and a rich variety of semantic associates such as synonyms, antonyms, homonyms (Nagy and Scott, 2000)."

Lexical chunks

'Native English speakers have tens or hundreds of thousands--estimates vary--of these formulae at their command,' he says. 'A student could learn 10 a day for years and still not approach native-speaker competence.'"
(Ben Zimmer, "On Language: Chunking." The New York Times Magazine, Sep. 19, 2010)".

"Using a 4.7-million-word sample of North American English conversation from the Cambridge International Corpus (CIC), and applying corpus analytical software to obtain a frequency count for recurrent chunks, the following totals emerge for chunks occurring more than 20 times:

two-word chunks 19,509
three-word chunks 12,681
four-word chunks 2,953
five-word chunks 385

Chunks and Single Words

Only 14 items in a single-word frequency list occur more often than the most frequent chunk (i.e., you know, which occurs 45,873 times). Of the first 100 items in the overall frequency list, 11 are two-word chunks, including I think and I mean. By the time we reach 500 items, there are 177 two-word chunks and 7 three-word chunks, that is, 35% of the most frequent items are chunks, not single words."

The addition of chunks to the vocabulary syllabus is not an optional extra, since their meanings are extremely frequent, necessary, and fundamental to successful interaction. They make fluency a reality. But what descriptive and pedagogical lessons should we draw from all this? We offer the following:

High-frequency chunks are often more frequent than core single words.
The most frequent chunks, like the most frequent single words, perform core communicative functions in everyday interaction.
Fluency must involve the ability to call on a vocabulary of ready-assembled chunks.
We should not assume, however, that high-frequency chunks should be obligatory components of the learner's productive repertoire. It may be that receptive mastery is more important than productive repertoire.
Chunks are chunks: analyzing them and taking them apart may not be useful, and they should be processed and retrieved holistically (see Wray, 2002).

Lessons from the analysis of chunks
https://jalt-publications.org/tlt/artic ... sis-chunks

One of the reasons for this variation is that uptake rates vary widely depending on a range of factors. Among these factors are learnability, criteria for learning and the opportunity for successful learning. One of the main factors affecting learnability includes the ratio of unknown to known words in a text. The more dense a text is (more unknown words it has), the less likely incidental learning can occur. Liu Na and Nation (1985) and Hu and Nation (1999) suggest the optimal known word coverage rate be about 95-99% of known words for there to be a good chance that learning can take place. Learnability is also affected by other factors such as whether a word is concrete or abstract, a cognate or not, or if it appears with highly redundant co-text, and whether the target word appears in a transparent or opaque context, and so forth.

The inescapable case for extensive reading
http://www.robwaring.org/er/what_and_wh ... _vital.htm
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Re: Oulipo approach to language learning

Postby Iversen » Wed Jan 05, 2022 7:07 pm

reineke wrote:Chunks are chunks: analyzing them and taking them apart may not be useful, and they should be processed and retrieved holistically (see Wray, 2002).


And that's one point where I beg to differ. I have just started to do wordlists with French expressions, and before that I read scores of pages with such expressions from a book containing page up and page down with such expressions, and it is obvious that they almost always are meaningful - the only problem is that you sometimes don't have the background information to see the logic.

Of course you also have to learn expressions and chunks as multi-word compounds, but I know from experience that I remember them better when I know what their components mean. Learning such compounds 'holistically' (without caring about the meaning of their components) would be the same as to burdening my memory with thousands of very long words. Learning them as meaningful word combinations makes the task much easier.
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Re: Oulipo approach to language learning

Postby reineke » Wed Jan 05, 2022 7:37 pm

Iversen wrote:
reineke wrote:Chunks are chunks: analyzing them and taking them apart may not be useful, and they should be processed and retrieved holistically (see Wray, 2002).


And that's one point where I beg to differ. I have just started to do wordlists with French expressions, and before that I read scores of pages with such expressions from a book containing page up and page down with such expressions, and it is obvious that they almost always are meaningful - the only problem is that you sometimes don't have the background information to see the logic.

Of course you also have to learn expressions and chunks as multi-word compounds, but I know from experience that I remember them better when I know what their components mean. Learning such compounds 'holistically' (without caring about the meaning of their components) would be the same as to burdening my memory with thousands of very long words. Learning them as meaningful word combinations makes the task much easier.


I don't disagree with your comment at all. Idioms, colloquial expressions and phrasal verbs count as lexical chunks and analyzing them and taking them apart may prove fun, useful and interesting. In some cases even rank beginners (hey, a chunk!) will already understand the basic constituents of expressions such as "you know" but feel confused about the word combination or miss it completely. However chunks do need to be processed and retrieved holistically to make sense.
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Re: Oulipo approach to language learning

Postby einzelne » Wed Jan 05, 2022 7:55 pm

reineke wrote:High-frequency chunks are often more frequent than core single words.
The most frequent chunks, like the most frequent single words, perform core communicative functions in everyday interaction.
Fluency must involve the ability to call on a vocabulary of ready-assembled chunks.


That's why I dream about a OULIPO book so that these words would occur in a meaningful context.
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Re: Oulipo approach to language learning

Postby einzelne » Wed Jan 05, 2022 8:09 pm

Iversen wrote:Of course you also have to learn expressions and chunks as multi-word compounds, but I know from experience that I remember them better when I know what their components mean.


Moreover, if you take a look at the original publication, you'll see that the was majority of chunks are basically filler words with zero meaning:)

(2) He's totally like, you know what I mean, it's like he's very liberal. I mean, he's open minded. He doesn't care. You know and so...


Or some basic high frequency expressions which you can easily find in textbooks.

I had something else in mind in my original post.
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Re: Oulipo approach to language learning

Postby reineke » Wed Jan 05, 2022 10:03 pm

einzelne wrote:
I’ve got to the point when reading an average contemporary fiction book in French gives me on average 500 new words/expressions. I would love to continue to expand my knowledge of everyday words/idiomatic expressions but he problem is I rarely enjoy contemporary novels and, frankly speaking, I don’t have that much time for reading.

All learners materials are centered around high frequency words. Novels on the other hand become 'ineffective' tools of vocabulary expansion (you read 80k words and only get 500 new words).

So this leads me to my utopian vision of a novel for language learners. What I have in mind is some kind Oulipo experiment for learning purposes: a novel (a long sequency of stories, sketches?) which would would methodically go through the frequency dictionary and try to connect them into a semblance of coherent narrative. (Suppose, every 15 min chapter has to introduce 50 new words and mention them at least 5-7 times under different contexts)

Imagine a book, which doesn't have 7-8k unique words, as an average novel does, but at least 20k ? That means that by relistening to a single audiobook, you would review the core vocabulary which, as studies show, has to be way bigger that 5k.

I'm aware that this is just a utopian vision but, damn, what a beautiful utopia it could be!


einzelne wrote:
språker wrote:I suppose that it is almost always possible to find a more advanced text that is challenging, even in a language you know quite well.


Yes, it's easy. Take some classical or modernist novel and—boom!—you have it! But these words won't be as useful in everyday life as, say, words from some polar. I'm interested in expanding (and reviewing) such words and expressions. That's how I came up with my utopian idea of an OULIPO novel.


Studies show many things including that you can start reading/watching fiction with a relatively modest vocabulary.

I remember having an interesting conversation with a language learner who didn't like baby books full of useless baby words such as "balloon" so what's useful is very much open to debate.

50 words per 15 mins = 200 words/hour and 20000 unique words/100 hours

This number would need to be multiplied several times to cover different contexts and registers. That in itself would make the task unmanageable. In my log I wrote that one of the first expressions I heard watching Nación Z an eternity or so ago was "rueda pinchada" (flat tire). I didn't have to look it up. After some 220 hours of listening I heard/noticed it again watching Chicho Terremoto. RAE'S CREA lists "pinchar" at 31,329th place and "pinchada" is much lower than that. I traveled over 1.2 million words in between. Rueda pinchada is of course also a collocation. Unfortunately there are tons of low frequency words that are useful or even indispensable in some narrow everyday or literary contexts so even a relatively dense text of two million words would still be missing thousands of words and collocations. I'm also not also not sure how a mammoth bolus of language learning material could be made more palatable than modern pulp or even a series of modernist novels.

S King's Dark Tower series is 1.3 million words long. The audiobook series is around 130 hours long. I listened to all of it in German. I recall many scenes that made me think of vocabulary miners including one where one of the characters is barricaded in an airplane lavvy. It's still missing most everyday situations. The short story "The Finger" has some fun scenes that include vocabulary related to plumbing. Not sure about the total number of unique words but the author's idiolect spread across some 60 novels and 200 short stories is perhaps worthy of consideration as a wham bam thank you ma'am approach.

Classic 18th century French and Italian books sound a lot more modern than Dutch or Croatian books from the same time period. À la recherche du temps perdu (1.5 million words) may not include vocabulary from our current (post)modern lives but calling this vocabulary not useful in everyday life is misleading. If you want to read fiction including literature proper you'll need a wider range of vocabulary. If you want to read non-fiction etc. you'll need additional vocabulary. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol 1-6 has 43113 unique words. The total word count is over 1.5 million. If all of a sudden you need to put together a list of groceries you may still find your vocabulary lacking. TV helps.
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Re: Oulipo approach to language learning

Postby einzelne » Wed Jan 05, 2022 11:25 pm

reineke wrote:Studies show many things including that you can start reading/watching fiction with a relatively modest vocabulary.

I remember having an interesting conversation with a language learner who didn't like baby books full of useless baby words such as "balloon" so what's useful is very much open to debate.


And by relatively modest how many words do they mean?

> I remember having an interesting conversation with a language learner who didn't like baby books full of useless baby words such as "balloon" so what's useful is very much open to debate.

Yes, this is precisely my point. I want to have such words in my passive vocabulary but I don’t want to waste my time on reading useless books/books I’m not interested in.

> This number would need to be multiplied several times to cover different contexts and registers. That in itself would make the task unmanageable.

Well, first of all, you missed the word utopia in my OP :)
Second, when it comes to low frequency words there not that many contexts and registers there. le pare-brise, for example. How many contexts and registers does it have? Or the same balloon you mentioned above? To paraphrase Stein, a balloon is a balloon is a balloon.

> Not sure about the total number of unique words but the author's idiolect spread across some 60 novels and 200 short stories is perhaps worthy of consideration as a wham bam thank you ma'am approach.

Here’s a thing. Life is short. I’m not sure I will find time to read the whole Proust in the original, not to mention Steven King.

I read all sorts of book and media. Thanks to modern technologies, I can read Proust comfortably right now without worrying to much about such words like aubépine — thanks to pop-up dictionaries, I can look it up and forget immediately. If I pick it up evenitally while reading, fine but I’m don’t think it is wise to make any deliberate effort to store such words into long-term memory. On the other hand polars, thrillers, romances are full of useful words and expressions but I can only read them sporadically.

Anyways, I was just daydreaming. I’m perfectly aware of the effective strategies for the expansion of everyday vocabulary.
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Re: Oulipo approach to language learning

Postby zenmonkey » Thu Jan 06, 2022 1:15 am

It's a nice daydream.

And I'm a fan of the OuLiPo movement and authors.
Maybe the movement, for us, should be ApLaPo (apprentissage des langues potentielle)?
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Re: Oulipo approach to language learning

Postby reineke » Thu Jan 06, 2022 1:35 am

Maybe you can share your strategies because learners keep discussing, arguing, humping frequency lists and groaning and moaning under vocabulary load and researchers keep researching.

I was having fun with your daydream and I tried to provide some practical building material for it. It turns out the book to rule them all would be humongous and your next book may still contain a few hundred unknown words. You're not the first person here or over at HTLAL who has played with the idea of an ideal graded corpus. Harry Potter gets touted as a sort of a magic entry ticket into the pleasures of reading literature in the original. Eh... I remember getting a considerable boost after reading 50 Italian books in a few weeks. It's not an amazingly difficult feat and it doesn't have to be one "perfect" book or series but you need to bulk up. You may still discover that your next book...contains a few hundred new words.

"As the data indicate, a limited vocabulary of 1000 words would allow language learners to recognize between 75-80% of all lexemes in written Spanish, and about 88% of all lexemes in spoken Spanish (which is due to the higher repetition of basic words in the spoken register). Subsequent extensions of the base vocabulary have increasingly marginal importance. By doubling the vocabulary list to 2000 words, we account for only about 5-8% more words in a given text, and the third thousand words in the list increases this only about 2-4% more. There clearly is a law of “diminishing returns” in terms of vocabulary learning."

"Children’s programs were found to have the smallest vocabulary load; the most frequent 2000 word families, plus proper nouns and marginal words accounted for 95% coverage. The most frequent 3000 word families plus proper nouns and marginal words accounted for 95% of American drama, older programs, situation comedies and British programs. The genres with the greatest proportions of low frequency words were news stories and science fiction programs."

See the bottom post. Some information is repeated but there's also more data and a couple of handy tables.



https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 5&start=40
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Re: Oulipo approach to language learning

Postby reineke » Thu Jan 06, 2022 2:16 am

Balloon

an inflatable rubber bag of various sizes, shapes, and colours: usually used as a plaything or party decoration
a large impermeable bag inflated with a lighter-than-air gas, designed to rise and float in the atmosphere. It may have a basket or gondola for carrying passengers, etc
a circular or elliptical figure containing the words or thoughts of a character in a cartoon
brit a kick or stroke that propels a ball high into the air
(as modifier): a balloon shot
a round-bottomed flask
a large rounded brandy glass
a large sum paid as an irregular instalment of a loan repayment
(as modifier): a balloon loan
an inflatable plastic tube used for dilating obstructed blood vessels or parts of the alimentary canal
(as modifier): balloon angioplasty
go down like a lead balloon ⇒ informal to be completely unsuccessful or unpopular
when the balloon goes up ⇒ informal when the trouble or action begins
vb
(intransitive) to go up or fly in a balloon
(intransitive) to increase or expand significantly and rapidly: losses ballooned to £278 million
to inflate or be inflated; distend; swell: the wind ballooned the sails
(transitive) brit to propel (a ball) high into the air

Collocations

balloon
n
[blow up, pop, inflate, burst] a balloon
the balloon [popped, burst]
the balloon [floated, flew] away
a [red] balloon
a [Mylar, latex] balloon
balloons for [the party, her birthday]
[party] balloons
a bouquet of balloons
is giving out (free) balloons
helium (-filled) balloons
threw water balloons (at)
using a weather balloon
in a hot-air balloon
The child was [holding, playing with] a balloon.
playing with [party, birthday] balloons
[cheeks, a face] like a balloon
[puffed out, swollen, inflated] like a balloon
went down like a lead balloon
v
ballooned [in weight, in cost, in value]
his weight ballooned to [200 pounds]
[costs, stocks, prices, debts] are ballooning
[costs] have ballooned by [$500, 500 points]
[costs] have ballooned in [the current quarter, recent years]
[costs] have ballooned by [more than, over, nearly, almost]
with [costs] ballooning to [$500]
[costs] are ballooning out of control
ballooned from [150 pounds, $250] to [200 pounds, $500]

https://www.wordreference.com/definition/balloon

Windshield is definitely a less versatile word. However how many learners would mangle these?

Les statistiques sont formelles, on casse son pare-brise en moyenne tous les 7 ans.

fissure sur votre pare-brise ?

Brosse à neige pour pare-brise...

voitures sans pare-brise...
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