Learn 12 languages in 12 months? Right.

[tastyonions]

I would submit that "general speaking ability" includes more than grammatically correct sentences spoken fluidly with proper grammar. Someone constantly (yet very fluently, of course) engaging in circumlocutions or using a description of an object where a common (but unknown to them, because they were intent on being "fluent" with 300 words) noun would do ends up being a tiresome conversation partner.

[emk]

OK, let me see if I can give some concrete examples of vocabulary learning rates and necessary vocabulary sizes. Unfortunately, I'll need to rely to heavily on first-hand experience from many years ago, in order to tie the examples to actual, real-world CEFR tasks.

All estimates have their limitations. As a way of guessing at how long it may take to achieve A2, word count seems reasonable to be used in combination as an additional factor. Of course there are the other factors such as "class hours", and the necessary practice factors, etc.

Right around the time I took my B2 exam, I sat down with the Routledge Frequency Dictionary of French, which contained 5,000 words. I picked random selections of words from the most frequent to the 5000th most frequent, tested myself on whether I knew their meanings, and extrapolated from my sample to the entire list. I estimated that I knew roughly 4,500 of the most common 5,000 words. And I definitely knew some more words that weren't in the top 5,000. I wouldn't be surprised if my total vocabulary at the time was in the range of 7,500 words.

There were definitely words on the test that I didn't know, and they definitely cost me points. I still had enough points to pass comfortably, at least. But if I had only 1,900 total words of vocabulary, I would have been wrecked. Remember, a B2 certificate is what's typically required to be admitted to a university as a foreign student. You're expected to be able to read college textbooks, although you might be looking up lots of words and generally suffering.

I am sure there are some memory freaks who could do the 30/30 challenge. I recall watching a documentary about the autist memory guy Daniel Tammet who supposedly learnt Icelandic in a week. I have no idea how accurate that is, because he also gets labelled a maths genius for being able to recite PI...

You don't need any particular super powers to learn 30 words a day, if you're aiming primarily at comprehension, and if you're using any kind of reasonable technique. You just need to put in lots of hours.

For example, right now, I'm studying Spanish is a pretty lacksadasical way, learning 15 new Anki sentence cards per day. My current review times range from 20-30 minutes per day, and they'll probably plateau around 30-40 minutes/day.

Sometimes I get two new words per card. Other times I need to see a word in a couple of contexts before I get it:



Here, derrota and fracaso were new to me. The second card gives me the verb form derrotar. I won't have most of these words in my initial active vocabulary, but I'm not really aiming for that yet. There's also a lot of grammar and idiomatic usage on these cards. In some ways it's easier to learn words in context, because then my brain seems to be far more willing to hold onto them.

If I were willing to spend two hours a day on Anki, I could add 45-60 new cards a day, with daily reviews peaking somewhere below 450-600 cards. It would be an absolute grind. But assuming I wanted to put in the hours expected of FSI students, that would still leave 7 hours per day! I could spend another couple of hours doing grammar exercises or reading bilingual books. I could spend 45 minutes writing 50 words about my day, and getting them corrected. If money were no option, I could hire a tutor for an hour of conversational practice. And once my brain was completely reduced to tapioca, I could re-watch Avatar (following 30-40% of the dialog), or find a telenovela, or sing along with songs that I've learned.

Adding 30–50 passive words per day this way would be pretty doable. You couldn't really combine this with a job, unless you had one of those jobs where you can basically sit and study all day. But I'm pretty sure that Iversen learns words faster than I do, using his word lists, and that Sprachprofi could leave me in the dust when it comes to flash cards.

I'm so glad you brought this up. I didn't dare intervene in the discussion about CEFR levels and vocabulary size because I was sure people would start howling "There goes s_allard again on his usual crazy rant about needing only 300 words to pass a C2 level test. Everybody knows you need at least 5000 words. " But now that the cat is out of the bag, I'll revisit the idea very briefly from a different angle.

When I took the Italian B2 test last year, I was surprised by the very short duration of the speaking test. It literally consists of two minutes of conversation on two topics. Even more surprising to me was the fact that I passed this section that carries just as much weight as the the other longer sections of the test.

I think we've been having this particular discussion on and off for over a decade now.

The last several times we discussed it, the key point of contention turned out to be the difference between:

• The number of words actually used on a particular speaking test. This usually isn't that high, if you record everything actually said and carefully count the words.
• The number of words you need to know to be confident of handling an arbitrary topic that the test-makers might have chosen at a given level.

So, yes, if you give me the exact subject of the test in advance, and if you write down the questions that will be asked, then I can learn to understand all the words in those questions. And I can memorize canned responses by responses by heart. And I can probably get by with a total vocabulary of 300 words, if my accent and intonation are good enough. But as soon as the examiner goes off script, I'm going to be totally lost.

As I mentioned up-thread, my B2 presentation topic was, "Should Paris introduce congestion charges to limit traffic in the city?" I had no access to a dictionary, and I had to talk for 10 minutes and answer questions for another 10. But my question was drawn from a jar, and they could have asked me about many other topics.

Let's assume I only know 300 words. In order to maximize my chances, I'm going to learn the most commonly-used 300 words. Here are some words I wouldn't know:

• péage "toll"
• centre-ville "downtown"
• circulation (routière) "traffic"
• environnement "environment"
• pollution "pollution"
• pauvre "poor" (#499)
• conduire "drive"
• embouteillage "traffic jam"

I would, at least, have ville "city" (just under the wire at #295), voiture "car" (#250) and "argent" (#180). But the examiners aren't looking for me to say, "If the city asks for money to have a car moving in the city, then the city will have more money and the people will have less money. The people with only a little money will be more sad. The people with lots of money will be less sad. The trees will be happier."

At B2, the examiners would be a lot happier if I managed to cobble together one or two phrases like augmenter les fonds disponibles pour la construction des routes. Except I wouldn't know any of the struck-out words.

And sure, if I knew what paper they were going to draw out the jar two weeks in advance, then I could learn and practice all the key vocabulary for this question. I could rehearse my speech and pay a tutor to ask me likely questions. With luck, I could fill 20 minutes with my incredibly specialized vocabulary. But having such a narrow and focused vocabulary is a defining feature of A2, not B2. At A2, you're expected to be able to introduce yourself, ask for directions, talk briefly about yourself and your interests, and fairly limited set of other tasks. By B2, however, the whole point is flexibility. You're supposed to be ready for a wide range of topics (emphasis added):

B2. Can use the language fluently, accurately and effectively on a wide range of general, academic, vocational or leisure topics, marking clearly the relationships between ideas. Can communicate spontaneously with good grammatical control without much sign of having to restrict what they want to say, adopting a level of formality appropriate to the circumstances.

I know that this is unlikely to resolve this topic any more than it did the last several times we had this thread. But I feel like the "300 words" argument is easily misleading for first-time learners.

[Le Baron]

You don't need any particular super powers to learn 30 words a day, if you're aiming primarily at comprehension, and if you're using any kind of reasonable technique. You just need to put in lots of hours.

Remembering words is about memory not just hours and memories just can't be stacked up like that at short notice. I'm willing to agree that from a lot of word learning over a period of time some will stick, but many won't and no-one can say which ones they will be. It takes some times for words to get embedded (though some are more quickly retained) and piling more on day after day in a limited period doesn't help. Nor does it guarantee they will be 'learned'.

[bombobuffoon]

You don't need any particular super powers to learn 30 words a day, if you're aiming primarily at comprehension, and if you're using any kind of reasonable technique. You just need to put in lots of hours.

Remembering words is about memory not just hours and memories just can't be stacked up like that at short notice. I'm willing to agree that from a lot of word learning over a period of time some will stick, but many won't and no-one can say which ones they will be. It takes some times for words to get embedded (though some are more quickly retained) and piling more on day after day in a limited period doesn't help. Nor does it guarantee they will be 'learned'.

This has also been my experience. I can make some short term gains but these are quickly lost. It does not scale to do 30 words a day after say a week. For me I doubt even 5 a day would stick after a month. I could get exposed to 30 words a day, but probably only 2 would stick. There is really no pattern to what sticks and what slides.

Some words stick first time, at first sight, some especially stubborn others I have been drilling over and over into my thick skull and I never remember them.

[bombobuffoon]

OK, let me see if I can give some concrete examples of vocabulary learning rates and necessary vocabulary sizes. Unfortunately, I'll need to rely to heavily on first-hand experience from many years ago, in order to tie the examples to actual, real-world CEFR tasks.

All estimates have their limitations. As a way of guessing at how long it may take to achieve A2, word count seems reasonable to be used in combination as an additional factor. Of course there are the other factors such as "class hours", and the necessary practice factors, etc.

Right around the time I took my B2 exam, I sat down with the Routledge Frequency Dictionary of French, which contained 5,000 words. I picked random selections of words from the most frequent to the 5000th most frequent, tested myself on whether I knew their meanings, and extrapolated from my sample to the entire list. I estimated that I knew roughly 4,500 of the most common 5,000 words. And I definitely knew some more words that weren't in the top 5,000. I wouldn't be surprised if my total vocabulary at the time was in the range of 7,500 words.

There were definitely words on the test that I didn't know, and they definitely cost me points. I still had enough points to pass comfortably, at least. But if I had only 1,900 total words of vocabulary, I would have been wrecked. Remember, a B2 certificate is what's typically required to be admitted to a university as a foreign student. You're expected to be able to read college textbooks, although you might be looking up lots of words and generally suffering.

I am sure there are some memory freaks who could do the 30/30 challenge. I recall watching a documentary about the autist memory guy Daniel Tammet who supposedly learnt Icelandic in a week. I have no idea how accurate that is, because he also gets labelled a maths genius for being able to recite PI...

You don't need any particular super powers to learn 30 words a day, if you're aiming primarily at comprehension, and if you're using any kind of reasonable technique. You just need to put in lots of hours.

For example, right now, I'm studying Spanish is a pretty lacksadasical way, learning 15 new Anki sentence cards per day. My current review times range from 20-30 minutes per day, and they'll probably plateau around 30-40 minutes/day.

Sometimes I get two new words per card. Other times I need to see a word in a couple of contexts before I get it:



Here, derrota and fracaso were new to me. The second card gives me the verb form derrotar. I won't have most of these words in my initial active vocabulary, but I'm not really aiming for that yet. There's also a lot of grammar and idiomatic usage on these cards. In some ways it's easier to learn words in context, because then my brain seems to be far more willing to hold onto them.

If I were willing to spend two hours a day on Anki, I could add 45-60 new cards a day, with daily reviews peaking somewhere below 450-600 cards. It would be an absolute grind. But assuming I wanted to put in the hours expected of FSI students, that would still leave 7 hours per day! I could spend another couple of hours doing grammar exercises or reading bilingual books. I could spend 45 minutes writing 50 words about my day, and getting them corrected. If money were no option, I could hire a tutor for an hour of conversational practice. And once my brain was completely reduced to tapioca, I could re-watch Avatar (following 30-40% of the dialog), or find a telenovela, or sing along with songs that I've learned.

Adding 30–50 passive words per day this way would be pretty doable. You couldn't really combine this with a job, unless you had one of those jobs where you can basically sit and study all day. But I'm pretty sure that Iversen learns words faster than I do, using his word lists, and that Sprachprofi could leave me in the dust when it comes to flash cards.

I'm so glad you brought this up. I didn't dare intervene in the discussion about CEFR levels and vocabulary size because I was sure people would start howling "There goes s_allard again on his usual crazy rant about needing only 300 words to pass a C2 level test. Everybody knows you need at least 5000 words. " But now that the cat is out of the bag, I'll revisit the idea very briefly from a different angle.

When I took the Italian B2 test last year, I was surprised by the very short duration of the speaking test. It literally consists of two minutes of conversation on two topics. Even more surprising to me was the fact that I passed this section that carries just as much weight as the the other longer sections of the test.

I think we've been having this particular discussion on and off for over a decade now.

The last several times we discussed it, the key point of contention turned out to be the difference between:

• The number of words actually used on a particular speaking test. This usually isn't that high, if you record everything actually said and carefully count the words.
• The number of words you need to know to be confident of handling an arbitrary topic that the test-makers might have chosen at a given level.

So, yes, if you give me the exact subject of the test in advance, and if you write down the questions that will be asked, then I can learn to understand all the words in those questions. And I can memorize canned responses by responses by heart. And I can probably get by with a total vocabulary of 300 words, if my accent and intonation are good enough. But as soon as the examiner goes off script, I'm going to be totally lost.

As I mentioned up-thread, my B2 presentation topic was, "Should Paris introduce congestion charges to limit traffic in the city?" I had no access to a dictionary, and I had to talk for 10 minutes and answer questions for another 10. But my question was drawn from a jar, and they could have asked me about many other topics.

Let's assume I only know 300 words. In order to maximize my chances, I'm going to learn the most commonly-used 300 words. Here are some words I wouldn't know:

• péage "toll"
• centre-ville "downtown"
• circulation (routière) "traffic"
• environnement "environment"
• pollution "pollution"
• pauvre "poor" (#499)
• conduire "drive"
• embouteillage "traffic jam"

I would, at least, have ville "city" (just under the wire at #295), voiture "car" (#250) and "argent" (#180). But the examiners aren't looking for me to say, "If the city asks for money to have a car moving in the city, then the city will have more money and the people will have less money. The people with only a little money will be more sad. The people with lots of money will be less sad. The trees will be happier."

At B2, the examiners would be a lot happier if I managed to cobble together one or two phrases like augmenter les fonds disponibles pour la construction des routes. Except I wouldn't know any of the struck-out words.

And sure, if I knew what paper they were going to draw out the jar two weeks in advance, then I could learn and practice all the key vocabulary for this question. I could rehearse my speech and pay a tutor to ask me likely questions. With luck, I could fill 20 minutes with my incredibly specialized vocabulary. But having such a narrow and focused vocabulary is a defining feature of A2, not B2. At A2, you're expected to be able to introduce yourself, ask for directions, talk briefly about yourself and your interests, and fairly limited set of other tasks. By B2, however, the whole point is flexibility. You're supposed to be ready for a wide range of topics (emphasis added):

B2. Can use the language fluently, accurately and effectively on a wide range of general, academic, vocational or leisure topics, marking clearly the relationships between ideas. Can communicate spontaneously with good grammatical control without much sign of having to restrict what they want to say, adopting a level of formality appropriate to the circumstances.

I know that this is unlikely to resolve this topic any more than it did the last several times we had this thread. But I feel like the "300 words" argument is easily misleading for first-time learners.

A2

-He can understand sentences and frequently-used expressions related to the areas of experience most immediately relevant to him/her (e.g. very basic personal and family information, shopping, places of interest, employment, etc.).
-He can communicate in simple, everyday tasks requiring no more than a simple and direct exchange of information on familiar and routine matters.
-He can describe in simple terms aspects of his past, environment and matters related to his immediate needs.

That means to me, you can handle yourself in all day to day life and work a manual job, and have general situational language capability.

To model the world to this level of detail you would need more than 1000 words I feel. You would need a fair amount of verbs and capability to conjugate those verbs to different tenses. Its not quite so trivial in some languages.

I would admit that some people seem to be able to reach A2 in English in 3-6 months. Or at least this is what they mean by "speaking English". English is rather easy in that it has the benefit of lots of leverage like powerful contextual capability, unparalleled media. You can speak incorrectly and vaguely and be understood, people tolerate accents. At least thats what I am told. So yes you may be able to do get by with fewer words in English. How many, I am not sure.

[Le Baron]

Yes. It's surely why the projections: of 'I'll learn x number of words in x amount of time' is just not realistic. It's hard to tell if you've learned words, because it can be months later when you realise you've retained a word from batches you were drilling a long time ago. Some words also don't end up in active vocabulary, they need to be seen and recognised rather than there ready for use.

I'm mostly uninterested in notions of what was roughly called a 'super learner' (remember this was not my terminology!), but rather with the 'ordinary' learner. Most language learners are ordinary learners, despite what desires they might entertain when reading about magic tricks. I prefer realism. 'Think big' is a nice notion, but if it doesn't produce corresponding big results, better to stick to reality.

[emk]

Remembering words is about memory not just hours and memories just can't be stacked up like that at short notice.

This has also been my experience. I can make some short term gains but these are quickly lost. It does not scale to do 30 words a day after say a week. For me I doubt even 5 a day would stick after a month. I could get exposed to 30 words a day, but probably only 2 would stick. There is really no pattern to what sticks and what slides.

"Sticking" frequently requires a mix of seeing the word in multiple contexts (2 or 3), and periodically encountering the world over the course of a couple of months. After that, it's likely to stay around for a long time.

You can achieve this in many different ways. I think Pimsleur may have actually designed this into their courses. Or if you can handle native materials, then reading and watching comprehensible input can reinforce thousands of common words. And of course, there's spaced repetition, which can work very well under the right conditions.

I'm not going to recount my logs here, but yes, it is totally possible to maintain surprisingly good passive retention for years. Active vocabulary is harder to keep up.

And my techniques aren't the most effective on this forum. Iversen gets great results with his word lists, for example. And there are a number of people active on this forum who have either learned huge amounts of vocabulary, or who have "raced" to A2, and reported how long it took.

[s_allard]

...
And sure, if I knew what paper they were going to draw out the jar two weeks in advance, then I could learn and practice all the key vocabulary for this question. I could rehearse my speech and pay a tutor to ask me likely questions. With luck, I could fill 20 minutes with my incredibly specialized vocabulary. But having such a narrow and focused vocabulary is a defining feature of A2, not B2. At A2, you're expected to be able to introduce yourself, ask for directions, talk briefly about yourself and your interests, and fairly limited set of other tasks. By B2, however, the whole point is flexibility. You're supposed to be ready for a wide range of topics (emphasis added):

B2. Can use the language fluently, accurately and effectively on a wide range of general, academic, vocational or leisure topics, marking clearly the relationships between ideas. Can communicate spontaneously with good grammatical control without much sign of having to restrict what they want to say, adopting a level of formality appropriate to the circumstances.

I know that this is unlikely to resolve this topic any more than it did the last several times we had this thread. But I feel like the "300 words" argument is easily misleading for first-time learners.

I know we’ve had this debate many times before, but I didn’t bring it up because it often doesn’t end well. The only reason I even touch it is that I see all this discussion about vocabulary size and the CEFR scales and exams. All déjà vu.

It has already been already pointed out, not by me, that nowhere in all the documentation of the CEFR is there any mention of vocabulary size. Just look at the quote above defining B2 proficiency. Not one word about vocabulary. Instead, we have : «… a wide range of general, academic, vocational or leisure topics, marking clearly the relationships between ideas…»

So, why are we bothering talking about vocabulary size when the CEFR doesn’t consider it ? On the other hand, I note that the same definition explicitly says : «Can communicate spontaneously with good grammatical control without much sign of having to restrict what they want to say.». This is what proficiency is all about.

The fundamental problem is that many people believe that a language is a random bunch of words from a dictionary. Learning a language then means learning a ton of words, the more the better.

On the other hand, I happen to believe that a language is a set of micro-systems and structures that are used to convey meaning. Learning a language means learning words of course and, just as important, how to work with them.

When we meet someone for the first time, within a minute of less we can probably determine if that person is a native speaker of our own language. If this is the case, we probably tell the region or city of origin, the level of education and even the kind of profession. We can do this because there are clues or patterns in the person’s speech.

There is this myth that you need a huge vocabulary for a C2 exam because you never know that subject might come up. If you intend to sound like an expert talking to another expert, then you will need expert vocabulary. But you are talking to a language examiner who is not interested in the subject but in how you can use the language to talk about it. This includes admitting your ignorance and talking about that.

Suppose for example, you are confronted with a conversation topic like : Is artificial intelligence a threat to civilization ? You don’t know a thing about artificial intelligence. So what do you do ? Just sit there and look stupid ? Obviously not, you say something like :

« I have to admit that I have given this much thought. I’ve heard a lot about it in the mainstream media but since I don’t have a technical background in the field I’m frankly sort of clueless about the whole thing. That said, I would think we have to start by defining thinking, intelligence and the various kinds of intelligence. Then how can we make artificial forms of these intelligences. Did you have particular concerns that you would want to share ? »

If I were a language examiner, I would say that an answer like that demonstrates a pretty good mastery of the language. There’s probably not much point in continuing the exam. Did I count the number of different words used ? No. But I did really notice the excellent control of grammar, the idiomatic choice of words and their usage and the flow of ideas.

Edit: minor corrections

[tastyonions]

« I have to admit that I have given this much thought. I’ve heard a lot about it in the mainstream media but since I don’t have a technical background in the field I’m frankly sort of clueless about the whole thing. That said, I would think we have to start by defining thinking, intelligence and the various kinds of intelligence. Then how can we make artificial forms of these intelligences. Did you have particular concerns that you would want to share ? »

If I were a language examiner, I would say that an answer like that demonstrates a pretty good mastery of the language. There’s probably not much point in continuing.

I guess mastery of a language now means being able to say smoothly with a nice accent that we've got no idea how to talk about much of anything, perhaps because we thought that smooth talking was so much more important than "learning a ton of words."

[Le Baron]

The fundamental problem is that many people believe that a language is a random bunch of words from a dictionary. Learning a language then means learning a ton of words, the more the better.

This is a bit of a non-sequitur. As it happens I don't think 'many believe language is a random bunch of words from a dictionary', but even if they did it wouldn't invalidate the truth that knowing more or 'a lot' of words common to different registers, and knowing how to use them, adds both considerable substance and flexibility to communication.

You seem to be making an argument for reducing communication to its lowest 'functional' threshold in the name of reducing both time and quantity of material and then insisting this qualifies as 'having learned a language. I don't even want to argue against the strong possibility that this base could be put into use and that over time, with lots of exposure, interaction and use it will develop into more. That is commonsensical, but the base is not 'having learned a language' unless you want to shift the definition goalposts. To my mind the process of expanding that elementary base over time is the actual 'learning a language'. The first bit was merely acquiring some basic tools.

There is this myth that you need a huge vocabulary for a C2 exam because you never know that subject might come up. If you intend to sound like an expert talking to another expert, then you will need expert vocabulary. But you are talking to a language examiner who is not interested in the subject but in how you can use the language to talk about it. This includes admitting your ignorance and talking about that.

What is 'huge'? You should know that you won't just be able to repurpose and apply a vocabulaire considered satisfactory for B1 or B2 to navigate a C2 exam. I'm finding it fairly difficult to know what you are saying exactly, because it looks like you're claiming it's possible to traverse all the CEFR levels with some kind of minimal core vocabulary and that this will serve you in all scenarios. Which I find strange after rather forcefully insisting that the CEFR measures some sort of level progress. So what is this progress scale? A measure of how someone manipulates the same words they had at A2 plus a small handful extra? And that this gets the name 'C2'?

Forgive my bluntness, but it sounds like nonsense.And the refrain about not bringing it up because it doesn't end well it actually quite annoying. How could it ever 'end well' when making such absurd and frivolous claims?