Reading goal for 2022 - need your advice?

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lichtrausch
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Re: Reading goal for 2022 - need your advice?

Postby lichtrausch » Sat Oct 30, 2021 5:08 am

einzelne wrote:I'm sorry but you completely missed my point. As a native speaker, you think these words are common so you can find them a lot in literature or newspapers. In fact, they are not. That's why I gave these words as examples — something which you consider to be quite common is not for a non-native speaker. I didn't see these words only once in my life, of course, but sometimes the time interval could be several months or even a year, if not more.

Seems like you're trying to redefine the word "common". A common word is a common word, regardless of whether we're talking about a native or non-native speaker. A word can be more or less common in different contexts, and non-native speakers may find it difficult to get sufficient exposure to certain contexts of language use, but that's a separate matter.

I've been reading in English more than 13 years (fiction, non-fiction, news, magazines, literature in my field). I've watched hundreds, if not thousands of hours of TV series and movies and the first time I met the 'essential' expression 'to total the car' was this summer when I was reading a Philip K. Dick novel. With nonnative speakers this happens all the time — sometimes we don't know even some basic words, even if we had thousands of hours of exposure.

I realize that happens to non-native speakers all the time. And I'm saying that with the technology and available content of 2021, for the most popular languages, it can be alleviated with strategic choice of input. What's the average vocabulary difference between a native speaker and an advanced non-native speaker? 10 or 15k words? That's not an insurmountable gap. But it requires strategic choices of input, there are diminishing returns, and people have other priorities, so most people don't bother, which is fully understandable.

Yes, when I read books in my field, I rarely meet new words. And although I can easily read general fiction, newspapers, etc there are still gaps in my vocabulary. Sometimes even advanced learners don't realize what a huge gap separates them from native speakers.

I live in a city full of highly educated non-native speakers of English, and a nontrivial minority of them (especially the Harvard crowd) have vocabularies that rival or surpass the native speakers around them. You simply can't make such a blanket statement about this gap.

As I said, I only have about 2 hours (may be 3 in my best days) for language related activities in all my languages. I'm happy when I can read one fiction book per month in a given languages. Depending on the language, an average book will give me 400-800 new words. Some of them would be obscure or irrelevant for me. But some of them are pretty common like 'to total a car'. If I happen to review them, I increase the chances of getting them into my long term memory. My review sessions don't take much time (usually it's a batch of 50 word which takes about 5 minutes to review — I can easily go through it during a coffee break), so I don't see I need to give up this tool when intensive reading alone with low frequency words stops working.

You seem satisfied with your method, and that's what matters most.

Le Baron wrote:Is 'scrounge' a rare word? It seems to me to be the most common term bandied about in media to describe perfectly legitimate benefits claimants. You can barely get away from the word.

In my experience it's rare, but that could just be a quirk of the type of English input I get.
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Dragon27
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Re: Reading goal for 2022 - need your advice?

Postby Dragon27 » Sat Oct 30, 2021 5:32 am

lichtrausch wrote:I don't doubt that you make progress, I'm just not sure that it's actually the most efficient way to learn rare words. Perhaps I would add a caveat for a relatively small group of rare words like "to scrounge". And of course you're right that if you really don't enjoy doing this type of targeted input, then best resort to other methods.

I remember watching a let's play of a game (don't remember the name, it was basically a parody of The Oregon Trail but with zombies), where the player/commentator said a phrase like "let's do some scrounging around". This usage of the word in context (coupled with me paying attention to it, since it looked like an interesting word) really cemented it in my brain.

What do you think of the word "scooch"? I've met it once in Friends (in the context of moving over to free up some space on the couch) and I don't remember ever meeting it again since (which doesn't mean that I haven't), but it seemed like a simple word every native would know.

einzelne wrote:"To meet all the 10,000 most frequent words in English 10 times, you’d need to read 79.1 books that are 80,000 words long."

I just personally find that I don't need to meet each (relatively rarer) word ten times to make it part of my (passive) vocabulary. So I'm not really sure about the usefulness of these kind of averaging statistics.
Last edited by Dragon27 on Sat Oct 30, 2021 7:59 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Reading goal for 2022 - need your advice?

Postby rdearman » Sat Oct 30, 2021 7:42 am

I was looking into this sort of thing recently. Native speakers of a language typically have about a 1 to 10 ratio of active vocabulary to passive vocabulary. An adult typically has about 5000 words in active vocabulary and a university educated adult about 10000 active vocabulary. Although the ratio falls a bit as active vocabulary increased.

But another point is a common word is only common if it is common to you. People in the UK use the word bonnet all the time, when was the last time you heard it in the USA?

In addition if you never saw the word then it means nothing where it ranks on some frequency list. Because in your frame of reference it isn't common.

I would like to point out in a similar vein.

"Common sense" isn't very common.
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Re: Reading goal for 2022 - need your advice?

Postby einzelne » Sat Oct 30, 2021 2:10 pm

lichtrausch wrote:Seems like you're trying to redefine the word "common". A common word is a common word, regardless of whether we're talking about a native or non-native speaker.


No, my point is simple: if a word or expression is 'common', it doesn't necessary mean that you will see/hear it frequently as a non-native speaker because of the statistical distribution. I remember someone here shared his story of visiting Brazil with advanced Portuguese — he had to buy shoelaces but didn't know the word (I personally don't know the word for shoelaces in German and French either)

There are of course some exceptions. I imagine all those who followed the American news in summer 2020 know the word 'curfew' by heart. Sometimes one striking occurrence is enough (I didn't have to meet the expression "the moot point" 8-10 times because I saw Friends which has a hilarious play of words around this expression). But these exceptions cannot beat statistical regularities — you learn one word thanks to some serendipitous moment but there are thousands and thousands others.

lichtrausch wrote:What's the average vocabulary difference between a native speaker and an advanced non-native speaker? 10 or 15k words? That's not an insurmountable gap.


I think, 15k words gap is a huge underestimation. But even if we take this number, you forget that, again, because of the statistical distribution. It would be several levels harder to internalize them through natural exposure.

lichtrausch wrote:I live in a city full of highly educated non-native speakers of English, and a nontrivial minority of them (especially the Harvard crowd) have vocabularies that rival or surpass the native speakers around them. You simply can't make such a blanket statement about this gap.


I have lots of questions to this personal observation.

First, how can you tell? Because they use more sophisticated language? I have this experience all the time. People assume that since you read Melville and DeLillo and French post-structuralist philosophy in the original, you wouldn't have any problem with discussing all other stuff or with their thick regional accents.

What's more important: do you realize what a unique and privileged group you bring to counter my argument? First, they live in a L2 country. Second, they got their degrees in the English speaking universities (research shows that the last burst in vocabulary acquisition happens in your college years). Third, if they managed to get into Harvard, that means that they already had a very strong knowledge of English as teenagers. It's hard to generalize, but quite often it simply means that those people come from very rich families and could afford expensive private schools or native English tutors. At any rate, an average L2 learner (especially an adult learner) simply don't have all these benefits.
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Re: Reading goal for 2022 - need your advice?

Postby Iversen » Sun Oct 31, 2021 6:57 pm

I have actually done some 'research' on my own vocabularies (and in a few cases supplemented it with online tests, which mostly have given slightly higher results). The method has always been to take sample equidistant pages from a midsized dictionary and divide them into known, not known and a middle group. The main objection to this is of course that I could have misjudged the words, especially since I can see them in the dictionary. The antidote to this is to run through the lists a day or two later and see whether I really know the supposedly known words well enough to translate them or describe their meaning or something like that - and I have done that a number of times and found that I generally could trust my judgment. OK, I could have learnt the words during the exercise, but that would just be a very good reason for doing more of it.

The result for my English counts has on average been 79% (down to 31% with the massive Webster's unabridged). Giving absolute numbers is a problem since they depend on the size of the dictionary, but with my 2003 Gyldendal that claims it has 45.000 headwords that would amount to around 31.500 headwords. So I should in principle have a passive vocabulary at the level of a native speaker haha, but no. I have namely also done the same exercise with a Danish dictionary of the same size, and there I have just counted a few unknown words per page, ie. around 98 % known words, so my guess is that an elderly English lady who has had a garden, children, kept her household running, read novels and solved crosswords all her life also should have had a vocabulary consisting of more than 90% of the words in a standard midsize dictionary - which is more than the normal vocabulary assessments indicate. Which of course is a testable hypothesis - we only need someone to do the experiment.

The words she would know and I don't know are those you need to live in an Anglophone society. On the other hand I probably know more scientific words than her, but I don't really need most of her 'rare and common' words, and she doesn't need to know what a rackett or a Wolf-Rayet star is so we can both live happily with our respective vocabularies. I think she knows more words, but I know enough.
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Re: Reading goal for 2022 - need your advice?

Postby Iversen » Mon Nov 01, 2021 10:11 pm

rdearman wrote:I was looking into this sort of thing recently. Native speakers of a language typically have about a 1 to 10 ratio of active vocabulary to passive vocabulary. An adult typically has about 5000 words in active vocabulary and a university educated adult about 10000 active vocabulary. Although the ratio falls a bit as active vocabulary increased.


I wonder how anyone can know that. To test the claim (for English, which isn't my native language) I did a wordcount with 160 words, which I as usual divided into known, not known and lala in between, and I then thought it would be easy to mark those known words which I could see myself using, given a relevant situation and optimal state of mind (i.e. awake). But it was not easy at all - almost all words I could mark as known I also could see myself using, but I could also see myself go blank with even fairly common words. So I dropped the idea.

Long ago, when dinosaurs roamed and I wrote things over at HTLAL (in other words around 2008-9), I made a statistic analysis of my Anglophone contributions. I collected 75838 wordforms, cleansed them and split them in two, reduced them to unique headwords and ended up with 3498 + 3914 headwords, sum 7412 - but only 5433 unique ones so the overlap was 1979 headwords - not much. And this has consequences for bookreaders: even if you learn all words in one book you'll' be faced with an abundance of new words in the next one you grab. And I have no idea how many books you have to read before the stream of new headwords tapers off. Now see this from the perspective of the author: the (probably) best definition of active vocabulary would probably be at the point where the stream of new words has dried up and he/she can't come up with any more words. Then compensate for those that were forgotten along the way plus those the author didn't want to use and ... well, you get my point: the calculation would be almost impossible to do even for world famous authors whose 'Gesamtwerk' has been digitized, and it is impossible for anyone else.

I just concur with the observation that it is easier to use your vocabulary actively when you know it well AND use it regularly - so in weak new languages the ratio would probably be lower than 1 to 10.
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Re: Reading goal for 2022 - need your advice?

Postby lichtrausch » Fri Nov 12, 2021 4:29 am

einzelne wrote:I think, 15k words gap is a huge underestimation. But even if we take this number, you forget that, again, because of the statistical distribution. It would be several levels harder to internalize them through natural exposure.

You keep bringing up the statistical distribution of rare words, and thus disregarding my point that strategic input helps alleviate this issue. Let's try an analogy. If you want to encounter a bunch of rare instruments, you might spend years and years listening to your local radio stations. And eventually you would have heard a lot of rare instruments, but the process was terribly inefficient and probably incomplete. The smart way would have been to listen to radio stations from a highly diverse set of cultures. The statistical distribution of rare instruments played on your local radio stations is not that important.

First, how can you tell?

Long conversations about diverse topics.

What's more important: do you realize what a unique and privileged group you bring to counter my argument? First, they live in a L2 country. Second, they got their degrees in the English speaking universities (research shows that the last burst in vocabulary acquisition happens in your college years). Third, if they managed to get into Harvard, that means that they already had a very strong knowledge of English as teenagers. It's hard to generalize, but quite often it simply means that those people come from very rich families and could afford expensive private schools or native English tutors. At any rate, an average L2 learner (especially an adult learner) simply don't have all these benefits.

None of the people I know personally who achieved native level English (except for a slight accent) came from highly privileged circumstances (speaking from a developed country point of view). And to be clear, all I'm arguing is that these people exist, and finding one isn't as hard as finding a blue-throated macaw. Yes they are rare, yes they have taken advantage of the opportunities available to them, and yes they probably all have rather high verbal intelligence.

That's all I have to say about this topic. Nice talking.
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Re: Reading goal for 2022 - need your advice?

Postby einzelne » Fri Nov 12, 2021 5:08 am

lichtrausch wrote:You keep bringing up the statistical distribution of rare words, and thus disregarding my point that strategic input helps alleviate this issue.


The statistical distribution of low-frequency words. Huge difference (low-frequency ≠ rare). I already mentioned the difference that I don't want to repeat myself (just like I don't want to repeat about the difference bw terminology and general vocabulary).

lichtrausch wrote:None of the people I know personally who achieved native level English (except for a slight accent) came from highly privileged circumstances (speaking from a developed country point of view). And to be clear, all I'm arguing is that these people exist, and finding one isn't as hard as finding a blue-throated macaw. Yes they are rare, yes they have taken advantage of the opportunities available to them, and yes they probably all have rather high verbal intelligence.


I don't think it's fair to compare an average L2 learner who lives in his native country to those who live in the States (for I don't know how many years) and who went to college there.

Yet even in this case sometimes you can spot the surprising gaps in their vocabulary. Just like generation 1,5 speakers can have a perfect command of their heritage language (since they talk it at home, and may be moved to the L2 country at the age of 5-8 old) and you cannot tell them from a native speaker but a long conversation might reveal the most unexpected gaps in vocabulary. This was my favorite part when I had a chance to talk to heritage Russian speakers in the States. Again, the problem was not some specific terminology but rather some basic words like "slacker" or "to quit (drinking alcohol)" — these are some real examples from my own experience.

PS! Btw, thanks for adding "macaw" to my list of new English words!
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Re: Reading goal for 2022 - need your advice?

Postby BeaP » Fri Nov 12, 2021 8:15 am

I'd try to go through some quality skill developers:
Deutsch Intensiv Lesen B1, B2 (Klett)
Deutsch Intensiv Wortschatz B1, B2 (Klett)
Deutsch üben Lesen und Schreiben B1, B2 (Hueber) skip the schreiben part
I would read German fiction at the same time, not translations. Being able to read original texts (sometimes unattainable for those who don't speak German) gives me motivation and tricks my brain into believing that German is very important for me, which leads to better retention. Also literature is full of references, so it's beneficial to know the culture. Start with good quality detective novels or short stories. Recommendations beside the obvious Thomas Mann (from easier to more difficult, roughly):
Volker Kutscher: Stumme Tod, Der nasse Fisch (several books, the series Babylon Berlin is based on them)
Juli Zeh: Neujahr
E.T.A Hoffmann: short stories (German romanticism is a gold mine)
Daniel Kehlmann: Ruhm
Martin Suter: Montecristo
Stefan Zweig: short stories
Vicky Baum: Menschen im Hotel
Elias Canetti: Die Blendung
Marc-Uwe Kling: QualityLand
W.G. Sebald: Austerlitz
Hermann Broch: Der Tod des Vergil
Try to read some articles from a quality newspaper every day. Buy a small notebook, note down the words you want to learn. If you only have a couple of minutes, read through the notebook.
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Dragon27
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Re: Reading goal for 2022 - need your advice?

Postby Dragon27 » Sat Jan 29, 2022 6:07 pm

einzelne wrote:'etiolated'

Hey, I've encountered the word! Finally got around to reading 1984.
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