Reading goal for 2022 - need your advice?

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

Postby AllSubNoDub » Fri Oct 29, 2021 4:06 am

einzelne wrote:But even if we take my initial example with 'grasshopper': do I really need to read a wiki page on insects even if I have zero interest in entomology? 'Grasshopper' is pretty normal word, I have no desire to deliberately learn the names of all common insects but if I happen to see it in the text, then, hell, why not to put it in my passive vocabulary?

Just watch some Kung Fu, man.



Words are like catching water in a leaky bucket. You can spend your time plugging the hole or you can just turn the spigot wide open.
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Re: Reading goal for 2022 - need your advice?

Postby Le Baron » Fri Oct 29, 2021 12:42 pm

I got the Kung Fu annual for Christmas one year. I think the series had actually already ended its run.
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Re: Reading goal for 2022 - need your advice?

Postby lichtrausch » Fri Oct 29, 2021 8:33 pm

einzelne wrote:Out of proportion? It really depends on your situation and your goals. If you're not in the hurry, have plenty of time, or feel chilled about your vocabulary, then, certainly, there's no problem here.

I share your concern about time.

The examples you provided are examples of terminology. I had in mind simple words. What kind of wikipedia pages I need to read or YouTube channels I need to watch to artificially increase the occurrence of such a motley set of words like: 'slovenly', 'squalid', 'to scrounge', 'to total a car', 'to chug', 'etiolated' and so on? But even if we take my initial example with 'grasshopper': do I really need to read a wiki page on insects even if I have zero interest in entomology? 'Grasshopper' is pretty normal word, I have no desire to deliberately learn the names of all common insects but if I happen to see it in the text, then, hell, why not to put it in my passive vocabulary?

slovenly: not that rare in high brow literature
squalid: shows up regularly in the news ("squalid conditions")
to scrounge: yes
total a car: common in local news
to chug: any sort of input that has college students enjoying themselves
etiolated: I don't know this word
grasshopper: input that involves insects

Targeted input like the above-mentioned types will teach you multiple words, how those words are used, how people talk about different topics, what kind of people (class? gender?) use what words, etc. etc. It's an efficient way to absorb a lot of info about a language, IMO. All of this should help you better appreciate literature and the language in general.

I don't use Anki, I cannot stick to its rigid algorithms and don't believe in its 'scientifically calculated' intervals. But I think repetition is key. So I like to flip through the book (paper or Kindle) I've recently read in my spare time and review highlighted words. As I said, I'm not very strict with my routine but every time I do it, I find it definitely positively contributes to my vocabulary. How can I know for sure? Usually I read fiction before sleep, and I go through the new words next day during my morning cup of coffee — usually, during my first review round I have to look up translations for almost all of the words. It's only after 3 days (around 9 repetition sessions in total) that I start to feel confident (and bored) and switch to a new batch of words.

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

Postby AllSubNoDub » Fri Oct 29, 2021 8:51 pm

lichtrausch wrote:
einzelne wrote:Out of proportion? It really depends on your situation and your goals. If you're not in the hurry, have plenty of time, or feel chilled about your vocabulary, then, certainly, there's no problem here.

I share your concern about time.

The examples you provided are examples of terminology. I had in mind simple words. What kind of wikipedia pages I need to read or YouTube channels I need to watch to artificially increase the occurrence of such a motley set of words like: 'slovenly', 'squalid', 'to scrounge', 'to total a car', 'to chug', 'etiolated' and so on? But even if we take my initial example with 'grasshopper': do I really need to read a wiki page on insects even if I have zero interest in entomology? 'Grasshopper' is pretty normal word, I have no desire to deliberately learn the names of all common insects but if I happen to see it in the text, then, hell, why not to put it in my passive vocabulary?

slovenly: not that rare in high brow literature
squalid: shows up regularly in the news ("squalid conditions")
to scrounge: yes
total a car: common in local news
to chug: any sort of input that has college students enjoying themselves
etiolated: I don't know this word
grasshopper: input that involves insects

I'm sorry, but this doesn't seem like a very well-informed post. Assuming, einzelne would be consuming more than archaic literature:

slovenly: not that rare in high brow literature - Agree. Also, the first time I heard this word was from a comedian (granted, it was for effect).
squalid: shows up regularly in the news ("squalid conditions") - Agree, not uncommon, but higher register.
to scrounge: yes - I use 'scrounge' all the time in spoken speech, as in 'scrounge around' . Granted, maybe it's because I came from a poor family, haha.
total a car: common in local news - EXTREMELY common to the point of essential.
to chug: any sort of input that has college students enjoying themselves - Very common, I would consider essential.
etiolated: I don't know this word - agree
grasshopper: input that involves insects - No one watched my Kung Fu clip. :(
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Re: Reading goal for 2022 - need your advice?

Postby einzelne » Fri Oct 29, 2021 9:43 pm

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'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. And I could recall their meaning the second time, only because I reviewed them.

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.

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.

Statistical estimations provide a rough picture, but still they indicate the complexity of the issue and why extensive reading is problematic. Here's an interesting article: "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."

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

Postby Le Baron » Fri Oct 29, 2021 10:08 pm

einzelne wrote: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.

I'm glad at least that you know the correct phrase/term. The Dutch seem to think this is called 'total loss' and won't be corrected. :D

einzelne wrote:Sometimes even advanced learners don't realize what a huge gap separates them from native speakers.

So true. Some go even further than not realising it, but also just plain ignoring it and pretending it's not real. I remember an old man in a bar saying to me: 'your French is really good, but even though you know more words than my old mother, she has a grasp of the language you'll never have'. I think it was a petty thing to say, but ultimately true. Even the C2 certificate-toting people have to face this fact.
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Re: Reading goal for 2022 - need your advice?

Postby Le Baron » Fri Oct 29, 2021 10:11 pm

lichtrausch wrote:Perhaps I would add a caveat for a relatively small group of rare words like "to scrounge".

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

Postby Eafonte » Sat Oct 30, 2021 2:22 am

einzelne wrote:Statistical estimations provide a rough picture, but still they indicate the complexity of the issue and why extensive reading is problematic. Here's an interesting article: "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."



To meet all these most frequent words I'd rather read a frequency dictionary.
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Re: Reading goal for 2022 - need your advice?

Postby AllSubNoDub » Sat Oct 30, 2021 2:53 am

Eafonte wrote:
einzelne wrote:Statistical estimations provide a rough picture, but still they indicate the complexity of the issue and why extensive reading is problematic. Here's an interesting article: "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."



To meet all these most frequent words I'd rather read a frequency dictionary.


coldrainwater did both. More books/pages than that, and several more dictionaries actually (and some grammars to boot). Also, another good argument for tracking - the data in his logs now makes them invaluable to other learners.
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Re: Reading goal for 2022 - need your advice?

Postby verdastelo » Sat Oct 30, 2021 3:20 am

Le Baron wrote:
einzelne wrote:Sometimes even advanced learners don't realize what a huge gap separates them from native speakers.


So true. Some go even further than not realising it, but also just plain ignoring it and pretending it's not real. I remember an old man in a bar saying to me: 'your French is really good, but even though you know more words than my old mother, she has a grasp of the language you'll never have'. I think it was a petty thing to say, but ultimately true. Even the C2 certificate-toting people have to face this fact.


Someone please break the news to the Indian elites who are convinced that they have become native speakers of English after watching a few series on Netflix and reading The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck. My pleas have fallen on deaf ears.
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The life of man is but a succession of vain hopes and groundless fears. — Monte(s)quieu


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