Struggling to reach C1 (problems with increasing active vocabulary)

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Re: Struggling to reach C1 (problems with increasing active vocabulary)

Postby IronMike » Thu Dec 07, 2017 2:03 pm

АмериканскийДурак wrote:How many words do you think can be learned in a day?

I never answer these types of questions b/c it is SO person-dependent. Sorry. :(
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Re: Struggling to reach C1 (problems with increasing active vocabulary)

Postby Theodisce » Thu Dec 07, 2017 3:31 pm

IronMike wrote:
АмериканскийДурак wrote:How many words do you think can be learned in a day?

I never answer these types of questions b/c it is SO person-dependent. Sorry. :(


Plus, it is very hard to evaluate if we have learned a word or not, even when "have learned" is taken to mean both passive as well as active knowledge. Few weeks ago I heard a word I was sure was not a part of my active vocabulary only to recall that I had actually used it few days earlier in a conversation.
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Re: Struggling to reach C1 (problems with increasing active vocabulary)

Postby Dylan95 » Mon Jan 15, 2018 8:49 pm

whatiftheblog wrote:
LinguaPony wrote:Try writing. Then you just will have to look up words you don't know, and the next time you read a book you'll find it easier to do.

I used to write book reviews, but then I got rid of that blog.


^^ This, and what I like to call "faux vlogging". Basically, pick a topic that interests you (<-- this part here is super important, it must be something that you find really engaging, otherwise you just won't do it, or else you won't commit to doing it well) and pretend you're recording a vlog about it. This is a fancy way of saying "talk to yourself / your pets". For inspiration, try finding vloggers you like on Youtube (there are apparently plenty of Russian vloggers now, so this should be easy). Within 10 minutes you'll be able to tell where your weak spots are - don't hesitate to stop and look up words to help the flow of things - and if you keep doing this often enough, you'll notice a huge difference.

I'm really passionate about French politics, so I basically faux-vlogged my way through the entire campaign, since I had so many FEELINGS~* about it and there was only so much my (American) friends could take of it before I began noticing their eyes glazing over. (Fun fact: they once timed how long it would take for me to start talking about the election from the moment we met up that evening; I lasted 11 minutes :lol: ... there was an over/under pool as well.) This helped me tremendously, and even now I'm noticing a marked difference between how quickly/elegantly I can express myself on topics related to politics/the election/etc vs. things I've never faux-vlogged about.

Vloggers in general are a very good - and massively underutilized - source of passive-to-active conversion, since they tend to speak a livelier, more down-to-earth form of the language.

Finally, as a relatively recent B2 -> C2 transition...er? ... I'll go with my usual tired advice - just drown yourself in spoken content. It's how you learned to speak English - you were surrounded by it, and you eventually just picked it up and started forming words.

Удачи! Помните, что русский вообще дико сложный язык, на самом-то деле, и тот факт, что вы уже добрались до Б2, говорит о многом, так что не сдавайтесь!


спасибо большое за совет и поддержку! Русский правда дико сложный язык, но я тоже не сильно опытный. Я живу в России сейчас, но ненадолго. Я общаюсь с русскими каждый день только на русском, но они не исправляют мои ошибки, так что я даже не замечаю когда допускаю ошибки. Это плохо, но я понимаю это. Ведь они не мои учители)

"Thank you very much for the advice and support! Russian is truly a crazy difficult language, but I'm also not very experienced. I'm living in Russia now, but not for long. I speak only with Russians every day only in Russian, but they don't correct my mistakes, so I don't even notice. This is bad, but I understand. After-all they aren't my teachers."

translation so as to not break the forum rules^
Last edited by Dylan95 on Mon Jan 15, 2018 11:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Struggling to reach C1 (problems with increasing active vocabulary)

Postby rdearman » Mon Jan 15, 2018 10:21 pm

Please write in English or provide a translation outside of logs or multilingual room.

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Re: Struggling to reach C1 (problems with increasing active vocabulary)

Postby Dragon27 » Tue Jan 16, 2018 7:16 am

Dylan95 wrote:Ведь они не мои учители)

My intuition immediately told me "учителя́". But then again, "учи́тели" doesn't sound that bad either. Could it be that my intuition failed me? Unable to overcome the overwhelming feeling of inadequacy in my native language I reached for the wiktionary. Indeed, this word (like "сын" in some other thread I've participated in fairly recently) has two declension schemes. The second one "учитель - учители" is marked in the wiktionary as "устар" (obsolete, antiquated), and is also used for a specific sense: "человек, являющийся высшим авторитетом для кого-либо в какой-либо области, имеющий последователей; глава учения или научной школы" (an authority, guru, Teacher).
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Re: Struggling to reach C1 (problems with increasing active vocabulary)

Postby Dylan95 » Tue Jan 16, 2018 7:29 am

Dragon27 wrote:
Dylan95 wrote:Ведь они не мои учители)

My intuition immediately told me "учителя́". But then again, "учи́тели" doesn't sound that bad either. Could it be that my intuition failed me? Unable to overcome the overwhelming feeling of inadequacy in my native language I reached for the wiktionary. Indeed, this word (like "сын" in some other thread I've participated in fairly recently) has two declension schemes. The second one "учитель - учители" is marked in the wiktionary as "устар" (obsolete, antiquated), and is also used for a specific sense: "человек, являющийся высшим авторитетом для кого-либо в какой-либо области, имеющий последователей; глава учения или научной школы" (an authority, guru, Teacher).


Wow I had no idea. Initially I thought it was because не often takes the genitive. For example я не люблю этого. But I guess that's just the default nominative plural. Thank you!
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Re: Struggling to reach C1 (problems with increasing active vocabulary)

Postby whatiftheblog » Wed Jan 17, 2018 12:52 pm

Dylan95 wrote:
спасибо большое за совет и поддержку! Русский правда дико сложный язык, но я тоже не сильно опытный. Я живу в России сейчас, но ненадолго. Я общаюсь с русскими каждый день только на русском, но они не исправляют мои ошибки, так что я даже не замечаю когда допускаю ошибки. Это плохо, но я понимаю это. Ведь они не мои учители)

"Thank you very much for the advice and support! Russian is truly a crazy difficult language, but I'm also not very experienced. I'm living in Russia now, but not for long. I speak only with Russians every day only in Russian, but they don't correct my mistakes, so I don't even notice. This is bad, but I understand. After-all they aren't my teachers."

translation so as to not break the forum rules^


Honestly (and slightly OT, sorry, but this is worth noting!), this was pretty much perfect. I'd use учителя, add a comma after замечаю, throw in a "я тут" between но & ненадолго if you meant to say you won't be staying for long, otherwise it just seems like it's missing something, and - on a suuuuper nitpicky note - move это before понимаю, though your version isn't incorrect. All of this to say that your written Russian is better than 85% of what I see coming out of native speakers on social media. Excellent job!
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Re: Struggling to reach C1 (problems with increasing active vocabulary)

Postby Dylan95 » Wed Jan 17, 2018 2:15 pm

whatiftheblog wrote:
Dylan95 wrote:
спасибо большое за совет и поддержку! Русский правда дико сложный язык, но я тоже не сильно опытный. Я живу в России сейчас, но ненадолго. Я общаюсь с русскими каждый день только на русском, но они не исправляют мои ошибки, так что я даже не замечаю когда допускаю ошибки. Это плохо, но я понимаю это. Ведь они не мои учители)

"Thank you very much for the advice and support! Russian is truly a crazy difficult language, but I'm also not very experienced. I'm living in Russia now, but not for long. I speak only with Russians every day only in Russian, but they don't correct my mistakes, so I don't even notice. This is bad, but I understand. After-all they aren't my teachers."

translation so as to not break the forum rules^


Honestly (and slightly OT, sorry, but this is worth noting!), this was pretty much perfect. I'd use учителя, add a comma after замечаю, throw in a "я тут" between но & ненадолго if you meant to say you won't be staying for long, otherwise it just seems like it's missing something, and - on a suuuuper nitpicky note - move это before понимаю, though your version isn't incorrect. All of this to say that your written Russian is better than 85% of what I see coming out of native speakers on social media. Excellent job!


Thank you so much! These are the kind of corrections I've been hungering for. It's quite difficult learning these kinds of intricacies without them being pointed out by a native speaker. And thank you for your support :D It's very motivating at a time when I feel like my skills have been stagnating for so long.
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Re: Struggling to reach C1 (problems with increasing active vocabulary)

Postby NoManches » Fri Aug 31, 2018 5:49 pm

Dylan95 wrote:I've been at B2 for well over a year by now, and I have to say I'm really struggling to improve my vocabulary. I can get through basically any situation without a problem, but my vocab limits my ability to read literature, and my ability to speak eloquently. I have also noticed that while my passive knowledge continues to grow, my active* vocabulary seems to be more or less stagnating. The reason for this seems to be that now when I study words, they are rare enough, that I don't use them often enough for me to remember them actively.

If anyone has any advice on how I can improve my active vocabulary, I would really appreciate it.

*by active vocabulary, I'm referring to words that I not only passively recognize, but also can use in daily conversation on my own.



Doing a search brought me to this old post. I feel like I'm in the same boat as you (or the same boat you were in). It's an old post, but a good subject, and I was expecting to see more comments (maybe there is a similar post somewhere). Anyway, I'd like to bring it alive again.

I have found that even when I used Anki on a regular basis (a time when I had a strong vocabulary), words would only go into my active vocabulary if I made an effort to use them. Anki helped my passive vocabulary a lot and I found that words I knew because of Anki were easier to bring into my active vocabulary. For example, there were many times when I would have a conversation and come across a word that I didn't know in Spanish...only to realize that actually I DID know that word because I had just added it and studied it with Anki. From there I could introduce it into the conversation and I'd end up using it a few times and before I knew it, it would be a part of my active vocabulary.

This makes me wonder: Maybe part of the reason Anki was beneficial for me was because it was nothing more than a list of words I thought were important enough to bring into my active vocabulary. Eventually I'd come across that word during study or during conversation and would put it into use

Now that I think about it, Anki was great for my passive vocabulary (but so is reading!) Why is it then, that I used to love Anki. I think because they were my "go to words" that I knew would eventually be part of my active vocabulary.

So with this being said, and to get back to your question, I think you need to USE words for them to really be part of your active vocabulary. You can TRY to make this happen with speech...but speech is fast. Unless you have a paid tutor who is patient, most speakers will find the easiest way to get their point across (which you mentioned was a problem you were having). Most speakers won't stop mid speech and say: "give me a second to look up this word I want to use. I know a simpler way of saying the same thing but I'm trying to improve my language X". No...the speaker will just say the easiest thing and go on with the conversation. I think the answer to making things active in your vocabulary is to write! I should mention that I've had good success before with keeping a list of words handy that I want to use during a Skype speech. Occasionally I'll glance down at my list and try to use one of the words. It's not always natural and seems a bit forced at times..but it works!

One idea I have is to write about a random topic, but to try to use vocab that I need in my active vocabulary. Writing also allows you to find gaps that you have, and all you have to do is look the word up and use it. It might take a few uses before it is part of your active vocabulary but it is a good start.

Maybe you went to get your car fixed in a foreign country and didn't know a lot of the vocabulary. Go home, and write an essay about your experience using the words you want to learn.


I'm curious: since you first posted this question, what have your results been like??
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Re: Struggling to reach C1 (problems with increasing active vocabulary)

Postby patrickwilken » Tue Sep 04, 2018 12:32 pm

I have never really believed that there is a very interesting difference between active and passive vocabulary.

As far as I see within your vocabulary you have a bunch of words, some better known than others. When the words are well known enough they become actively available. And what does it mean to be "well known"? I would guess that means the word is strongly tied into the semantic network of your TL. When you hear/see one word automatically other words are activated within the network. If they are strongly enough tied into the network then they will become active.

newnet-global-colored.png

So to get more active vocabulary you must strengthen the network, which essentially comes down to using the network by reading, talking, writing, speaking. Studying word lists probably won't help simply because they are not helpful in strengthening the network per se; perhaps studying words embedded within sentences would be OK as that tends to strengthen the network itself.

If your passive vocabulary is increasing then you shouldn't worry. I am sure you active vocabulary is also increasing, albeit less noticeably.

As others have pointed out it takes a lot more than a year to go from B2 to C1. In fact a good B2 is an OK level to do a Master's thesis here in Germany in German so it's nothing that trivial.
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