A person's vocabulary is the set of words A word is the smallest free form in a language, in contrast to a morpheme, which is the smallest unit of meaning. A word may consist of only one morpheme (e.g. wolf), but a single morpheme may not be able to exist as a free form (e.g. the English plural morpheme -s) they are familiar with in a language Language is a term most commonly used to refer to so-called "natural languages" — the spoken forms of communication ubiquitous among humankind. By extension the term also refers to the type of thought process which creates and uses language. Essential to both meanings is the systematic creation, maintenance and use of systems of. A vocabulary usually grows and evolves with age, and serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication Communication is a process whereby information is enclosed in a package and is channeled and imparted by a sender to a receiver via some medium. The receiver then decodes the message and gives the sender a feedback. All forms of communication require a sender, a message, and an intended recipient, however the receiver need not be present or aware and acquiring knowledge Learning is acquiring new knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, preferences or understanding, and may involve synthesizing different types of information. The ability to learn is possessed by humans, animals and some machines. Progress over time tends to follow learning curves.
Knowing and using a word
A vocabulary is defined as "all the words known and used by a particular person".[1] However, the words known and used by a particular person do not constitute all the words a person is exposed to. By definition, a vocabulary includes the last two categories of this list:[2]
- Never encountered the word.
- Heard the word, but cannot define it.
- Recognize the word due to context or tone of voice.
- Able to use the word but cannot clearly explain it.
- Fluent with the word – its use and definition.
Types of vocabulary
Listed in order of most ample to most limited:[3][4]
Reading vocabulary
A person's reading Reading is a complex cognitive process of decoding symbols for the intention of deriving meaning and/or constructing meaning. Written information is received by the retina, processed by the primary visual cortex, and interpreted in Wernicke's area vocabulary is all the words he or she can recognize when reading. This is the largest type of vocabulary simply because it includes the other three.
Listening vocabulary
A person's listening Hearing is one of the traditional five senses. It is the ability to perceive sound by detecting vibrations via an organ such as the ear. The inability to hear is called deafness vocabulary is all the words he or she can recognize when listening to speech. This vocabulary is aided in size by context and tone of voice.
Writing vocabulary
A person's writing vocabulary is all the words he or she can employ in writing Writing is the representation of language in a textual medium through the use of a set of signs or symbols . It is distinguished from illustration, such as cave drawing and painting, and non-symbolic preservation of language via non-textual media, such as magnetic tape audio. Contrary to the previous two vocabulary types, the writing vocabulary is stimulated by its user.
Speaking vocabulary
A person's speaking vocabulary is all the words he or she can use in speech Speech is the vocalized form of human communication. It is based upon the syntactic combination of lexicals and names that are drawn from very large vocabularies. Each spoken word is created out of the phonetic combination of a limited set of vowel and consonant speech sound units. These vocabularies, the syntax which structures them, and their. Due to the spontaneous nature of the speaking vocabulary, words are often misused. This misuse – though slight and unintentional – may be compensated by facial expressions, tone of voice, or hand gestures A gesture is a form of non-verbal communication in which visible bodily actions communicate particular messages, either in place of speech or together and in parallel with spoken words. Gestures include movement of the hands, face, or other parts of the body. Gestures differ from physical non-verbal communication that does not communicate specific.
Focal vocabulary
"Focal vocabulary" is a specialized set of terms and distinctions that is particularly important to a certain group; those with a particular focus of experience or activity. A lexicon, or vocabulary, is a language's dictionary, its set of names for things, events, and ideas. Some linguists believe that lexicon influences people's perception on things, the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis. For example, the Nuer of Sudan have an elaborate vocabulary to describe cattle. The Nuer The Nuer (also known as the Nei Ti Naath (--or roughly: original people) are a confederation of tribes located in Southern Sudan and western Ethiopia. Collectively, the Nuer form one of the largest ethnic groups in East Africa. They are a pastoral people who rely on cattle products for almost every aspect of their daily lives have dozens of names for cattle because of the cattle's particular histories, economies, and environments. This kind of comparison has elicited some linguistic controversy, as with the number of "Eskimo words for snow It is a popular urban legend that the Inuit or Eskimo have an unusually large number of words for snow". English speakers can also elaborate their snow and cattle vocabularies when the need arises.[5][6]
Vocabulary growth
Initially, in the infancy phase, vocabulary growth requires no effort. Infants An infant or baby is the very young offspring of humans. A newborn is an infant who is within hours, days, or up to a few weeks from birth. In medical contexts, newborn or neonate refers to an infant in the first 28 days of life (from birth up to 4 weeks after birth, less than a month old). The term "newborn" includes premature infants, hear words and mimic them, eventually associating them with objects and actions. This is the listening vocabulary A person's vocabulary is the set of words they are familiar with in a language. A vocabulary usually grows and evolves with age, and serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and acquiring knowledge. The speaking vocabulary A person's vocabulary is the set of words they are familiar with in a language. A vocabulary usually grows and evolves with age, and serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and acquiring knowledge follows, as a child's thoughts become more reliant on its ability to express itself without gestures and mere sounds. Once the reading A person's vocabulary is the set of words they are familiar with in a language. A vocabulary usually grows and evolves with age, and serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and acquiring knowledge and writing vocabularies A person's vocabulary is the set of words they are familiar with in a language. A vocabulary usually grows and evolves with age, and serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and acquiring knowledge are attained – through questions and education Education in the largest sense is any act or experience that has a formative effect on the mind, character or physical ability of an individual. In its technical sense, education is the process by which society deliberately transmits its accumulated knowledge, skills and values from one generation to another – the anomalies and irregularities of language can be discovered.
In first grade First grade is a year of primary education in schools in the United States, Canada and some other countries. It is the first school year after kindergarten. Students are usually 6 to 7 years old, an advantaged student (i.e. a literate student) knows about twice as many words as a disadvantaged student. Generally, this gap does not tighten. This translates into a wide range of vocabulary size by age five or six, at which time an English-speaking child will know about 2,500–5,000 words. An average student learns some 3,000 words per year, or approximately eight words per day.[7]
After leaving school, vocabulary growth reaches a plateau. People may then expand their vocabularies by engaging in activities such as reading, playing word games Word games are generally engaged as a source of entertainment, but have been found to serve an educational purpose as well. For instance, young children can find enjoyment playing modestly competitive games such as Hangman, while naturally developing important language skills like spelling. Solving crossword puzzles, which requires familiarity, and participating in vocabulary programs.
Passive vs. active vocabulary
Even if we learn a word, it takes a lot of practice and context connections for us to learn it well. A rough grouping of words we understand when we hear them encompasses our "passive" vocabulary, whereas our "active" vocabulary is made up of words that come to our mind immediately when we have to use them in a sentence, as we speak. In this case, we often have to come up with a word in the timeframe of milliseconds, so one has to know it well, often in combinations with other words in phrases, where it is commonly used.
The importance of a vocabulary
- An extensive vocabulary aids expressions and communication.
- Vocabulary size has been directly linked to reading comprehension.[8]
- Linguistic vocabulary is synonymous with thinking vocabulary.[9]
- A person may be judged by others based on his or her vocabulary.
Native- and foreign-language vocabulary
Native-language vocabulary
Native speakers' vocabularies vary widely within a language, and are especially dependent on the level of the speaker's education. A 1995 study estimated the vocabulary size of college-educated speakers at about 17,000 word families[clarification needed], and that of first-year college students (high-school educated) at about 12,000.[10]
Foreign-language vocabulary
The effects of vocabulary size on language comprehension
Francis and Kucera[11] studied texts totaling one million words and found that if one knows the words with the highest frequency, they will quickly know most of the words in a text:
| Vocabulary Size | Written Text Coverage |
|---|---|
| 1000 words | 72.0% |
| 2000 | 79.7 |
| 3000 | 84.0 |
| 4000 | 86.8 |
| 5000 | 88.7 |
| 6000 | 89.9 |
| 15,851 | 97.8 |
By knowing the 2000 words with the highest frequency, one would know 80% of the words in those texts. The numbers look even better than this if we want to cover the words we come across in an informally spoken context. Then the 2000 most common words would cover 96% of the vocabulary.[12] These numbers should be encouraging to beginning language learners, especially because the numbers in the table are for word lemmas A lemma in morphology is the canonical form of a lexeme. Lexeme, in this context, refers to the set of all the forms that have the same meaning, and lemma refers to the particular form that is chosen by convention to represent the lexeme. In lexicography, this unit is usually also the citation form or headword by which it is indexed. Lemmas have and knowing that many word families would give even higher coverage.
Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition
Learning vocabulary is one of the first steps of learning a second language, yet a learner never finishes vocabulary acquisition. Whether in one’s native language or a second language, the acquisition of new vocabulary is a continuous process. Many methods can help one acquire new vocabulary.
Memorization
Although memorization can be seen as tedious or boring, associating one word in the native language with the corresponding word in the second language until memorized is considered one of the best methods of vocabulary acquisition. By the time students reach adulthood, they generally have gathered a number of personalized memorization methods. Although many argue that memorization does not typically require the complex cognitive processing that increases retention (Sagarra & Alba, 2006)[13], it does typically require a large amount of repetition. Other methods typically require more time and longer to recall.
Some words cannot be easily linked through association or other methods. When a word in the second language is phonologically or visually similar to a word in the native language, one often assumes they also share similar meanings. Though this is frequently the case, it is not always true. When faced with a false cognate, memorization and repetition are the keys to mastery. If a second language learner relies solely on word associations to learn new vocabulary, that person will have a very difficult time mastering false cognates. When large amounts of vocabulary must be acquired in a limited amount of time, when the learner needs to recall information quickly, when words represent abstract concepts or are difficult to picture in a mental image, or when discriminating between false cognates, rote memorization is the method to use. A neural network model of novel word learning across orthographies, accounting for L1-specific memorization abilities of L2-learners has recently been introduced (Hadzibeganovic & Cannas, 2009).[14]
The Keyword Method
One useful method to build vocabulary in a second language is the keyword method. When additional time is available or one wants to emphasize a few key words, one can create mnemonic devices or word associations. Although these strategies tend to take longer to implement and make take longer in recollection, they create new or unusual connections that can increase retention. The keyword method requires deeper cognitive processing, thus increasing the likelihood of retention (Sagarra & Alba, 2006)[13]. This method uses fits within Paivio’s (1986)[15] dual coding theory because it uses both two verbal and image memory systems. However, this method should be used only with words that represent concrete and imageable things. Abstract concepts or words that do not bring a distinct image to mind are difficult to associate. In addition, studies have shown that associative vocabulary learning is more successful with younger aged students (Sagarra & Alba, 2006)[13]. As students advance and age, they tend to rely less on creating word associations to remember vocabulary.
Basic English vocabulary
Several word lists have been developed to provide people with a limited vocabulary either quick language proficiency or an effective means of communication. In 1930, Charles Kay Ogden created Basic English Basic English, also known as Simple English, is an English-based controlled language created by linguist and philosopher Charles Kay Ogden as an international auxiliary language, and as an aid for teaching English as a Second Language. It was presented in Ogden's book Basic English: A General Introduction with Rules and Grammar (1930). Capitalised, (850 words). Other lists include Simplified English Simplified English is the original name of a controlled language historically developed for aerospace industry maintenance manuals. It offers a carefully limited and standardized subset of English. It is now officially known as ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English (1000 words) and Special English Special English is a controlled version of the English language first used on October 19, 1959, and still presented daily by the United States broadcasting service Voice of America. World news and other programs are read one-third slower than regular VOA English. Reporters avoid idioms and use a core vocabulary of about 1500 wordsplus any terms (1500 words). The General Service List The General Service List is a list of roughly 2000 words published by Michael West in 1953. The words were selected to represent the most frequent words of English and were taken from a corpus of written English. The target audience was English language learners and ESL teachers. To maximize the utility of the list, some frequent words that,[16] 2000 high frequency words compiled by Michael West from a 5,000,000 word corpus, has been used to create a number of adapted reading texts for English language learners. Knowing 2000 English words, one could understand quite a lot of English, and even read a lot of simple material without problems.
Vocabulary differences between social classes in the U.S.A.
James Flynn reports the remarkable differences in vocabulary exposure of pre-schoolers between different classes in the U.S.A. Apparently, pre-schoolers of professional families are typically exposed to 2,150 different words, pre-schoolers from working class families to 1,250 words, while those from households on welfare just 620.[17]
See also
- Differences between American and British English (vocabulary) There is noticeable variation in the vocabularies of American English and British English. Definitive analysis is problematic, but thorough research can reveal useful data and evidence of the differences. The table on this page shows evidence of regional variation between American and British English
- Language proficiency Language proficiency or linguistic proficiency is the ability of an individual to speak or perform in an acquired language. As theories vary among pedagogues as to what constitutes proficiency , there is little consistency as to how different organizations classify it. Additionally, fluency and language competence are generally recognized as being (Linguistic proficiency) The ability of an individual to speak or perform in an acquired language).
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