【罗肖尼】如何永远学会一个单词？
(Notes for academic reference use)
What is a word?
The word dog does not look like a dog, walk like a dog, or woof like a dog, but it means “dog” just the same. - Steven Pinker, The Language Instinct
Saussure’s Arbitrarines of the Sign 索绪尔任意符号理论（可以用来解释群体的共同语的形成，传播和消亡）
What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. - Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, Scene 2
Form-meaning connection knowledge
“Think about having to memorize a new batting average or treaty date or phone number every ninety minutes of your waking life since you took your first steps...” （语言的重复效应，例如手机号，QQ号等无规则数字以及密码等有一定规则的字符排列）- Steven Pinker, The Language Instinct
Working memory 短期记忆 only takes in 7 words a time, and only lasts for 20-30 secs
“Public enemy number one of language students is forgetting” - Lomb Kato, Polyglot: How I Learn Languages
Repetition 阿新急速英语秘籍 - Definition/Glossary Learning (Dictogloss learning)
Useful but VERY low efficiency for long-term learning
World knowledge advantage 常识优势 by Nagy（可以利用母语理解L2的所指对象，但是后果是弱化Form-meaning connection)
One forgets words as one forgets names. One's vocabulary needs constant fertilizing or it will die. - Evelyn Waugh
Its (Dictogloss learning) disadvantage is that it carries isolated words to the brain, removed from their contexts. And the meaning to which you attach each word to be learned is your mother-tongue's meaning of the term. That is the only NAIL you hang you new possession on – or to put it more scientifically. That is what you associate it with. - Lomb Kato (2008) Polyglot: How I learn languages
Words have a habit of changing their meaning from one CONTEXT to another. - Willian Labov, The Boundaries of Words and Their Meanings --- Polysemy多义性
e.g. I found the book by Dickens by chance by the tree and shall return it by mail by Friday. - Frank Smith, Reading without Nonsense
All the common words of our language have a multiplicity of meanings, with the most common words being the most ambiguous. - Frank Smith Understanding reading: a psycholinguistic analysis of reading and learning to reada.
Most commonly used English words (500 in total) has around 28 definitions each. Fries C. C. (1945) Teaching and learning English as a a foreign language
Conventionalization 约定俗成化 attaching words with semantically opaque meanings
Multi-word combination多词组合语
Over a half of written and oral English is composed by Multi-word combination. - Erman B., Warren B. (2000)
The width problem of vocabulary acquisition
Quite – what does the word mean to us? - Ken Hyland (conclusion: totally opposite based on the context)
The depth problem of vocabulary acquisition
Dictionary is not designed to be a stand-alone source of meanings for words that are isolated from a comprehensible context, and it serves this purpose poorly. Therefore, we must abandon the belief in contextless vocabulary building programs in which students try to memorize the definitions of lists of unrelated words. - Anderson R. C. & Nagy W. E. (1992) The vocabulary conundrum
The power of context语境的力量
Context originates from Latin Contextus, meaning textures used to fabricate textiles
Text is always a woven fabric. You can take a word or phrase out of it but such an isolated unit will only represent the whole as much as a snippet of fabric will represent the bolt of cloth it originatd from. - Lomb Kato (2008) Polyglot: How I learn languages
Words cannot be removed from their contexts. One can only understand them – and should only learn them – in their contexts. - Lomb Kato, Polyglot:…
Contextual learning needs Comprehensible Input (brought up by Stephen Krashen), and it can solvev the arbitrary sign, the width problem and the depth problem
The Baker and baker paradox
Context is the main method for human to memorize things by human. - Lisa Genova (neurolingust)
The brain captures and binds together the contextual details surrounding what you experienced- where you were, who you were with, when this happened, how you felt about it, and so on. - Genova L. (2021)
Google Image –visual aids
Leaning words from context: one-time encounter can help learners grasp the word firmly. Nagy W. E., Herman P.A. & Anderson R. C. (1985)
ZPD hypothesis “i -- i+1” -- comprehensible input hypothesis可理解输入假说
Paul Nation: 98% familiar words – can understand; 95% familiar words – sometimes refer to dictionaries; less than 95% - very glitchy
61% context is very directive, 31% not so much, and 8% is misleading. Vocabulary Development: All contexts are not created equal. Beck et al. (1983) - Varied contexts help consolidate appropriate language use.
Infants learning words like “pour” and “fill” take them a few years to differentiate them.
Word learning is not dichotomy, but incremental.
Why swear is the easiest expression to be learnt in a language? Because it mainly exists in the context which is very emotional and fixed.
To learn a word, you should encounter in NATURALLY VARYING contexts for at least 12 times. Webb S. & Nation P. (2017) How vocabulary is learned
And don’t forget, in 98% comprehensibility texts.
Game playing, role-playing (not absolutely effective though), AI technology to generate contexts
Besides its million assets, it is only culpable in one thing: it cannot speak, but it is only books that provide an unlimited amount of repetition; it is only reading that can be returned to again and again without being an ordeal. (AI is also appropriate with this description!)
AntWordProfiler统计单词的出现率和与考纲词汇的重合情况
林语堂： 试问诸位少时看红楼水浒，何尝有人教？何尝翻字典？你咩你的侄儿少辈现在看红楼西厢，又何尝需要你们去教？《读书的艺术》
近四十年的应用语言学研究发现是：自发的、消遣式的阅读很可能是一个人大部分词汇量的来源，无论是母语还是二外
Nation I.S.P. & Coxhead A. (2021) Measuring native-speaker vocabulary size：一个普通英美高中生至少认识两万个核心单词word families，以及它们的至少四万个衍生形式 derivations and inflections，但是很少是通过背单词学来的，更多的是implicit, contextualised, meaningful, purposeful learning.
学校一年最多也只能教三四百个单词 Nagy W. E. (1995) On the role of context in first- and second-language vocabulary learning
You came by the bulk of your understanding without lifting a finger, by a more comfortable means than dictionaries, course books, or teachers: BOOKS! -Lomb Kato Polyglot:…
Self-learning is the ultimate solution to any aspect of knowledge.
Impatience is a common, healthy mindset in language learning. - Lomb Kato
The most common and frequent 3000 words in English cover around 85% of all oral and written texts. Nation I. (2006) How large a vocabulary is needed for reading and listening?
Forming a habit is like planting a seed. - Fogg B.J. (2019) Tiny Habits: the small changes that change everything 福格行为模型
Nation (2014) How much input do you need to learn the most frequent 9000 words? (amount of reading input and time needed to learn each of the most frequent nine 1000 word families)
We should read because it is books that provide knowledge in the most interesting way, and it is a fundamental truth of human nature to seek the pleasant and avoid the unpleasant. - Lomb
Toussaint & Langenscheidt: we learn grammar through manipulating language, instead of learning language through cramming grammar into our brain.
If you need someone to grant you certain permission so that you can read freely what you want, then I am hereby granting the permission to you wholeheartedly. - Stephen King (2000) On writing : A memoir of the craft
