Hello, I'm Dr. Heidi, creator of Vocab Victor, and today I'd like to talk to you about your
vocabulary size, which is how many words you know in English. So, I want you to think about
two questions. One, how many words do I know now, and Two, how many words should I know?
What's a good size vocabulary to have? The answer to that question has to do with your
ability to function well in English and to understand a lot of the language that you
encounter. So, for example, if I want to read this book and I don't know any of the words,
obviously I can't read it. If I know ALL the words, I can read and enjoy it but I might
not learn anything new. And if I only know half the words, then as I read it, I'm going
to have to stop, and look up words in the dictionary, and then I'll lose my place, and
forget what I was reading... it can be very frustrating to try to read something if you
don't know a lot of the words. So what I want to find is what we call in
English a sweet spot, which is the right amount so that you can understand MOST
of what you are reading and continue to learn new words. And according to linguists who
have studied this, that sweet spot is at about a 5,000 word vocabulary.
It's not exact, some people will say more, some will say less, and it also depends on
what you're reading, so if you are reading something very technical or very scientific,
a 5,000 word vocabulary might not be enough. But, for the general types of things you see
every day - articles, books, stories, web sites - if you have a vocabulary size of about
5,000 words you will be able to understand about 90% of what you read, and that's enough
to read fluently while also learning new words. So, how do you get there? Well, the first
thing to know is, how many words do you know now? Next I'm going to show you how to find
the answer to that question.
This is the vocabulary test web site, testyourvocab.com.
I put the link in the description below. And it's a very simple type of vocabulary test
that will show you how many words you know. This type of test is called a checkbox test.
So, each one of these boxes is called a checkbox. It's very simple. You read each word ... like...
think about it to yourself. And if you know the meaning of the word, you check the checkbox.
So, think ... yes, I know what that word means, go ... I know what that word means, look ,,, I
know what that word means. And I really want you to pay attention when you take this test.
Read the words and think about what they mean. Like, withdraw ... okay, maybe you don't
know what that means, don't check the box ... mist ... don't check the box if you don't
know what it means. It's really important. Don't go through and just go, Click click
click, oh yeah I know that word, click click click." Because if you give this test bad
information, then the test will give you bad information. It's really important to be
honest. This is not for a grade. This is not for a test. This is not to impress anybody
with your vocabulary size. This is for your personal knowledge to understand your own
vocabulary size. After you finish this screen, you come to
the second screen. This is basically the same activity with some different words. And again,
go through each and every word ... never ... read it to yourself. Think about it to yourself.
If you know the meaning of the word, check the box. If you don't know the meaning of
the word, skip it. That's all you do. Go through each word. This is a very sophisticated
test and it will do a good job of testing your vocabulary if you answer the questions
honestly. You probably will not know all the words. This is on purpose. It's part of
the design of the test that some of the words will be too hard for you. So, don't worry
about that. When you're done, Continue. And then, this comes to the research survey
where it wants to know if you're a native speaker, how old you are, and so forth. I'm
not going to answer this because I didn't give accurate answers. I'm just testing
it to show you as a demo how to do the test. So then I will tap finish. So this is my estimated
size of 231 words. This is really small because I didn't give accurate answers, I was just
kind of rushing through the test to show you. When you do the test I think your vocabulary
size will be bigger. And when you finish, if you want to, I would love to know what
your vocabulary size is. Go ahead and enter it into the comments section below. I would
love to see the different results that people have. So that is the vocabulary size test.
It's pretty straightforward.
After you take the test, you will know your
vocabulary size. So maybe you know 1,200 words or 3,600 words. If you are a native English
speaker you can take the test and the number will be much higher. If your vocabulary is
higher than 5,000 words, that's great. I only have one word for you: Read. Read as
much as you can. Reading will help you continue to improve your vocabulary and strengthen
your language skills. If on the other hand your vocabulary size
is less than 5,000 words, I want you to set a goal for yourself to close that gap, that
space in between. So, why do I want you to set a goal? Well, for example, I recently
started running. I said, okay, I'm going to run, I need the exercise. So what if you
said to me, Dr. Heidi, what is your running goal, and I said, No goal, just running. I
would probably exercise and have some fun. But what if you said, what is your goal? And
I said, well, I want to run a 5K race and I want to finish it in 30 minutes and I want
to do it by next month. Now, I have a goal, and that means every day when I run I'm
going to try to run a little faster, and run a little farther, I'm going to practice
more often because I'm trying to achieve my goal. I could say to you, go learn more words.
And, you would learn! You're studying, you're working on it, you're a good student, you're
trying to improve your English. But if I say, try to get from your current level to 5,000
words, you've got a goal you can work on, and you can work on it for a couple of months
and then come back, take the test again and see how much progress you've made. It's
a lot of words, it is a lot of words. But you only know 1,200 words that might feel
like it's too much; that's okay, you can set a smaller goal, like by the end of this
semester I want to be at 2,000 words. Set a goal for yourself that you think can make.
Next video I will show you tips on how to improve your vocabulary, especially if you
are under 5,000 words. Again, if your vocabulary is over 5,000 words go read. It's the best
thing that you can do. But at any level, one way to improve your vocabulary is to play
Vocab Victor. Vocab Victor is an app that I made to help non-native speakers improve
their English language vocabulary. You can download it for free on the Apple Store or
Google Play. It's very colorful. It's got all different word learning games, and it
will adapt to your level, so it will give you harder words or easier words depending
on how you do. So, subscribe to this channel, and play Vocab Victor, come back next time
and I will help you become a vocabulary winner.
Không có nhận xét nào:
Đăng nhận xét