To be in a conversation where you can't understand what the other person
is saying is much worse than not being able to find the right word.
I can read, I can understand when I listen, but I can't speak or I
can't speak as well as I would like.
I hear this all the time.
This can be described as the conundrum of how do I activate my passive vocabulary.
There is this distinction between, obviously, the much larger number of words
that we know, that we understand in a context with a whole bunch of other words
and our ability to retrieve the words that we need when we're in a conversation.
So there's a lot of research that has been done on how to teach vocabulary,
how to learn vocabulary, and in there you'll find a lot of advice on how
to activate your passive vocabulary.
And I'm gonna share some of these with you, and I'm gonna refer to them.
But first, I want to talk about some principles that I have about this whole
issue of active versus passive vocabulary.
So let me start by saying that I think the problem is overstated.
It's exaggerated to me.
There is no clear division between active and passive vocabulary.
We never know when we'll be able to retrieve a word that we know
passively, uh, from our memory reserve.
We might even forget a word or we see it in a context where the surrounding
words help us identify or or infer the meaning of that word that we maybe know
imperfectly or have seen a few times.
So there's a very fuzzy sort of
process whereby we acquire even our passive vocabulary.
And I think moving it to a situation where we can use it actively in, in a particular
context, to my mind is also fuzzy.
In fact, in my native language or in languages that I speak,
well, I don't distinguish between passive and active vocabulary.
I make no special effort to
activate my vocabulary.
I'm just confident that in time, if I am exposed to enough of a context, if I
don't mind making mistakes, if I don't mind not being able to retrieve a word,
eventually I will be able to activate more and more in all of my online lessons
with my tutors in different languages.
There's never a time when I'm not disappointed by my inability
to retrieve a word that I know.
I know, I know this word, but I can't find it.
And then of course the teacher sends me the conversation report and I read
it and I listen to it, and I'll be looking for that same word next time.
Like there's no clear, deliberate step towards activating
vocabulary in my opinion.
Rather, the broader my passive vocabulary, the more interesting content I can engage
with, the more meaningful conversation I can have in the long run, the more of this
passive vocabulary I'm gonna activate.
And that's been my experience.
In fact, I consider passive vocabulary to be a major sort of measurement of
our potential in a language, and that's why so much of the statistics at LingQ
are built around measuring how many words we know, how many words we've
read, how many hours we've listened.
But in particular, to what extent have we built up our passive vocabulary?
Very, very important.
It's sort of the, the first step towards activating that vocabulary.
There's no such thing as, in my opinion, as active vocabulary in the abstract.
I think what we are referring to is domain-relevant vocabulary.
So we hear about academic english and business, English and uh,
technical English or medical English.
In other words, if we are engaged in a particular domain, as they call it, in
a particular subject matter, or even an author say, when I was doing Russian, you
know, Tolstoy, I'd get very comfortable with his vocabulary, but it would be
more difficult for me to, uh, read a book written by Dostoevsky, for example.
So the kind of content that we are using will determine the range of our
vocabulary, even passive vocabulary.
And so within that subset, some of these words will be
activated when we least expect it.
And even again, in our own language, people who read more have a richer
vocabulary, both passive and active.
That's why literacy and reading widely on a broad range of subjects is the
best indicator of a person's ability to communicate, to express themselves, to
write well, even though there may not be any deliberate strategy to convert this
passive vocabulary into active vocabulary.
Now, I will refer to some of these suggested methods of
activating vocabulary, which I'm a little skeptical of
because ultimately, sure, you can drill yourself or talk to yourself or have,
you know, role playing discussions with people or, and as I often do
at LingQ, I go to sentence mode and I'll review some of the vocabulary.
I'll review the vocabulary, uhm, while I'm in a lesson, I'll go
over the new vocabulary on a page.
I do all of these things without really knowing to what extent it
makes it more likely that I'll be able to activate that vocabulary.
It's more in terms of acquiring this passive vocabulary 'cause I'm
convinced that if I have enough passive vocabulary, eventually I'll be
able to retrieve more and more of it
when I need it.
Rather, the issue for me is where do I wanna spend my time?
So I will spend some time on sentence review, for example, I will spend
some time with an online tutor.
I don't like spending time talking to non-native speakers.
It's just a matter of where do I think I will get or derive the
greatest benefit, which usually is, where am I enjoying myself the most?
My view is that we never fully know which activity is enabling us to learn.
It's not a matter just of knowing a word.
We have to know which words are used with that word, how it's used, the full
range of meaning of that word, and all of this takes a long time to mature
and we acquire that sense of the word through a lot of listening and reading.
So the idea that there's some sort of deliberate master plan strategy
to activate our vocabulary, I don't agree with, I see it more
as, again, something that came up in my recent, uh, Persian podcast.
I always refer to Parseh's podcast because he has so many things to talk about.
But if we look at a flock of, I dunno, hundreds or more of starlings,
birds in the air who move in unison,
if there's a potentially a predator bird around, they'll all move
in formation away from that.
And it turns out that this is not some master plan.
They don't have it all planned out ahead.
Obviously, it's the individual birds moving, sensing that the bird beside
them is moving and they all respond to a couple of birds to either side
of them and what their movements are.
And I think acquiring vocabulary and eventually making this vocabulary active
is also because we encounter these words in different contexts we're kind
of gradually moving slightly, so it's very much a bottoms up type of process.
We can't deliberately go out to learn a bunch of of vocabulary.
We wanna expose ourselves to these vocabulary
items in different contexts, and we will be nudged a little bit by every exposure
until eventually these become very well understood, uh, in terms of the range of
meaning and which words they're used with.
And then eventually some of these will activate by a process that we don't,
that at least I don't understand.
So the way to activate more words is not to worry so much about how much you
think you should be able to do based on your understanding of the language.
Rather, it's continuing to sort of spread your roots in terms
of your passive vocabulary.
Through a lot of listening and reading . To speak as much as possible.
I try to go twice a week now, I initially, I do very little online, you know,
chatting with my tutors, but now I'm up to two, sometimes three times a week.
I have no idea whether I increase my active vocabulary through speaking with my
tutors or increasing my input activities.
But I am guided more by what I enjoy doing, and so to some extent, I am
improving my ability to activate my vocabulary by speaking with my tutors.
I recognize also some of the gaps in my even passive vocabulary.
I keep doing it as long as I'm motivated to stay with it.
And as I say, I'm never quite sure how words start to stick.
One of the advantages of having a large passive vocabulary is that you can engage
in extensive listening and reading.
So right now,
I'm listening to this audio book in Swedish about the life of Napoleon
while cleaning my deck and doing things around the house, so I'm
not totally focused in on it.
There are sections that are, at least certainly words that I don't understand,
but by the same token, I am reinforcing my grasp of phrases and structures
and vocabulary, albeit passive.
And in doing that, these little bits and pieces are coming into my memory
reserve, and some of these will activate in ways that I don't fully
understand or don't deliberately do.
But by having a large enough passive vocabulary, I can engage in this kind
of extensive listing and reading that will eventually allow me to have a
vocabulary that I can use more and more, as long as I'm willing to expose
myself to the potential embarrassment of being in a conversation where I can't
find the words that I want, however.
To be in a conversation where you can't understand what the other person
is saying is much worse than not being able to find the right word.
And if you continue to engage in these kinds of meaningful conversations,
which you're only able to do if you have a, a broad level of comprehension,
as you continue to do that, and if you don't worry about making
mistakes, you will eventually activate
more vocabulary without going through some of the deliberate
activities such as this graph.
Typically, these are activities designed for the classroom.
These are not things that I would do, and in fact, many of the references that I
will leave you with here are suggestions on keeping a diary and putting, you
know, stickies around your kitchen and
all kinds of things that I wouldn't do, but someone else might wanna do them.
That's fine.
I think the simplest solution here is, the sort of Occam's razor, is if you
expand your passive vocabulary through massive input listening and reading
activities and if you're willing to talk and accept the fact that you'll
make mistakes, you'll eventually expand
the range of words that you can use, and therefore you'll stop saying, I can read
and listen, but I can't express myself.
Because typically you have to accept that when you speak, you're gonna do
less well than you would like, but if you continue doing it, you'll get better.
Therefore, my, uh, suggestion is don't focus on extracting a group
of, call it active vocabulary out of your broad passive vocabulary.
Expand your passive vocabulary, engage as much as possible
in meaningful conversations.
Easier to do if you have a large passive vocabulary, and eventually you'll find
that you'll be able to say more and more things in the language you're learning.
Thank you for listening.
Bye for now.
