How to estimate how many words you already know

Have you every worried about not knowing enough words in the foreign language you are currently learning? Most probably, yes. Have you complained about that to your language teacher? Most probably, yes. Have you ever worried about not knowing enough words in your native language? Most probably, no. Do you know all words in the standard vocabulary of your native language? Most probably, no.

But, how many words do you actually know – in your native language and in a foreign one?

In this article, I will show you how to find answers to the above questions, and give you some tips on learning new words, too.

Always start with your native language in mind. Many language students completely forget how things work out, or not, in their own language. And then they have unrealistic expectations of what to expect from themselves while acquiring a new language.

Have you ever been in a situation where you felt uncomfortable speaking? During a job interview, presentation, sales conversation, family conflict, flirting, or, in a conversation with a specialist in an area you do know nothing about (with an accountant, legal expert, car mechanic)? If you want to admit it or not, the cause is most probably that you do not possess the necessary technical vocabulary to participate in the conversation as a competent speaker, or, you do not know what the most suitable word or phrase would be for the situation at hand.

If you want to gauge how many words you already know, the most thorough way would be to go through an entire dictionary, to mark all the words you know, to count them and to calculate the percentage of known words. Typically, dictionary companies disclose how many words their dictionaries contain. This is, of course, a very cumbersome task. Better, do the following:

·         You choose a limited number of pages in the dictionary, by chance (!);

·         You count the total number of word entries on each page;

·         You mark all words you know;

·         You divide known words by total words on the page, and multiply the result by 100%.

·         You calculate the mean percentage of known words for all tested pages;

·         You extrapolate how many words your mean percentage would translate for the whole dictionary.

Example:

You have chosen 4 pages (e.g. fictitious pages 6, 15, 67, 183) of a dictionary. For simplicity’s sakes, each page has 50 entries. You identify the following number of known words on the 4 pages:  23, 14, 25, 18. From this, you get the following percentages:

·         Page 6: 23/50 * 100%=46%;

·         Page 15: 14/50* 100%=28%;

·         Page 67: 25/50*100%=50%;

·         Page: 183: 18/50*100%=36%

Now, we calculate the mean:   46%+28%+50%+36% / 4 = 40%

The dictionary states it has 20 000 words. 

40% out of 20 000 is 8000.

Answer: your estimated vocabulary is 8000 words.

You can do this method of sampling pages for word lists, too. If you have a list 1000 of medical terms you need to learn, you can sample by chance chunks of 10 words. Then, you will do the same as with the dictionary pages. You calculate what percentage you know out of each 10-word chunk, calculate the mean, and extrapolate the result to the entire list.

Depending on the area of expertise you want to be conversational in a foreign language, there are lots of word lists or technical dictionaries available. There, you can estimate the number of words you know by categories:

·         Overall dictionary

·         Technical language in field A

·         Technical language in field B

·         Proverbs

·         Swear words (why not?)

·         Irregular verbs

·         Prepositions

·         Etc.

Of course, all this is an estimation. If you want to improve its precision, you will need to increase the number of samples: e.g. test 10 instead of 4 pages.

If you like the attitude of these articles, please check out my online courses : at the moment, German for Russian- and Romanian-speakers, as well as on goal-setting.

If you are interested in improving your English in the area of business presentations, I know of no better address than Tom Antion. Please check him out following this link.

Stay tuned!

Gerhard

The GO Method

The GO Method applies quality management and psychological science to the study of foreign languages. It helps students establish individual and clear goals, build learning routines, overcome psychological obstacles, monitor progress and systematize the learning process.

It is the perfect approach for high performer students that need to speak as closely as possible to a native speaker. From lesson one, it focuses on building your own sentences bottom-up, and not memorizing phrases like a parrot.

Gerhard J. Ohrband

Psychologist and polyglot from Hamburg /Germany (*1979). Married with children. MA in psychology from the University of Hamburg. More than 15 years of experience as a university lecturer in psychology as well as a consultant for UNICEF, Terre des Hommes, IOM, the EU and private companies. Coordinator of the GO Method network, with representatives in more than 90 countries worldwide.