Active and Passive Vocabulary

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Harry Smith

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I'm not very fond of it either, anymore. :-(

I know. Anyway it's daytime where you are and it's about midnight here. I have lived some eight hours more today than you. The weather is surprisingly warm here in Moscow.
 

RonBee

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Here's a little vocabulary test. See how you get on

English Vocabulary Tester

From the site:


An isolated word may have many meanings. Be honestly to click the word you have seen, or studied or known before. If you have a problem to see the following tester, please click this link
I would like to know what the native language of the test maker is. It is definitely not English. (Emphasis added.)

(Because you have seen a word before doesn't mean you know it.)

~R
 

MikeNewYork

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I know. Anyway it's daytime where you are and it's about midnight here. I have lived some eight hours more today than you. The weather is surprisingly warm here in Moscow.

It is 23° F (-5° C) here today. That is the coldest so far this season.
 

Harry Smith

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It is 23° F (-5° C) here today. That is the coldest so far this season.

It's +7C here in Moscow. Such a warm day in winter was registered hundred years ago. Usually winters in Moscow are cold and snowy. We haven't had any snow this year yet. Hope it'll snow soon.:-D
 

MikeNewYork

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It's +7C here in Moscow. Such a warm day in winter was registered hundred years ago. Usually winters in Moscow are cold and snowy. We haven't had any snow this year yet. Hope it'll snow soon.:-D

I suspect you will get your wish. :-D
 

Harry Smith

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Harry Smith

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I always advise my students to read a dictionary. I tell them to choose five words and try to remember. So if they learn five new words a day they will know 1825 words in a year and more than 9000 in five years. For free comminication with foreigners half of it will do. :-D
 

Harry Smith

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Yesterday we had the last lesson of the term in the 8th grade. We decided to play a vocabulary game. It was like this. I wrote two words on the blackboard and told them to form new words with the letters of those two words. They had to keep to the rule, i.e not to use other letters in their words. Those two words were: " WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE".
I told them to form 100 new words in 20 minutes. Two of them succeeded. The others had from 50 to 75 words. I was very happy and gave them very good marks.:-D
 

Harry Smith

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Reading helps to enlarge someone's vocabulary a lot. The last book I read gave me 123 new words. I'm very happy to store them in my active vocabulary.:-D
 

SSteffin

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You are looking at a complicated, question, but one which research can answer. In seeking an answer, some ambiguities in the way you framed your question need to be addressed:
  • The Term "should" implies that there have been some currently determined standards against which a given speaker can be compared.
  • What is an "Average Endlish (sic) speaker?" Is he/she an adult? Is English the speaker's native language. What about the level of educational attainment of this speaker? What social, occupational, or environmental factors determine the vocabularly used by this speaker.
  • You need to define what you mean by the term "Active Vocabulary."
  • What does it mean to "...know in general?" Does this refer to recognition of a word, being able to use it in a sentence, being able to provide a formal definition?
There are some other issues in your question that are not readily apparent:
  • I wonder why you have selected spoken English, rather than written. Variability of usage frequency is so much dependent on the context of the communicaton wth respect to both speaker and audience, that you would have to record all words used by a representative random sample of speakers having the attributes described above, within a variety of audience contexts, to determine the frequency of usage for any given word.
  • You would be far better off looking at word frequencies as used in school text books at grade levles 1-12, to get a feel for the most commonly used words at those grade levles.
To get some assistance in pursuing your question, you may want to look at this site: Companion Website for: Word Frequencies in Written and Spoken English
 

Harry Smith

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Ten days ago was the last day of school and my pupils had no books and exercise-books with them. At first I didn't know what to do. Suddenly an idea came to my mind. I wrote all the letters of the \English Alphabet on the blackboard and told them to write all the words they know beginning with the letters of the alphabet.I told them these words are their active vocabulary. You know the result was better than I expected. Two of my students wrote 500 words with the first six letters (A,B,C,D,E,F). The others did well too. They promised to finish it at home. I was so happy to see their enthusiasm.I am sure many of them will write more than 1000 words.We mustn't forget that they have only two English lessons a week.
 

blouen

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Reading helps to enlarge someone's vocabulary a lot. The last book I read gave me 123 new words. I'm very happy to store them in my active vocabulary.:-D

Yes, I agree! I read a lot of books and never miss a day without reading anything... I mark difficult words in my book and look them up in my dictionary for the meaning. The only problem is I can't put those words in practice for they are a bit advance for conversations.

Do I need to record those words not to forget them?
 

Harry Smith

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Yes, I agree! I read a lot of books and never miss a day without reading anything... I mark difficult words in my book and look them up in my dictionary for the meaning. The only problem is I can't put those words in practice for they are a bit advance for conversations.

Do I need to record those words not to forget them?

You can write them on a piece of paper and have a look at them several times during the day. In this way you'll better remember them. Don't forget to use these words in different sentences of your own. It helps a lot too.:up:
 

blouen

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Okay, thanks! I'll do it!!!
 

Harry Smith

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Okay, thanks! I'll do it!!!

You are most welcome!
If you want to know how many active words do you remember try this game. You choose a long word, let's take

Celebration
and with the letters of this word make up new words, for example:
table,late, rate, cite, nice, rat, bat, ton, note, it, at, lion, real, brain etc.
I hope you'll like it. It's a good exercise for learning English.:-D
 

blouen

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You are most welcome!
If you want to know how many active words do you remember try this game. You choose a long word, let's take

Celebration
and with the letters of this word make up new words, for example:
table,late, rate, cite, nice, rat, bat, ton, note, it, at, lion, real, brain etc.
I hope you'll like it. It's a good exercise for learning English.:-D

Okay, I'll try it when I have time later.... let's see what words I can come up with...:up:
 

RonBee

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You are most welcome!
If you want to know how many active words do you remember try this game. You choose a long word, let's take

Celebration
and with the letters of this word make up new words, for example:
table,late, rate, cite, nice, rat, bat, ton, note, it, at, lion, real, brain etc.
I hope you'll like it. It's a good exercise for learning English.:-D

actor
action
berate
bract
brace
create
creation
elation
clean
cleaner
clear
trace
train
trainer
iron
ration
robin
relic

:)
 
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