Vocabulary Skills
MBA
I – II
Reading
vocabulary
A person's reading
vocabulary is all the words he or she can recognize when reading. This is the
largest type of vocabulary simply because it includes the other three. It needs
a lot of practice to read. This we should learn from a teacher. Otherwise
certain words we should refer dictionary for pronunciation.
A person's listening
vocabulary is all the words he or she can recognize when listening to speech.
This vocabulary is aided in size by context and tone of voice. While listening
the pronunciation differs from native to native.
American accent is
called yankee style which is very different and difficult to understand.
We follow the British
style. Especially ours is called Indian style. Why it is called because we
follow our own mother tongue style.
This is very less in
day to day conversation. If we listen to experts, scientists, writers etc. it changes or we cannot follow unless we know
about that subject. Because the jargon differs from subject to subject.
A person's writing
vocabulary is all the words he or she can employ in writing. Contrary to the
previous two vocabulary types, the writing vocabulary is stimulated by its
user.
Writing is an art. It
depends upon the subject the writer is writing. Whether is an expert or
ordinary person.
A person's speaking
vocabulary is all the words he or she can use in speech. Due to the spontaneous
nature of the speaking vocabulary, words are often misused. This misuse –
though slight and unintentional – may be compensated by facial expressions,
tone of voice, or hand gestures.
American accent is
called yankee style which is very different and difficult to understand. Others
cannot follow it as usual. Those who are born and brought up can only speak
that style.
We follow the British
style. Especially ours is called Indian style. Why it is called because while
speaking we follow our own mother tongue style.
This is very less in
day to day conversation. If we speak to experts, scientists, writers etc. it changes or we cannot follow unless we know
about that subject. Because the jargon differs from subject to subject.
"Focal
vocabulary" is a specialized set of terms and distinctions that is
particularly important to a certain group; those with particular focuses of
experience or activity.
For example, the Nuer
of Sudan have an elaborate vocabulary to describe cattle. The Nuer have dozens of names for cattle
because of the cattle's particular histories, economies, and environments.
This kind of
comparison has elicited some linguistic controversy, as with the number of
"Eskimo words for snow".
English speakers can
also elaborate their snow and cattle vocabularies when the need arises.
That is why English
is full of synonyms. Every year atleast 1000 new words join English. If the
speaker uses the native words where they to that area, he can be understood
well.
Eg. British call police and Americans call police as cop.
Initially, in the
infancy phase, vocabulary growth requires no effort. Infants hear words and
mimic them, eventually associating them with objects and actions. This is the listening vocabulary.
The speaking vocabulary follows, as a child's thoughts become more reliant on its
ability to express itself without gestures and mere sounds.
Once the reading
and writing vocabularies are attained – through questions and
education – the anomalies and irregularities of language can be discovered.
In first grade, an
advantaged student (i.e. a literate student) knows about twice as many words as
a disadvantaged student. Generally, this gap does not tighten. This translates
into a wide range of vocabulary size by age five or six, at which time an
English-speaking child will know about 2,500–5,000 words. An average student
learns some 3,000 words per year, or approximately eight words per day.
After leaving school,
vocabulary growth plateaus. People may then expand their vocabularies by
reading, playing word games, participating in vocabulary programs, etc.
Even if we learn a
word, it takes a lot of practice and context connections for us to learn it
well. A rough grouping of words we understand when we hear them encompasses our
"passive" vocabulary, whereas our "active" vocabulary is
made up of words that come to our mind immediately when we have to use them in
a sentence, as we speak. In this case, we often have to come up with a word in
the timeframe of milliseconds, so one has to know it well, often in
combinations with other words in phrases, where it is commonly used.
- An extensive vocabulary aids
expressions and communication
- Vocabulary size has been directly
linked to reading comprehension.
- Linguistic vocabulary is
synonymous with thinking vocabulary
- A person may be judged by others
based on his or her vocabulary
- Every day new new words are
created, or borrowed, we need more vocabulary.
Native speakers'
vocabularies vary widely within a language, and are especially dependent on the
level of the speaker's education. A 1995 study estimated the vocabulary size of
college-educated speakers at about 17,000 word families, and that of first-year
college students (high-school educated) at about 12,000.
Francis and Kucera[10]
studied texts totaling one million words and found that if one knows the words
with the highest frequency, they will quickly know most of the words in a text:
By knowing the 2000
words with the highest frequency, one would know 80% of the words in those
texts. The numbers look even better than this if we want to cover the words we
come across in an informally spoken context. Then the 2000 most common words
would cover 96% of the vocabulary.[11]
These numbers should be encouraging to beginning language learners, especially
because the numbers in the table are for word lemmas and knowing that many word families
would give even higher coverage. But before you start thinking you would learn
a language in no time, think how well you would understand a book in your own
language where every fifth word was blacked-out! We cannot usually guess
meanings from context when that many words are missing.[12]
We need to understand about 95% of a text[13]
in order to gain close to full understanding and it looks like one needs to
know more than 10,000 words for that.
Basic
English vocabulary
For English language
learners. Knowing 2000 English words, one could understand quite a lot of
English, and even read a lot of simple material without problems.
