An article on the testyourvocab site.
May. 29th, 2013 10:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
conulyhttp://www.economist.com/blogs/johnson/2013/05/vocabulary-size
They now have results!
Interesting thing here. At the end of the article, the author mock-complains that everybody bragged last article about their purported vocabulary size, ignoring the warning that it is "naff" to do so. Definitely his word, I'm pretty sure I only learned it in the last few minutes. One commenter jokingly (?) suggested that maybe they ignored the warning because "naff" isn't in their vocabulary!
It's the sort of comment you see all the time, that a book or movie uses words the commenter "doesn't know". Do people really not teach students to wiggle out the meaning of a word via context anymore? I see that all the time, and I *know* that is a skill we were explicitly taught!
(Then again, we were also explicitly taught that c always and only makes the s sound in front of the letters e, i, and y, and yet if you look up any information about phonics instruction you'll find page after page of people saying they only learned that rule as an adult, and now they're a convert on the subject. I find that a nifty way to sort out who had only whole word instruction as a child. Point is, sometimes people aren't taught basic information when they should be. That's not their fault.)
They now have results!
Interesting thing here. At the end of the article, the author mock-complains that everybody bragged last article about their purported vocabulary size, ignoring the warning that it is "naff" to do so. Definitely his word, I'm pretty sure I only learned it in the last few minutes. One commenter jokingly (?) suggested that maybe they ignored the warning because "naff" isn't in their vocabulary!
It's the sort of comment you see all the time, that a book or movie uses words the commenter "doesn't know". Do people really not teach students to wiggle out the meaning of a word via context anymore? I see that all the time, and I *know* that is a skill we were explicitly taught!
(Then again, we were also explicitly taught that c always and only makes the s sound in front of the letters e, i, and y, and yet if you look up any information about phonics instruction you'll find page after page of people saying they only learned that rule as an adult, and now they're a convert on the subject. I find that a nifty way to sort out who had only whole word instruction as a child. Point is, sometimes people aren't taught basic information when they should be. That's not their fault.)
no subject
Date: 2013-05-30 03:22 pm (UTC)I was also taught to use a dictionary. One of the parents telling me to use a dictionary would then lift it down from the shelf for me, as the Shorter OED is rather heavy when you're only 5 :)
Not sure if "naff" is in there. I'll check tonight.
no subject
Date: 2013-05-30 04:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-30 04:28 pm (UTC)Oh, and I just checked. My hard-copy SOED (25 years old, wedding present) does not contain "naff".
no subject
Date: 2013-05-31 12:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-31 11:30 am (UTC)