know 9000 words still use dictionary

AHMET   Mon Sep 08, 2008 9:59 pm GMT
Hi, I know more than 9000 words in english 1000 of them are everyday words, 2000 of them are terms etc. But I still use dictionary while reading simple webpages, while reading simple books. Im not yet speaking about the documents full of special terms, though I know more terms, even more than any native speaker. Yes. That`s true. I dont say that I dont understand anything. The problem is that there are always one or maximum three words that I dont know. Why? How much words do I have to learn? My TOEFL iBT is 118. I think it is a wrong idea to tell the learners that if you know 3000 words thats enough OK.
For example: trivival vocabulary questions. This is the first time I see the word trivival. ANOTHER EXAMPLE: I know the word "to pay" and the word "itself" But I will never find a sentence in any dictionary like: The printer pays for itself if it prints 3000 pages. Of course When I reach the end of the sentence without thinking I understand what it wants to say.
MY QUESTION AND PROBLEM IS: I have no reading and understanding problem. Thats ok. Through time I see learn and improve. I want to create that sentence myself. "The printer pays for itself if it prints 3000 pages."
But it is impossible and incredible to create such a sentence without having seen it anywhere. WHY? WHATS THE PROBLEM?
Guest   Mon Sep 08, 2008 10:03 pm GMT
Que?
Estel   Tue Sep 09, 2008 9:25 am GMT
I was lost. Anyone care to translate that? Or simplify it to an understandable level for me.
Guest   Tue Sep 09, 2008 11:23 am GMT
<<The problem is that there are always one or maximum three words that I dont know. Why? How much words do I have to learn?>>

Apparently, 9000 words isn't enough for reading web pages effortlessly.

I guess you'll just have to keep on learning words, until you don't need to consult the dictionary to get through each sentence.
Guest   Tue Sep 09, 2008 11:30 am GMT
<<WHY? WHATS THE PROBLEM? >>

I guess "paying for itself" is an idiom, and its meaing is not the same as you'd get by combining meanings of the individual words. All languages have this problem, and most of them seem to be far worse than English in this regard.
Johnny   Tue Sep 09, 2008 1:28 pm GMT
<<I know more than 9000 words in english>>
<<How much words do I have to learn?>>

How did you count them? It's too complicated, it depends how you count them... if you consider "happy" and "happily" as two words or not, "effort" and "effortless", prefixes and suffixes, etc. And then what is part of your active vocabulary and what part of your passive vocabulary...
I consider a word as a "dictionary entry", and I guess you would need to know around 20,000 entries to be at an excellent native level, but that's just my estimate. Of course with much less words (10,000 I guess, but still just an estimate) you would already be at an unbelievable level as a non-native speaker, provided you know how to use them idiomatically and your grammar is good.
And remember native speakers' comprehension is not 100%. It might be 99.9, I don't know... but you don't need to know everything perfectly, because probably no one can.

<<But it is impossible and incredible to create such a sentence without having seen it anywhere. WHY? WHATS THE PROBLEM?>>

It just takes a lot of time. Keep reading and learning, and you'll improve in a few years. Learn in context, and you'll notice some expressions will be absorbed by your mind.
Guest   Tue Sep 09, 2008 2:33 pm GMT
<< though I know more terms, even more than any native speaker.>>

No you don't. Average native speakers (adults) generally have 30,000 + word vocabularies. You have a long way to go.

9,000 words, is the vocabulary of a 7-8 year old child.


<<"The printer pays for itself if it prints 3000 pages."
But it is impossible and incredible to create such a sentence without having seen it anywhere. WHY? WHATS THE PROBLEM?>>


English is highly idiomatic. You just have to learn all the peculiar expressions, that don't make literal sense. Just keep reading; you're doing the right thing.
Guest   Tue Sep 09, 2008 3:27 pm GMT
"I consider a word as a "dictionary entry", and I guess you would need to know around 20,000 entries to be at an excellent native level, but that's just my estimate. Of course with much less words (10,000 I guess, but still just an estimate) you would already be at an unbelievable level as a non-native speaker, provided you know how to use them idiomatically and your grammar is good."

The first post gives a good indication of why that might be such an accurate approach.

Take this sentence:

"But it is impossible and incredible to create such a sentence without having seen it anywhere. WHY? WHATS THE PROBLEM? "

Incredible has the primary meaning according to the dictionary of "1. so extraordinary as to seem impossible: incredible speed. " Yet if you just assumed the word credible with the latin negative prefix in- to meant 'non-credible' then that would be a totally different meaning, so you can't always assume prefixed/suffixed word will always have the expected meaning.
sam   Tue Sep 09, 2008 3:28 pm GMT
here is a well read paper with the numbers, which could be an indication that you are right where you should be in regards to comprehension:

http://www.fltr.ucl.ac.be/fltr/germ/etan/bibs/vocab/cup.html
Guest   Tue Sep 09, 2008 6:46 pm GMT
I know about 5000 words and expressions, I mean phrasal verbs, idioms and so on, and I'm more or less like you when it comes to doing difficult readings, but that 3000 or even 1000 words thing is not complete bullshit. I got a great part of the English I know from movies and TV series, as well as the news, so I can understand a lot of spoken English.

Actually I've noticed that whether I can understand something or not depends a lot on the kind of stuff I face. For example:

- Spoken English in movies or dialogs in novels: I can manage
- News and clever talking about politics, current affairs, science or abstract concepts: I have no trouble
- Descriptions in novels or plays in the radio: I get completely lost.
- Narrations: not much better.

So, the claim of methods like the 100 words is that they can teach you to understand basic, everyday spoken English in a short period of time, just focusing on what is important for that. It's normal if just with that you can't understand an article in the New York Times, so you shouldn't blame this on them. Anyway, I've never done one of those courses.