Vocabulary - active, passive

What is active and passive vocabulary
What is more important: active stock or passive stock?
How to improve your active and passive vocabulary - Tips for improving your active and passive vocabulary

If you are studying foreign languages, then you have probably encountered situations when you easily recognize and translate certain words in the text or speech of your interlocutor, but cannot remember and use them yourself when speaking or writing. This is because the words and phrases we learn by heart become part of either our active or passive vocabulary. In this article we will look at what passive and active vocabulary , how to replenish them , and also how to translate words from the first to the second.

Vocabulary and its importance in personality development

The wealth of vocabulary directly indicates the level of intellectual development of a person. A person with a rich vocabulary is perceived by society as a bright, intelligent, perhaps gifted and extraordinary person, capable of competently formulating his ideas, thoughts and conveying them to his interlocutor.

People with a rich vocabulary are more successful in business, move up the career ladder faster, and both colleagues and management are more willing to listen to them. Such people are highly likely to have interesting, exciting and creative work, and significant achievements.

The higher the level of development of verbal intelligence, the more likely it is that a person will succeed in both business and personal life.

Passive vocabulary

Words that a person recognizes by ear, but does not use in everyday conversation, for example, archaisms, historicisms that have ceased to be necessary, as well as neologisms that have not yet entered into everyday use, belong to passive vocabulary.

The volume of a person’s passive vocabulary is much larger than the active one, but these are not constant values; their values are constantly changing depending on external factors. If necessary, a person can retrieve words from the passive vocabulary from the depths of his memory, but they are not used in daily communication.

Repetition

A football player who knows many feints will quickly learn a new one when, as a beginner, he practices throwing the ball for three weeks. Upgrading your vocabulary is like a snowball: the more you know, the easier it is to increase it.

The number of words needed is subjective. But interval cyclic repetition will definitely help you. You need to repeat the learned words at different intervals between visits. For example, you found five phrasal verbs that you will need in correspondence with business partners - repeat them an hour after the first acquaintance, the next day, then a couple more, a week, a month, three months later. Each time you increase the interval, you will give yourself the opportunity to strain to remember these words. Also, thanks to the constant repetition of different sets of words in parallel, memory, without your conscious participation, will layer their meanings on top of each other, intertwining already well-learned words with new ones.

Active vocabulary

The active vocabulary consists of familiar words that are constantly used in written and oral communication. This also includes words that a person hears every day and can use every day in his speech without thinking about their meaning.

It is the active vocabulary that people use when communicating with loved ones, friends, colleagues, and when writing posts on social networks and SMS. The average vocabulary of an adult reaches four thousand words.

If a person strives to learn, reads a lot and learns new things, his total vocabulary expands to ten thousand words, but most of them will be classified as passive vocabulary. The vocabulary of professional scholars amounts to up to fifty thousand words. At the same time, the bulk of words will be used by these people to read specialized literature.

Representatives of different professions, as well as people belonging to different strata of society, have different vocabulary sizes. When changing the region of residence or type of activity, a person becomes acquainted with a huge number of new concepts and meanings and includes them in active use.

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Individual dictionary

Any language is extremely diverse, and knowing a language does not mean knowing all its words and expressions . This is simply impossible, because even in your native language, sometimes you are amazed at how much is still unknown, and this is not to mention specific names and terms relating to certain professions, names of birds, flowers, medical terms, and so on.

To know a language means to have a certain vocabulary sufficient for communication in different situations. This is a purely individual thing, which depends on the needs of each individual person, but also, of course, on different levels.

You can know a few words, but use them masterfully and create complex lexical structures. And even with a huge vocabulary, you may not be able to convey your thoughts. If we talk about dry quantities, here are the approximate requirements for how many words a person should know at a certain level of English proficiency:

Starter – 500–600 words
Elementary – 1000–1300 words
Pre-Intermediate – 1400–1800 words
Intermediate – 2000–2500 words
Upper-Intermediate – 3000–4000 words
Advanced – 4000–7000 words
Proficiency – 7000–12000 words

And one more interesting point. Ten thousand words is not twice as good as five thousand. And two thousand is not twice as good as one. After all, words are not equal in value. Some are used more often, while others less often. After learning a few thousand words, you will already understand up to 80% of what is written in English texts. And beyond 10 thousand words, each word still expands your vocabulary, but not as much as words in the first thousand. We wrote more about this in the article 1000 most important English words .

Methods, methods and techniques for expanding vocabulary

In everyday everyday communication, a person uses a limited number of words. As a result, his vocabulary becomes impoverished, his speech loses expressiveness. There are a number of methods aimed at expanding the vocabulary.

Compiling a list of words used in daily communication. To do this, you need to take an explanatory dictionary and write down the maximum number of synonyms for each word. The more synonyms a person knows and uses, the richer and brighter his speech looks. It is necessary to try to use new synonyms in daily communication until they become part of everyday life and replenish the active vocabulary.
Reading unusual literature. For example, translated or specialized. Reading interesting paragraphs, rich in new words, out loud also brings great benefits.
An excellent way to expand your vocabulary is to retell what you read as close to the text as possible. When retelling, you need to use vocabulary taken directly from the text, gradually translating it into an active vocabulary.
Working with explanatory dictionaries is of great importance, including finding unfamiliar words, studying their meanings and possible contexts.
To memorize new words and unfamiliar terms, you can use the sticker method. Note sheets can be placed in plain sight to quickly get used to them and introduce them into everyday or professional communication.
Using new words every day. They must be recorded in a notepad or electronic notebook. There you can write down beautiful expressions and well-formulated thoughts.
Writing and rewriting. It is advisable to write as much as possible. You can rewrite interesting modern articles, or works of art familiar from childhood.
It is interesting and useful to enrich your vocabulary by solving crossword puzzles published by reputable publishers. Crosswords can get you interested in an unfamiliar word and make you open a dictionary.
Listening to audiobooks. It is convenient to use audiobooks on the road or traveling by car. For business people who do not have time to read books on paper, audiobooks will be an excellent way to develop their ability to communicate successfully.
Communication with diverse people. A wide circle of contacts significantly enriches your vocabulary.
Learning foreign languages. By studying any foreign language, the vocabulary is enriched on several fronts at once. There is constant memory training, establishing connections between words of the native and foreign languages.

To improve your communication skills, you need to communicate continuously. The more often a person uses new words in communication, the sooner they will replenish his active vocabulary. If you use methods of expanding and enriching the vocabulary in a complex, you can make communication more expressive and, as a result, more effective.

What's more important

Both dictionaries are extremely important for effective communication, since the active dictionary allows you to correctly express your thoughts, and the passive one allows you to understand the statements of other people without much difficulty, develop a semantic guess, even when communicating on completely new, unfamiliar topics.

However, it is always worth maintaining a natural balance. That is, to work efficiently both in receiving and delivering information. You may perfectly understand everything that is said to you, but it will be very difficult to say anything. This situation will arise if you do not pay enough attention to speaking practice.

Either way, there is no point in deliberately developing any particular skill. When learning new vocabulary, words will sort themselves. Some will seem interesting to you, some will be useful, and some you will simply put aside as unnecessary in the passive stock of the English language.

Game as a means of vocabulary development

In my opinion, the most effective way to fill your vocabulary with new words is games. It's always interesting and exciting. You don’t even notice how you gain new knowledge.

There are a lot of word games being developed these days. These are: games “Words from Words”, “Anagrams” and many others.

Today I offer another game with words. You have to solve anagrams consisting of 4-7 letters. I'm sure you'll really like the game.

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Load

Don't be afraid to start with one word a day, or better yet a phrase - for example, a catchphrase from your favorite TV series.

If you start by memorizing phrases rather than individual words, you will make it much easier for you to understand grammar. Then gradually increase the load to the point that will allow you to repeat words in your free time and spend no more than half an hour a day on it. How? Write examples with words, read them aloud, revise them, or listen to them again.

Let's imagine that you really want to use three phrasal verbs because you hear them in every other episode of Friends. For example, these:

to break up - break up

to hang out - spend time with someone

to hit on someone - try to get to know someone

Make a beautiful sign, write a translation with transcription. Develop a web - add to these words what you already know to give new phrases context of memorization and connect them to your vocabulary:

to break up with a boyfriend

to hang out with friends

to hit on a girl in the bar

These phrases are much easier to repeat - they can be imagined, drawn, visualized. Continue in this manner until you have a complete sentence in which you have one new word/phrase, and the rest are your active stock. I call it the “web of words.”

to break up with a boyfriend → to break up with a boyfriend because he is bad → I broke up with a boyfriend because he is a bad person → I broke up with my boyfriend because he is not a good person…

Active and passive vocabulary: what they are and how to replenish them