To learn or not to learn, that is the question? | General discussion | Forum

I think the easiest answer to this question is, you only need to know the words you need to know.  Ok, that's not very helpful, so I will try to explain.  While I have never seen Benny in action, so to speak, it seems to me he enters a situation knowing the bare minimum of what he needs to know to get by and then adds to his vocabulary by simply asking questions as he goes.  This is how we learned to speak as children.  As a native English speaker, I don't find myself randomly searching English dictionary's for words I don't know just for the sake of knowing them.  Sure, when I come across a word I don't know, I look it up, and now that word is part of my vocabulary, but clearly it wasn't needed before then.  I think trying to build an arsenal of words in advance will only hurt you.  First, you need to know what situation you will be speaking Arabic.  For me, I often practice Spanish at work, so knowing how to ask how everyone's day has gone and how their families are is most useful, while knowing the politics of their native countries may trail far behind.  As a learning tool, I often watch Spanish telenovelas to pick up phrases, so being able to discuss silly television is useful for me as well.  If you're going to be using Arabic to talk with high ranking government officials, television vocab may not go over as well as political vocab.  It all has to be taken out of context.  I suppose the day may come when I need to know how to say some very complex technical jargon or something associated with the politics of the day, but I don't think conjuring up hypothetical situations you may encounter and then trying to learn all the words you may use is going to work for you.  Think about words you do use in everyday conversation and go from there.  Good luck.

Here is the thing…your list of words you know, depends on the situation.  Look at your native tounge.  I would bet that if you were to be tested on your vocabulary for reading writing speaking and listening, they would be differen't.  Of course there is overlap, but your vocabulary is differen't depening on which skill you are using.  So I don't think it is a problem for you to know words in listening, but don't use in speaking. 

One way to improve your speaking skill is that you record yourself speaking in your native tounge in a regular everyday situation, talking with a friend or just talk to yourself about something important.  Then go back listen to it and translate it to how you would say it in your Target language.  You know these are important words and phrases to know, because you know you already used it. 

Anyway my point is that I can read and hear words that much higher level than my speaking and writing ability, in English, Thai, and Spanish.  Thats ok.  Don't fret about not learning something.  or skipping something.  Just use your Target language how you would your native language, and the Vocabulary will come.

I'll go with them, start only with the very shallow basics, the ones you'd need if you wanted to spend your holidays there, things like "museum", "gasoline", "liter", long numbers… Even if you won't go to the place or if it's a dead or a planned language, it's a base, something essential.

So, after you're done with that, start learning things you'd need to have a conversation, things like family members, deep slang…

Then, you start learning what you need to read a simple book, like not casual grammar and deep vocabulary. Reading simple books is a good way to catch them haha

Afterwards, you just start learning very specific things like obsolete grammar and specific/technical vocabulary.

That's how I do it, at least.