Vocabulary Acquisition Quotes

To be functionally fluent in a language, for instance, in most cases you need about 1,200 words. To acquire a total of vocabulary words, if you really train someone well they can acquire 200 to 300 words a day, which means that in a week they can acquire the vocabulary necessary to speak a language.

It was mostly through pop culture, through hip-hop, through Dungeons & Dragons and comic books that I acquired much of my vocabulary.

I never really thought I had an extensive vocabulary like that, and I'm not an avid reader. I didn't read a lot growing up - at all.

We learn words by rote, but not their meaning; that must be paid for with our life-blood, and printed in the subtle fibres of our nerves.

When I'm studying English I love to watch 'Friends' or 'Nikita.'

Words play an enormous part in our lives and are therefore deserving of the closest study.

So many problems are solved simply by knowing enough verbs.

My parents told me I'd point to a bed of flowers and say 'Pink. Pretty,' before I knew any other words.

I've got a 12-year-old grandson who, when he was 3 years old, before he could say many other words, could name the different kinds of dinosaurs.

One cannot explain words without making incursions into the sciences themselves, as is evident from dictionaries; and, conversely, one cannot present a science without at the same time defining its terms.

At about a year and a half, the child discovers another fact, and that is that each thing has its own name.

Words fascinate me. They always have. For me, browsing in a dictionary is like being turned loose in a bank.

All last year we tried to teach him (Fernando Valenzuela) English, and the only word he learned was million.

You know it’s them books what make you talk funny.

I like to listen to French radio; I'm trying to learn French.

At one year of age the child says his first intentional wordhis babbling has a purpose, and this intention is a proof of conscious intelligenceHe becomes ever more aware that language refers to his surroundings, and his wish to master it consciously becomes also greater.Subconsciously and unaided, he strains himself to learn, and this effort makes his success all the more astonishing.

There are a lot of words that I knew first as a reader, and I never put the pieces together in my brain. The word segue I thought was pronounced "seeg," I think until I went to college, which is horribly embarrassing.

Once the grammar has been learned, writing is simply talking on paper and in time learning what not to say.

Words aren't made — they grow,' said Anne.

He should have known better because, early in his learnings under his brother Mahmoud, he had discovered that long human words (the longer the better) were easy, unmistakable, and rarely changed their meanings, but short words were slippery, unpredictable changing their meanings without any pattern. Or so he seemed to grok. Short human words were never like a short Martian word - such as grok which forever meant exactly the same thing. Short human words were like trying to lift water with a knife. And this had been a very short word.

Russian is such a tough and complex language that I am happy enough to understand everything and read most things pretty well, but, without constant practice, my speech is not what I wish it was, and I would sooner write in crayon than write a letter in Russian.

Vocabulary is a matter of word-building as well as word-using.

If we are always reading aloud something that is more difficult than children can read themselves then when they come to that book later, or books like that, they will be able to read them - which is why even a fifth grade teacher, even a tenth grade teacher, should still be reading to children aloud. There is always something that is too intractable for kids to read on their own.

I took Latin and Spanish. I can speak a very small amount of Spanish, but Latin has sort of gone away! Unless I was joining the Catholic Church, there would be no need to learn Latin.

I is reading it hundreds of times,' the BFG said. 'And I is still reading it and teaching new words to myself and how to write them. It is the most scrumdiddlyumptious story.' Sophie took the book out of his hand. 'Nicholas Nickleby,' she read aloud. 'By Dahl's Chickens,' the BFG said.