English Listening - Learning Useful Vocabulary
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Welcome to the Listening Time Podcast. Hey everybody, this is Connor, and you're listening to episode 199 of the Listening Time Podcast.

We're almost at episode 200. That's awesome. I'm very happy that I've reached this number of episodes. And to me, that just means that there's more content out there to help English learners practice their listening. So that's great. Thank you all for helping me reach this number of episodes.

That's super exciting. So in today's episode, I want to talk about learning useful vocabulary. Not just learning vocabulary, but learning useful vocabulary. This is something that has been on my mind a lot recently, and it's something that I've been thinking about as I've been

modifying, adapting my language learning plan and my language learning philosophy, you could say. I think I already mentioned this. I'm going to talk more about that in detail.

A few months or four to six months maybe, I'm applying some new techniques into my own language learning and I'm testing them out and I'm going to talk about this once I've done this for a certain amount of time. So, like I said, learning useful vocabulary has been one of my goals with this.

this change in philosophy that I've had. So, uh, I want to talk a little bit about that today, and this is going to be useful for all of you. You're all English learners. And I think that, uh, this is something that will help you focus your energy on, uh,

learning the right things, let's say. So I know you'll enjoy this episode, and I want to remind you to check out my advanced podcast episodes if these normal episodes have gotten a little bit easy for you. You don't really need the transcript. Well, it's time to check out those advanced episodes and try those out. So if you're interested in those, the link to sign up is down below. That's

patreon.com slash listening time. And you also have the link down below for my US Conversations podcast.

in which I talk to people from all over the United States about a lot of different topics. It's really fun, it's really educational, and it's great practice for your listening. So that link is also down below. That's patreon.com slash usconversations. And as always, please give this podcast a five-star rating and write a review if you can. All right, let's get started.

Are your ears ready? You know what time it is. It's listening time. All right, let's talk about learning useful vocabulary. Why am I talking about useful vocabulary and not just learning vocabulary? Well, learning vocabulary in general is great.

Great. This is one of the basic pillars of language learning, meaning one of the basic parts of the foundation of language learning. It's one of the most important things. So learning vocabulary in general is great. Learning any word is great. However, learning useful words is

is even better than just learning any words. So let me give you a number here. The Oxford English Dictionary, which is one of the most famous English dictionaries that exists, has about 170,000 current words in it. I think that's up to date. Maybe by the time you listen to this episode,

That number might be different, but I think it's around 170,000 English words. And so that is the number of current words, the words that are used today. However, the total number of words, which includes like technical words, really specific technical jargon,

and also obsolete terms, meaning terms that we no longer use in our current English, if we add those in with the current words, there are more than a million words. That is a ton. That's a lot. So let's just take the number of current words, 170,000.

That's still a lot if you think about it. And let me give you another number. The average native English speaker knows between 20,000 and 35,000 words. Most people probably know, um, more, uh, on the upper, uh, range of that, maybe 30,000 or something. Uh, I think, okay, don't, um,

take my words as absolute truth, but that's what I've seen. So we can safely estimate that between 20,000 and maybe 35,000, maybe 40,000 words for really educated people, that is what the average native speaker knows, the average native English speaker.

How about English learners? How about people that have learned English as a second language? They're not native speakers. They didn't speak this language throughout their childhood. How about people that have learned English and are fluent in English?

Well, from my research, I've seen numbers anywhere from 3,000 to 10,000 words. I'm guessing that this just depends on your definition of fluent. Some people have a definition of fluent that's

a little bit more flexible than other people's definition of fluent. So depending on your definition of fluent, whether to you that means that you can have conversations pretty easily but you still have a lot of mistakes, or if that means that you can have conversations about anything with very few mistakes,

Depending on your definition of fluent, someone might know 3,000 to upwards of 10,000.

Upwards of means like above this number. So that's a pretty big range. But let's take the high number there. Let's say 10,000 words. If someone knows 10,000 words, that's a lot compared to other English learners. Well, that's still...

much fewer than a native speaker who might know 30,000 words, maybe three times the amount and

We're talking about a native speaker versus an English learner who knows a lot of words compared to other English learners. And 10,000 is a lot because I was listening to this French YouTuber. She is an English teacher, but not a native teacher. So she learned English as a foreign language. And

And she said that she took a test to see how many words she knew, and it was around 9,000 or 10,000. And she's a teacher, and she claims to speak English very well and can talk about any subject without any problem. So she's obviously a very advanced English speaker, and she knows around 9,000 or 10,000 words.

So that will give you some perspective when I talk about these numbers. The average just normal English learner who's not an English teacher but who's fluent, maybe they know 7,000 words or something like that versus a native speaker who knows 100.

30,000 words, 35,000 words, even, um, that's a big difference. Right. And let me just say that people measure, uh, these statistics differently. Like, uh, with, uh, some measurements, they'll count all of the conjugations of a word as being like a new word, like walk walks, uh, like those are two different words, uh,

For some people, but for other people, they would count those as just one word. So you might find different numbers depending on the measurements people are using. But why am I talking about these numbers? What does this all mean? Well, let me give you some points that I wrote down here. Number one.

So if these numbers are correct, the numbers that I gave you, this means that most native speakers know less than 25% of the current words that exist. So of all the words that are current, not including obsolete terms, terms we don't use anymore, or really technical terms, native speakers usually know less

fewer than one quarter, less than one quarter of the words in existence. And these are native speakers. So imagine how many words there are that are just not useful in everyday life. That's a lot of words. Okay. We're looking at like 130,000 words or something that are

native speakers might not even know in their own language. Okay. So that is an interesting number, but also it doesn't seem like that to a native speaker. Like if you were to tell a native English speaker, like, Hey, uh, did you know that, you know, less than 25% of all current English words, uh,

the person you say that to probably wouldn't think that that's accurate. Like what? It almost seems like that means when I read something, I would only understand 25% or less of what I'm reading in English. That's ridiculous. That's insane, right? But,

The key here to understand is that this is accurate and because it's accurate, it shows that the vast majority of words in the English language are actually not useful at all in our everyday lives. And it's a strange thing to think that we have many, many, many thousands of words that

We don't even need that. A native speaker doesn't ever need it throughout their whole life. Right. So the point that I'm trying to get at here is that there are tons of words that are not important. OK, the vast majority of words are almost never used in English. OK, so this means that a fluent language,

non-native speaker, so let's say you, let's say you reach a level of fluency in English, you can talk about most subjects with a relatively small number of words, right? If there are 170,000 words in

Right.

But with those words, you can talk about most subjects that you need to talk about, except for maybe super technical subjects, right? And that's good news because, uh, if you had to learn 170,000 words, that would be super hard. That would be almost impossible because a native speaker, uh,

doesn't even know 25% of those words. So the good news is you only need like 3% or something of those words, 4%, I don't know, I didn't do the math, but you probably only need 3% or so of the current words in order to speak about most subjects. That's really cool, right? So

This means that, uh, number one, you can do pretty well with, uh, uh,

a relatively small number of words, but also you shouldn't stress too much when you encounter a lot of unknown words when you're reading, especially because books tend to have a lot of high level vocabulary and even movies sometimes can have very particular vocabulary because there might be a scene that

in that movie that has words that you'll never come across normally because movies are filled with really strange and fantastic scenes that aren't really relevant to your everyday life.

So if someone is robbing a bank in a movie and they're talking about opening the vault of the bank and they're talking about the logistics of getting the bank vault open, then

there are probably going to be some words that are completely useless for you in your everyday life. And you're going to hear them in the movie during that scene. And it's going to be frustrating because these are extremely specific words that are unrelated to any situation that you will ever have in your life. But you can't really understand what they're saying because they're using these words differently.

And that gives English learners and language learners in general a sense of frustration. Like, oh, there are so many words that I don't know. But you know what? I honestly think that it's not super important to be able to understand all of those words if you're not really coming across those words correctly.

frequently at all. Like you hear the word once a year or something. I mean, yeah, it's great to learn that word. I'm not saying to not learn it, but if you hear a word, let's just say once a year or once every two years, uh,

it might not be worth the effort to really try to retain that word. It might be just easier to relearn that word every time you come across it, which is just once a year or once every two years. I'm just trying to be logical here and be practical. I know we want to learn every word and we want to understand every word in the movie that we're watching. And again,

I think that that's a really cool goal to have, and I don't want to discourage you from that. What I want to do is encourage those of you who feel discouraged when you're watching movies that have scenes with very specific language that you've never heard before, specifically because it's just not useful for you. So I hope you get my point with that.

I don't want you to get the wrong idea and say, oh, Connor said that it doesn't matter if I don't understand words in movies. I'll just not look them up and continue watching. Obviously, you should use your discretion to learn words that are useful, pertinent, words that will help you, or just words that you want to be able to understand because they do show up most.

more than once a year or whatever. So that's a point that I want you to understand. Another point is that when it comes to your own speech, your own speaking,

you should focus most on the words that you need for your own sentences. Okay? This is a very simple idea, but it's something that we can forget sometimes. And that is that you should be able to comprehend, to understand words

more than you can say. And I would even say it might be a significant difference. I know a lot of people talk about closing the gap between the words that you know in terms of understanding them and the words that you can say in your own speech. And I agree 100%. I love that idea. However, I do think that there will remain

pretty sizable, meaning a pretty big difference between the language you comprehend and the language you use. For example, in English, there are tons of words, tons of phrases, plenty of idioms and slang and things like that that I understand but I don't use in my own speech.

And if that's true for a native speaker, now think of a non-native speaker. Let's just transfer that over to language learning. If you're learning English right now, which you are, then...

there will be a significant difference, most likely, between what you can understand and what you can say. And yes, I agree that we want to close that gap or at least increase the amount of words that we can say.

However, that gap might not actually close a whole lot if you are constantly learning new words that you can understand. Like those words, that number of words,

should constantly increase as well as the number of words you can use. So if both of those are increasing, then maybe the gap between those two numbers won't decrease as much as you think, right? And that's okay because as long as the number of words that you can use in your own speech is increasing, that's good.

Right. So you should be able to comprehend more than you can say simply because you're not going to use all of those words that you understand. We have a very distinct style of speaking. Each of us is different. We prefer talking in different ways. We have our own style of speaking. And so we're not going to use all the words that we can comprehend.

And so we don't necessarily need to focus on taking those words and using them in our speech. If you already have your own preferred way of saying something, then

Yeah, it's good to learn to use another type of structure or sentence, but you don't need to spend all of your effort and energy on trying to do that because it would probably be better to find your other gaps of things that you don't even know how to say at all, but you want to say that you should focus more energy on filling in those gaps.

and learning a phrase that you can use to say that thing, to get that idea across, right? Does that make sense? So you're focusing a little more energy on just learning how to say things that you don't know how to say, but you want or need to say, rather than just learning seven different ways of saying the same idea, right?

Right. Both are good, but I think the first is more important. That's just my opinion. And one other point that I wanted to make, this is kind of a personal point.

I have already achieved a level of fluency in Spanish. So I've done this with a foreign language. And what I've noticed is that I can use my knowledge of Spanish as a reference point for what words and phrases are

I need to learn in French. Let me explain this. So sometimes I'll think that I need to learn this particular phrase in French and I'll think, yeah, I should definitely learn that. That'll be useful for me.

And then I say, wait, let me think about if I can say that exact phrase in Spanish. And many times I'm surprised to realize that I don't know how to say that in Spanish. And it's a little strange to me because I've been speaking Spanish for over a decade, right? For maybe 11 years or so, more than that now, I think. And

Obviously, I'm fluent in Spanish. I've lived in Mexico for many years. I did my whole life there, and yet I don't know how to say this particular phrase that I thought I needed in French. And what that shows me is that that phrase isn't as useful as I thought it was. If that

hasn't been something that I've needed to say throughout my 11 years of speaking Spanish and my six years of living in Mexico, my eight years of being married to a Mexican Spanish speaker, plus another three years of dating her. If I have never needed to use that phrase,

then that probably means that there's another way of saying that idea that I probably already know. And I've been able to express that idea

in a different way. And so I don't need to learn every phrase that sounds useful or interesting. We can get this impression sometimes that we need all of these particular phrases when in fact we already have a way of expressing that. And that's not to say that I just shouldn't learn that phrase in French. But what that does show me is that this need

Maybe isn't a phrase that should be high on my priority list in terms of what I should learn to use in my own speech. So I probably already have another way of saying that. And when I think about it, like when I think about my Spanish and I think, well, how would I say that then?

If I don't know how to say this exact phrase, how would I convey this idea? Meaning, how would I express this idea? And I can usually think of another phrase, another structure that gets the same point across. And I say, oh, I guess that's why I don't know how to say this exact phrase because I don't need it.

I express the same idea. I convey this same idea by saying this other phrase. And then I realize, oh yeah, I already know how to say that same thing in French in this other way. And so this is one advantage of already having learned a language because when you've learned one foreign language and then you start learning another one,

that first foreign language becomes a reference point for you to know what's important to learn, what's not important, what phrases you've needed, what you haven't needed. It's actually a really cool advantage that you have. And so this is one of the reasons, I think, why as you learn more foreign languages, it gets easier in that sense.

you have these reference points that kind of point you in the right direction. Like, hey, don't pay too much attention to that. Or, hey, this is a big priority. Learn this. That's one thing I've noticed when I examine my knowledge of Spanish and I use that to help me choose what to focus on in French. So that's just something that I wanted to add here because it shows that even phrases that might seem...

and important, they might not be as useful or important as you think because you have another way of saying it. And again, I think it's good to learn multiple ways of saying things. This makes your speech richer and you sound more...

like a native probably. However, that might not be the top priority if you have all of these other gaps in your speech where you just don't know how to say the idea at all. And you have to learn at least one phrase to be able to express that idea. For me right now, filling in that gap is what...

takes priority over just increasing the amount of synonyms I know for different words and learning all these different phrases that mean the same thing. I want to learn those, but I'm placing more priority on the useful phrase, the phrase that I really need that I don't have.

Okay, so hopefully you got the right idea from everything that I said here and you don't take any of these points out of context, right? Overall, you should learn as much vocabulary as you can, but you should have a perspective that is a little more nuanced, a little more detailed.

And know that there are certain words, certain phrases that are more useful for you to prioritize than other words and other phrases. And you shouldn't freak out when books and certain movies have these unknown words that you just can't understand and you feel like you...

aren't progressing because there are so many words that you don't know. You should...

Take a deep breath and understand that many words are actually not as useful and don't show up as frequently as you might think. Okay? All right. Well, hopefully this was helpful for you all, and hopefully it was good practice for your listening. I want to remind you to try out my advanced podcast episodes in which I speak at normal speed. I speak fast.

Check those out. The link is down below for that. And the link for my U.S. Conversations podcast is also down below. That's a really great podcast that will help you practice listening to more than one person talking. This is an essential skill that you'll need. So use that podcast to help you develop that skill. That link is down below.

And as always, please give this podcast a five-star rating and write a review if you can. All right. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. And I'll talk to you on the next episode of Listening Time.