I think you’re missing the point. It’s not just memorizing words and collecting them like collecting Pokémon. Paul Nation, the dude that did all this research into vocabulary frequency, notes that memorizing a word involves learning it until you can actually use it and understand it being used. This also involves knowing things like chunks and collocations, words commonly used with one another. This is all stuff you need to know to learn a language anyway, and it’s proven that learning this stuff in order of frequency is much, much, more efficient.
With this post I was trying to argue against that specific kind of collecting mindset I see in students and other language learners at the beginner level.
I probably should have made it clearer that I don't think it's pointless to ever study with frequency in mind. Using things like example sentences, thematic groupings, and scenario or project based learning will also expose learners to frequently used words, chunks, and collocations.
My main point, that I guess I didn't make very well, is that while studying functional language we'll naturally pick up many frequent words and phrases specifically because they appear so frequently. But you're absolutely right that as we progress to intermediate and beyond we'll have to start explicitly studying the frequent words, phrases, and collocations we still haven't encountered naturally.
I think you’re missing the point. It’s not just memorizing words and collecting them like collecting Pokémon. Paul Nation, the dude that did all this research into vocabulary frequency, notes that memorizing a word involves learning it until you can actually use it and understand it being used. This also involves knowing things like chunks and collocations, words commonly used with one another. This is all stuff you need to know to learn a language anyway, and it’s proven that learning this stuff in order of frequency is much, much, more efficient.
With this post I was trying to argue against that specific kind of collecting mindset I see in students and other language learners at the beginner level.
I probably should have made it clearer that I don't think it's pointless to ever study with frequency in mind. Using things like example sentences, thematic groupings, and scenario or project based learning will also expose learners to frequently used words, chunks, and collocations.
My main point, that I guess I didn't make very well, is that while studying functional language we'll naturally pick up many frequent words and phrases specifically because they appear so frequently. But you're absolutely right that as we progress to intermediate and beyond we'll have to start explicitly studying the frequent words, phrases, and collocations we still haven't encountered naturally.