Do you know the difference between active and passive?
You could mean one of two things when you say you know a word or phrase.If someone says the word to you, you know what it means.This is not active knowledge.The second way of knowing is that you can recall it.This knowledge is active.
This isn't related to active or passive voice.There is a large, important difference between how you store your memory of a word and how it is used later.
You can listen and understand with passive vocabulary.Hearing the words prompt you to recall their meaning.You are being told to recall it.It is passive vocabulary.
When the situation requires it, active vocabulary is vocabulary that you can recall and use at will.You are using the word and retrieving it from your memory.
One of our teachers had an analogy for this.He showed us the note and asked us what it was.Everyone recognised it.We were asked to describe the note in detail.
Few of us could come up with much.A couple of people remembered that Charles Darwin is on the back of it, and we knew it had the queer old dean dear old Queen on it.
We didn't come up with anything even though we saw £10 notes regularly.There is a difference between active and passive knowledge.Is it possible to simply recognise something or to actually reproduce it from memory?
Good for you if you find this distinction clear.I don't remember acknowledging the distinction until the teacher pointed it out.I didn't act on it when learning, but I was vaguely aware of it before that.
It is important in the early stages of learning a language to have it.To propel you to higher levels, you need to cram in vocabulary as quickly as possible as a beginner.It is easy to get a lot of passive vocabulary when you neglect the active side of things.
It is easy to forget about the difference when you are learning words.We often think that we know a word because we don't have a problem understanding it when other people use it.How often do you find yourself talking about words that you can't remember quickly?
It's not that you can't remember the word.You might remember it with a couple of seconds.It is often too long in the middle of a conversation.You can't directly recall the word, it's in there.It is passive vocabulary because it needs prompting to come out.
The Chinese word for dance floor is.I get an image of a dance floor if I see or hear it.If I wanted to talk about a dance floor, I would most likely say the place where people dance.
Being able to get your point across on the spot is an important ability for language learners.When your ultimate goal is to speak like a native, you will probably want to get to the point where an apt word does just roll off your tongue.