[wenc]

How about the highest frequency phrases and variations?

As a language learner, I’ve found that high frequency word lists to not be that useful. It’s too atomic of a unit devoid of context. Memorizing word lists don’t lead to speaking a language — but learning phrases often do. Even better is to learn phrases within a context, like a restaurant or a lecture.

LLMs might actually add value. Word frequencies are simply statistical counts, but finding common phrases is a more co more complicated problem — and the LLMs structure (attention) might actually be the solve.

(I actually ask this if ChatGPT 4 today. I ask it to tell me the highest value phrases I should learn if I’m in a restaurant. I also ask it to break down phrases for me, and give me a lesson on conjugations etc.)

[GolDDranks]

Ah, yeah, totally! The whole point of this excercise is to ascend the level of "words" to get to level of "units of meaning". These commonly consist of not single words but phrases.

Also, you are absolutely correct that learning "atomic units" in isolation is not good practice. What I'm thinkin here is to get some tools to collect the data for "what". The "how" of the learning needs to happen in context.