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Can one speak better than understand? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Peregrinus Senior Member United States Joined 4436 days ago 149 posts - 273 votes  Speaks: English* | Message 25 of 186 21 September 2012 at 5:29am | IP Logged | ||
I think it is more likely that he understands subjunctive tenses of verbs he actually knows, but that the problem is actually not knowing many verbs past the most common ones, i.e. lack of vocabulary. This situation could easily result from relying on a non-audio grammar heavy course that taught very little vocabulary and failing to followup with intensive vocabulary study. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4709 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 26 of 186 21 September 2012 at 5:57am | IP Logged | ||
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Someone mentioned something like this earlier in the thread, but I think this may have
something to do with, "tolerance for ambiguity." I know that I have a very high tolerance for ambiguity. I tend to say that I understand something if I understand any of it. This keeps me struggling in a situation where I'm over my head. When the telenovela is done, if I got the gist of it, I generally say that I understood it, and I call it a success, and watch it again the next day. Another learner might have the same level of comprehension, and consider the experience a failure, because they missed some of it. Is the glass half empty or half full? steve 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| petteri Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4876 days ago 117 posts - 208 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: German, Spanish | Message 27 of 186 21 September 2012 at 8:49am | IP Logged | ||
I think that the toughness of romance verbs could depend on the background of the learner. Romance verbs could be easier for ie. Russians and Finns than for English natives due to the fact that inflected word forms are much more common in Russian and Finnish than in English. As well almost all serious Russian and Finnish self-learners who successfully tackle Spanish have already achieved good competence on English language. On the other hand learning Spanish vocabulary is much harder for ie. Russians and Finns than for English-speaking learners. So few cognates. Edited by petteri on 21 September 2012 at 8:50am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| petteri Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4876 days ago 117 posts - 208 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: German, Spanish | Message 28 of 186 21 September 2012 at 9:19am | IP Logged | ||
Good point. When I studied languages at school I always scored high points in reading and listening comprehension. Not because I knew the words, but because I have intuitive and highly operational ability to solve problems. Now I have learned Spanish for over a year and I have developed different tendencies. I get distracted if I do not understand something. That tendency even affects my English comprehension unless I turn it off. Swedish is a different animal for me. I do not know all the words, but meanings just flow through my brain. There is a vocabulary barrier above which everything blurs, but below that barrier I feel extremely comfortable. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5476 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 29 of 186 21 September 2012 at 1:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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When speaking, you control the vocabulary used, the rate of speech and the accent. When
listening, you control none of these. So there are some situations where listening is a much bigger challenge than speaking. A few examples I've encountered: - There are some words I know perfectly well from written French, and which I can use in my own speech, but which I'm extremely unlikely to recognize in full-speed native speech. A perfect example is oser, which I've known for years, but which took me 3 seasons of Buffy to hear reliably. (It's short and relatively rare.) Other common examples include cognates with lots of silent letters, where I sometimes 'see' the word in my mind and pronounce it aloud, even though I'd have great trouble recognizing the sounds if somebody else used them in fast speech. - When doing Skype exchanges with people from Quebec—especially with people from outside the big cities—I sometimes have really frustrating conversations where I can speak at B2 but only understand around A2. I'll be speaking relatively quickly, about moderately complicated topics, and my exchange partner will be speaking very slowly, and will sometimes resort to typing. At B2, I can't reliably compensate for unfamiliar accents and major differences in grammar during a 30 minute conversation. As you can see, both of these situations involve subtly different forms of French (written vs spoken, Europe vs Quebec). Maybe this wouldn't happen as easily in a language with one dialect and a completely phonetic orthography. 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4651 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 30 of 186 21 September 2012 at 2:01pm | IP Logged | ||
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I recognise emk's problem. I have no problem speaking standard German to anybody but oh
my God if they lapse into Bavarian or Swiss German or whatnot, it might as well be Japanese to me. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5374 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 31 of 186 21 September 2012 at 2:06pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm think I'm beginning to understand how some people can say that they speak better than they can understand. If you actively know little but you know this little very well, you could truthfully say that you speak well. Let's say you have a limited knowledge of the verb system, but what you do know you know well. However, the little that you know does not allow you to understand what you hear. In that sense, one could technically say, "I can speak (very little) well, but I can hardly understand anything. Therefore I speak better than I can understand."
I guess the real question is how we define "speaking well." This, of course, is how all those language courses can claim to teach you how to speak in two days, 10 days, etc. So, after you've finished your Rosetta Stone, Michel Thomas or Pimsleur, you can honestly say that you speak well. The problem, as we all know, is that you usually can't do anything in the real world because that "well" does not mean that you are functional with natives. It simply means that you've learned the given material well. I take a broader view of language skills. If someone says to me that they speak a language well, I expect that person to be able to have a decent conversation. If someone tells me that they speak French well but can't understand two words of what I say, I tend to believe that the person does not speak French that well after all. I guess it's all a question of perspective. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6541 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 32 of 186 21 September 2012 at 2:21pm | IP Logged | ||
As for the verbs, you don't need to know everything to speak. You do need to know it all passively though, otherwise you'll be able to say everything you want to say, but won't understand what a typical native speaker says. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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