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Can one speak better than understand? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5432 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes  Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 1 of 186 20 September 2012 at 2:08pm | IP Logged |
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In an other thread, the op stated that they could speak a target language fairly well but could hardly understood more than a couple words of any answer from a native speaker. But this was not limited to conversation with native speakers. He/she could hardly make out words of a television program or a movie. It seems then that this person could speak much better than they could understand.
Within that thread I started a discussion as to whether a language learner could really speak better than they could understand. I took the position--that seemed intuitive to me--that the vast majority of learners find it easier to understand a language (a passive skill) rather than actually speak it (an active skill). Most people say to me, "I can understand somewhat or quite a bit, but I have difficulty speaking." To my great surprise, quite a few people in the thread actually claimed that it's easier to speak than to understand and that they could speak a language well yet they have difficulty understanding native speakers. I know there are issues of accents, slang and unusual vocabulary, but can one really say that one speaks a language well yet is unable to understand something of a television program in the target language? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| hribecek Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5351 days ago 1243 posts - 1458 votes Speaks: English*, Czech, Spanish Studies: Italian, Polish, Slovak, Hungarian, Toki Pona, Russian | Message 2 of 186 20 September 2012 at 3:15pm | IP Logged |
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This is my case in Hungarian. I can't say that I speak it that well (at about an high A2/low B1 level) but my understanding is a lot worse than my speaking ability. I think it's because I speak to myself a lot in Hungarian and so have got used to putting the words together in my own way, but when I hear real Hungarian I miss words that I know due to the speed they're said, the blur of other unknown words they're mixed with and also because I'm not as used to hearing those words as I am to saying them.
Things like word order are also an issue, I can put together my Hungarian sentences with perhaps an English word order but can't catch the sometimes very strange native Hungarian word order. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Peregrinus Senior Member United States Joined 4494 days ago 149 posts - 273 votes Speaks: English* | Message 3 of 186 20 September 2012 at 3:34pm | IP Logged |
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In the other thread I had thought that your point was that the OP was not accurately self-assessing his speaking ability. I still think that is possibly the case despite Serpent thinking he was being modest.
The key question is whether someone who says that they can speak better than they can understand is comparing apples to apples or not. If he/she has the same level of vocabulary knowledge as the people he/she can't understand, then that would be puzzling. But if not at the same level, then the self-assessment is off by quite a bit and explains the apparent counter-intuitive assertion of speaking better than understanding, i.e. he simply cannot talk about as wide a range of topics and to a depth as those he is listening to. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| BaronBill Triglot Senior Member United States HowToLanguages.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4691 days ago 335 posts - 594 votes Speaks: English*, French, German Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Persian | Message 4 of 186 20 September 2012 at 3:45pm | IP Logged |
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I have that issue with German. I can speak about most any topic that I need to without much difficulty. I can read most things fairly easily. My issue is listening comprehension. I can understand most of the vocabulary, but it just doesn't "click" when I hear it.
The thing that gets me is word order of the verbs. With the verbs coming (in most cases) at the end of the sentence, my mind has trouble processing that when I hear it. Due to the nature of verbs, this makes it very difficult to follow a conversation if I can't process the verbs quickly enough. That is not the case when speaking because I am formulating the word order in my head naturally as that is how it is ingrained in my brain. I know it doesn't make much sense as I had the opposite problem in French as a child when I could understand pretty much anything but had trouble speaking until I really got a solid bit of practice in. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Spanky Senior Member Canada Joined 5958 days ago 1021 posts - 1714 votes Studies: French | Message 5 of 186 20 September 2012 at 4:14pm | IP Logged |
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Can one speak better than one can understand? Clearly yes. I have found one such
person (in addition to BaronBill above), from detailed and exhaustive investigation in the field. Just to avoid being coy, this odd specimen is me. I do not say that I stand as a counter-example to the final question in your post above (I do not say that I speak French well) but I am at a stage of learning where I can put sentences together correctly and pronounce them well enough to be readily understood, but still need to strap in tightly for the perilous task of being able to understand what is said back to me, experiencing a dismissal rate of understanding. This is not just an issue of the responding speaker happening to use words I am not yet familiar with; it occurs even where someone says something in language (word choice and pattern) which should be readily familiar to me (ie. if written, I would very easily have been able to understand it). Speaking and listening are different skills sets from each other. I understand this does not make sense to you, but just because you don't understand how it can be so that does not make it to be the case and does not render people like me mistaken in our self-assessments. Scientists and engineers for years could not understand how bumblebees achieved and maintained flight, yet they fly nonetheless (I don't know if this last comment is true or just apocryphal, but I stand by my point nonetheless).** Reading and writing are different skill sets as well, and at least for me they follow the pattern which you indicate you expect in relation to speaking and listening - that is, I can read far more easily than I can write, due to a greater passive than active knowledge (and frankly with French, so many cognates that guessing is easy for reading but not as easy for writing). ** EDIT: nope, the story is just apocryphal, I just googled. Apparently it all turns on bees having reverse-pitch semirotary helicopter blades instead of fixed wings or something like that, which probably does not directly assist here, but as said, I stand by my point. Edited by Spanky on 20 September 2012 at 4:26pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| nonneb Pentaglot Groupie SpainRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4753 days ago 80 posts - 173 votes Speaks: English*, Ancient Greek, Latin, German, Spanish Studies: Mandarin, Hungarian, French | Message 6 of 186 20 September 2012 at 4:36pm | IP Logged |
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Although now I understand better than speak Spanish, during the earlier stages in the process (around the A2 level)
this was not the case. This was primarily due to faulty learning strategies (first foreign language, studied in secondary school, wasn't really interested at the time). The concept of training myself to understand what I was hearing hadn't occurred to me yet, and I could form sentences, but I couldn't understand native speakers saying the same types of sentences I knew how to say. Spanish is the only language in which I've experienced this. I also can't imagine someone's speaking ability going above A2/B1 if they're listening ability is behind their speaking ability, but that's mostly speculation. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5383 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 7 of 186 20 September 2012 at 4:44pm | IP Logged |
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I would tend to agree with you, s_allard. Generally, I'd say anyone claiming to speak better than they understand would either be mistaken about their real ability (may not be understood as well as exptecte) or has seriously neglected input, but then in the latter case, this would also imply that their speaking ability probably isn't as good as they think it is as their foundation for production would be shakey at best. The only other plausible situation would be if a person learned a standard dialect, works mostly with books, and is then faced with a different dialect.
I've sometimes said I found speaking easier than understanding, but that's only because I tend to find speaking easy and because I'm really picky in wanting to understand everything. There is no doubt that I can understand a lot of things I couldn't express. But could I express something that I wouldn't understand? Maybe to a certain degree, but that kind of statement certainly wouldn't hold true when considering the entire language. I find it hard to conceive that a person would know and be able to use a word, yet wouldn't understand it in context. Moreover, anyone is bound to understand words they only know passively, or else words they don't know at all but can guess due to the context. They will inevitably understand structures they are unsure about or get the gist of usages they wouldn't have expected. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5432 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 8 of 186 20 September 2012 at 4:57pm | IP Logged |
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I wonder if this phenomenon of speaking better than understanding isn't something found at the beginner level where just decoding the sounds is challenging. Conceivably, one could be able to make decent sounds but not really understand ordinary speech.
But at higher levels of proficiency I think the ability to understand or at least get the gist of something tends to precede the ability to speak fluently and correctly. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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