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Can one speak better than understand? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Majka Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic kofoholici.wordpress Joined 4659 days ago 307 posts - 755 votes  Speaks: Czech*, German, English Studies: French Studies: Russian | Message 9 of 186 20 September 2012 at 5:33pm | IP Logged | ||
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Sometimes, understanding has not much to do with the learner's ability, but with the speaker. In the office, we have often contact with native German speakers.
And there is one of them almost nobody can understand. He is speaking in standard German, it has nothing to do with an accent. But he is simply hard to understand - mumbling, his speech is extremely "unreadable" - lot of false starts, changes of direction in middle of sentence etc. And he cannot be bothered (or is unable) to adapt his speech. Usually, after I have a contact with similar speaker, I can "learn" to decode his speech and have never again problems. But with this person, I need every time I meet him few minutes to adapt. The others in the office (with different skills, ranging from low B1 to high B2, perhaps even C1 in the discussed subjects) are simply unable to understand him. I need to interpret all the time, because we would be in the uncomfortable situation that the people could talk to him, but would need me to interpret back. In the last 20 years, I have met about 4 natives with such problem for us non-natives. But people could learn to understand the other 3 - but not this one... In all the years, I have lived through some surprising moments - one college was able to talk with native speakers for an hour on phone, nobody did notice anything suspect, but then he would call me and ask me to find out what did they agree on. It was quite a regular occurrence for a few years. I am sorry to never actually hear him on the phone, till now I cannot imagine how it really went. But he was at least at low B2 level. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6599 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 10 of 186 20 September 2012 at 5:39pm | IP Logged | ||
It's just that a lack of balance between speaking and understanding is natural. Not many are even able to produce super-eloquent speech in their native language, but educated natives generally understand 99,9% of what they encounter. Understanding only as much as you can say yourself is unnatural, and de facto it means that you speak better than you understand. And it's quite hard to do just enough listening in order to develop a good accent but less than is for a good level of listening comprehension. I wouldn't recommend trying to do this XD 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5058 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 11 of 186 20 September 2012 at 6:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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That's a frequent situation.
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| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5432 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 12 of 186 20 September 2012 at 6:22pm | IP Logged | ||
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I wonder if part of the issue here isn't a question of intelligibility. As @Majka has pointed out there are people who mumble, speak very quickly or have voices or accents that are hard to understand. In this case it can be hard to figure out what they are saying. This is much less a case of course with professional voices on the television or in movies.
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| 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 13 of 186 20 September 2012 at 6:26pm | IP Logged | ||
None of this has anything to do with general speaking ability versus general understanding. It's rather irrelevant in the discussion. 1 person has 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 14 of 186 20 September 2012 at 6:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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I would like to clarify a few things. For me, I believe my issues to be partly psychological and partly perhaps due to lack of input, but also partly due to the way I learn and perhaps genetics.
People process things differently and just as some people learn things differently than others, I would say that some people have rather different skillsets when it comes to abilities. Why is it so hard to believe that someone who may not have the same auditory processing skills as another person would not lag behind in audio comprehension? My brother has an auditory processing problem and has since he was born. He can read just fine and now has excellent speaking skills but often has difficulty understanding things when he hears them. Think of it as a kind of "auditory dyslexia" if you will. I have several native speaking German friends who all comment on my good accent, my decent grammar and the ease with which I can speak. However, I have the toughest time putting together what they say to me. Even with phrases that I know the meaning of the words, I can still have difficulty processing through my head before the next wave of words come at me. Like I said, some of it is psychological (perhaps "stage fright" of some kind) but I believe some of it to just be the way that I process things. I find I use words that I know just fine when they leave my mouth but when they come back to me I struggle to identify them. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| stifa Triglot Senior Member Norway lang-8.com/448715 Joined 4875 days ago 629 posts - 813 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, EnglishC2, German Studies: Japanese, Spanish | Message 15 of 186 20 September 2012 at 6:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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That's at least not the case with me and English... Just arrived in Bath and my
speaking sucks though I can read and listen rather well. (C1 level according to my IELTS 7.5 score) I think that people who say they speak better than they understand just mean that they can understand everything they say, yet being unable to understand what they hear. I suck at explaining stuff, but that's the kind of thought that striked me reading through this thread.. Edited by stifa on 20 September 2012 at 6:40pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6599 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 16 of 186 20 September 2012 at 6:40pm | IP Logged | ||
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The worst is when you just process too slowly, and while you ask "what?" you actually start to understand :D :/
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