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Narrative Speech vs Spontaneous Speech | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| schoenewaelder Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5563 days ago 759 posts - 1197 votes  Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 1 of 21 24 January 2015 at 5:01pm | IP Logged | ||
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This is something that has been buzzing around in my head for years, and I've been
meaning to try and nail down some concrete ideas about it, but it's all still a bit vague. Anyway, it seems to me there be a qualitative rather than just quantitative step, that makes progression in listening comprehension beyond a certain point very difficult. There may be better terms to describe them, but by narrative speech I basically mean that you think (or read) what you are going to say before you say it, and in spontaneous speech, you basically speak without consciously deciding beforehand (or maybe even being aware of) what you are going to say. Spontaneous speech wiill usually be faster, less clearly enunciated, contain more colloquialisms and be less grammatically correct So narrative speech would be: Audiobooks (or any storytelling) Documentary narration TV Newsreaders and Moderators/Presenters (School, Uni etc) Lectureres or teachers Formal debates Spontaneous speech would be: Animated conversation Animated TV debates Of course, much speech would alternate between the two components. A quiet, deliberate, thoughtful conversation would probably be mostly narrative, but an argument or bantering would be spontaneous. Some films, such as melodramas would be mainly narrative, while action films would have a lot of spontaneous speech. Although I guess it would also depend on the actors. Dubbed films might tend more toward narrative than the original. I haven't really thought it all through, but I suspect to some extent, that it is only possible to understand some spontaneous speech if you know the language well enough to be able to guess (or anticipate) what the other person is saying, which probably means being able to actually speak at a similar level yourself and may not be possible without immersion or at least regular practice with native interlocuteurs. Edited by schoenewaelder on 24 January 2015 at 5:02pm 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| holly heels Groupie United States Joined 3889 days ago 47 posts - 107 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 2 of 21 24 January 2015 at 11:45pm | IP Logged | ||
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One of the myths of language learning IMO is that mastery of the narrative or academic language is almost unattainable but even a casual learner can acquire spontaneous speech and comprehension of banter almost effortlessly.
But that hasn't been my experience. Before I started studying Mandarin, a woman said I could become fluent in the colloquial Mandarin, but I would never be able to discuss politics, etc. But more academic subjects like politics or economics or history, when discussed in a conventional or narrative format, usually adhere to fixed grammatical rules and have been much less challenging for me than spontaneous speech. It's the difference between hearing "I haven't done anything", or "I ain't done diddly squat"--it's doubtful that the second example would be found in any English textbooks but is automatically understood by all native speakers, including uneducated ones. But it goes way beyond just slang--narrative speech is more rhythmic and uniform, and spontaneous speech is often slurred or just blurted out. Cultural familiarity is also assumed. The language you hear at a business meeting or at a bar may be totally different but equally important, but native speakers are not making a conscious effort to transition between the two, so this is an issue mainly for more serious language learners who may have a severe deficit in the comprehension of both. I am constantly aware of the difference between narrative and spontaneous speech and I try daily to push the outer limits of my understanding by avoiding academic subjects on TV and gravitating toward more high velocity entertainment that may include game shows, celebrity gossip shows and gangster movies, which are much better tests of my comprehension level than a dry discussion on air travel safety. 11 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6706 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 3 of 21 25 January 2015 at 11:57am | IP Logged | ||
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I agree with holly-heels: in many respects it is easier to deal with the kind of language where many of the words are international, the rest are in your dictionary and you can trust your grammar. But the word 'narrative' may be misleading because it mostly is used about literature. Schoenewaelder's question really has two dimensions: 1) written against spoken language and 2) premeditated language against spontaneous expression.
As I see it, you can actually be fairly spontaneous even when you write in a language. You are slower, yes, and you have time to think about things in the middle of a sentence, yes, but you also know that you can make corrections later (almost all my messages carry the sinister "edited by Iversen" below them*) so you don't have to be too fuzzy about errors. In contrast I tend to plan my utterances much more when I speak - and especially when I speak one of my weaker languages. * this one too: I had first written "omninous", then corrected it to "ominous" and finally went for "sinister" (and corrected "corected" to corrected") Edited by Iversen on 25 January 2015 at 11:59am 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| schoenewaelder Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5563 days ago 759 posts - 1197 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 4 of 21 26 January 2015 at 1:41pm | IP Logged | ||
Do you think that listening practice alone is helping? Another reason for it being so hard to understand, is that it is impossible to find materials of the the "your level + 5%" type, that makes learning through comprehensible input possible. Everything is at least "my level +100%" 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| schoenewaelder Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5563 days ago 759 posts - 1197 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 5 of 21 26 January 2015 at 1:51pm | IP Logged | ||
It's really the listening comprehension aspect that I was thinking of, although the speaking bit is interesting from an academic point of view of course. For me at least, it is definitely possible to say things(in English, and to a lesser extent in other languages) where I am almost totally unawre of what I am saying until after I have said it. Some of the usual language circuitry must be getting bypassed. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4536 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 6 of 21 26 January 2015 at 4:04pm | IP Logged | ||
I thought this spontaneous "unconscious" speech was the norm. I think more deliberate, thought out speech is actually the type of communication that requires additional language circuitry. I have always thought this was a quasi-argument towards an input-style way of learning, since speech itself seems to be largely mediated by non-conscious areas of the brain. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6706 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 7 of 21 26 January 2015 at 5:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think that the more deliberate, thought out speech is the type of communication that requires LESS language circuitry. The spontaneous "unconscious" speech may be the norm for the native speakers and the advanced learners, but it takes time to automatize those processes.
I have never seen this as an argument against a mainly input-style way of learning, since reading and listening in my opinion to a large extent are trained by using conscious areas of the brain to pump data down into the abyss of the unconscious. The only trouble I have with the extreme input-lovers is that they sometimes believe that all this goes better without help from factual knowledge about a language, and I get that knowledge from grammars and dictionaries as well as from my own observations. And at some point there will be so much stuff down there in the underworld that it can function with little interference by my consciousness, but I would prefer never totally to loose control over what I say. Edited by Iversen on 27 January 2015 at 4:09pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| rodrigoau Triglot Newbie Australia Joined 3637 days ago 19 posts - 52 votes Speaks: Macedonian*, English, Spanish Studies: Italian, Turkish | Message 8 of 21 28 January 2015 at 12:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think the gap between narrative vs spontaneous also depends on the language. I find
this gap to be EXTREME in Spanish. My focus has always been Spanish from Spain so I won't comment on the American varieties, although it's similar. While I understand formal speech (e.g. news, dubbed movies and tv-series) around 100% and I am extremely comfortable with it, almost as comfortable as with my native language - even when it comes from very challenging dialects such as Andalusian Spanish and even when very complex topics are discussed, my understanding of people talking spontaneously diminishes greatly - depending on the accent, register, level of education of the speaker etc, to the point where I may not be able to understand anything at all at times. It's strange and frustrating - it's like hearing two different languages that don't have anything in common. I have watched hundreds of movies in Spanish (native Spanish in addition to dubbed), and I'm sure this has helped a lot but I'm still not there, not even after six years of active study. Dubbed movies/series are easy, as well as the type of series produced by RTVE. Independent movies on the other hand - that's the real test for my listening skills. It's similar when I'm with people - when they are talking to me, I feel they adapt the way they speak (although they say they don't when I ask them - I guess it's not a conscious process for them). When they talk between themselves, I can easily get lost at times, especially if they are younger than 18. Sometimes I think it's a gap extremely hard to bridge, sometimes I wonder if it is possible at all. Spanish is really, really difficult in this respect not only because of the large lower registers vocabulary (which can be learned) but because of the way it is pronounced (or not pronounced to be more accurate). It's a completely different story in Italian. There are many reasons for it - first and foremost, a very large percentage of Italians do not speak (standard) Italian at home even today (this used to be the truth for the majority until very recently according to their Census), so when they do speak Italian they make an effort, almost like a person who speaks a second language rather than a native. This means their sentences are more likely to be well-thought, properly constructed and their speech well-enunciated. The other thing is Italian is very clearly pronounced (standard Italian and most dialects) and the language has a LARGE number of sounds (consonants as well as vowels) that do not exist in Spanish (I can probably count at least a dozen immediately). So, Spanish is constructed with fewer sounds and words collide easily with each other, making confusion easy and comprehension difficult. Italian has a much more complex phonetic system with a much larger number of sounds that makes confusion between words less likely. This is why most people find with Spanish that it's hard to hear it. When you see transcribed what you're hearing, most people don't have a hard time either with the vocabulary or with the grammar. Bridging this gap is difficult if you are not in the country whose language you study There are not many resources apart from independent movies with subtitles in the same target language. E.g. listening to RTVE even 24 hours per day doesn't help as most of the language you'll hear is constructed rather than spontaneous (news, tv-debates - although this could be hard, documentaries, tv-series - yes, even their tv-series sound very artificial and constructed - no one speaks like that in real life). I even listen to the radio a lot, but even programs where people call in are not much helpful because when someone calls to talk on the radio, they care about how they speak and they do not sound at all similar to the way they will speak later to their friend or family once they hang up the phone. Besides, I'm not convinced listening helps that much beyond a certain point. When you don't understand something you hear, you don't understand it and that's it, unless you have it transcribed. Now that everything is available in electronic format, it's easy to rewind. When I don't understand something, I've tried rewinding even 10 times. It doesn't help - I would still understand it 0% the tenth time. So progress it's difficult unless you have a native speaker around that you can bother constantly - rewind whatever you are hearing and ask them to tell you what has been said. That's almost never possible in practice. I have always believed that we need a separate forum for listening comprehension only. That type of thing doesn't exist on the Internet. There is wordreference where you can ask whatever you wish about grammar and vocabulary, but not listening comprehension questions which is clearly the most important and the most difficult thing when learning a language. What I am having in mind - and have suggested this before - is a forum where each target language will have a section (just like wordreference) and where you can post links to videos and ask questions about particular parts you have a problem with. I've tried this before on a different Spanish learning forum and it's extremely helpful. E.g. please see below youtube (or whatever RTVE etc) link. Could you please scroll to 1:20 and tell me what is being said from 1:20 to 1:36. Most people who are studying the language are happy to test themselves and try, and then there are always kind native speakers who will clear any doubt remaining. There are sometimes situations when even native speaker will tell you that they had a very hard time understanding at first, which will put you at ease sometimes about your abilities. And knowing how difficult understanding spontaneous speech is, I would be happy to volunteer 5 or 10 minutes of my time daily and help transcribe whatever short audio/video people who learn my native language would ask. This would in time create a huge listening comprehension library so that anyone can log in and see what's being asked, click on the links and learn. There would be very little narrative language there as it is easily understood by anyone who is upper- intermediate and above. So, it would be mostly a resource for mastering spontaneous speech comprehension that we all struggle with. It's strange that such site doesn't exist, even with thousands and thousands of community sites dedicated to learning languages. I think this site should create such forum. I hope the site owner is paying attention, because it would drive huge traffic to this site. Edited by rodrigoau on 28 January 2015 at 1:16pm 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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