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Narrative Speech vs Spontaneous Speech | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4536 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes  Studies: German | Message 9 of 21 28 January 2015 at 2:09pm | IP Logged | |||||
I think that's an interesting theoretical construction of how conscious/unconscious processes interact in the brain, but I am not sure if it's true. It's certainly true for certain motor processes. When I learnt to touch-type it was a very conscious activity, that over time became unconscious and automatic, to the extent that now if you asked me where a certain key was I would either have to look at the keyboard or move my finger to find it. The same thing happened when I learned to ride a bicycle. The extent that this is true for language learning seems more of an open question to me. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7208 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 10 of 21 28 January 2015 at 6:19pm | IP Logged | |||||
Which I why I think your resistance to FSI is unfortunate. The German course doesn't have the same reputation as the Spanish and French courses, but ... 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6600 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 11 of 21 28 January 2015 at 9:14pm | IP Logged | |||||
There's nothing inherently more difficult about listening. Many just don't do it enough. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5229 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 12 of 21 28 January 2015 at 9:51pm | IP Logged | |||||
As per the OP's definition I think 'narrative' in the context of this thread needs no further initial definition than 'non-spontaneous', while 'spontaneous' would simply be the stuff people say to each other without too much time to think about it. This would obviously imply that spontaneous speech undergoes very little 'editing' (i.e. review and correction) if any at all, and this marks an important starting point that I think is common to all languages and all speakers. I'll quote Robert J. Sawyer (the SF writer) about this ("ON WRITING" by Robert J. Sawyer - Speaking of Dialogue, and I think his essays on writing can be very interesting for us language enthusiasts even if he doesn't seem to speak any language other than English):
But there's also the educated/elaborate kind of spontaneous speech, in which people actually try to focus on communication and the exchange of ideas rather than the other functions language has. Is this kind of speech really different from its 'narrative' counterpart? Is the (spontaneous) speech in a conversation about some scientific documentary going to be very different from that (non-spontaneous) on the documentary itself? I don't think so. I don't think this difference (or lack thereof) depends much on the language used either. Since both 'elaborate' and 'normal' kinds of spontaneous speech rely on a huge amount of automatisms, I'd say the primary source of variation between them, while still within the spontaneous category, is their different balance between transmission and exchange of information that can be done via pure language, and intermixing with the other stuff: acknowledging and reacting to the interlocutor's presence, emotions and whatnot. This, in turn, makes 'normal' speech naturally less focused and predictable (not to mention the lack of many 'international words' and the like that Iversen and others have mentioned), which results in its being generally harder to follow, but that's it. Different wording and a long roundabout to come to similar conclusions I guess. But why is 'spontaneous', hard-to-follow speech notably absent from Spanish TV in spots where it could be possible? You're not seeing a linguistic pattern, but a policy, and one I appreciate. I mean, we all should be aware that spontaneous speech can be difficult to follow even in our native languages: we all have 'reality' programs and talk shows. The question is, do we really want to have it that way, every time? I certainly don't, as inconvenient as it may be for 'advanced' language learning. As much as I prefer watching films in the original when I understand the language, because of so many horrible translations in the dubbing, I'd certainly like most film makers not to be so keen on 'realistic' audio or 'spontaneous sounding' speech which increases my chances of missing on something. Any good storytelling should be clear cut on what the audience is supposed to hear/understand or not, and I appreciate any efforts to make that happen, just like I would expect a novel to have ellipsis in its text where appropriate instead of having pages blurred here and there. A friend's wife won't read subtitles nor speaks any foreign languages so they only watch Spanish films or dubbed ones. The interesting part is, she has come to hate the Spanish film industry and lists as her no. 1 reason that "audio sucks, it's so difficult to hear/understand what they say in modern films", yet she is a native. She is in the opposite situation of those who dislike dubbing because it sounds 'unnatural' -- well, at least it is crisp and clear! As for making the transition from clear to 'unclear' speech, I would say it's pretty much analogous to going from grammatically complete sentences to natural phrases. The first necessary thing is to understand how language (pronunciation) breaks down and so why it is admissible to leave certain bits out or merge certain others in apparently ungodly ways -- and of course, why those little 'harmless' dropping out operations we all do in our L1 are different from the analogous ones we'll need to do (and expect) in L2. From there, it is just another task of habit and automation. Easier said than done, I know, but it's not a completely unfathomable, unknown path. Edited by mrwarper on 28 January 2015 at 9:54pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| robarb Nonaglot Senior Member United States languagenpluson Joined 5062 days ago 361 posts - 921 votes Speaks: Portuguese, English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, French Studies: Mandarin, Danish, Russian, Norwegian, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Greek, Latin, Nepali, Modern Hebrew | Message 13 of 21 29 January 2015 at 5:51am | IP Logged | |||||
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Regarding "educated" spontaneous speech: Even in serious discussion about science or other educated topics,
spontaneous speech is full of false starts and ungrammatical phrases. There might be less of this in an interview or Q&A session, but in free-flowing discussion it's certainly there. Some "spontaneous" speech in recorded media, however, is edited to minimize disfluencies. I think rodrigoau is setting the bar a little higher than is reasonable. Many of the situations he describes are spontaneous speech, in that they're unrehearsed and contain disfluencies and/or slang--for example, talk shows or conversing with natives. The level where he describes trouble--speech that is not only spontaneous but also extremely colloquial and familiar--really is hard to understand. In fact, most native speakers probably have some trouble with it. Is it really that easy to understand when siblings, or teenagers who go to the same school, who are from a different region, talk to each other in your native language? They have a lot of common ground that you don't, so they naturally abbreviate and change their language. If you married one of those people, they'd probably eventually start talking to you in a way that you could understand, while native speakers would have difficulty! That's why no one goes on TV or with strangers or with foreigners mumbling this ultra-familiar style of speech. People wouldn't reliably understand it, even if they had the same native language. If you can understand all speech in the media, plus the speech that natives naturally use to talk to you, you're good enough to be a functional native. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 4050 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch | Message 14 of 21 29 January 2015 at 10:52am | IP Logged | |||||
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Academic speech is easier than spontaneous speech, where the context is less clear, the
speech either and loads of neologisms are introduced and you can only count on your ability to understand the context. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4668 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 15 of 21 29 January 2015 at 2:11pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I don't have any plans to live in (for example) France, so there would hardly be a point in subjecting myself to hours of reality TV just so I could boast about understanding every little morsel of the slangiest styles of street speech. If my performance lags a bit in that domain, it's hardly the end of the world. I improve plenty by sticking to things that actually interest me, even if they are less "natural."
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| rodrigoau Triglot Newbie Australia Joined 3637 days ago 19 posts - 52 votes Speaks: Macedonian*, English, Spanish Studies: Italian, Turkish | Message 16 of 21 30 January 2015 at 9:34am | IP Logged | |||||
No, I'm not talking about some obscure street jargon. But if you understand the news 100% every time and then watch a reality TV-show and your understanding falls as low as 30 or 40%, you have a problem. Your language learning is failing you generally speaking. It depends on what your goals are, of course. And that can easily happen to you with Spanish, because the gap is extreme between the carefully constructed language of the news and documentaries and the way a very large number of people (not all) speak in every day life. It's not only a question of vocabulary but the way the language is pronounced. Anyone who is at advanced level in Spanish and has tried to watch even a single indie Spanish movie knows exactly what I am talking about. I can watch the news, an RTVE tv series or even one of those Mexican or Colombian telenovelas, and I swear I feel like there is NOTHING left for me to learn in Spanish - I understand it 100%. Then I go to watch an indie movie or a reality tv-show and I feel almost like I've wasted so many years only to be at a level where I can't understand the MAJORITY of what is being said. Basically I feel like a failure with no prospects for any progress. That's how EXTREME the gap in Spanish is between the formal and spontaneous speech. Everyone studying this language should be aware of that. As I said, I don't find this gap nearly as extreme with some other languages that I know (certainly not with a number of Slavic languages that I understand well and not with Italian). I don't know what it is like with French, but I hear all the time people have great difficulties understanding spoken French. Edited by rodrigoau on 30 January 2015 at 9:48am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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