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Rate of Speech And Clarity DOES Matter | ||
Tags: Speaking | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Itadakimasu Diglot Newbie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4187 days ago 31 posts - 82 votes  Speaks: English*, Japanese | Message 25 of 40 16 August 2013 at 12:22am | IP Logged | ||
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Yes I agree. It's also pretty interesting how knowing those top 1,000-2,000 words can significantly slow the language down.
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| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5428 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 26 of 40 17 August 2013 at 5:12am | IP Logged | ||
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I may be wrong - and I will willingly stand corrected - but it seems to me that the word fluency has not been
mentioned hitherto in this thread. But flow of accurate speech or fluency is what we are really talking about here. The problem, of course, is that most people use fluency as a synonym for general proficiency. Now that I've gotten that off my chest, I can move on to the subject at hand. Like @jeffers I don't see any evidence here that output has a bad rap anywhere, including here at HTLAL. Quite the contrary, output or productive performance is at the very center of the whole idea of speaking a language. That's why we say speaking and not just knowing a language. I don't see what the fuss is about. Various people have mentioned good ideas for achieving fluency. As for "knowing those top 1,00-2,000 words can significantly slow the language down." are we to assume that not knowing those top words is conducive to fluency? I don't get it. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5007 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 27 of 40 17 August 2013 at 5:25am | IP Logged | ||
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Well, I agree the most frequent 2000 words won't help much with this. What does help is listening a lot to the language and getting used to the speed. Than one can hope to join in.
I think the value of the first thousand or two words is often overrated. I think knowing the top 10 000 words can help as you are much more likely not to stumble on vocab, both what you hear and what you want to say. After all, your first thousand words (most of which will be the most frequent ones) will include 7 days of the week, 12 months, some numerals, pronouns etc. A thousand words is really not that much. One of the points behind the thread seems to be that sounding confident and competent. Whether you are proficient is another thing, even though I'd say even more important. But people in general tend to care more about what you seem to be than what you are. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| BaronBill Triglot Senior Member United States HowToLanguages.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4687 days ago 335 posts - 594 votes Speaks: English*, French, German Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Persian | Message 28 of 40 17 August 2013 at 6:46am | IP Logged | ||
I believe what he meant by "slowing the language down" was not literally slowing the language output, but knowing those words can cause the language input to be more accessible and not as jumbled or fast as it would be without it. Kind of the equivalent of when they say in sports that the "game slows down" for the superstar athletes, meaning they can handle the speed of the game better than many of the other players. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5428 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 29 of 40 17 August 2013 at 6:54am | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks @BaronBill. I think your interpretation is right.
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| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5764 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 30 of 40 17 August 2013 at 7:01am | IP Logged | ||
The question is whether it's always advisable to come across as rather confident and competent, especially when you quickly find yourself out of your depth. In a situation where everyone pretends to be more skillful than they actually are, the only thing left to do is to save face. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5428 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 31 of 40 17 August 2013 at 7:11am | IP Logged | ||
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Although I certainly agree that you should have a passive knowledge of as many words as possible, I also believe
that one can achieve fluency with a tiny number of words. Fluency is not correlated with the number of words; it is correlated with the ability to recall and properly use a given number of words. You could have a fast-paced conversation with friends for an hour and use less than 500 words. I did that just this evening. It was just mindless banter and telling of jokes over a few drinks. I doubt that any but the most proficient non-native speaker of English could understand many of the jokes that made us roar with laughter. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Itadakimasu Diglot Newbie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4187 days ago 31 posts - 82 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese | Message 32 of 40 17 August 2013 at 11:54am | IP Logged | ||
question. Like he said I was referring to it "slowing down the game" like he said and allowing speech to sound slower. But it was just something me and Cavesa were talking about though, not the point of the thread. To answer your first paragraph, I'm not one of those people who throw the word fluent all over the place. The first thread I made on this site was about my distaste for the word, so trust me I know what your talking about. This thread is about using accuracy and not speaking to slow or fast and that everyone should work on what they sound like; as well as input. That's it. Nothing more nothing less. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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