What Speakers Do Part 2 of 4
This is a four part video series looking at what native speakers naturally do and how
this knowledge can assist language learners.
The first video considered the challenge of spontaneity in conversation.
This video will discuss the strategies of chaining language together, self-monitoring,
conceptualization and automaticity.
Chaining & Self-Monitoring Native speakers do not feel the need to respond
in perfect, whole sentences every time.
Again, this is a way that speaking differs from writing.
If a communicator responds in complete, grammatically correct sentences all the time, then the conversation
feels very formal and becomes difficult to follow.
Granted, in situations where formality is required, maybe that is what needed.
Why is it more difficult to follow complete sentence conversations?
Because much of what is said is redundant.
By repeating the redundancies, we make it very difficult for the listener to catch the
important information.
Our brain cannot handle treating all incoming information with equal significance.
A good speaker will naturally not repeat what has already been said – unless, of course,
they want to emphasize the importance of it.
But also, native speakers tend to use an “add-on,” or chaining, strategy.
Again, unlike writing where sentences use clauses and conjunctions to combine thoughts
into one long sentence that has been thought out, much speaking does not think further
ahead than a clause or two.
When a speaker comes to the end of a clause, if they have more they want to say, they will
add it on.
This add-on strategy then means that most conversations do not proceed smoothly with
transitions and connections.
Information ends up being chunked, or chained, together.
Non-native speakers can benefit from knowing this so they don’t feel the pressure to
speak in perfect sentences.
If they understand that native speakers will add a clause onto a phrase onto a clause as
they think of the words they want, it can relieve speaking stress.
The other aspect that results in “bumpy” conversation is that native speakers will
self-monitor their speech so that they make corrections immediately.
They may mispronounce a word, but will pause and then state the word correctly continuing
on with their thought.
Or, they may back up, like I just did, and reword longer phrases.
While I have labeled these under self-monitoring, the truth is that some language repairs occur
due to response from the listener, not always from just self correction.
Again, this freedom to correct is an important concept that needs to be communicated to language
learners.
They should feel the freedom to make modifications after they have articulated, articulate means
speak, articulate a thought, and not just before the articulation.
Conceptualization & Formulation Another trick of native speakers is that they
actually conceive of a story in their head before talking.
To the listener, it may sound spontaneous, but in reality, the speaker has consciously,
or subconsciously, decided what type of story it is, why they want to tell it, and how they
want to organize it.
By doing so, they can identify the genre of the discourse and apply appropriate organization
and pre-determined phrases that match the genre.
This will be discussed more in the next video series about what speakers know.
Automaticity That leads to a third trick of native speakers.
They are able to fill in parts of the script ahead of time by considering the topic of
what they want to say as well as how they want to organize, or formulate, the information.
I think this aspect is the most important for language instructors because it means
that we can assist learners by teaching them chunks of language that they can memorize
ahead of time.
Memorizing language has had a bad reputation in language learning since the Audio Lingual
Method got rejected by most, but in this case, we should realize that native speakers “memorize,”
or script, chunks of language to use in specific genre discourses.
By using scripted language, it frees our brain to configure the next part of our message.
If it is useful to native speakers, consider how much more helpful it could be to non-native
speakers.
Besides memorizing chunks of language, native speakers tend to repeat some stories over
and over.
This offers the advantage of not just memorizing language based upon the genre, but remembering
whole sentences or groups of sentences that have been used in the story before, allows
the brain to work on the parts that cannot be scripted as well as how to figure out the
pronunciation.
In summary, native speakers chain language together in small chunks, adding on in phrases
and clauses.
They know it is natural to make a mistake so they self-monitor and repair their mistakes
immediately.
They make a plan for what they are going to say in their had before saying it.
And, they use memorization and scripted language chunks to automate parts of what is said.
The next video will discuss the importance of pausing in communication.