- Sometimes, speaking English is really easy.
Other times, yeah, not so much.
Why?
(whooshing)
Hello, I'm Julian Northbrook here today with another
Two Minute Tip.
Two minutes on the timer.
(snapping) Go.
Sometimes, comes a question,
speaking English is really easy.
Other times, it's really difficult.
Why?
This is a good question.
It is one with no simple answer, however,
because it really depends on a lot of factors.
There are a range of reasons why you may find
one conversation pretty straight forward and pretty easy
but another one quite difficult.
For example, is it a topic you are familiar with
versus a topic you are very unfamiliar with?
Different topics use slightly different words,
phrases, and expressions.
Well, if one of them has more
that you are very, very familiar with
and another has lots that you're not,
well, you're gonna struggle to understand
and speak about that thing.
More, it also depends to a certain extent
with whom you are speaking.
Some people are gonna be easier for you to talk to, again,
and it really comes down to familiarity.
Whereas some people may use speaking styles
that you are less familiar with
and therefore are gonna find it harder to understand
and to interact with that person.
There's also something that we call cognitive load,
which is one of the five elements of fluency.
You see, we tend to think of fluency as being a single thing
but actually, that's not true.
Fluency is a set of multiple processes
all working together in the human mind.
There are five of them and one of them
is the concept of cognitive load.
Cognitive load actually isn't really specific to language,
rather is more to do with what's actually happening
in our brain.
Simply put, if a lot of things are happening
all at once in your head,
your brain's power will be spread out across several things
and you're gonna find it much, much harder
to process any one of them.
Well, if you're in a conversation
where you are very comfortable
and very familiar with a person,
you're gonna be very relaxed
and that is gonna free up the brain's RAM, as it were,
for you to just engage in the conversation.
If, on the other hand, you are panicking
or don't feel so confident or you are getting flustered
because you're speaking with someone you don't know,
it's a high pressure situation,
and oh my god, things are getting really hard,
you're gonna find it much, much harder
to speak in that situation because suddenly,
your brain is trying to fight a lot of different fires
and it's not able to allocate enough RAM to your speaking.
Again, this is a somewhat simplistic answer
to quite a complex question
and there may be many other reasons
why you can find one conversation easy
but another more difficult.
But those are what I would say
are the three of the biggest most common of them.
Hope that answers your question.
If you have a question of your own,
dear video watcher, leave it in the comments
and if you're lucky, I may answer it
in a future Two Minute Tip.
This is me, Julian Northbrook,
signing out from another
(chuckles) Two Minute Tip.
If you found this useful,
give it a nice big ol' thumbs up.
If you hated it, give it a thumbs up anyway
and I'll see you, my friend, in the next one.
Thank you and bye bye.
(lively rock music)