The Doing English Blog Archives — Page 59 of 68

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Language Science | What is Language?

August 18, 2017 , by Dr Julian Northbrook

What is language?

You’d think this would be an easy question to answer. But it’s not. Far from it.

What do language scientists tell us?

Well, In the 1960s Charles F. Hockett came up with a set of features that characterise human language. We say “human language”, because although clearly animals do have language, it’s clearly not the same as human language.

This is a good starting point.

What are these features?

Originally there were 13, but arguably some of the features aren’t actually necessary for language. Speaking and listening are a great example — sign language does a pretty good job of being “language” without speaking or listening. So clearly they aren’t necessary.

In a nutshell, First a language must communicate meaning. Nothing difficult there.

Second the language itself is arbitrary. What we mean by this is the “words” themselves are just symbols. The words “rock” and “ishi” [Japanese] both describe the same thing — but the symbol is different. Neither symbol is better than the other. They’re just different. And totally arbitrary. I could chose to call a rock a “bligbopper” if I wanted, and it would be the same (though nobody else would understand me!). The sounds of language must fit into district categories. These are different between languages — English has about 40 phonemes, Japanese has about 46, some languages have a lot more, some a lot less — but the number of sounds we produce has to be limited. Language must be able to communicate events which are happening away from the speaker in terms of time and location. Monkey’s, for example, communicate information about predators using distinct sounds. But they only do it when the predator is present — they can’t talk about a predator that was there, or one that a friend saw. Humans can. Finally, languages are “generative” in that a limited number of units, whether words, rules, chunks, phrases, expressions or what have you, can be used to create an infinite number of sentences.

Now, this is a start.

It does a great job of describing the features of language.

But if you ask me it doesn’t get to the heart of the question. While it’s great to know what the features are, just like it’s great to know roses are red and grass is green (unless you’re colourblind… then they’re the same), I still don’t really know what language is.

And here in lies my criticism of academia.

Science has to be exactly, precise and objective. But by doing so, it often sacrifices usefulness.

So in the next email I’ll give you my personal definition.

Cheers,

Julian

Master English FAST

Filed Under: chunks, fluent english, how to speak english, native english

How to speak English like a native speaker?

August 13, 2017 , by Dr Julian Northbrook

A very common question: How to speak English like a native speaker?

To answer this, first, we have to ask another question: how do native English speakers actually speak English?

For a long time, questions like…

How do native speakers speak fluently?
Why do they sound so natural?
How do they sound so nativelike?

… really confused linguists.

How to speak English like a native speaker - Small Talk Superhero, Tokyo — Speaking at a recent seminar

I do a lot of public speaking in the form of training seminars and workshops.

And guess what?

These aren’t a walk in the park

Speaking at seminars is extremely tiring — even in my first language (and when I’ve done seminars in my second language, it’s even tougher) I have to speak at length while paying attention to the room. As I’m speaking, I’m also thinking about what I will say next – and occasionally answering questions at the same time.

Simply put, there’s a lot going on in my mind all at once… and even as a native speaker, this makes it tough to speak good English.

So how DO native speakers use their language?

We believed that native speakers spoke using grammar rules vocabulary words to create sentences — like a complex mathematical equation. But the problem is, the brain’s RAM just isn’t this good. We should speak slowly and awkwardly with a lot of mistakes and errors. You see, grammar rules are very, very complicated. And we say a lot very quickly. So we’re having to take those rules, add words to them and make the sentences we need as we go… well, the brain wouldn’t be able to keep up.

Again, we should sound very slow and awkward.

But we don’t.

Spoken English is really, really fluent.

Native speakers use natural English… not grammatical English

But why do some phrases and expression sound more natural in English than others?

Why do we say, “Good morning?” and not, “Pleasant first half of the day”…? Why does, “Julian, your ugly face needs plastic surgery” sound natural, but, “Julian your ugly face needs a plastic operation” sounds weird?

Clearly, to speak good English well just knowing “grammatical” language is not enough. Indeed, many of the things native speakers say actually aren’t even grammatical, but do sound very natural – take “thanks very much”, for example. Nobody would argue that this isn’t good English usage. But it’s not grammatical by traditional standards.

Simply put…

Native speakers speak in CHUNKS.

When we speak a language, we’re actually speaking in chunks. Phrases and expressions – big pieces of language. Native speakers store chunks in memory, and then just pull them out as-is when they speak. There are no rules or individual words – so no computation is necessary.

This is why native English sounds so fluent and natural. It’s why we can speak so fast, and why we speak so naturally.

The problem with English speaking courses

Now, the problem with most traditional English learning is that it totally ignores this. You are taught English using grammar rules and you’re forced to memorise lists of individual words… simply put, you learn in exactly the way natives DON’T use their language. Then you wonder why your speaking is slow and awkward with a lot of mistakes.

Simply put, to speak like natives speak…

… just learn to speak in that way from the start. Simple. And extremely effective.

So how do you talk in English well, using chunks?

I go into more detail on this topic in this video:

On YouTube: How to speak English like a native speaker?

As you can see, saying how native speakers actually use their language isn’s simple.

Start learning in chunks. This is the fastest way to getting good at them. In my lessons and courses, I almost never teach individual words (or grammar for that matter). Instead, we concentrate on fluency-building chunks of language. This has several advantages. First, by learning them like this, it’s easy to speak using chunks. Second, unlike words, it’s very hard to translate chunks – which helps make it easier to think directly in English.

Learn more about this

A discussion of exactly how to identify chunks, learn them and use them, is too much for this blog post.

So instead I refer you to my best selling book, Master English FAST. This book will show you step-by-step how to improve your English as an intermediate-advanced English learner. And yes, Chapters 5, 6, 10 and 11 are all about chunks and using chunks to speak fluent natural-sounding English.

[Julian]

P.S. Want to know more about speaking amazing English? My book, Master English FAST will show you how (get it Here).

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How to Speak Fluent English Without Hesitation

August 5, 2017 , by Dr Julian Northbrook

How to speak fluent English without hesitation?

Good question and one many of you are asking.

Have a watch of this video:

Having trouble speaking English?

First, when people tell me they’re having trouble speaking, having to spend too long thinking about what they need to say, can’t respond quickly and are hesitating….

… the first thing I ask them is this:

How much time are you putting into learning English every day?

Generally, it’s not much.

You see, what happens is people have a conversation in English, totally screw it up and end up feeling horribly embarrassed about their English. At this time they’re really motivated. But then as soon as the embarrassment fades, it all becomes too much effort… and they do nothing. Not until the next time they embarrass themselves in English.

Then they just repeat the process.

This is a pretty shitty way to get good at English.

How to speak fluent English without hesitation?

Simple ー

Put time and effort into getting good at English!

Mastering a language really isn’t hard. Learn the language, then practise what you’ve learned until it’s automatic and do it Repeat (watch my free training if you’re not sure what to do).

Again, pretty simple.

But you’ve actually got to do the fucking work to see results.

Best,
Julian