Daily Excerpt: How to Improve Your Foreign Language Immediately (Shekhtman); Communication Rules
Excerpt from How to Improve Your Foreign Language Immediately: Foreign Language Communication Tools
Definition of Communication Rules
Yet everything discussed above—the acquisition of the language, the knowledge of the language—have nothing to do with communication tools.
Communication tools are the combination of skills which allow a speaker to use most effectively the level of foreign language in his or her command.
To make this definition more clear, let us imagine two groups of students with the same level of knowledge of foreign language. Let us imagine also that these students have come to the host country and are capable of observing the quality of their communication with native speakers. We do not have to have any great imagination to know that the members of the two groups will be quite different one from another and in striking ways. Everyone has seen representatives of each of these groups. So, let’s see what happens with these two groups when they are “in action.”
Group #1 These students communicate with the inhabitants of the host country only with great difficulty. They cannot maintain a conversation. They answer questions very abruptly. They are afraid of making mistakes. They await the next question from their counterpart with fear. In the process of speaking, they think extensively in their native language. Even worse, when they speak, they translate from their native language to the foreign language. They cannot find the necessary words quickly. In brief, they create an anti-communicative atmosphere with their counterpart and, as a result, conversation stops.
Group #2 Students in the second group have the same level of knowledge as students in group #1. However, they conduct their conversations much better and more effectively. They are able to maintain conversations even if they do not know all the words or even fully understand the all the content. They answer questions smoothly and at some length—as in a conversation in their own language, creating comfort for their interlocutor. They make mistakes, but they keep on going; they are not afraid of “being wrong.” They look forward to the next question from their counterpart, often setting up the conversation so that the next question will be one that they can, for sure, handle. In the process of speaking, they seem to think in the foreign language; at least, language spills out of them seemingly effortlessly. They clearly are not translating from their native language because they use expressions and discourse that are particular to the foreign language. The words they need always seem to be at their command. As a result, they create a communicatively interesting and comfortable environment with their counterpart, and, as a result, conversation flows unabated.
What is the reason for this difference? The second group of students intentionally or intuitively use some communication tools—tools which this book describes.
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