Chunks Of Sound

Right off the bat, the very first question from each of us must be “Why speak?”

We all came to this world by the sounds. A child would start collecting information from the outside world by hearing and looking around. But obviously, sound does come first

In the period of their first 12 months, those kids are like a TV in reverse. Rather than broadcast the sound and image, they collect them, which means they literally hear and see only.

After the first birthday party, most of them will start speaking their first words. Next, they will be sent to kindergarten so that the teachers there will help them learn the letters and also familiarize with the numbers in order to kick off the reading process. How many years are they supposed to learn basic reading? Typically, the answer would be 3 years from kindergarten all the way to their first grade before struggling with a legendary subject called “Essay writing” in the following 12 years. Sixth grade literature is also the subject that officially opens up the last level in one’s linguistic development process, which is the essay writing ability.

So, we easily see that the very classic phrase “Listening-Speaking-Reading and Writing” is actually to imply a super natural process in which a child will develop their language from basic to advanced.

What if we look into it from a real usage perspective?

Before going into further detail, we should be able to tell input information from the output one. Thereby knowing that language skills should be divided into 2 sides, as illustrated in the simple diagram below.

As the names suggest, those pieces of information coming out from our mind will be called “output” whereas those ideas we collect from outside sources will be labeled as “input.” That is the reason why Listening and Reading would have the name of receptive skills while Speaking and Writing would be called by the name productive skills.

If you really think about it, you’re going to realize that speaking is quite frustrating. Among the four skills, it seems nothing would rely on the thing called “reflex time” more than speaking. All I’m saying is you can literally take a guess while reading or listening to something. The conversation could still be carried on. When you can not write your essay continuously, it’s perfectly fine that you stop for googling, editing back and forth, checking out some more reference books or even trying to talk to the cats to get the new ideas to continue, pretty much in the same way as Murakami. Meanwhile, in the middle of your sentence, if you suddenly stop for around 10 seconds so that you can find the right word, double check the grammar or to do stuff like verb conjugation, then you’re done. That’s all I’m saying. Especially when you practice speaking, your reflex time to the idea in your head is the name of the game.

But yet, one of the most obvious problems is that, very often, we keep confusing ourselves between the concept of reading comprehension and the actual ability of saying it. Being able to comprehend something doesn’t mean you can verbalize it fluently. In practice, the gap between those two is very, very huge.

According to the definition from Cambridge dictionary,

“Comprehension is a test to find out how well students understand written or spoken English.”

That is to say, comprehension is a way to “test” to see if you can understand a phrase or a whole English sentence well enough.

I will use an example taken from the very first part of a book named The Selfish Gene. It goes as follows,

Let me repeat and expand the rationale for the word 'selfish' in the title.

There’s pretty much no complicated word in this sentence but the word “rationale” (Noun of the adjective “rational”) which seems to be quite strange. Theoretically, the fact that you don’t know up to 1/14 (7%) of the whole sentence will not make a big deal whatsoever. Yet alas, the only word you don’t know here happens to be a keyword that means there’s a strong probability that you won’t get the meaning at all.

The task of comprehension itself, or comprehensive reading, is essentially no easy job. Thus during 12 years of schooling as well as college education, one would mainly be taught to be able to deal with comprehension which is why this is an inevitable skill required in any international linguistic contests.

Comprehension is one thing while being able to let it out verbally is something else. Apparently, similar to comprehension, effective speaking is essentially just the same as comprehension. It does not involve a lot of words. Likewise, you’re required to use around 20% of the amount of words to barely convey your idea. This is only the fundamental requirement, which is merely sufficient to grasp the general idea. It’s also called pidgin English, which means using “broken English” to talk to each other. Yet this technique requires the speaker to be kind of a master of communication skill to be able to use another popular kind of language, commonly known as body language to utilize their body movements as well as appropriate intonation. In other words, if you’re not that good at English, you’ve got to be a hustler.

Unfortunately, who wants to use broken English though? We spent a shitload of time and money learning English to be capable of speaking fluently, duh. Speaking of fluency, do you know what plays the main role in building up those unexpected bumpy roads while you speak English?

Matter of fact, we keep stumbling over our words during our speech because the very fact that we do have to translate each word individually in our mind and combine them all together, not to mention the time we confused ourselves with verb conjugation. But don’t you worry, everyone has to pass this specific stage initially. For now, I call it the first fluency level (The most fundamental level or the level when you can barely speak it), which means you can only be fluent when that word stands alone.

In the meantime, if a person could speak English very freely and fluently while using a bunch of impressive pauses so that the listeners could easily follow them like those talented hosts in the IELTS Face Off nightly show on VTV7, then what do you think is their secret?

Actually, it’s because they have upgraded their fluency level all the way to key phrases. They refused to stop at the level of knowing tons of keywords like you and me.

In terms of maths, the fluency level is inversely proportional to the number of times you have to pay attention to the way you convey an idea.

Anyway, if you take heed, do you find teaching someone the ways to speak theoretically is pretty easy while helping them actually do that better in real life, I mean more fluently and more coherently, is way too laborious, if not hopeless?

That is the reason why you typically hear something like no need to learn speaking at all, just let him live in the US a couple of years then his English is just going to be fine because fundamentally, speaking skill is particularly tough to deal with. The point is, the process of teaching speaking will definitely run into a paradox, which I usually call the zero paradox.

The truth is, ideas are essentially not linguistic whatsoever. They are way too abstract and you just can not feel any of them by primary senses. Ideas have got nothing to do with the correctness of stuff like grammar and vocabulary. Idea means idea, end of story. One could be coming up with an idea simply by contemplating it or by feeling it.

If humans are more evolved than animals at the capability of using languages then the saints (If any) will become superior to mankind in a very similar manner. They’re going to say something like languages have gone out of fashion (Maybe for the sake of speed, they’re going to use Bluetooth instead, pew pew and then they can see eye to eye in a flash, fancy that!)

I will borrow the image of an oak barrel to make it easier to figure out, imagine your mind is now an oak barrel.

Note that idea is the most essential material of the transformation process, I’m talking about pure water. If I say Vietnamese language is rice wine then whiskey would be the best fit for American language.

 “The language bears no meaning per se, the very process of feeling it and contemplating it gives language a meaning.”

So, where does the zero paradox lie in the linguistic process above?

It’s located in step 1 and 2 in the 3-step process of practicing speaking. The zero paradox could be put into words like this:

“To convey a nonlinguistic thing (Ideas), we have to, in turn, go down the road of language.”

Traditional learning techniques with the aid of dictionaries have been proved way too slow and learners will keep stumbling over their words in the effort to combine words individually to make a full sentence. Not to mention the fact that learners could hardly figure out those common idiomatic phrases themselves and that they don’t really know how to translate things that sound natural enough to the native speakers’ ear, which makes their whole practice process become impractical.

Therefore, more than ever, the learners feel the need to equip themselves with a lot of beautiful and practical speaking phrases provided by their instructors. Unfortunately, though, the path from the mind of the instructor to the “oak barrel” of the learners will certainly have to go through the bridge of zero paradox as mentioned above.

Being well aware of the existence of the so-called zero paradox, CHUNKS has done some research and put forth the idea about a perfect process for practicing speaking, including 3 following steps:

1. Listen – You’re required to concentrate to collect audio information from the instructor. Don’t forget to pay attention to his or her intonation and attitude.

2. Feel it – You need to get the feeling of whatever you just listened to be able to form an idea in your mind, you must not memorize the information in your mother language. (Many learners just can not follow this step properly).

3. Let it out – With your current language efficiency, you will most likely be able to say something in English to convey a message, regardless of the absolute correctness regarding vocabulary and grammar.

After 3 steps above, the instructor will consider making adjustments directly on the learners’ original answer to help them get better and boost their confidence as well.

Well, we all know that the fastest and the most convenient way for one to grasp the idea is telling them in their own mother language. Make no mistake, this thing needs two steps, not one. Listening and comprehensive listening are two very different things. Step No.1 (Listening) is only the necessary condition, not the sufficient one. In the first step, the learners will listen to a random piece of information from the instructor. Then they are invited to stay calm in a moment to be able to feel the true intention of that information. This is the central part of step No.2, which requires subtle feelings to get the message.

Interestingly enough, there is a well-known technique that the professional linguists have been using to practice speaking all the way back in the 1950s. Hence, it is going to be very intriguing if we can together have a look into that technique in relation to the 3-step process of CHUNKS as mentioned above.

And the thing I’ve been referring to was the legendary shadowing technique.

Whether or not you have ever heard of the word “Shadowing,” 100% you’ve been using this technique quite a lot. I swear to God.

One of the biggest advantages that one could learn from this methodology is the rhythm and the proper ways to link the sounds, which is called liaisons. Or to put it simply, this particular way of practice will help you take notice, repeat what you heard then you could get the feel of the ways native speakers actually use in reality.

In the speaking perspective, I mean practicing to be able to speak for real, if we practice shadowing in a wrong way, it’s virtually impossible for us to verbally apply those things in the future ourselves although we would have the feeling that our rhythm and pronunciation did get a lot better.

Theoretically, these two processes are pretty much identical. They both support learners to be able to express their ideas in English, given that they did go through step No.2 in the middle. That means they have been able to feel the idea in the original information.

Yet, most of the learners will tend to mentally pick the easiest way or a direct link from the original idea to the very sentence they are about to say. Because there’s nothing more frustrating than having to stay alert, in a second though, in order to feel an idea. Yes, it’s much harder than it looks.

The thing is, the learners don’t even know they’re practicing rote learning. Say, they listen to something, they just try to memorize and then repeat whatever they just heard as quickly as possible but they don’t really have any idea what they’re saying.

Now, the question is, suppose I do follow these 3 steps above then whether or not I can really get myself those cool habits like the guy named Forrest Gump, you know? To be honest, there’s no one who doesn’t wish to play ping-pong as incredibly as Forrest Gump or to do a powerful kick like Bruce Lee but if you technically only practice those 3 steps then clearly, it’s not enough. You have missed an additional but very critical step. That is the self-practice step to form unconscious habits.

If I rearrange those 3 steps above vertically, you will see it has the shape of a proper number six the moment I add in the next step.

The best part is, the more you practice the smaller amount of time from the moment you want to summon an idea in your head to the time when you actually let the sound of that phrase come out of your mouth is going to be. Imagine an endless whirl with 2 corresponding poles would be your mind and your mouth muscle. The stronger this whirl is, the smaller its radius is going to become. When you practice for a certain amount of time, everything will seem to blend together. It is the moment when your emotion as well as your reflexes step into the unconscious zone and voilà, you’ve got yourself a thing called habit.

Understanding all the root causes of the process of practicing speaking, CHUNKS has come up with these 3 following changes in methodology of speaking teaching:

1.Ear – Brain – Throat (Help learners practice speaking in situ)
2.Emotional English (Help things stick longer in the learners’ brains)
3.Differential language (Help learners react quicker)

In real life, some say “phrase” is an idiom, some believe “phrase” is just a bunch of slang words, another one could say they are simply sentence structures or even there are those who’d rather put them into the group of proverbs. Yes, all of them could be counted as phrases but phrases don’t necessarily have to be those things. Phrase is just more than that.

Relatively speaking, proverbs are supposed to be longer than idioms and idioms are often longer than slang words. Semantically, regardless of the fact that they are proverbs, idioms or slang words, the listeners would always find it hard to guess the real meaning or its intended meaning just by looking at the literal meaning of each individual word.

“Kick the bucket” is a good example of an idiom. Instead of saying Mrs. Kim just kicked the bucket the other night, you said she just kicked the pail or she just booted the bucket then for sure your pals would look at you like you were speaking foreign language.

The problem is, it’s not that you don’t know enough words, it’s more like you don’t know much of the common forms of wording used in spoken language. There are a few particular words that, to be honest, for some reason usually come together and gradually form a thing called “phrase.” If you didn’t call the following phrase a phrase, then what else could it be?

Then why is the notion of “phrase” getting so critical? Simply because it does stick to the notion of fluency, regardless of whether it is listening-speaking or reading-writing, so to speak. In other words, they are like inseparable concepts. I mean, when you immerse yourself into tons of phrases, not only do you speak more fluently and coherently but you definitely will do better in comprehensive listening, comprehensive reading and also write in a much smoother way.

So, I’m going to wrap up this lengthy analysis by giving some explanations for an amazing phenomenon called “listen in phrases.”

It’s fair to say, if you can do well in comprehensive listening, then you would be able to do well in comprehensive reading. But if you want, technically, to become excellent at speaking then you must be able to repeat exactly whatever you just heard. I’m pretty sure about this.

The question is whether or not, in practice, human ears could be sensitive enough to catch 100% of the numbers of the words in our everyday conversation with real speaking speed of the native speakers. Let me tell you upfront, no.

Well, what is the secret of those who listen so damn well out there? Guess. Yes, you’ve heard it right. They technically guess but they take a guess extremely well. The thing is when being asked, these great listeners would always assume that they could literally hear the whole thing, word by word, then when giving you a piece of advice, they would rather encourage you to try to figure out every single word, in a miserable way, as if you could have possibly done that much better and that was where the shitshow began.

 “I can get the general idea while listening but the funny thing is, I couldn’t repeat it after that!” Have you heard of tons of overwhelming complaints like this? I’ve been teaching speaking, so I run into this one quite a lot. It’s just because you haven’t yet practiced listening in phrases. That’s the long and the short of it.

Then what the heck is listening in phrases to which I’ve been referring back and forth all this time???

It is when you can technically hear a few words but you can manage to guess the whole phrase. When you’ve got used to that, even a couple of keywords will help you figure out the whole sentence, which is perfectly normal.

But why do we usually listen in phrases so terribly? Because it is normally taken out from the listening syllabus. In other words, we couldn’t nail this skill just because we have never ever learned about it. Fundamentally, we all would have dealt with 2 styles of listening exercises in secular education: Filling the blank and listening comprehension in order to grasp the general idea to answer all the following questions. It’s true that the latter skill will do us a lot of favors in real life later on but, to be honest, it’s nowhere near helpful enough to make us listen and speak in phrases.

If you have read this far, then please bear in mind that unlike Beethoven or Van Gogh, your ears are totally fine and those good listeners do not catch the sound miraculously better than you either. They just know more phrases. Now you know what you’re supposed to do. All right, I hope this helps.