How to have a fluent English conversation | Canguro English

in May this year Google gave a demonstration of their new artificial intelligence technology called duplex it's able to make telephone calls and have conversations without any human help it's incredible technology but the part of their demonstration that generated the biggest response might surprise you so what you're going to hear is the Google assistant actually calling a real salon to schedule an appointment for you let's listen I'm looking for something even though we were witnessing a computer having a completely autonomous conversation with a human the part that really shocked everybody was that tiny short mm-hmm now why would such an insignificant non words be such a surprising thing to hear from a computer because those tiny words are actually an essential part of human fluent conversation so if fluency is what you want keep watching [Music] [Applause] the objective of most learners is fluency to have a fluent conversation and there's a lot of focus on individual output and input but conversation isn't something that you do alone it is a collaboration that requires two or more people to perform an intricate and precisely timed dance that is as old as language itself and the secret to this dance is taking turns there are five very simple rules to this dance that we must all observed to have fluent conversation one signal that you want to speak to recognize the right moment to speak 3 use the appropriate structure to take control 4 recognize other people's desire to speak and 5 give up control [Music] good conversation is about people taking turns to produce something beautiful together the timing of this dance between people in a conversation is extremely precise in English the average space between turns in a conversation is 200 milliseconds that's really fast but actually that's not the most interesting thing you see if I show you an object and ask you to tell me what it is the time it takes for your eyes to process this image and then for your brain to go and retrieve that vocabulary and sound information ready to speak is 600 milliseconds but the average space between terms is only 200 milliseconds that means that we actually prepare to speak before the other person finishes and we also know exactly when they're going to finish but how do we know that knowing when the other person is about to stop speaking is an ability that comes with practice so naturally native speakers are really good at it and we can test your skills with a really simple two-part experiment so for the first part I'm going to play a sound now as soon as that sound stops I want you to press the pause button as quickly as possible and then have a look at your reaction time on the clock below ready most native speakers reacted in about 800 milliseconds quite slow actually not fast enough for turns in conversation so now for part two this time I'm going to say a sentence and again when I finish that sentence I want you to press that pause button as quickly as possible ready I like pizza because it looks good it smells good and it tastes good most native speakers reacted to that in just 200 milliseconds the same as in conversation so it's not just about sound finishing it's about lots of different things the ability to detect when the other person is about to finish speaking is really important because of a simple rule in English the one second rule in English we don't like silence silence is uncomfortable in fact research shows that silences longer than just one second indicate three very bad things either you don't understand what the other person is saying you don't like what the other person is saying or you are about to say something negative now if you do have those long pauses in your conversation terms we need to eliminate them if you want to eliminate those long pauses and have a really fluent conversation there are four essential things to learn the first one is how to take control how to take your turn to speak the second one is how to hold on to that control so you can continue expressing yourself and saying everything you want to say the third one is to pass control how you can finish your turn and finally how to support control to help the other person to continue speaking now obviously there are nonverbal ways that we can do this like with gestures and eye contact but I'm going to focus on language so the first thing is taking control and there are three ways you can do that so the first way is to use a buffer buffers are those meaningless no content words like you know and well and um that create a buffer they create that space that allows you to start your turn you can also use competitive interruption you don't want to do this too often otherwise you will seem rude and like you're not listening but it's also a great strategy for taking control and finally reinforces like yeah and really and Wow by reinforcing by supporting their story again it gives you that opportunity to to come in and take your turn the next one is holding control so you can continue expressing yourself now again you can use buffers like or something and again by using a buffer by filling that space with a sound it indicates that you know you're not ready for that other person to come in that you're you're still in the flow of your of your conversation and another thing you could do is simultaneous talking so basically when when they try to come in they think you've finished they see the space and they try to come in you continue talking at the same time and then normally the other person will stop so again the same as with competitive interruption you don't want to do simultaneous talking a lot because it can seem rude the next one is passing control when you said everything that you want to say now the first way you can do that is using your voice with intonation or pitch or loudness by elongating that final syllable by dropping your pitch or your loudness your volume they're all great ways to indicate that you've finished speaking the next one is buffers so again different types of buffers like you get the idea or and so on and anyway all indicate that you're ready for the other person to take their turn in the conversation and finally asking questions I I don't think that there's any better way to tell the other person that you want them to speak than by asking a question and it's also in general just a great way to elevate conversation to the next level by asking questions now what's a really important way that's bad for passing control silence don't do it the final thing is supporting control now I can't stress this enough when you enter into a conversation with somebody you enter into an obligation to support them when they're speaking it's not just about waiting for your turn to speak it's about this dance this magic cooperation so the first way you can support them again is with reinforces like oh my god amazing really mm-hmm the next thing you can do is ask for clarification really so on the right ah you mean like the big one I can see this is a type of cooperative interruption cooperative interruptions might be when you help them to finish their sentences or maybe you're adding some extra details that you think will help them to tell their story supporting control super-important please don't ignore it the consequences of not following these conversation rules can actually be quite severe if in a conversation you never pass control then you could be labeled as a motormouth who never shuts up and everybody is going to avoid conversation with you conversely if you never take control then you could be labeled as passive and timid and not get that job that you want in general it could mean that you have difficulty participating in conversations and expressing yourself and integrating in society but there is actually one other consequence which is much more important for the language learner in 2000 researchers from the University of Victoria performed a very simple experiment they invited people to come into their laboratory and tell a stranger an exciting story from their lives but there was a twist the strangers who were listening to the stories had to press a button under the table every time they heard the letter T now normally when a person is listening to a story they produce a specific type of response every 27 seconds but because they were so distracted by listening for the letter T and by pressing the button they only produced this response every 12 and a half minutes but it's not the effect on the listener that were interested in the person telling the story wasn't receiving all of the normal feedback that the story was interesting or surprising and being understood and they should continue they weren't being supported by the listener the effect was that they became less fluent less coherent and they paused and hesitated more the listener actually had an effect on the speaker's fluency you control the fluency of the other person but the really negative effect is that it makes the person who you're trying to speak to more difficult for you to understand obviously a really important question is can you learn and practice those skills absolutely yes now I'm going to show you a few ways that you can do that now the first one is if you want to practice alone and you're going to practice by utilizing the noticing hypothesis basically by paying attention by noticing you're going to increase your abilities so all you need is an interview okay so you can go on YouTube on the internet and find an interview now don't use a film or a television series because they are scripted it's not natural dialogue you want something spontaneous and what you're going to do is simply use the pause button okay so what you do is you watch the interview right and at a moment when you think the person is going to pass their turn when you think they are getting ready to stop speaking and they want the other person to speak you pause the video just pause it and then think to yourself okay what would I say or how would I take control of the conversation at that moment and then unpause the video and see if you were correct see if in fact they were getting ready to stop speaking and they were trying to pass that that turn on and you could also do the same thing with your continuous when you're trying to encourage the other person to continue speaking so when mr. Tom Hanks here is in the middle of telling his story and I feel like maybe I should say really ah mm-hmm and I paused the video and I decide which one I think is the most appropriate and then I unpause the video and see if I was correct now you don't have to use video videos good because it has all of the other elements like hand gestures and eye contact but you could do this with a radio interview or a podcast with any spontaneous speech and the best thing it's totally free and you don't need any special resources but of course the best way to practice is with another person and these days there is no excuse you can always find someone to practice with online so let me show you a few ways that you can practice with a partner or a group of people so the first one is very simple so what we're going to do is we're going to count to 20 and we're going to take turns doing the counting yeah so I'm going to pass control to you and then you pass back to me and we're going to be using maybe eye contact and gestures and our tone of voice to pass control and the idea is to make that that gap as small as possible okay you ready yeah yeah 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 like that and so you know it's a great way to just practice some of that that intonation that helps the other person understand when when you want to pass control and it's also great to help you understand you know when it's your turn to take control now maybe we're doing the numbers that could get boring pretty quickly right so you can you can do the same thing in a different a by telling a story now you could use some story cubes if you have them or you can just just tell a story and take control and past control so for example I'll start okay one day there was a boy walking along the street and he saw this really beautiful tree it was so beautiful that he decided that he would count every leaf on every branch of the tree and as soon as he finished counting every leaf and every branch on every tree he went back to his house but when he when he arrived home he felt very sad because he enjoyed being in the countryside and he didn't want to stay in his house he loved the countryside because because there was lots of Sun hot Sun in the countryside that would dry his clothes mm-hmm and so during this storytelling right so the idea is to make that space as small as possible and also you can use maybe some of those those continues when I'm trying to help you to keep talking mm-hmm-hmm so all of those things you can incorporate now the final way to practice after you've done some numbers and some stories is to use this incredible worksheet game from the website TEFL tastic okay and basically on the first page you have a list of all of the different types of turn-taking so interrupting stopping other people from interrupting taking the turn back offering other people etc etc and then you have specific vocabulary set phrases and vocabulary for every single one of these of these functions it's it's a great it's a really great resource that the link is down in the description box okay so let's practice the first one interrupting interrupting so I'm gonna start talking and you can interrupt using any of these phrases is all from interrupting yep they're all from interrupting Wow so you can see here this is all the vocab just for one of the boxes on the first page so it's quite a lot it's a lot it's a lot and you know no one expects you to memorize all of this you know choose two of your favorites done and the rest will come with time so after I drop you at the swimming pool my plan is to go and I just say something I think it would better if you go to the school first and then to this really but I I don't know because I need to do some filming when I when I get there I need to film another class and I think if I go to the swimming pool first and drop you off then I'll be free but in a minute in a minute wait a minute I think it's I just think that's a bad idea as with most things in language there is no mystery about how to perfect the delicate dance of conversation it's just practice but I hope that now you are aware of the magic power of those thumbs and ours well I hope you found this class interesting if you would like to support free English education then there are two ways you can do that one is you can become my patron on patreon and the second one is you can buy some very stylish kangaroo English merchandise and if you would like to see any more videos about the English language then don't forget to subscribe I'm Christian this is kangaroo English I'll see you in class [Music] [Music] thank you

Channel: Canguro English

Views: 136,193

Keywords: how to have a fluent conversation, fluent conversation in english, canguro english, kangaroo english, canguru english, how to learn english, fluent english conversation, how to have a fluent english conversation, how to speak fluent english conversation, learn fluent english conversation, fluent english speaking practice conversation, How to have a fluent English conversation, english conversation practice, fluent english speaking practice, fluent english speaking

Id: 0Er2ptC-z4c

Length: 22min 13sec (1333 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 24 2018