How to have a good conversation in English (with anyone) | Canguro English

hello and welcome to kangaroo english my name is christian and today is monday the best day of the week now i want to start by asking you to think about something how do most people describe their language ability they describe themselves as speakers i am a native english speaker and i also speak spanish people don't ever describe themselves as english grammar experts or english worksheet fillers or english certificate holders like it or not speaking is the only skill that matters and that includes with sign languages remember that a majority of the world's languages have never been written down ever they are only spoken and when we do speak we normally don't speak to ourselves and so when we're speaking to other people also we are not normally producing a monologue we are interacting having a conversation conversation is the core of language the question is how can you have a good conversation well i could give you some rules for conversation in 1975 the philosopher paul grice created the cooperative principle which included four rules or maxims of conversation rule number one is the maxim of quality try to make your contribution one that is true basically don't lie number two is the maxim of quantity make your contribution as informative as required basically don't talk too much the third one is the maxim of relation be relevant stick to the topic don't talk about things that aren't related to the conversation and the fourth rule is the maxim of manner be perspicuous and avoid ambiguity be clear and transparent in the things that you say so there it is the secret to good conversation but i want to go a little bit deeper and to ask what it really means to communicate with other people and to do that we're going to have to play a game [Music] this is the game of connect 4 and the rules of the game are really simple basically two players take turns to insert these colored discs and you win the game by making four in a row you can make the four vertically or horizontally or even diagonally simple but now i want you to use your imagination for a moment imagine that me and my friends have been playing this game every day for 10 years and during that time we have developed our own rules our own special way of playing the game and the good news is that these rules called christian's rules well i've written them down every single one of them now your job is to pass these rules on to all of the other players of connect 4 but the problem is i can't give you this copy of the rules it's my only copy i want it for myself so i'm going to have to explain the rules to you and then you are going to have to explain the rules to every other person who wants to play the game how long do you think that would take how many repetitions would it take for you to learn those rules and to pass them on to other people how many errors do you think you would make how would you simplify those rules now maybe you're wondering what any of this has to do with language and conversation well this metaphor of playing the game of connect 4 actually explains a really interesting paradox in language you see languages that have very big populations of speakers tend to have very simple grammar but very large vocabularies and languages that have very small populations of speakers tend to have very complex grammar but very small vocabularies and this explains why you see when i create these rules with my small population of friends it's very easy for us to invent them and pass them around but if i have to invent and pass around rules amongst millions of people well that becomes very very difficult in 2018 researchers modeled this behavior in a computer and showed that when a population of speakers reaches only 100 people really complex rules completely disappear okay so again what does any of this have to do with having a good conversation it tells us something very fundamental about how language works language only receives meaning through contact with other people language is always a social activity even if you are writing on your own or reading on your own or listening on your own the meaning of that language always comes from hundreds or thousands or millions of people agreeing on the same thing you can't hide behind your workbooks or your exam results or your apps if you're not using language to be social then you're not really using language a lot of students don't have conversations because they are waiting waiting for something or someone waiting for someone to come along and take away their fear of speaking waiting for an app to teach them enough vocabulary so that they'll be ready to have a conversation waiting for a teacher to give them the secret to having a good conversation but here's the truth nobody can teach you to have a good conversation take a moment to consider how hard it is for you to change yourself to eat healthy to exercise more to read more to work harder to stress less to be good and then once you realize how hard it is to change yourself you start to realize the chances that you have of changing other people i don't have the power to change you i don't have the power to make you have a good conversation only you have that power when you decide to participate in language instead of sitting on the side and watching so you have a decision to make about having good conversations is it one day or day one [Music] i'm christian this is kangaroo english [Music]

Channel: Canguro English

Views: 41,397

Keywords: canguro english, kangaroo english, canguru english, how to have a good conversation in english, how to have conversation in english, have a conversation in english, conversation in english, Learn english conversation, how to have a fluent english conversation, how to have a fluent english conversation with anyone, how to start a conversation, how to start a conversation in english, how to start a conversation in english with anyone, how to practice conversation in english

Id: e4qAT7wP1-k

Length: 10min 26sec (626 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 09 2020