7 Deducing meaning

Sometimes we all face the challenge of not being able to hear clearly or understand what is being said in a foreign language film, perhaps because of background noise, the speed of the language or the speaker’s pronunciation of words. For example, a Spanish speaker from Andalusia will typically drop the letter ‘s’ from the end of words. You may feel frustrated when you can’t distinguish each word that is being said. In the final part of this course, you can practise some useful strategies to help yourself overcome this challenge.

Box 7: Deducing meaning

In your own language, you deal on a daily basis with understanding other speakers despite background noise, unfinished words and sentences, ungrammatical sentences, unpronounced letters and information not fully given. In your own language your mind will automatically fix incorrect language or fill in the gaps of what you can’t hear or understand.

When learning a foreign language you need to rely on other strategies to fill in those gaps, such as making an informed guess based on the knowledge and experience you already have of languages and of the specific situation or topic, whether you are talking to a native speaker or watching a video.

When watching videos you have the advantage of being able to pause and go back or to view more than once.

7.1 Understanding the gist

In this activity you are going to practise your deductive skills by listening to Amalia Schubert Arévalo’s story. Amalia's speech is natural, with hesitations and pronunciations you may find unclear.

Actividad 28

First, watch a short extract of Amalia’s video without subtitles and identify which of the following topics she is talking about:

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Her experience of living in Ajo.

Travelling to different countries.

Emigrating to Spain from Paraguay.

Her family holidays.

7.2 Listening for detail

Now watch Amalia again and focus on the details she provides in the video. Which of these things does Amalia mention?

Actividad 29

Select the correct answer from the drop-down menu.

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Box 8: Shadow reading (2)

As you practised in section 6.2, shadow reading using a transcription of the words by the speakers is a good technique to practise listening, reading and speaking. As before, listen to the video material at least once to become familiar with the pronunciation and the content. When you think you are familiar with it, try to imitate the speaker by reading his or her words from the transcript. You can try to talk at the same time as the speaker, or you can wait until he or she finishes the sentence and then pause the video and read out loud what he or she said.

Actividad 30

Now that you have heard a bit of Amalia’s story, think of how she comes across and of how you would describe her personality. Then listen to another extract and pay attention to the words she uses to talk about her personality. Even if you don’t understand every detail of Amalia’s description of herself, you’ll see that by understanding just a few words, in this case adjectives, you’ll be able to deduce a lot of the rest and build up a picture of what Amalia is like. Make a note of all the adjectives you hear that describe her.

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Provide your answer...

7.3 Recognising native speaker techniques

Amalia’s speech shows some common signs of natural speech. These are things we all do in our mother tongue to correct ourselves when speaking spontaneously without much time to think. An awareness of these techniques – repetition, correction, addition, reformulation and omission, alongside ‘fillers’ (such as ‘um’ and ‘ah’) – will help you ignore them and identify the essential information of a message. You’ll be able to follow the train of thought and deduce what Amalia might have intended to say.

Actividad 31

Listen to another extract and then, using the transcript, identify examples of these techniques.

Technique Examples
Repetition
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Correction
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Addition
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Reformulation
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Omission
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