Communicating in a Second Language

When in doubt, guess

When you are learning a new language, you must guess a lot. When you hear people speaking in English, you can’t stop them every time you don't understand a word. You need to keep listening and try to guess as much as you can of the general meaning, based on the parts that you do understand. Appreciate and use the pieces and parts of the language that you do understand, instead of worrying about all the pieces and parts that you don't understand. If you worry too much about all of the parts that you don’t understand, it will be much more difficult to get the general meaning. When you understand the general meaning, you can make better guesses about the pieces of language within that general meaning that you don't understand.

Use all of your senses to understand things: look, touch, smell, taste. Other things besides language can help you understand something. Also use other methods in addition to language to help people understand you. Learn to use your hands and face to help explain ideas to people when you are trying to speak in English. Use your face and hands to make it easier for English-speaking people to guess what you want to say. When they can guess what you want to say, they will probably say it for you -- and then you may learn how to express a new idea in English. When people understand you better, they will talk to you more, so you will have more opportunities to learn language from them.

While dictionaries are important and useful tools, you should not use a dictionary too much. When you read something in English, try to guess as much as you can about the meanings and the ideas without using a dictionary. Try to read the whole chapter or article quickly first, to get the basic ideas, and then, if you want to, go back and read more carefully, using a dictionary only when you can't guess the basic idea of a word, or when the exact meaning of a word is interesting or important to you. Use an English dictionary, instead of a bilingual dictionary, as much as possible.

When you stop in the middle of reading something to look up a word in the dictionary, you may have trouble. If you frequently stop what you are reading to look up words in a dictionary, you may forget what you were reading about. Then it will be more difficult for you to understand the reading. It will also take you a long time to finish reading and finally understand the piece, and you may get frustrated. This is not good! Frustration is not helpful to your language learning process! Choose things to read on your own that are easy enough for you to understand without using a dictionary very much.