Students who only memorize how to answer certain questions have no foundation of understanding from which to draw when they encounter a situation for which they have not prepared.

 

 

 

In normal conversation, one cannot know in advance, how the conversation might change or where the conversation will lead. To be competent at remaining engaged in the conversation requires two skills.  The first is to 'think in the language spoken', and the second might be described as the  ' skill of conversation'.

 

In order to develop the skill of thinking in a foreign language, the major requirement is the actual 'real time' experience of speaking in that language.  The more frequently you engage in 'normal' (not memorized) conversation, the faster you can recall vocabulary, questions and grammar.

 

As for attaining some 'skill of conversation', that requires both knowledge and practice of technical aspects of conversations.  That is what we will look briefly at in this section.

 

 

 

 

 

There are several major 'skills' involved in conversation.  Here we will look at just three (3) of them.

 

 

One skill in conversation is to make the other person talk.  To do that, one needs to ask 'Open Questions'.  So you ought to spend some time thinking how you yourself ask questions.

 

If your questions can generally be answered by 'Yes or No', then they are not open questions.  Open questions make people talk. Here are some examples:

 

Bad Question:   Do you like Chinese Food?  [Yes/No  Answer]

 

Bad Question:   Did you return to your country during the Summer Holiday? [Yes/No  Answer]

 

If you think before you ask, then perhaps you will realise that your question is not likely to make a person give you information.

 

 

 

 

 An 'Informative Answer' is one that provides real information, and often it means providing more information than was specifically requested.  You provide that extra information because you can guess what the next question will be.

 

So perhaps someone says to you: 'Who are you?'

 

You could say:  "My name is Li Wei!"

 

One example of an informative answer might be:

This answers four questions:

Each situation in which you are asked questions is different, but one thing which remains constant, is that if you just give a simple sentence answer to a question, more questions are going to follow.  If you can guess those questions in advance, then you can provide all the answers in a sentence or two.  Furthermore, if you can guess such questions, you can ensure that your answer does not provide opportunity for the other person to ask you a particular question that you do not wish to answer.

 

Why do I say this?  Because in general, questions are asked about the key words used in the previous answer.

 

If you avoid using certain key words, you will most likely avoid being asked questions about that topic.

 

In the next section we will be looking at informative answers from within the framework of their technical name: Compound-Complex Sentences. 

 

 

 

 

If you have and use the skills of conversation, it is very easy to 'Change the topic' in a conversation, yet the most common way students seek to change topics is by saying: 'I don't like this topic! Give us a new topic!'   This is something I hate hearing students say because it demonstrates that they have no conversational skill. 

In the article entitled: Group Discussions there are numerous examples of how to change 'hot topics'.  The keys to changing topics are simple:

 Word Association means finding words that are connected by a common theme, or other words you think of when someone says one particular word.

 

Word Association at its simplest just means, 'What do you think of when I mention a specific word'.  For Example: 

 

If I say 'dog' you might say: 'Cat'. 

 

If I ask 9 people for one word that they associate with the word 'dog' they might come up with the following list:

• Lovely
• Loyal
• Friendly
• Big
• Fierce
• Guard dog
• Friend
• Pet
• Protect

We could word associate a different way.

 

For example,

Word Association is simply a thinking skill that connects words to ideas or concepts. It links one keyword with another, - but different - keyword and/or topic.

 

It is the ability to see 'opportunities' in Keywords, that enables you to change topics.

 

When we are writing essays, speeches and thesis, the ability to word associate is very important to the initial planning or outline of what we intend to write.  [Planning an essay]