Talking around words you don’t know
What’s it called?
It’s so important for language learners to be able to simplify the language of their “inner monologue” so that they can express what they’re thinking. One of that process is being able to “talk around” words that we don’t know, or can’t remember.
In fact, that’s something many of us do in our first languages too:
“I spent all morning looking for my – oh, what’s it called, the thing you put in your ears to listen to music.”
Basically, you’re coming up with a simple definition of the word, and using it as a quick placeholder for the word you need.
People, places, and things
What’s nice about this approach is that you can use it to talk around any word, as long as you remember the equivalents for “person,” “place,” and “thing” in the language you’re learning:
“The thing that we ate yesterday”
“The person who works at the cafe”
“The place where we’re going tomorrow”
Dealing with the grammar
I’ve been using examples from English here. Depending on what language you’re speaking, people might use other strategies to talk around words they don’t know. Maybe there are also communities where people don’t do that at all – I can’t think of any, though!
Specifically, I’ve been using examples with English relative clauses. Some languages have similar constructions, and others don’t. For example, in my Mandarin classes, I had students practice a similar kind of construction.
In some languages, these kinds of constructions might not exist. Or, the syntax and morphology might be very complicated. Learners might not yet have the background to put all the pieces together yet. In that case, we still have options:
Introduce the constructions as “set phrases” without getting into the grammatical details
Adjust the lesson plans a little bit, gradually introducing learners to each of the pieces, and finally how to put them all together
Be flexible about small syntactic or morphological errors involving things learners haven’t learned yet
Come up with other approaches to talking around words we don’t know
Just one of many strategies
Some teachers worry that learners will overuse this strategy. My response to that is: maybe! I haven’t seen that happen much, though. And I think it’s still better than some alternatives, such as quickly looking up a word in the dictionary or an online translator. The problem isn’t the “looking up” part, it’s the “quickly” part – it takes time to check the context to make sure the word you’re looking up is actually appropriate to the situation. Of course, there are other strategies learners can use:
Ask the person they’re talking to for the word
Come up with something else to say
Use code-switching or code-mixing
Incidentally, some people don’t like the idea of using other languages besides the target language while they’re practicing. But I’m a fan of exploring translanguaging, so I strongly believe it’s something that teachers should accept, and even embrace.