…Raymond Benson would have said, thinking of his tenacious hero, Bond. What does this have to do with learning a foreign language? Everything.
You have to dare and keep asking questions and looking for answers.
You should not neglect the way you speak in a foreign language. It can affect your image, access and influence in your professional field and personal life. An important role in speaking a foreign language is played by our ability to use and recognize patterns when asking our own questions and responding to others’ interrogations.
When you learn a new language, you have to go beyond those boundaries settled by what you know and are comfortable with. When you ask questions in a foreign language, you not only have to keep in mind the information you would like to elicit, but also, you have to pay attention to the grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation of the foreign language in use.
Thus, you need to concentrate on two major objectives at the same time. You will be able to do this as naturally as possible only practicing. Therefore, it would be preferable that, as you learn about different aspects of the functioning in a foreign language, you should constantly apply what you have learned. This can be done by speaking on different concrete or abstract subjects. In time, you should feel more comfortable, even in the situations when you make mistakes.
When you ask questions you elicit information and/or reactions, that is you gather information from someone and/or you make someone react in a certain way. You are a bit like Bond. Always on the verge of a dramatic outcome, but consistently aware of your goals.
Elicitation is multi-purpose, versatile. Elicitation is something we do every day in order to address a diversity of topics in which we are interested professionally or personally. All fields that use verbal communication – and they are many! – involve use of good elicitation skills: language testing, health assessment, lawsuit stages, military and police interrogation or investigations, contract negotiation, etc. We may need to ask questions, make statements or requests that encourage a response.
Elicitation can be a powerful tool, used for decision making such as employment selection, contract negotiation or medical diagnosis. Therefore, every question asked under these circumstances is important since it carries a certain purpose assigned to a different field.
Patterns are important in this respect because if you get to know them it will be easier to formulate your discourse and they mainly refer to types of questions or statements you can address to your partners of discussion.
Especially when the subject involved touches an emotional aspect that you may be sensitive about, you should pay extra attention to the accuracy of your questions and answers. When we get emotional we tend to lower the grammatical accuracy level in a foreign language. Stress, intonation and tone may be faulty on these occasions. It is normal, even accepted by both natives and non-natives.
Let me give you some examples so that you can understand better how being aware of patterns can help when you speak in a foreign language.
Basically you can ask yes/no questions (Have you ever worked in London?) and information questions (Where did you work before working for Google?). The best strategy is to alternate them so that the conversation should flow smoothly and be pleasant apart from being useful to your purpose.
Join our workshop on the 28th of June and find out more about these patterns and about how knowing them can prove an advantage to you when you speak in a foreign language.
Until then, watch this video and see what the advice of the speaker about asking questions is. Enjoy!