Many of us, when we start learning languages, in difficult moments strive to jump off the study, justifying ourselves with the fact that "there is no talent for languages." However, the so-called linguistic instinct, it is also a linguistic guess, is very rarely innate. In fact, linguistic flair develops and trains.
So what is this, a linguistic guess?
This is the ability to understand or guess the meaning of a word using the context, as well as knowledge of word formation, the ability to guess other meanings of polysemantic words, and also to put stress on the correct syllable, use the appropriate intonation. And you will probably be surprised to know that every, absolutely every person in his life has repeatedly used his linguistic instinct. When? In childhood, when I studied my native language, which means that we all have this skill.
How to train this skill?
First of all, it is important to practice and develop all aspects of the language: speaking, listening, reading and writing. It is important to learn the language comprehensively, because with an excellent ability to hear and strong grammar, but a tiny vocabulary, the language sense will not be able to work.
Read
The so-called "innate literacy" in any language appears with intensive reading of various texts. The more you read, the more different words, phrases and grammatical structures your subconscious remembers. And if you read texts of various styles, for example: business correspondence, official texts, journalism, fiction, essays, then you will practice understanding the stylistic coloring of words and expressions, remember which words are needed when writing texts in a particular style, and which words should never be used, for example, in an official letter.
Write
It is useful to do the so-called "work of a trained hare", that is, to write a lot. Current foreign language textbooks often do not have a large amount of writing. All sentences are given in exercises with gaps, where you just need to insert the appropriate word or grammatical structure. As a result, instead of remembering the whole sentence, we remember individual words and forms, out of context. Therefore, when doing exercises, it is best to rewrite the entire sentence in a notebook from a textbook, and when compiling your own dictionary, write down not only one or two meanings of a new word, but also a couple of phrases with it.
Listen
Hearing needs to be actively developed. It is useful to listen to books while reading the text being listened to, training auditory and visual memory at the same time. Watch and listen to movies and TV shows, while repeating phrases after the characters, practicing pronunciation and intonation. For better assimilation, it is useful to write audio dictations.
speak
As you know, if you want to learn how to swim - swim, and with colloquial speech, you need to use every opportunity to talk, even if it is a dialogue with yourself. At the same time, it is necessary to restrain yourself as much as possible from mental translation from your native language into a foreign one. Learn to think in the language you are learning, then the subconscious mind itself will slip you words that are suitable for a particular situation. Find a good teacher to help you train your linguistic sense.
The more knowledge you have, the better your linguistic guess works. After some time, you will find that it has become much easier for you to speak and understand the interlocutor, that unadapted texts no longer cause you such horror and awe as at first, on the contrary, to fully understand what is written, you will most likely need to use unfamiliar words clarify in the dictionary only a couple of words, not a few dozen, since the meaning of the rest will be clear to you from the context.
The translator, who has to work with a literary text, first of all has to penetrate into the author's intention, master the entire scope of the communicative potential of the text, combining the perception of linguistic material and understanding it. At the same time, an essential role is played by the individual psychological characteristics of the perception of the text by the translator, his experience and skills. As a result, there are various versions of translations of the same work, which is realized in purely individual forms and ways of conveying the author's intention, mood, attitude to the depicted reality.
Thus, the translator, referring to literary texts in his work, must not only have an excellent command of the outgoing language, but also have deep background knowledge, have a good idea of foreign cultural realities, and have an increased sense of intuition.
As for oral, simultaneous translation, in my opinion, the role of intuition in such activities also lies in the fact that a professional interpreter clearly feels what exactly can be omitted when translating a speaker’s speech, based on his knowledge of people, culture and etiquette.
Sense of language
"Sense of language is a phenomenon of intuitive language proficiency, manifested in the understanding and use of idiomatic, lexical, stylistic constructions even before purposeful mastery of the language in teaching. It is a generalization at the level of primary generalization without prior conscious isolation of the elements included in this generalization. It is formed as a result of spontaneous mastering speech and basic cognitive operations.Provides control and assessment of the correctness and familiarity of language structures. "Kushnina L.V. Translation activity as a heuristic process // Modern problems of science and education. 2012. No 6. P. 490-490.
A sense of language is a trait inherent in an educated native speaker. For some, this sense of language is more pronounced, for others less: the natural inequality of people is manifested in the degree of their linguistic competence.
Anyone whose occupation is far from languages, translations or literary and journalistic activities may not even think in real life about whether he has a sense of language or not; it is not vital for him. At the same time, the "feeling of the language" is one of the key points for the professional mastery of any language.
A sense of language for a translator is like an ear for professional musicians. For a native speaker, the sense of language manifests itself in the form of a certain automatism.
"Sense of language" is one of the key elements that unites a professional translator with a native speaker. A sense of language is required where the translator has the problem of choosing from several translation options. A sense of language is also in demand in cases where a direct, literal translation is impossible, or when the customer initially asks to improve the text stylistically during translation.
It often happens that when the translator does not know the correct translation of a particular word into a foreign language, in this case, the brain itself, as it were, gives out an acceptable option. When interpreting, one can observe how two completely different translators of similar qualifications, independently of each other, produce exactly the same translations of the same phrase or combination of words. This once again confirms that there are regular lexical correspondences between the two languages. And these regular correspondences themselves (or translation clichés) are accessible to a professional translator precisely because he has a developed sense of language. But sometimes it happens that such a stable translation correspondence does not exist in nature. Under these conditions, an experienced translator, based on previous translation experience and a sense of the language, creates a kind of translation that can later, having undergone some modifications, gain a foothold in the language. In this case, it is worth mentioning such a thing as linguistic intuition.
Language intuition- the ability to feel the language, its phenomena, understand its interconnected hierarchical structure and anticipate, intuitively guessing new, previously unknown to the individual linguistic phenomena, neologisms.
The language intuition of a person is closely connected with such concepts as "language development", in particular "language development of the child", "language ability", "sense of language", "intuition". The development of language intuition is directly related to the process of learning first the native language, and then a foreign language or languages in kindergarten, school and other educational institutions.
Language intuition is, first of all, the result of language practice, but the ability to engage in this practice is different for different people and depends on a number of factors, including which of the components of language ability is emphasized (intellectual or special). In general, linguistic intuition is an integral part of the creative language process, and therefore, in order to develop the child's abilities, it is necessary to constantly improve and stimulate his linguistic intuition.
As our contemporary Viktor Tombak said, we live in an era of great spelling discoveries. There are fewer and fewer smart people. Would you like to be literate? We think the answer is yes. It will be easier to become one if you develop a linguistic flair. Let's find out what it is and whether it is possible to develop this feeling in yourself in adulthood.
Being literate is fashionable. Learn to "feel" English. You have probably heard about the concept of “innate literacy”. This expression refers to the ability to write and speak correctly without learning any rules. At the same time, a person cannot explain why he wrote or said this way and not otherwise. However, can this feeling be called innate? The question has been tormenting the minds of philologists, linguists, and psychologists for a long time. It is difficult to give an unambiguous answer, but the opinion of the majority still boils down to the fact that innate literacy is actually not innate at all, and this feeling can and should be developed. After all, if a person is not taught to write, read, speak, he will not be literate.
Similarly, with the so-called "sense of language" or "linguistic intuition." These words are understood as intuitive reactions, the ability to correctly place stresses, choose intonation, write and speak correctly. This skill is not innate.
On the other hand, the development of a sense of language is not only teaching grammar and style at school, expanding vocabulary. This is a rather painstaking, but interesting work on yourself, which will ultimately help you achieve your goal - to speak and write correctly.
At what age is a sense of language formed and does everyone have it? According to psychologists and philologists, instinct is inherent in every person: for some it is more developed, for others it is weaker. The skill begins to develop from early childhood and continues until the age of 16-18. It is believed that by this age every mentally developed person already has a sense of language.
And what to do with English if you started learning it already in adulthood, after 18 years? Is time lost? No, we already wrote about this in the article "". A flair for the English language can and should be developed. As philologists and linguists note, even native speakers cannot have a perfect sense of language, so do not be afraid to make mistakes in the course of your work.
How to develop a sense of language
Development is a continuous process. Improve your English constantly. Linguistic flair in English develops in the same way as in Russian: through training, various exercises and active use of the language. We want to give you some useful practical recommendations that will help you develop this kind of intuition in the shortest possible time.
1. Develop all language skills at the same time
A sense of English cannot appear with a modest vocabulary or ignorance of grammatical structures. That is why it is so important to actively use the language every day, learn new words, practice grammatical constructions. When a child learns Russian, he learns to write, listen, read, and speak.
2. Read literature in English
Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.
Today - a reader, tomorrow - a leader.
Remember when we were given a summer reading list in school? Surely the teacher did this not out of harm, but so that during the holidays we would not lose the sense of the word, would not take a step back in our development. Read books by authors who write competently in English, so you will memorize expressions, constructions, new words from the context. Reading the text will allow you to “feel” the English language, see the use of grammar “live”. This tip is especially useful for visuals, because they have a good visual memory. What is the memory here? Read the next paragraph.
3. Develop visual memory
Let us return briefly to the concept of innate literacy. It turned out that this skill is most developed in children who read a lot. Their flair for language appears and develops much faster than their peers. Philologists believe that innate literacy is nothing more than a good visual memory. That is, a person has already read somewhere a well-written word or turn of speech, remembered how to use it, and began to use it in his own written and oral speech.
How to develop visual memory? The easiest way is with a variety of memory-games (special games for developing memory), as well as exercises in the style of "find 10 differences in the picture", etc. And check out our tips "".
4. Rewrite texts in English
Another useful exercise from the school curriculum. Remember, in order to improve literacy, teachers often advised us to take the texts of Russian classics and copy them into a notebook. It would seem so boring. We would like to object: rewriting an already read text is really an amateur occupation. But what is stopping you from choosing a book in English that you have long wanted to read? At the same time, it is not at all necessary, even undesirable, to take a completely ancient classic. Learn from contemporary authors that interest you. Read and at the same time rewrite the text in your notebook. Gradually, you will notice how it has become easier to build a sentence in English: you work out word order, grammar, and the rules for using / combining certain lexical units. And after writing the word necessary 5-7 times, you will no longer be tempted to write neseccary, that is, spelling is also trained.
This advice is most appropriate for audials - those who live in the world of sounds. Working with audio and video is like working with a book: you listen to a recording and memorize the grammar, vocabulary, and style of the English language in context. For better assimilation of the material, we advise you to put the recording on slow playback and write a dictation. At the same time, mechanical memory will be included in the process of memorizing information. In this case, you can use the resources from our articles "" and "".
6. Communicate more often with people who speak English competently
How competently and culturally a person speaks, not least depends on his environment. If in childhood we could not influence our relatives or friends, then in adulthood we choose our interlocutors ourselves.
Where to speak English?
There are not so many options here:
There are many methods for developing language flair, free and paid, banal and exciting. We recommend that you, if possible, actively apply various approaches and develop this very flair in yourself, because it is not in vain that they say: a literate person is the sun, an illiterate person is a dark night. Are you ready to “shine always, shine everywhere”?
What is the sense of language? Definitions and definitions
"Sense of language is a phenomenon of intuitive language proficiency, manifested in the understanding and use of idiomatic, lexical, stylistic and other constructions even before the purposeful mastery of the language in teaching.
It is a generalization at the level of primary generalization without prior conscious isolation of the elements included in this generalization.
It is formed as a result of spontaneous mastery of speech and basic cognitive operations. Provides control and evaluation of the correctness and familiarity of language constructs. Source: Psychological Dictionary)
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"A literate person has a special linguistic flair. Therefore, without remembering the rules, he finds the right solution in a split second. How?
A literate person does not know the rules, but the logic of spelling and feels it as a kind of vague "sense of language". Where does it come from? First of all, from the experience of long-term use of the language: reading, writing. In this case, the brain is forced to process a huge amount of linguistic information in its sound and graphic display.
The peculiarity of the work of our brain is that everything unnecessary and non-repeating is gradually eliminated and the main thing remains - what is repeated - logic. Compact logical models control the choice of the desired letter or punctuation mark. Compactness generates speed - hence the feeling of innate literacy, when a person writes correctly without thinking about how he does it. In the same infrequent cases when doubt arises, logical models guide the search for the correct option and find it. Source: Russian language courses and Russian literacy courses - www.runovschool.ru)
Sense of language - articles and websites
“Sense of language” is the key to learning and improving any language, including your native language (subscribe.ru/archive/job.lang.englishfast/)
M. Shestov's method from the Guinness Book.
The concept of “innate literacy” has long entered our lives, but how much it has the right to life is a moot point. There are no people who can read and write from birth, so where does innate literacy come from ?! The concept of "innate literacy" is applicable when a person, without thinking about the rules of grammar and spelling, speaks and writes correctly.
There are many courses that position themselves as "innate literacy" courses, but ... by attending them, you will encounter an intensive study of grammar.
What to do for those who cannot, on a subconscious level, speak and write without errors? Are there really only two ways out: to cram the rules or go all your life with the stigma of an illiterate person?
“Innate literacy” is, first of all, the ability to feel the language. “Sense of Language” is inherent in every person. First of all, it depends on the environment that surrounds you; more precisely - from the society in which you most often find yourself. We automatically imitate the pronunciation and articulation of the people around us. Pay attention to how different the speech of different segments of the population is. Moreover, the difference is not only in the vocabulary, but also in the very way of pronouncing both individual words and expressions in general.
Often, about a student who does not know the rules, but writes quite competently, we say that he has a sense of the language, while we mean his intuition, flair. But there are not so many people with an innate linguistic instinct, and if we assume that everyone has it, then it means that it needs to be awakened, developed, educated.
A sense of language is a sense of the word, and to develop a sense of the word, i.e. to arouse love for him and interest, it is impossible without introducing students to the texts of works of art, to the best examples of masters of prose and poetry.
The linguist says that the study of foreign languages sharpens the sense of the language - and of one's own in the first place: “This is an educational tool. It is especially important to study the grammar and idioms of a foreign language. Russian literature itself was brought up on the study of Church Slavonic and Latin, and in ancient times - Greek. The main drawback of modern literature is a flawed sense of language.
Perfume workshop. - Sense of language (Tim Skorenko's blog, nostradamvs.livejournal.com)
There is such a thing: a sense of language. Someone from birth was given the ability to solder microcircuits, someone - to run long distances, and someone - to correctly and beautifully express thoughts without making serious mistakes.
A sense of language is either given or not. One, in order to write correctly, needs to memorize the rules and substitute test words. I just have to watch out for typos, because rules are for the illiterate, yes.
By the way, it is likely that if you ask me how this or that word is spelled, I will not be able to answer. But I'll always write it right myself.
Further discussion of the above:
Innate literacy is a myth ;)
it’s just that you read a lot as a child, and well-written words were imprinted in the subcortex with whole visual images. Like hieroglyphs.
No, what are you. Not a myth. In the same way as not a myth - the ability to music, to drawing, to sports disciplines, to mathematics. It's just innate. Like talent.
I think you are mixing two concepts. Sense of language - i.e. a sense of style, the ability to choose the most accurate words, to create a text - yes, talent is akin to a musical ear.
And literacy is a purely technical skill.
This, I repeat, IMHO - I have not read studies on this topic, I can only refer to my own experience;)
No-o-o-o-o! What you're talking about is a sense of style. And innate literacy is a sense of language. It is similar to the ability to foreign languages.
I have always believed that a sense of language can be developed by reading books. My personal observations have shown: the more a person reads / read, the less grammatical errors he makes in writing. Regardless of whether he taught the rules of the Russian language at school or not.
O.A. Lebedeva Sense of language as a component of communicative competence (in terms of correlation of concepts) - article in pdf format
Communicative competence and a sense of language are among the commonly used, but not quite defined terms in the scientific literature. In science, for a long time, reference to communicative competence and a sense of language was carried out when considering questions of language proficiency, ability to speak, and without defining the essence of these concepts.
The sense of language is often spoken of in connection with the question of the formation of communicative competence. And also this term is used by language teachers to explain the rapid formation of spelling and stylistic skills in some students.
Of all the variety of definitions of the feeling of language, it seems to us that the most complete definition is E.D. Bozhovich, who understands this term as "the mechanism of selection and control of linguistic units, in which the correlation between the semantic and the formal is objectively non-formalized, varying in nature" . In our opinion, this definition overcomes the narrow understanding of the feeling of language as a reaction (O.S. Akhmanova, N.I. Imeladze, etc.); as a mechanism for monitoring and evaluating the utterance (M.M. Gohlerner and others); as a specific relationship to linguistic structures (G.V. Eiger); as language proficiency (M.R. Lvov and others); as a skill, a skill to follow the norms of speech (T.K. Donskaya, L.P. Fedorenko, etc.); as a manifestation of intuition (Z.A. Potikha, G.V. Ramishvili); as the ability to act correctly in a new speech situation based on past experience (V.A. Artemov, A.V. Puzyrev, T.M. Kolesnikova, etc.).
Thus, the formation of communicative competence is a complex process, one of the components of which is the formation of a sense of language, because this is one of the sides of communicative competence, namely the one that controls the choice in the communication process of such a language unit that most successfully expresses the content of the statement and corresponds to certain criteria for good speech.
A few words about the sense of language- thoughts in the blog (blog.prohq.ru)
For successful work, a copywriter needs excellent knowledge of spelling and grammar. But there is one important point that can sometimes play a decisive role in the success (or failure) of the text. It's a sense of language.
What is the sense of language? A talent given from birth? Maybe. Is there any chance to develop it? Undoubtedly. According to the perception of the surrounding world, people are divided into three conditional groups: visuals, auditory and kinesthetics. Visual learners are usually advised to read more to develop a sense of language, auditory learners are advised to listen to the radio, high-quality recordings of audio books or performances, and written work helps kinesthetic learners. It's great if there is an opportunity to communicate more with people who have a high culture of speech. And if they take the trouble to respond to the inaccuracies of your speech and correct them, then this is good luck.
So the sense of language is in the hands (as well as the eyes and ears)) of each of us. And only personal efforts and work on oneself can make it more perfect.
Magnetic alphabet ("Notes of a speech therapist" - tarologiay.ru)
If you have a magnetic alphabet lying idle in your toys, then you yourself do not know what a treasure you have. With this set of letters, you can develop a sense of the Russian language in your child, the so-called language flair.
Books about the sense of language
Stephen Pinker. Language as an instinct (The Language Instinct) Publisher: Editorial URSS, 2004, Paperback, 456 pp. ISBN 5-354-00332-6 (www.ozon.ru)
The popular science book by the famous American psychologist and linguist Steven Pinker examines human language from a variety of points of view: proper linguistic, biological, historical, etc.
Linguistic flair- a sense of language, style, thanks to which the individual seeks to express his thoughts stylistically, competently and undiminished, unconventionally and experiences specific awkwardness, noticing the speech errors of the interlocutor, subtly feels the slightest speech, ... ... Encyclopedic Dictionary of Psychology and Pedagogy
In Indo-European languages, the main part of a word, repeated invariably or with minor changes in a number of etymologically related (that is, similar in sound terms and close in meaning) words. K., at the same time, is a carrier ... ... Encyclopedic Dictionary F.A. Brockhaus and I.A. Efron
Aya, oh. adj. to language (in 3 and 4 digits). language phenomena. Linguistic flair. Linguistic relationship... Small Academic Dictionary
LINGUAL, linguistic, linguistic. adj. to language in 3 and 4 digits. Linguistic flair. language fact. language phenomena. language system. Explanatory Dictionary of Ushakov. D.N. Ushakov. 1935 1940 ... Explanatory Dictionary of Ushakov
Bible. The word bible comes from the Greek. byblos book words. B. is a collection of 66 individual books. For B.'s interpretation, see Holy Scripture. I. OLD TESTAMENT 1) COMPOSITION OF THE OT. In present OT time is a collection of 39 works of various lit. ... ... Brockhaus Bible Encyclopedia
- (1889 1945) humorist writer All people are divided into two categories: those who have the habit of dividing all people into two categories, and those who do not have such a habit. For a professional writer, the biggest hindrance is the need to change the tape in the writing ... ... Consolidated encyclopedia of aphorisms
Directions of style- Like any science with a complex object of study and a fairly long history of existence, stylistics is not limited to one area of research, but includes several scientific areas. Known attempts to systematize ... ... Stylistic encyclopedic dictionary of the Russian language
classic- a, m. classique m. German Klassiker, lat. classicus first-class, exemplary. 1. Follower, representative of classicism in literature and art. BAS 1. [Bookinist:] Before, it used to be just the classics, but the last one, but now it’s for nothing ... ...
normalizer- a, m. normaliser. Correct, corresponding to the norm, is recognized that which does not hurt the hearing of the normalizer; the same thing that his linguistic instinct rejects is declared non-normative, no matter how authoritative and revered the classic writer is. E. F. Petrishcheva K ... ... Historical Dictionary of Gallicisms of the Russian Language
normative- and I. oh. normatif, German. normative 1. Setting the norm, standards; defining the rules. Normative grammar. ALS 1. Normative view of language (establishing rules of thumb). Ush. 1938. Correct, corresponding to the norm ... ... Historical Dictionary of Gallicisms of the Russian Language
Books
- Gift for a first grader (set of 6 audio books), . Cheerful musical and poetic programs of L. A. Yartova develop memory, logic, thinking, fantasy, speech and ear for music. They will help children in a playful, entertaining way to increase ... audiobook
- Who came up with this name for the crocodile - Crocodile? , Hope Foss. Book about animals for children of primary school age. On the material of various texts, the manual improves the skills of oral and written speech, expands vocabulary, teaches how to work with ...
