Hesitations when speaking | Linguists' corner | Forum

I don't remember if it was Benny who wrote an article about this or not, but I read an article on this a while back which basically said:

This tends to happen when you've been language-learning the "school" way – memorisation, memorisation, memorisation.

For me, I have to stop and remember a word if I learned it via the English. For instance, when I learned vocab in A level German, I'd be like "beach, der Strand, beach, der Strand, beach, der Strand" (it didn't work, when "beach" came up on my exam, all I could think was "le plage"). Because there is no contextual link between the two words in your mind, the information is THERE in your head, but not accessible through thinking "what was the word for beach?". You need to ask this at the time of memorisation. "What is German for "beach"? Oh, der Strand."

But when you need the word in mid-conversation, you still have to stop and access the word through the English first, so you'd hesitate, and there's no way to stop doing this…

UNLESS.

I'm learning Turkish, and there are certain Turkish words that I always know and will never forget because I learnt them through visual cues. I didn't know what "elma" was until someone had actually picked the "apple" up several times. Now, when I want an apple, I don't have to stop and think "apple… elma", because just the image of an apple brings "elma" to my head. So I learnt through visual aid, which is obviously how children learn words, because image and words accompany each other.

Sorry this is getting long-winded, what I'm saying is, combine pictures and repetition within context and it should stick, thus reducing hesitation and improving sentence flow

I'd think at that point then, you'd have to go by learned responses. Which isn't actually as unnatural as it sounds.

When I'm speaking English, I'm not constructing the sentences in my head as I go because I've already repeated them enough times that they just come out like that, and it's the same with Turkish on the things I've actually heard enough times.

I mean, when someone says to you "how was your day" and you say "yeah it was alright", that's a learned automatic response in association with an emotion of contentment via boredom, you know what I mean? No one taught me to say "yeah it was alright" in response to "how was your day", because it sounds overly casual, kind of aloof and distant, but I've heard it enough times that it comes out flowing like that, especially because I've heard other people say it and so I've learnt to say it with a certain drawling accent. If you learned the phrases you're after from TV, in combination with visual aids, you'd probably pick up the fluidity and reduce your hesitations a lot because everything you say would be an automatic response, which is how you naturally speak English, except you connect the 2 responses together with "and" or "but".
If I remember how my day was and I feel excitement, I automatically say "Oh it was AWESOME", you know what I mean?

When I'm learning words for concepts that you can't visualise, I do 2 things.

1) Visualise the emotion.
2) Learn it in context.

So, with 1) if I'm learning "I don't want to go" in Turkish, I'm saying it to myself in English first, trying to conjure up the image of myself and my emotions when I'd need to say that. I imagine myself in a room, arms folded tightly, refusing to budge, with a strong feeling of reluctance. And over this image are the words "gitmek istemiyorum". Repetition repetition repetition. This is how I learned conversation connectors that don't really translate to English, ie. "Hosuna gitti mi?" "Hosuma gitti" (roughly translated as "did you like it?" "I liked it", but this is not what it actually means in Turkish).

2) Context… basically, if you want to learn the word for "important", learn it within a sentence, not on it's own. Learn to say "it's important that I leave now" or "this work is very important", accompanied with visual aids, and imagining the feeling of PRIORITY, high importance, like the work on the top of a pile, so to speak, should help it go in.

Finally.. hesitations are not that big of a deal unless it's happening constantly. People hesitate in their native language all the time. Even when I was typing this and saying it in my head, I was hesitating. Some people don't seem to hesitate because they DO plan everything in their head first but if you put anyone on the spot, they'll hesitate. It's pretty natural.

Sorry I don't know if this is what you were asking but this is basically what I'm thinking. Good luck