Using the audio clips and text below, follow the activities on this worksheet to improve your vocabulary and listening skills! These words and phrases are authentic and unrehearsed, taken straight from Episode 3 of JTBC.
JTBC_Episode3_VocabandIdioms_FinalDraft730
Download the exercise here.
Go for it
AK: When your inhibitions are lowered, and you’re not as, uh, self-conscious, you you can allow yourself to maybe not speak perfectly but just go for it.
Lay person
AK: There’s been some research done on people who are, um, let’s say, generation 1.5 Americans, for example, who are very fluent and everybody would say, “Yes, they’re fluent,” uh, not just the average sort of lay person but even a language instructor or an applied linguist, but they don’t have a large vocabulary, they can’t write an academic essay, they don’t know low-frequency words, [CSL: right] and that’s what makes fluency different from proficiency.
Pinpoint
AK: Well, in my research on fluency, I read lots of different definitions. It’s kind of hard to pinpoint actually so there’s not so much agreement about exactly what it is[…]
Inhibitions
AK: Yeah, um, maybe you know about a study that probably they wouldn’t allow today, ah maybe they would, I don’t know. In the 70’s, where they administered alcohol to the subjects and then asked them to speak their second language and they were more fluent.
CSL: Yeah, that’s one of our tips that we’re gonna bring up later is to…
AK: Yeah, the conclusion was, you know, not that being tipsy makes you more fluent, but it’s that what you just said, Carolyn, about lowering that inhibitions [CSL: lowers that monitor], right.
Tipsy
AK: Yeah, um, maybe you know about a study that probably they wouldn’t allow today, ah maybe they would, I don’t know. In the 70’s, where they administered alcohol to the subjects and then asked them to speak their second language and they were more fluent.
CSL: Yeah, that’s one of our tips that we’re gonna bring up later is to…
AK: Yeah, the conclusion was, you know, not that being tipsy makes you more fluent, but it’s that what you just said, Carolyn, about lowering that inhibitions [CSL: lowers that monitor], right.
Go a long way
CSL: So if they get that confidence and that experience of what it’s like to speak fluently, that should go a long way.
AK: Mm-hmm.