How do you know if you understand?

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s_allard
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How do you know if you understand?

Postby s_allard » Mon May 22, 2017 3:15 pm

In the course of thinking about intensive vs extensive reading, it occurred to me that that we rarely talk about what it means to really understand things we read. Three recent incidents brought this to my attention. First, when discussing a sentence with my tutor, I realized that I had never really mastered a particular grammatical concept and therefore I had understood the very opposite of the true meaning of the sentence in question. This meant of course that I had been misunderstanding similar sentences incorrectly all these years.

A second incident involved the use of the verb valer that I'm quite familiar with. Despite all my research in various dictionaries and the internet I just couldn't seem to understand the particular sentence. Even after discussing it with two tutors, the usage still seems foggy. I just don't see how I could it.

Thirdly, just last night, I tried to use the verb desharcerse in a sentence, only to learn that I was again saying the opposite of what I intended because I had misunderstood the use of this verb when I had read it and even looked it up in the dictionary.

In a similar vein, I recently came up with a perfectly constructed sentence but the wrong verb that resembled the French verb I was surely translating from in my head. Luckily my interlocutor corrected me.

All this makes me think that it is not always sure that we fully understand what we think we understand. How to be sure?
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Re: How do you know if you understand?

Postby zenmonkey » Mon May 22, 2017 3:47 pm

To paraphrase Wittgenstein -

You don't know, this creates doubt. Doubt gradually loses its sense. This language-game just is like that. And everything descriptive of a language-game is part of logic. It does not matter, you construct meaning over time even in error and doubt.
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Re: How do you know if you understand?

Postby DangerDave2010 » Mon May 22, 2017 4:04 pm

Language is inherently redundant, predictable. This redundancy is what makes it possible for us to learn our mother tongues largely by inference. If you misunderstand something, this will create contradictions, incoherence, telling you that someting is amiss. The secret lies in understanding the larger context. With enough reading, most of those mistakes will be trimmed out.
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s_allard
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Re: How do you know if you understand?

Postby s_allard » Mon May 22, 2017 4:25 pm

DangerDave2010 wrote:Language is inherently redundant. This redundancy is what makes it possible for us to learn our mother tongues largely by inference. If you misunderstand something, this will create contradictions, incoherence, telling you that someting is amiss. The secret lies in understanding the larger context. With enough reading, most of those mistakes will be trimmed out.

This is essentially the conventional wisdom: if you read enough, the correct understanding will grow on you. I believe this is more wishful thinking than fact and avoids the fundamental question: when and how do you know you have understood correctly?

The reality is that many people can understand incorrectly and we only find out when we ask them certain specific questions. I see this all the time in classes. "Est-ce que tout le monde a compris?" "Oui." "Très bien, alors, de quoi s'agit-il?."

Then it's pandemonium. It's amazing how people can understand things differently. People can interpret grammatical concepts in various ways.
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Re: How do you know if you understand?

Postby zenmonkey » Mon May 22, 2017 5:03 pm

Pandemonium or not, you can't know that you've understood correctly nor that the meaning is inherent in the discourse. This is a pretty clear philosophical discussion. If you fear that the meaning you have is insufficient then you need to construct referential checks.

Image

Is it a rabbit or a duck?

If you are interested in the subject of meaning and language and doubt (or certainty) Philosophical Investigations would be suggested reading.
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Re: How do you know if you understand?

Postby tarvos » Mon May 22, 2017 5:26 pm

How do you know understanding isn't an illusion placed in our brains last Thursday by aliens, including all our memories and knowledge?
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Re: How do you know if you understand?

Postby reineke » Mon May 22, 2017 5:58 pm

This feeling of yours and the inability to "binge read" literature comes from the need to analyze and dissect each and every word as if it were a dead frog.

ACTFL descriptors (reading)

DISTINGUISHED

"At the Distinguished level, readers can understand a wide variety of texts from many genres including professional, technical, academic, and literary. These texts are characterized by one or more of the following: a high level of abstraction, precision or uniqueness of vocabulary; density of information; cultural reference; or complexity of structure. Readers are able to comprehend implicit and inferred information, tone, and point of view and can follow highly persuasive arguments. They are able to understand unpredictable turns of thought related to sophisticated topics."

SUPERIOR

"At the Superior Level, readers are able to understand texts from many genres dealing with a wide range of subjects, both familiar and unfamiliar. Comprehension is no longer limited to the reader’s familiarity with subject matter, but also comes from a command of the language that is supported by a broad vocabulary, an understanding of complex structures and knowledge of the target culture. Readers at the Superior level can draw inferences from textual and extralinguistic clues."

ADVANCED

"At the Advanced level, readers can understand the main idea and supporting details of authentic narrative and descriptive texts. Readers are able to compensate for limitations in their lexical and structural knowledge by using contextual clues. Comprehension is likewise supported by knowledge of the conventions of the language."

" Advanced-level readers demonstrate an independence in their ability to read subject matter that is new to them...."

INTERMEDIATE

"At the Intermediate level, readers can understand information conveyed in simple, predictable, loosely connected texts. Readers rely heavily on contextual clues... "

"At this level, readers may not fully understand texts that are detailed or those texts in which knowledge of language structures is essential in order to understand sequencing, time frame, and chronology."

NOVICE

"At the Novice level, recognition of key words, cognates, and formulaic phrases makes comprehension possible."
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Re: How do you know if you understand?

Postby aaleks » Mon May 22, 2017 5:58 pm

s_allard wrote:In the course of thinking about intensive vs extensive reading, it occurred to me that that we rarely talk about what it means to really understand things we read. Three recent incidents brought this to my attention. First, when discussing a sentence with my tutor, I realized that I had never really mastered a particular grammatical concept and therefore I had understood the very opposite of the true meaning of the sentence in question. This meant of course that I had been misunderstanding similar sentences incorrectly all these years.

A second incident involved the use of the verb valer that I'm quite familiar with. Despite all my research in various dictionaries and the internet I just couldn't seem to understand the particular sentence. Even after discussing it with two tutors, the usage still seems foggy. I just don't see how I could it.

Thirdly, just last night, I tried to use the verb desharcerse in a sentence, only to learn that I was again saying the opposite of what I intended because I had misunderstood the use of this verb when I had read it and even looked it up in the dictionary.

In a similar vein, I recently came up with a perfectly constructed sentence but the wrong verb that resembled the French verb I was surely translating from in my head. Luckily my interlocutor corrected me.

All this makes me think that it is not always sure that we fully understand what we think we understand. How to be sure?


Just an anecdotal examples.
You are a native English speaker. I am an English learner with unknown current level of the language. Your post is the text I need to understand. I think I understood it. Let’s check if I really did. You wrote that you had had some troubles to understand correctly at least three Spanish (?) words. As a result you had misunderstood some sentences and also misused another, forth, word. That's my short version of your post :)

A couple weeks ago I participated in a discussion on a Russian figure skate forum about some coach interview. All participants are native speakers of the language. The interview was given and written in Russian too. So there’s no language problem at all. Nevertheless, we interpreted the interview not just in a different but completely opposite way. Whose interpretation was the right one - who knows?
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s_allard
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Re: How do you know if you understand?

Postby s_allard » Mon May 22, 2017 6:32 pm

I appreciate that for most people there doesn't really seem to be much of a problem with understanding. So, there is nothing to talk about. End of story.

But since I'm confronted on a daily basis with problems of misunderstanding both as a teacher and as a learner, one of the things I look at is why do people have problems with certain grammatical constructions. Depending on the native language, various constructs are more difficult than others to comprehend and to use. And of course I'm talking about advanced levels of proficiency, at least the C1 level.

At lower levels of proficiency, learners tend to understand by relating to translations or similar constructions or cognates in their native language. Obviously, this doesn't work well at the advanced levels where it is important to master the grammatical concepts sui generis.

In English, for example, the pseudo-passive or prepositional-passive construction, e.g. I was told to be here, is difficult for many learners. In French, certain pronominal verb usages, e.g. Cela s'entend, and impersonal or unipersonal verb forms, e.g. Il est venu trois personnes, are challenging. But what is really interesting is not that people have difficulty understanding, it is that they understand these forms incorrectly.
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DangerDave2010
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Re: How do you know if you understand?

Postby DangerDave2010 » Mon May 22, 2017 7:01 pm

Taking a wild guess, I suppose the reason people fail to understand certain gramatical patterns is due to having worked through an insuficient number of books.
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