smallwhite wrote:... In my case, the main problem is I don't remember the jargon: defendant, prosecutor, raid, crime scene, etc, mostly nouns but also some verbs....
But you wrote them down here in one of your L2s just now? Is it that you understand the words when they appear on TV but, never having delivered a news report, can't come up with them on the fly and have to glance at some news to refresh your memory?
Can I do it?
my attempt at news wrote:The defendant wasreportedseenwitnessed fleeing the scene of the crime in a white Toyota Prius,whereafterthen that same vehicle was seen at the corner of Eighth and B streets one hour later. He was apprehended by police near that intersection.
Interesting. The strikethroughs are the words that first came to mind before editing. And of course, though the newscasters are obviously very practiced at delivering the news, they need rehearsals and scripts and editing as well.
The linguist Yuen Ren Chao once shared an anecdote about a time that he and his wife were switching between different Chinese dialects for fun. All of a sudden she began speaking "perfect" Shanghai dialect, even though she'd always spoken Mandarin when growing up in Shanghai. Assuming the story is unembellished, it shows that at least some people can learn to speak a related language fluently after only receiving input.
Children of immigrants who grow up in a home where another language is spoken often have limited productive ability in that language, preferring to speak the language of their friends and the media they watch. Does anyone know if that's the case for, say, German immigrant children in Denmark, or Italian immigrant children in Spain?