In conversation, understanding doesn’t just come to us automatically. Although speakers are not generally aware of it, over the course of their language development they have gained certain skills than enable them to participate in conversations that result in mutual understanding. The goal of this lesson is to become aware of these skills, and develop them in English.
Competence in this area will enable you to keep your conversations moving and on track, and assure not only that you understand others, but that you are sensitive enough to your listeners that you are able to recognize whether or not they are understanding you. If they are not, you need to know what to do to correct or remedy the situation.
Here, we’re not concerned with what happens, for example, when you don’t hear something. What we do want to look at is what happens when, even though you understand all the words, you don’t understand what is conveyed by the words, that is, how you handle situations when you are not able to grasp the meaning of what the other person has said.
Think about conversations in your native language. How are misunderstandings handled? What do you do in your native language when you don’t understand? What do you do when you think someone hasn’t understood you?
If you found this question easy, then you are already aware of some of the skills we’ll be addressing in this lesson. Our goal is to enable you to
- ask for clarification when you don’t understand
- confirm to another person that you do understand him/her
- recognize when your listener needs you to clarify something, and
- confirm to your listener that s/he understands you correctly.
In English, there is a general conversational pattern that facilitates the achievement of mutual understanding. Awareness of this pattern makes the job of clarifying misunderstandings and confirming understanding much easier.
Click 
to listen to this excerpt from MICASE that reveals a robust conversational pattern. (Read along, if you like.) The excerpt is taken from a graduate physics lecture on electrodynamics. In this short clip, the professor says something that the student doesn’t understand, so the student asks a question. The professor answers the question and the student acknowledges that he understands. This is a typical example of what Clarifying and Confirming is all about: the student expresses non-understanding; the professor clarifies; the student confirms; mutual understanding is achieved.
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Listen:
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Professor: |
This is a standing wave pulse and a second standing wave pulse. But in this standing wave pulse you have two traveling wave pulses.
So you’re looking at one standing wave.
This is just the first standing wave.
Okay alright.
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Listen again, as many times as you like. You may read along.