An articulate speaker

Hello. I'm back. We are back. We made it through the quarantine, the weird summer, the exam season... We can even pretend we're back to "normal" (whatever that means). Anyhow, this school year I'm going to be teaching advanced courses (C1.1, C1.2 and C2). So, my greatest concern at this point is connected to your understanding of what the advanced level is about. Most of you already know what I'm about to say. Some of you, though, may still be in the dark in terms of the specific features of the level you're supposed to attain. In order for you not to row in the wrong direction I think I should just hint at some of the defining characteristics of the C level.

If I had to boil the whole level down to just one word, I would say "range". You are an advanced speaker when you record yourself speaking and every time you start over (because you're a bit of a perfectionist and repeat your speech several times) you don't use quite the same words. You produce different sentences. That's range. You can say things in many different ways. Why?

• Because you feel you ought to adapt to certain circumstances
• Because your interlocutor didn't understand you the first time around
• Because you want to strike a particular note
• Because you want to keep the conversation within certain boundaries (academic, impersonal, friendly, etc.).

That's a taste of what lies ahead... and, in order for you to better become acquainted with the concept of a well spoken person, I've decided to post an excerpt of an interview with famed theoretical physicist Richard Feynman (Nobel Prize 1965), whom I admire for many reasons, the first of which is not related to his scientific breakthroughs. Listen to him talk. In the clip below you might just identify some of the multiple factors that render a speech "advanced" or "sophisticated":

First and foremost, the topic he discusses is "cognitively demanding". By that we should not understand "abstruse" or "too technical" but rather "complex in nature". He presents the scientific approach to knowledge by means of an inspired analogy and he doubtlessly brings the point home. The man was a brilliant conversationalist. So, what's advanced about his explanation? Okay, let's take a look:

• Formal word choices: analogous instead of similar
• Colloquial phrases: some little gimmick
• Subject specific vocabulary: bishop, castling, pawn
• An inversion: only later do you discover
• A complex relative clause: we have to investigate the conditions under which this bishop's...

When you pack all of that into a seamless explanation with the right flow and the right pronunciation you are in the C2 heaven. Notice that MOST of what he says is not off-scale awesome language. It's actually pretty simple English, but it's the little things that combine to produce a marvelous description. One last thing. Check out these sentences:

Unlike the chess game, though... In the case of the chess game the rules get more complicated as you go along, but in the Physics, when you discover new things...

See what he does? He begins a sentence, breaks off and immediately starts all over. In this case his mind was probably too fast. So, he chose to discard a false start, reorganize the elements and begin again. That, my dear students, is also an advanced skill. You may stammer. You may hesitate (while in search of the right term). You may rearrange a sentence or two... It doesn't really matter. You can still be an amazingly articulate speaker.