Search from various English teachers...
drasvi
So .
(it is about English, I'm just using "Russian" as general discussion forum)

Some speakers start every new paragraph in their monologues with "so".

And... this habit is very convenient when you're trying to format transcripts of videos into something you can comfortably read with your eyes:)

As an example: a chunk of text (itself a part of a larger chunk of text!). In comments I will post the same chuck so-formatted.


so right now I'm gonna show you the magic this is the most important part of the entire language acquisition program so you need two things number one you're gonna need magazines you need to get as many magazines as you can find and number two you need children's stories again you need to get as many children's stories as you can find so let me talk first about magazines so it doesn't matter what language the magazines are in and it doesn't matter what language the children stories ring the important thing is that the magazines have tons and tons of pictures now this magazine is Sunset magazine I love Sunset magazine for language acquisition and the reason I love something magazine is it has tons of great pictures Sunset magazine is a Travel Magazine which means it's gonna have pictures related to travel food clothing accessories ads etc this magazine probably has around 200 to 300 great words that I want to acquire so when you sit down with your language friend you're gonna ask him or her to lovingly describe all of the pictures in the magazine and while he or she's doing that of course you're gonna want to participate and the way you participate is this he or she's gonna ask you simple yes-or-no questions about the pictures in the magazine and then you are gonna ask some super simple questions to and the most simple questions are what is this what's that what's he doing what's she doing and why why is the most important question in any language so let me talk about children's stories and storytelling in general storytelling is the most powerful way to acquire a me language I cannot say enough good about storytelling for language acquisition now storytelling children's stories this is going to be the bulk of your language acquisition program I would say about 80 to 90 percent you're gonna be working on children's stories now just like magazines and like I said it doesn't matter what language the children's stories are in the important thing about children's stories is that the pictures are very big and the text is very small now you're the language partner your language friend here she's not gonna translate the story in fact I don't recommend he translate this or he or she won't need to translate the story because the pictures are very big it's very easy to follow it it's a children's story so she'll suck magazines he or she is going to lovingly retell you the story in the target language and here she's gonna ask you simple yes-or-no questions and then just like magazines you're gonna want to participate so you're gonna ask what's this what's that what's he doing what's she doing and why now let me tell you something you don't have to do you don't have to retell the story in fact you never have to retell the story in fact retelling the story is probably going to be extremely difficult remember language acquisition is all about listening and not speaking so when he or she is retelling the story you're acquiring the language through listening and not speaking so you do not need to reach out the story ever children's stories storytelling in general are the way to go 

Comments · 5

1
Drasvi writes:
(it is about English, I'm just using "Russian" as general discussion forum)

Lol, you crack me up!

So, you know a few dozen languages, and you’re not going to list anything except Russian and Mandarin? At least add Russonorsk, Moroccan Arabic or something.

So, getting back on topic, I like your idea (although some speakers may use synonyms of “so” — you’ll need to consider that when you’re writing the code). Also, the content you’ve quoted seems like fairly good advice that learners could use with their language partners.
1
so-formatted, Part 1.

"so right now I'm gonna show you the magic this is the most important part of the entire language acquisition program 

so you need two things number one you're gonna need magazines you need to get as many magazines as you can find and number two you need children's stories again you need to get as many children's stories as you can find 

so let me talk first about magazines 

so it doesn't matter what language the magazines are in and it doesn't matter what language the children stories ring the important thing is that the magazines have tons and tons of pictures now this magazine is Sunset magazine I love Sunset magazine for language acquisition and the reason I love something magazine is it has tons of great pictures Sunset magazine is a Travel Magazine which means it's gonna have pictures related to travel food clothing accessories ads etc this magazine probably has around 200 to 300 great words that I want to acquire 

so when you sit down with your language friend you're gonna ask him or her to lovingly describe all of the pictures in the magazine and while he or she's doing that of course you're gonna want to participate and the way you participate is this he or she's gonna ask you simple yes-or-no questions about the pictures in the magazine and then you are gonna ask some super simple questions to and the most simple questions are what is this what's that what's he doing what's she doing and why why is the most important question in any language "
1
So-formatted, Part 2

"so let me talk about children's stories and storytelling in general storytelling is the most powerful way to acquire a me language I cannot say enough good about storytelling for language acquisition now storytelling children's stories this is going to be the bulk of your language acquisition program I would say about 80 to 90 percent you're gonna be working on children's stories now just like magazines and like I said it doesn't matter what language the children's stories are in the important thing about children's stories is that the pictures are very big and the text is very small now you're the language partner your language friend here she's not gonna translate the story in fact I don't recommend he translate this or he or she won't need to translate the story because the pictures are very big it's very easy to follow it it's a children's story 

so she'll suck magazines he or she is going to lovingly retell you the story in the target language and here she's gonna ask you simple yes-or-no questions and then just like magazines you're gonna want to participate 

so you're gonna ask what's this what's that what's he doing what's she doing and why now let me tell you something you don't have to do you don't have to retell the story in fact you never have to retell the story in fact retelling the story is probably going to be extremely difficult remember language acquisition is all about listening and not speaking 

so when he or she is retelling the story you're acquiring the language through listening and not speaking 

so you do not need to reach out the story ever children's stories storytelling in general are the way to go "
0
Phil, I think this kind of advice is much needed. Eveyone is so enthusiastic about langauge exchnage - but no one has a vaguest idea of what two learners would be doing when they start it. "Hello! How are you? I'm fine. Cool. Er... what do you major in?". There is an understanding that an intermediate learner and a native speaker could "just talk about something".

It is at least some suggestion, which is already great! So I wanted to quote it (as an example of which kind of things we need so badly), and I copied the subtitles from Youtube. To get full transcripts you need to click the ... symbol right below the right corner. But there were those timestamps every two seconds. I removed odd lines with a script, then I substituted "new line" symbols with spaces... and I got what we call in Russian "a bedsheet" of text:) That was scary.

https://youtu.be/illApgaLgGA?t=1552 - from 25:52
He also has a piece about "How to Language Exchange!": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7Xj3rGu1T0
I haven't seen it yet.

I didn't like many things about the video: it sounds like an ad, it is a naïve approach to comprehensible input. And he says "I'm a normal person like you":-/
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I just don't take profiles seirously enough. I think I don't even have my gender there, and this "I think" is telling:-) When I registered the first time I picked "Chinese" and "Vietnamese" just because I wanted students to be able to find me. But people who contacted me came from the forum...

I don't know "a few dozen langauges":) I know many things at beginner's level though. I just read (not even "can read") anything I want to read. This is how I learned English. My Romance langauges and German are improving at a slower pace and with Chinese my effort is not enough:(. Afrikaans, Irish, Old Irish and Breton which I studied in past but never used are nearly forgotten by now:(((( But I intend to do something about my Chinese this year.
0
So it's fairly normal to add follow on descriptions from something said or described earlier? Quite so.

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