Key Vocabulary

So let’s just go over a few words that you will need to know in order to really understand the basic ideas behind what we’re going to try to accomplish or achieve in this.

In this lesson first simplification.

So if you hear somebody say something or you read a book or you watch a movie whenever you talk about that thing often you’re simplifying what you heard.

Reducing it so that you can communicate it clearly to others.

So simplification means to take something and make it simpler.

This is a simplification if you know something about science that most people don’t know and you need to explain it to someone you have to be able to simplify it or make a simplification in order to explain it.

If you read a book and you want to express it you need to be able to simplify maybe some of the ideas to explain it to a good friend who might not know much about that topic.

So we’re going to try to do this in the second exercise but I just want to make sure you’re familiar with the word simplification.

It’s connected to the word simplify which is a verb simplification is a noun and it comes from also simple and simple is an adjective of course whoops a D.J.

as I usually write it as a D.J.

OK.

Now clarity is also something we have to think about when we’re expressing ideas or simplifying something or explaining something.

So if you have an idea which is very complicated and you want to communicate it it’s very easy to say it in a way which makes other people feel more confused because it’s a complicated idea or if you’re telling a story it’s easy to mix up the details.

And when you actually say all of the things you want to say it comes out as all sort of messy and mixed up.

So we have to focus on clarity.

Clarity means that when we speak when we write whatever we do.

Communication wise we have to try to say things in a way that can not be misunderstood.

The purpose of language is communication and clarity means that things are very clear very easy to understand.

Now the verb for this is clarify.

So if you have a bunch of people and everybody’s arguing and fighting and the reason is because they don’t really understand what they’re talking about and you really do you could say Excuse me.

Let me let me clarify this issue for you.

Let me try to make it simple and clear and easy to understand.

So we also have to try to bring some clarity to what we’re saying.

Always focus on trying to be simple trying to clarify things good English is not necessarily very complicated often natural English is very simple in fact and good communicators know how to speak clearly.

Next is syntax so syntax is an interesting idea.

We often think of syntax as related to writing but actually syntax is basically the different kinds of sentences that we choose.

So if you always begin sentences in the same way or you always maintain or keep the same basic sentence structure and you get into the habit of using maybe it was too much.

That’s just an example whatever it is people will begin to sort of lose interest.

So it’s also important to understand how to say things in different ways use different types of sentence structures begin sentences in different ways so that when you speak people are interested and they don’t get bored.

It’s actually very important to have some variation.

And when we say good syntax we’re usually looking at writing and saying oh there are some some longer sentences some shorter sentences some different types of sentences to say the same type of thing.

So this shows that you understand English and know how to use it well enough so that when people read what you write or listen to what you say they are fully interested because it’s always kind of different and changing its dynamic.

This is a good word to use.

I like this word dynamic dynamic dynamic.

OK.

The last word is merge.

So one thing we’re going to do today is we’re going to take some some words and we’re going to try to bring them together into a single sentence we’re going to try to merge them into full sentences merge means to bring them together of two big companies come together you merge them.

If there’s a big highway and a road that comes up to the highway and you enter onto the highway you merge onto the highway.

So it basically means to bring together or to become part of something else.

So we’re going to be doing an exercise where we stitch or merge merge different things together into single sentences and you’ll see what I mean in a moment.

So I hope these four words are clear and I hope you can keep them in mind.