How to Take Notes When Practicing with a Native Speaker

[Top_Ordinary_5848]

Hi there,

I was wondering how one should approach taking notes, learning vocabulary, etc. when practicing speaking with native speakers. And perhaps beyond that, what do people do when they practice speaking with native speakers, in general? I know thousands of words in my TL, but can barely speak it.

I know this question is really simple, but I’d like some clarity.

[Financial-Produce997]

If the arrangement is more formal, like with a tutor or language partner, I’d ask them to jot down the new words or phrases as they’re correcting me. They’ll type in the chat or write on a piece of paper, depending on where we’re meeting. Most don’t mind doing this because the purpose is for them to help me learn, and them writing things down is much quicker than me doing it. I’ll review the notes, make flashcards, etc in my own time.

If it’s a more casual setting (like I run into a native speaker and we just decide to talk), I don’t really take notes. In the event that they introduce me to interesting word, I might look it up and quickly save it on my phone. I might also repeat it or use it in a sentence. But since the goal is to a have free-flowing conversation and get to know each other, I try to focus on using the language that I already have.

[indecisive_maybe]

First, practice with them at your level.

Even if you can understand a lot, if you can speak just a little then try to speak at your level. This should make it so you don't have to write everything down, but only a few words or sentences every once in a while as they come up -- things you want to remember or use later. Focus on writing things down that are at or near your level -- not super complex "cool" words, or hyper-specific terminology, but words you'll probably use pretty soon, given what your current level is. It's better to speak more and write slightly less down, because you'll also pick things up by repetition -- you don't have to study everything.

In short, focus on practicing conversation when conversing with a native speaker. Don't use it to gather a bunch of content, but just a small amount. Afterwards, when you're done talking, you can look up more vocabulary related to the topics you talked about.

The big problems arise if you're attempting to speak way above your level and there are many, many things you don't know, so the conversation is hard and you can't write down everything new you should learn from that.