Orange Belt - Circumlocution
The core skill at this level is to be able to circumlocute, or “talk around” a word. For example, you should be able to say “a house is a place where you live”, or “a teacher is a person who teaches”. This is important for several reasons. One is that you don’t always know the specific word for something, so by circumlocuting you can make yourself understood even if you don’t know all of the words. I have a friend who was in the Congo and didn’t know the word for mechanic but knew the word for ‘car’ and ‘doctor’, so she said she is looking for a ‘car doctor’.
Another reason circumlocution is important is because it will help you create more complex ideas (relative clause) such as: “The guy I spoke to this morning told me that…”, and “that’s the best book I’ve ever read”.
And yet another reason why circumlocution is a core skill is that it will improve your listening comprehension as you become more skilled at guessing what the other person is trying to say. After all, the core skill of listening comprehension is being able to guess.
To practice circumlocution, think of the main 3 categories of nouns: person, place, and thing. Now can you describe a specific kind of person, place, and thing without using the word? You could even turn it into a guessing game. Say (in your target language), “I’m thinking of a person who … represents people in court.” Or, “I’m thinking of a thing that you use to cut butter.” ChatGPT can help you translate these thoughts.
For listening comprehension, you can say to ChatGPT: “Make me guess the movie by describing it in my target language.” Or, “Make me guess the animal by describing it in the target language.”