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English Rants English Rants @englishrants · 98 subscribers
Post #31 14
Restarting a sentence because the first attempt did not sound perfect.

I see this happen often: people feel like their sentence was bad, so they need to cross it out and start over. This is fine when learning, but not at all okay when actually speaking to people, because your speech isn't a pptx draft you can keep editing.

To understand the issue you need to look at it from the listener's perspective:

Imagine you're listening to someone explain their previous job:

They start: "At my last work, I did..."
You think: Okay, they are about to talk about their responsibilities

But they interrupt themselves: "No, in my company, I worked..."
You think: Okay, still talking about the same thing

And they restart again: "Uuhh, I was responsible for..."
At this point you're probably going to think: Yes, you had a job. Can you please tell me what you did there?



The takeaway here is that even though your first version wasn't perfect, the listener understood you perfectly. By restarting, you force them to process the same setup again and again without ever giving them the information they’re actually waiting for.

Language is a system for getting information across. If the person understands where you’re going, keep going and give them the rest of the thought.

Polishing and iterating are for practice and lessons, not for talking to people.
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При случае, пробуйте просто доводить кривую фразу до конца, если вам свойственно начинать заново когда что-то пошло не так. Боритесь с синдромом отличника.
Если после этого мир рухнет, вас уволят или депортируют — расскажете в комментариях 😄

А у нас будут данные, что так делать не нужно. Человечество не забудет вашу жертву.
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