“Are You Getting the Gist?”

The word, gist, means; idea, substance, essence, meaning. “Are you getting the gist?” basically means, “Do you understand what’s being said?”. As a beginner, learning English can be demotivating as students often think they get the gist, but they don’t. They recognise a word or two and guess what’s being said; it’s a great feeling to recognise a spoken word, and disheartening that you misunderstood the sentence.

For me, listening is the hardest skill to acquire when learning another language. There are strange new sounds and it’s hard to hear when a word starts and/or ends.  All the words seem like one continuous sound rather than a sentence, so, students guess.

When recognising a few spoken words, it’s obvious why guessing is not the best way to understand a sentence. Take a look at the sentences below, and their keywords.

1.       don’t like nuts; they aren’t good for me. I’m allergic to them.

2.    I don’t like nuts; they aren’t good for me. I’m allergic to them.

3.    I don’t like nuts; they aren’t good for me. I’m allergic to them.

4.    I don’t like nuts; they aren’t good for me. I’m allergic to them.

Guessing what the blanks are can change the meaning in many ways.

Guessing the first sentence could be; I/do you like nuts, or, like (similar) nuts OO are good…Is it a question or a statement?

The second sentence has more information although the information is confusing; does it mean, I/you don’t like nuts but they are good for me. I’m OO them. Again, is it a question or a statement?

If you only hear the words in the third sentence, it mostly makes sense however, keywords are missing.

The fourth full sentence explains everything and, how dangerous guessing can be!

Missing a keyword in a sentence can change everything in any language; how many times have you misunderstood someone as you didn’t listen carefully. When learning a different language be happy when you recognise a word or two, nevertheless, did you really get the gist from one or two words?