Week 11: THOUGHT GROUPS

THOUGHT GROUPS

What are thought groups? Thought groups refer to natural divisions we make when reading a text, speaking to other people, or giving a speech in front of a class. It is important to stress that this divisions or “speech chunks” are natural because, whether you are a foreign speaker of English and a native speaker of a different language, we divide or chunk our speech or a passage we are reading keeping the essence of logical linked ideas.

What are thought groups used for? A thought group is a speech unit speakers use to divide the message they want to convey. That is, when reading a text, we pay attention to punctuation marks, which are natural thought group divisions writers use to separate ideas, to better comprehend what is being said in sentences. When speaking, we do not use punctuation marks, yet we signal the beginning or end of a new idea, -thought group-, with a short pause.

How many thought groups can we find in a sentence in a text? That depends on what kind of sentence you are analyzing. A sentence such as “She’s a nice person /,” just contains a thought group, since it is rather short. However, a statement like “Since I moved to this neighborhood, / I have gone jogging in the park / because I want to be fit / and need to get more vitality /” has four different chunks because this complex compound sentence includes several ideas that a speaker or writer intends to communicate.

To sum up, thought groups serve two different purposes. On the speaker’s hand, s/he is giving the chance to breathe. No breathing implies the absence of air in one’s lungs; then speech becomes simply impossible. On the listener’s hand, it is essential time that is necessary to process the information provided by the speaker. That is why we can state that thought groups contribute with “good” communication.

THOUGHT GROUP PRACTICE

Divide the following text about the sense of taste into chunks or thought groups. Secondly, link the words in each thought group bearing in mind that you are not allowed to link over a boundary or punctuation mark.

SALTY, SOUR, OR SWEET?

What causes taste? Why do sugar taste sweet and a lemon taste sour? The answer is tastebuds. These are little bumps on the surface of the tongue. Different parts of the tongue tell each taste.

We taste sweet things on the tip of the tongue and salty things on the tip and sides of the tongue. We taste sour things on the sides of the tongue. Bitter things are tasted at the back of the tongue.

Smell also is important to taste. So, the nose helps us taste. For example, the smell of an apple or an orange becomes the “taste” on the tastebuds of the tongue. People have colds and food does not taste good because the nose is not helping to taste the food.

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