Imagine having a conversation with another person and feeling you understand exactly what they mean... because you've had a similar experience or because it made perfect sense to you. People love this type of connection with another because it makes them feel understood or it makes them realize others have felt exactly like them.
Now imagine a third person who knows what each of these individuals has gone through witnessing a huge misunderstanding between each speaker and listener in said interaction. We've all watched such misunderstandings in various films, and they've often produce a comic effect, but their effect in real life might not be so funny.
This kind of miscommunication evidently happens often when people discuss ideas using abstract words, but it can also happen with the use of concrete words, though the latter can usually be avoided with clear(er) communication. I find it crucial that the parties discussing a topic have a glossary of terms with examples to which they can all refer.
At a recent meeting with colleagues, we discussed teaching vocabulary by including word families in a passage. We all thought we were talking about the same thing...until forty minutes (!!!) into the discussion, we realized two of the colleagues had a different kind of word family in mind.
While the rest of us were talking about words from the same family in different parts of speech, such as act (verb), action (noun), active (adjective), and actively (adverb) or create (verb), creation (noun), creative (adjective), and creatively (adverb), two colleagues thought a word family referred to a common group of letters, in which changing the first letter results in a new word with a completely different meaning, like back, hack, lack, rack, and sack.
I got curious about this disastrous misunderstanding and googled word family only to find out many links exist to information about both kinds of word families, one kind referring to grammar and the other kind to spelling and pronunciation. The topic of our discussion had been grammar, but the other two colleagues, who happen to have young children learning to pronounce syllables and learn spelling, had assumed we were talking about pronunciation practice... for forty minutes... until I shared my experience at a school where the instructor didn't know describe and description belonged to the same word family. This made me realize the importance of using of examples, even in a glossary.
I've always believed, and said, that the purpose of language is communication, and clear communication can only happen through effective language which is specific, not vague and concrete, not abstract. Now, I would like to add the use of examples.
