Do native Japanese not summarise what they said or agreed to

[cloa513]

In totally friendly or professional professional English conversations people say back the gist of what they have said or agreed. In listening exercises that never happens. What generally happens in real life?

 

[mdchachi]

In totally friendly or professional professional English conversations people say back the gist of what they have said or agreed. In listening exercises that never happens. What generally happens in real life?

Can you give an example of such an English conversation? I don't think I do this unless I am trying to capture action items after a business meeting.

 

[Majestic]

You mean something like;

"OK, so tomorrow, the plan is to
1) meet at the airport at 12:00,
2) buy a bottle of wine at the duty free shop,
3) exchange yen for dollars when we land at the airport in Hawaii."

If so, then yes this sort of conversation is of course very common.

 

[bentenmusume]

The whole premise of this question rather confuses me.

First, it's been a while since I exposed myself to listening exercises, but I remember many of them doing exactly something what you say doesn't happen, summarizing things at the end and often going out of their way to phrase things in such a manner that the listener would be thrown off unless they understood a particular piece of grammar.

Second, I'm not sure why one would expect artificially created listening exercises to be a perfect mirror of actual conversations between native speakers. Listening exercises are created specifically to challenge learners to understand particular points. I'm not sure why you'd expect tendencies in them to perfectly mirror and represent exactly what happens between native speakers in all of their daily interactions.

Third, I've never felt that summarizing things is a universal property of every English conversation. It strikes me that people summarize when they expect that there might be a potential misunderstanding or lack of clarity. It's not like there's some unwritten rule that every English conversation has to end with a summary.

So in summary, no, I wouldn't say there's any significant difference between English and Japanese in this regard.

 

[Lothor]

When I did a business Japanese course last year, in many conversations when a request was made by a manager, it was quite common for the subordinate to summarise the request to demonstrate they understood what was being asked of them.

 

[cloa513]

I don't expect listening exercises to mirror real life merely wondering if it does. JLPT N4 listening never give the gist of what is agreed to given that is generally what question to answered is for the non-response type exercise. Response types dont have a gist. I also didnt say it was the universal property of English conversations rather a limited subset of those conversations.

 

[bentenmusume]

I don't expect listening exercises to mirror real life merely wondering if it does.

It doesn't, and for good reason. Listening exercises are designed specifically to test learners' comprehension of specific words and grammar points. Real-life conversations are about communication.

JLPT N4 listening never give the gist of what is agreed to given that is generally what question to answered is for the non-response type exercise. Response types dont have a gist.

This is almost certainly because the test makers believed that repeating the information too many times would make the question too easy, not because "native Japanese people never summarize what they said."

I also didnt say it was the universal property of English conversations rather a limited subset of those conversations.

Sorry if I misinterpreted your words. It just struck me as a bit curious that one would draw such a grand, sweeping conclusion of how native Japanese people speak (compared to English speakers) based upon artificial conversations designed for very low level learners.