theExact Word Experience

You may need help communicating. Or your workplace might.  Or your school. Whether personally or professionally, theExact Word Experience tailors well. Because a fundamental misunderstanding 1500 years ago or so has inadvertently veiled how English really works, English speakers have performed near miracles in sometimes successfully communicating nonetheless.  English simply does not operate as Latin languages do.  Our Latin grammar has a valuable place, for words. Yet, to disentangle thinking from words, we have to look between the lines for meaning we've unconsciously expressed.  theExact Word Experience affects other experience in collaboration, respect, education, and more considered selves.  Yet, shifting into how English really works is astoundingly easy.

If you can count to two, you can master English. English has two sets of thought patterns each used in one of two ways, no exceptions:

Image

• Two types of Images, for big-picture thoughts: Blue, Primary Images, and Pink, Conditional Images

Detail

• Two types of Detail for fleshing-out or deepening the broader picture: Green, Process Details, and Orange, Background Details. Used carefully, both types of Details can also compress Images to condense writing.
  

Note: theExact Word’s workshops additionally parallel these patterns and colors to the Latinate grammar.

Combining these patterns creates all English sentencing, spoken, read, heard, or written. Period. No choice. And have since Chaucer, around 1300, and in fact before that. As you speak and write, you use all four of these patterns. They have no exceptions. We cannot not use them.

But our “Latin” grammar, a grammar based on single-word use, inadvertently hid English meaning behind a veil of terms - you know them, not only "noun" and "verb" but also "participle," "modal auxiliaries," and quite a few more. But now, think of the eight-parts-of-speech as a “Latin Operating System,” (LOS), for 1500 years the only explanation we had for meaning in English. With theExact Word, you use the BOS (Brain Operating System) to “read” between the lines, to capture meaning beyond words, and beyond grammar. Nothing whatsoever wrong with either; but that third, hidden, meaning frames all your sentences either by default or by design.  No choice. The BOS Method for K-12 or ThoughtPrint Gateway to Mastery methods for adults gives you tools to see objectivity what added meaning all your writing - and speaking too - has. You become consciously articulate, objective about your own meaning. You shift your paradigm about language. You shift your vision. You think in ways you don’t think. You end strife. You gain strategies and use strengths better. You gain design options for better communications. You see in more than one way. For the fuller history of how theExact Word came to be, please see The Martian Moment

Seeing With New Eyes – New Knowledge

You could not speak English, or move past definitions of single words, without already, unconsciously, using “word-ordering.” Read this sentence. In a “nano-second” you will most likely see that you “add” the “real” meanings to each “still:”

My uncle owns a still in West Virginia. When the tax people
come after him, he hides under the still, lying very still; still,
he runs his still next to the still-life store.

So what? Your recognizing how the meanings of “still” change opens the door to shifting your paradigm to how English really works. Second-language speakers shift from word-focus to patterned thinking along with learning vocab. First-language speakers gain by consciously using dimensions of meaning unique to English and "Flipping" meaning to more-considered order.   Fundamental elements of English emerge into logical either/or choices. And that either/or nature of English includes grammar as a binary system too! Masterful and articulate communication evolves.  If you've ever struggled with English, with writing, with communicating, new options await.  theExact Word Experience shifts your vision to a new paradigm.

Seeing our language differently, and our communications choices differently, creates new confidence, new possibility – every day. We even see our own “realities” differently by having new choices, new perspectives, and new knowledge.

Language creates meaning beyond vocab and grammar. Language pattern connects to intuitive thought.  Everything begins with thought. Thoughtfully communicated meaning needs design.

New Knowledge

In English, we do not add “endings” to our words to relate them to each other. The “still” sentence illustrates this "Fixed-Word Order" trait of English. Instead, we tie word groups together. We connect them or we “stack” them on top of each other, sometimes three at a time.

We know this, but we don’t know we do. Becoming conscious of how English really works creates new knowledge. We have new knowledge about our choices of what to say. We see ourselves and each other differently. We shift options with multiple perspectives simply by “Flipping” thoughts from one pattern to another.

Change the pattern, change the meaning. Change the meaning, change realities.

You will gain new knowledge. Guaranteed. New knowledge about language, about English, your writing, your thinking, about others. You will understand why everybody else seems to think so differently. You will change what you know about how English works. The colors below mean something:  each color represents a pattern of thought.  Learning them activates more than one area of your brain.

ThoughtPrint

What if you knew why you think the way you do? And why others think so differently? What if you changed how you think just long enough to really communicate with someone else? You would have a new experience. Every English speaker has a language habit, often quite different from our own. Thus, “thinking out of the box” really means empowering ourselves with fresh views from other contexts -- how the other three patterns and their combinations differ from the default we each have as our individual language habit.  No matter your particular goals, theExact Word’s ThoughtPrint Inventory will direct you to a self-assessment of how you think and your patterned communications habits.

Every English speaker will usually have a first and second choice for a thinking style – how s/he best likes to learn or convey information. Those are strengths. His or her third and fourth choices may be styles less attractive to him or her, but they form wonderful strategies to augment personal strengths. After all, we must use all four patterns to speak and write English at all. Furthermore, all four patterns create different context meanings. As we think with each pattern, we invoke each type of meaning, despite our defaults.

• Orange, Background Detail: time, place, or grouping, the specifics about events and processes or other words.
  
  
• Pink, Conditional Image: circumstance or impinging conditions.
  
  
• Blue, Primary Image: mission or “bottom-line” purpose supporting all the other contexts.
  
  
• Green, Process Detail: guidelines, principles, or “always true” processes that have happened, are happening, or could happen.

“You already know everything you need to know about English because you speak it. “ (Dr. Robert Fox at American University) Making conscious what you unconsciously know will change your life.

Currently an activity during workshops, training, or coaching, theExact Word‘s ThoughtPrint inventory will be offered as an app or downloadable during 2013.

Every group, work team, organizational staff, faculty, classroom, or family has a collection of ThoughtPrints which theExact Word displays in a “ThoughtMap” which explains why people don’t see eye-to-eye or share standards for “doing things the right way.” Understanding communication “across the map” lowers barriers quickly, replacing them with bridges and interpersonal harmony.

The ThoughtMapping Inventory will accompany the app or downloadable of the ThoughtPrint Inventory during 2013.

“Perceptual Fog”

As a bonus accompanying the ThoughtPrint and ThoughtMap downloads, a new Perceptual Fog inventory will be included and, further treated in the forthcoming book, "You Should Just Know, How Perception Turns to Reality, Volume 1."
Why “Perceptual Fog?” Just as we all have language habits, so too are we often misunderstood and misperceived. This new “Fog” Inventory will point to potential extremes which our language habits can inadvertently press onto others.

The Paradigm Shift

Know it or not, you have a language paradigm. Ask nearly anyone on the street in America, likely globally, to define “noun” and “verb.” An immediate, almost robotic answer: “person, place, or thing,” for noun, and “action word” for verb will follow. What nearly always follows is a questioning, “So what?” look.

Between the ages of 3-5, humans are language geniuses, often learning more than one language, but unquestionably the patterns of at least one. Why do we seem to lose touch with that instinctive genius? Regarding English, the word-focused Latinate school model, The LOS (Latin Operating System) grammar, does not match how English-speakers think. Because English “works” by patterned word groups, theExact Word has captured something new under the sun in the patterns of English, not words.

You may have a moment or two in the learning where you’ll feel confused, or lost, or blank. This shift may unseat you for a moment and you might say something like: “Why didn’t you tell me this would happen?!!! Or, “The fuses blew;” “The lights went out;” “I fell off a cliff;” “Learning this is like blood-letting;” “You pulled the rug out from under me.” This kind of confusion, however, does not signal “something wrong.” It signals a real shift in understanding.  And, you will be surprised at how quickly you pass through those moments. In fact, because of that frustration, your Ah Ha! moments occur.

To learn and practice every pattern of meaning in English, you will see a new process. You will see how “Flipped" meaning, ordering and re-ordering thought, presents English as an idea language. Guaranteed. You will see “scrambling” and reordering thought as a strategy. "Scrambling" means devaluing the default or initial context to shift into a new one by design.  But a moment, sometimes short, sometimes longer, will occur when not seeing the “old” definition of language, nor the new one either, feels very uncomfortable. Yet thereby, somehow, new knowledge begins. Nor has it been otherwise, as two ancient texts tell us:

1.)  In Plato’s Dialogues, Socrates’ pupil, Theaetetus, complained, “But Socrates, I cannot shake this anxious feeling.” “My dear Theaetetus,” Socrates says, “you are bringing something to the birth in you.”

2.)  And the 5,000-year old Chinese text, the I Ching, says its texts touch the subconscious in order that a “… [necessary] … initial confusion triggers a sort of landslide of potential meaning. Being imaginatively open or versatile is the key to the interaction… [a]shen or awareness of spirit is excited....This is a living process.”

theExact Word will guide you through the shifting process to resolve any discomfort you might feel as you progress to the “Ah Ha” moments that always happen.
With theExact Word you will literally shift your paradigm as to how English really works. And it’s fun. You’ll see.

The Methods

Everything begins with thought. Two factors center your life: thought and language. We think day and night, no choice. We all have unconscious language habits, a kind of “default” pattern of how we see the world – detailed, maybe, or big picture. Our defaults seem normal to us, and usual. Everyone, however, does not have the same default style. So, having to communicate can twist us into knots because we have to “think in ways we don’t think.” That “mental flip” can make life hard at home, with loved ones, at work, on teams, and in writing whether on screen, or on paper. Nonetheless, make no mistake; that difficulty is not your fault. Human beings are language geniuses by ages 3-5 thus accepting how language works without question. Why then do we struggle later? Good question. For one reason, English grammar fits another set of languages, not English. Yet, the reason we have the grammar that we do rests on a very, very interesting story. For the moment, know for certain that struggles to communicate are not your fault. You simply need a new language paradigm and a scheme of procedure, and preferably easy solutions, not more years of exceptions and misfit models.

The human brain has more than one location for language function. The frontal lobe houses verbs, or really “Verbness,” while toward the back on the left side, the occipital lobe houses nouns or really “Nounness.” Wernicke’s and Broca’s areas house other language functions still awaiting full understanding by brain researchers.
Between the frontal and occipital lobes, an area of “sentence implementation” creates synaptic connections among the language functions. Behind that section, toward the center, the brain processes color.

Pairing color with the Verbness and Nounness lobes has made learning theExact Word’s Brain Operating System, ThoughtPrint Gateways to Mastery, and ThoughtPrint/ ThoughtMap models vivid.

Magic

The BOS and ThoughtPrint Gateways to Mastery Methods connect to brain functions so consistently that a Paradigm Pathway has emerged which bridges theExact Word Experience by connecting to life itself after the workshop - for example, how we interpret events, relate to others, set our standards. In the learning, questions, reactions, and comments occur in exactly the same ways, at the same turning points, and often in the same words in workshops and coaching in different years, different organizations, at different occupational levels.  Astounding really.

One participant in a Texas company came to a seminar saying, “I want to learn these magic keys to English that everybody’s talking about.”

Ah Ha! moments occur during seminars, and continue afterward. Students feel English has consistent structure after all. Magically. To support the on-going Ah Ha! moments, theExact Word has begun, in 2012, expansion of services, venues, materials, and feedback for organizations, individuals, schools.

Colors? And Patterns?

Every English sentence is bounded by one or more of four patterns and their connections. No choice. How you vary, connect, or populate them with vocabulary mirrors your mind, intention, imagination, design, and strengths. We use the colors to illustrate how the patterns overlap, a vivid, graphic demonstration. With the givens of four patterns in English and their color graphics, you have a lifetime of both creativity and secure new knowledge for “reading between the lines,” creating “lines-of-reasoning,” and articulate representations of what you mean to say. The four patterns and their colors are follow.
NOTE: Very Important:  Every other highlighted sentence on this site illustrates the four patterns by colored formula whereas the four following paragraphs do not.  Instead, the colors blanket the definition of each pattern's meaning, its "dimensions," so to speak, rather than the formula for making each pattern. Further, the ideas of "dimensions of meaning" and "lines-of-reasoning" have considerable importance in theExact Word's methods.

“Orange,” Background Details create meaning of time, place, and grouping. They “center” other parts of the sentence. Or they provide crucial information about where, like “over the mountains and through the woods.” Or grouping: Everybody went "except Ralph.” Therefore, “everybody” didn’t really go because Ralph didn’t. Thus, the detail adds precision or exactness as a Background Dimension of Meaning..

“Pink,” Conditional Images mean the circumstances or conditions which affect ideas or which limit them. Primary Images can become Conditional Images or back again, with an easy flip of the Conditional Triggers. Conditional Images identify the boundaries of events, the “whens” and “wheres” of circumstance or “if-thens” of how things happen as its Dimension of Meaning. “If Ralph goes, everybody relaxes.

“Blue,” Primary Images mean the mission, the “bottom line,” the skeletal point. Primary Images either express single events or mental pictures, or become a kind of “sentence skeleton” on which the flesh of ideas hang and “wear” the musculature or dressing which you give to thought as the impact of Primary Dimensions of Meaning. “Ralph left.” Or, Even though everybody wanted him "to go," Ralph decided  "not to.”

“Green,” Process Details, mean exactly that: processes. English speakers “name” processes by formula. Processes occur in time and have a feeling of being almost an “entity,” a thing in itself. We can “do them,” like “baking” or “running,” “fried,” “completed,” “to plan,” or “to have only known.” But, as Process Detail, Movement expresses not "action words," but the names of Processes, the Dimension of Meaning beyond vocabulary definitions.  “Knowing the others" would "probably become tense," Ralph apologized for "not being able to go."

So What?

Givens govern how we form ideas or translate thought to language. Language has pattern, no choice. We think, no choice. Knowing the givens and knowing our choices lead us to articulate thinking and to  live articulated lives. We use the patterns in every sentence, whether we intend to or not.  Besides, in English, the idea language, the choices are simple to learn and use.

                               From Default to Design:  Strategy

Remember that everything begins with thought, a point we must keep in mind. Whether you want to get a point across, aloud, on-paper, on-line, you want to express something you have in mind.  Remember too, however, that you have three minds:

    1.  your conscious mind with vocabulary, grammar, ideas you know  you have;
    2. your  subconscious mind with thoughts and perspectives you don't know you have;
    3.  the tools in language patterning which create meaning around your words.

An eighth grade girl in the All Boats Rise Documentary In Progress expresses what so many people say about writing:  the thoughts don't look on paper like they did in my mind.

Your "third mind," the one with the patterned tools of English harnesses your "second" and "first" minds.  Knowing your strengths and language habits gives you safe ground. Flipping your thoughts into other patterns and thinking with context automates "reaching into" your subconscious mind for perspectives  and objectivity to frame or change your first thoughts.
  
Imagine a student's dilemma, or an adult in the workplace.  Saying the first thing that comes to mind so often doesn't "work."  Why?  Who knows?  A student says, "That's all I got, dude," or something similar.  An adult says, "Oh, I give up," or something similar.  Both mean, "For some reason, I just can't do this."  Not with only grammar, or vocabulary, no.  But add context through the patterns, and you have the whole package;  you have concrete, real tools and you have your thoughts.  You know how English really works.  You know what you want to say.  You gain objectivity.  You make decisions.  Voila!
 

Empirical outcomes and consistently repeated participant responses in seminars or workshops indicate “something new under the sun.” Thereby a “Paradigm Pathway” has emerged for tracking understanding a new way  of using language. Thomas Kuhn famously defined "paradigm shift" as the slow "sea change" in knowledge  which emerges out of peer review or replicated scientific experience.  However,  Kuhn's definition apparently does not address how individuals shift paradigms. Therefore, a further new knowledge suggests potentially contributive new insights about English or how English connects to intuitive thought.  The resulting "Paradigm Pathway" has already created interesting results very valuable for teaching.

Once English speakers experience a new view of language, objectivity becomes less elusive. Choice and design of what to say and how to say it increase. Confidence too increases. Understanding how others think changes the tendency to judge or dismiss. The forthcoming Kudos Hall of Fame will chronicle individual outcomes.

No choice . . .
Everything we hear, read, say, and write, falls into one of four patterns.
Besides having our ThoughtPrint favorites, we have to use all four patterns because that’s all English has.

Is she young or old?