What is a thought group?
A thought group is a group of approximately two to five words that present a uniform idea, or a "unit of meaning." A thought group could also be called a phrase. The following sentence has three thought groups:
I'm trying to learn / how to speak more clearly / to be understood better.
In written English, all types of punctuation (commas, semicolons, quotation marks, periods, etc.) separate thought groups. In longer sentences, however, several thought groups will exist that will not be separated by punctuation (as in the example sentence above).
How to recognize thought groups?
This can be difficult at first, and shadowing over a longer period of time may truly help you develop an intuition for separating phrases into thought groups. However, please remember that many thought groups consists of a subject (e.g "I"), a verb phrase ("am trying") and a simple predicate ("to learn").
How to use pauses in English?
English uses pauses (short breaks in speaking) more than many other languages. Generally, periods and commas indicate long pauses (~one or two-seconds long, depending on the speaker). However, most speakers will also pause slightly between thought groups.
In ShadowTalk's practice videos, sentences have been separated by thought groups; this will help you develop an intuition for when to pause in your sentences. if no punctuation follows, each thought group will be marked with a "/" at its end.
💡Learn next: Word Prominence, or how one word in every thought group is given more focus than the others.