Avoid wasting your money until you are ready. Let me explain…
You’ve decided that you have some communication issues that you would like to improve upon and a coach is the solution to help you achieve your goals. Resolving to make change is a wonderful goal but too often, people with best intentions are unable to achieve their goals. Too often, we have unrealistic goals and don’t realize how difficult change can be.
Ever heard the phrase “It’s not you, it’s me?” Frequently, it is an excuse that is used by someone in a relationship who is breaking up with the other person.
But the same can be said for the listener who is struggling to understand people speaking with foreign accent…”It’s not you, it’s me!” The listener has ownership in the problem, too.
Maybe you are struggling with a foreign accent and have lost some self-confidence at work because of it. You are repeating yourself frequently (and that’s getting old real fast), other people jump in and explain what you just said or meant, you see blank stares or people responding off-topic to what you just said, or someone at work has told you were not selected to do the presentation because of your accent.
Research shows that your listeners grow tired of having to try to translate the message when you hard to understand. Your listener will stick with you for only so long before shutting down and stop listening. This puts you at a disadvantage. You have a couple of choices: Lose your accent completely or reduce your accent. Here are the advantages and disadvantages of both.
Have you ever felt frustrated that the conversation you had with a colleague or supervisor fell short of your intentions? Maybe you were trying to communicate something and it was clear that he/she didn’t understand what you said. Here are some ideas that may help you:
Americans use idioms in nearly every conversation without much thought. Non-native English speakers often struggle understanding idioms because they require a lot of background, contextual information.
Among the many aspects of learning a language, non-native English speakers learn how to pronounce English sounds to become easier to understand. There are a few “rules” around the way sounds are pronounced.
Hands down, vowels are more difficult to learn in American English than consonants. Why? Because in American English, most consonants have one sound associated with them whereas, there are five letters in English that represent our vowels system but there are about 22 pronunciations of those vowels.
The business world has recently reinvented the way people are communicating with clients, team members and other businesses. What do you do if you are constantly being misunderstood? How can you identify and overcome your foreign accent trouble spots?
Ever heard the phrase “It’s not you, it’s me?” Frequently, it is an excuse that is used by someone in a relationship who is breaking up with the other person.
Among the many aspects of learning a language, non-native English speakers learn how to pronounce English sounds to become easier to understand. There are a few “rules” around the way sounds are pronounced. 
Hands down, vowels are more difficult to learn in American English than consonants. Why? Because in American English, most consonants have one sound associated with them whereas, there are five letters in English that represent our vowels system but there are about 22 pronunciations of those vowels.
The business world has recently reinvented the way people are communicating with clients, team members and other businesses. What do you do if you are constantly being misunderstood? How can you identify and overcome your foreign accent trouble spots?