“Why Am I so Hard to Understand When I Speak So Well?”
As an English learner with a great command of the language, why are you still hard to understand?
You are bright, extremely intelligent, and a great asset to your company. Everyone raves about your knowledge and expertise. People ask for your opinion but yet they don’t get done what you have asked them to do or you receive a lot of blank stares. Although English is not your native language, you know you have an excellent command of English grammar and perhaps you’ve even lived in the U.S. for many years. However, you realize that people have a difficult time understanding you and you notice that your colleagues seem to be avoiding you.
How is it that you have such a good command of the English language but are still difficult to understand? There are six potential problems to consider:
1. Vowels and consonants are inaccurately pronounced, substituted or entirely omitted. Since vowels and consonants carry a lot of meaning to words, a substitution can change the meaning drastically. Other languages don’t use the same alphabet as English does, so you must learn entirely new sounds. Among the harder sounds to learn are /r/, /l/ and /th/and the voicing of some consonants. Vowels, if mispronounced, will cause miscommunications. You may have adopted the sounds of your language when speaking English and never learned the new ones.
Another problem you might encounter is not knowing how to pronounce a spelled word since many American English words are not pronounced like they are spelled. Even native English speakers find pronunciation of unfamiliar spelled words problematic.
2. Inappropriate stress is placed on syllables in words. You may be using the structure of your native language and applying it to English. Some languages don’t stress syllables the same way that English does. In order to stress a syllable, we lengthen the vowel sound of the stressed syllable and we increase our pitch and our loudness on this syllable. Consider the following two words: thirty and thirteen. The first syllable is stressed in the word “THIRty” and the second syllable is stressed in “thirTEEN.” If, for example, your native tongue gives equal length to all syllables, then you are going to say these two words almost identically. Word meaning is carried in these stressed syllables in American English. When syllable stress is you accurate, your listener will probably not understand.
3. The rhythm and melody of speech (intonation) doesn’t match American English intonation patterns. American English puts stress on the important words in our sentences like verbs, nouns and pronouns. This gives the sentence more meaning. Say the following sentence stressing the word that is in bold:
Language Tools for educational and learning methods and systems for understanding a foreign or international dialect.
I like pizza.
I like pizza.
I like pizza.
These sentences are different based on the context:
Does Sara like pizza? No, I like pizza.
Do you hate pizza? No, I like pizza.
Do you like chicken? No, I like pizza.
Some languages speak with very little intonation and so sentences sound flatter than American English. This interferes with intelligibility because American English uses pitch variation to make sentences interesting and to give them meaning. English also uses a lot of pitch variation at the endings of sentences. The pitch goes up at the end of some questions and down for other questions and statements. There are multiple variations of pitch that are used to help the listener.
If the rhythm of speech is broken up because you don’t link sounds in words or words in sentences, your cadence of speech will be choppy. It won’t sound natural and won’t flow well. Learning to link sounds and words is a high level skill that is key to understandable speech.
4. The rate of speech is too fast. A fast rate of speech compromises the listeners’ understanding no matter who is speaking. Add mispronunciation of sounds, inaccurate stress, a flat pitch, and choppy rhythm and you will become especially difficult to understand. If your speech is too slow, it is difficult for your listener to stay engaged. You must be especially careful to speak at an appropriate rate that is appropriate and it depends on how much of an accent you have. Even with a good grasp of the language, the presence of an accent will compromise the intelligibility. You can increase your chances of being understood by slowing down.
5. The nuances and intricacies of the language have not been learned. /r/ and /t/ variations, contractions, word endings, etc. The presence of seemingly small variables can affect how understandable you are.
6. Grammatical errors—the number of errors present will correspond with your intelligibility. Minor errors will not compromise intelligibility but many errors will affect it.
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