Skills in English for the non-native professional
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  • Skills in English for the non-native speaker
    • Native Proficiency: La filosofía.
    • Native Proficiency: La metodología.
    • PLANNING YOUR LEARNING: WELCOME TO COACHING FOR ENGLISH
      • TRAINING FORMATS
      • Modalidades de formación
    • THREE LAYERS: UNDERSTANDING THE NATIVEPROFICIENCY APPROACH
      • LANGUAGE SKILLS
      • COMMUNICATIVE SKILLS
      • PROFESSIONAL SKILLS
  • Contacto – Acerca de esta web / Contact – About this website

Skills in English for the non-native professional

Category

Communication Across Cultures

Communication Across CulturesCommunication SkillsPronunciationSpeaking Skills

Would you like to be taken seriously?

written by Francisco Sanjurjo

Being taken seriously is a serious issue. It is mostly about respect and treating people equally. But sometimes we don’t treat people seriously for a number of reasons, objective and subjective. Maybe we do not want to be taken seriously. But what if we do and we fail? Seriousness is in the eye of the beholder. The way you look, the clothes you wear, your haircut.

How you sound? Yes, being taken seriously is also a matter of how you sound. More so in English than let’s say in Spanish. How you sound is a very wide concept, so let’s have a look (I will try and make it quick) at the factors that make you sound serious.

If you mean business, act the part. Sound the part.

It goes without saying that what you say is important. But the way you sound is part of your sales pitch.

First of all: the individual sounds.  Pronouncing clearly and correctly the individual sounds is important to a great extent, because it is the base of what makes us understandable.

Let’s say you arrived to your hotel room and found the bed sheets have not been changed since the last guest’s departure. You call reception and you politely ask “could you please change the bed shits?” Chances are you will hear a stiffled chuckle and sooner or later someone will come to your room and change your sheets. However you may become “the guest who asked to have the shits changed”. Quite likely they understood you perfectly because of the context, but still, what they heard was shit, and not sheet.

Lesson #1: individual sounds can be the difference between two words. If you make mistakes with that in a professional context you may give off an aura of amateurship. This happens to native speakers too, because being a native speaker is no guarantee either.

Let’s continue: We do not spell words sound by sound, and we don’t say words in total isolation. Our brains do the work of cutting up the pieces when we hear them, because we recognize when and where to cut. However you need to train your brain – not your ear as people would expect – to make these fine distinctions. This is called “connected speech“. Chopping everything in discrete pieces as you speak is tiring and confusing on the listener, specially if they are native speakers and they are expecting you to connect the sounds and the words.

Lesson#2: sounds and words do not happen in isolation and when we speak we connect them constantly rather than finish one and start the next. It is important to learn to do this confidently because your listeners’ brains are expecting you to do it. Otherwise you are puzzling and annoying them one word at a time.

Finally (for now), we need to discuss intonation. Intonation patterns, the “ups” and “downs” in every sentence are not a whim or a choice for the speaker. They have meanings like the difference between questions and statements, or the difference between being “neutral” or expressing sarcasm. Your audience will probably be more understanding of mistakes with this if they know you are a non-native speaker. Or they may be thinking “he’s been here for five years and still speaks like this?”. Or you might be sounding offensive without noticing.

Lesson #3: intonation is like the icing on the cake. But a rather important icing. There may be more pressing matters, such as the two above. However, mastering it will still make a huge difference in how effective or confusing your communication efforts are. In reverse, pay attention to people’s intonation when they speak to you: they might be saying more than words alone can express.

Did you find it interesting? Do yo think you could use some help with any of this stuff?

Info.nativeprofiency@gmail.com

Would you like to be taken seriously? was last modified: November 6th, 2018 by Francisco Sanjurjo
2nd October 2018 0 comment
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Communication Across CulturesCommunication SkillsLearning TipsProfessional Skills

Skills in English: the cultural shock.

written by Francisco Sanjurjo

When we acquire a skill in a new language it is more than just putting words together. When you come in contact with new people, even in your own culture, you store information in your brain about how to deal with them: how they need to be greeted, how they like to go about doing things or what sets them on edge.

When we approach a different culture, a different language, a different country, we need to acquire the “ways of the land”. That is the way things are done in the particular place where the skill is going to be used. This is particularly important when learning to do things in English. It is truly a global language and that means that people will use English in environments where nobody is a native speaker. English and “how things are done” do not go automatically hand in hand.

One factor in this is  the huge number of varieties of English: English has been nativized in many countries, like The Philipines, or Singapore. In other countries people do not use “English” strictly speaking, but creoles, local languages that have formed using English as their foundations – often because it was the language of the colonists –  but including many local vocabulary and grammar items.

Try this easy experiment: if you live in a medium-sized or big city and use public transport – or even walking down the street – eavesdrop subsaharan immigrants when they are talking among themselves. Often they come from countries that used to be british colonies and they speak english-based creoles. (Or French-based creoles in some cases.

A second factor is what happens in countries like Spain where English is not a language people use in everyday life. The influence on English when it is spoken as a foreign language or a second language depends on the contact the speaker has had with an English speaking culture and also with whether the person or people spoken to are native speakers or second language speakers as well.

People who come from monolingual contexts – quite common in Spain – will feel their heads spinning by now. What is the protocol if nobody is a native speaker? It is not an easy issue. Even if there are native speakers, they could be in the minority.  Usually native speakers are the most problematic in international environments, where they are just one more player in the game. In any case, common sense and politeness dictate that one should stick to the rules and customs of the host country. And of course, observe and adjust as you go. Again, common sense.

In conclusion, using English as a language for international communication is a matter of juggling with the different cultures, the origins of people and the location and situation where communication takes place. It requires an open mind, ready to not be shocked at anything – which doesn’t mean everything goes – and also ready to learn.

Skills in English: the cultural shock. was last modified: September 13th, 2018 by Francisco Sanjurjo
18th September 2015 0 comment
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