Much has been written on English as a lingua franca and the responsibility of native English speakers, who make up only about one-third of the total English-speaking population, to attune their speech and ears to those who speak English as a second (or third, or fourth…) language. In fact, a BBC article written in 2016  claims that native English speakers are far worse than nonnative English speakers at understanding others and making themselves understood in intercultural situations.  Nonnative English speakers, according to the article, tend to speak more purposefully and carefully than native English speakers and use less jargon and slang. On the other hand, native English speakers, especially those who speak only English, are less likely to adapt to the needs of their listeners, by slowing down, for example, or rephrasing points in a different way. In fact, research shows  that when a native English speaker enters a conversation among nonnative speakers, understanding declines.

Over the years, I have worked with nonnative English-speaking clients who spoke perfectly clear English. When asked why they want to “improve” their English (i.e., make their English sound more like standard North American English), their responses have been variations on two common themes: they have encountered negative attitudes from native English speakers when they speak, or they feel they are not well understood by others. I’ve suggested to these clients that the negative reactions they have received from others say more about the others’ attitudes and prejudices than about their ability to speak clear English. Nonetheless, many remain motivated to change their English pronunciation.
 
Communication, however, is a two-way street. So how much of the burden to change should lie on the nonnative English speaker, and how much should lie on the native English speaker? With the majority of English speakers in the world nonnative, it may be time for native English speakers to improve their communication skills.  So, how can one become a better intercultural communicator? The following five tips are designed to help native English speakers communicate more effectively in intercultural situations:
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1.  Bring a Positive Attitude – One of the most important shifts you can make towards intercultural competence is to make a conscious effort to want to understand a speaker.  Reflect upon your own culture, biases, and attitude. What’s getting in your way? For example, do you feel that it is mostly a speaker’s responsibility to make listeners understand? This may reflect a Western bias towards the importance of speaking, taking listening for granted as something “you just do.” Many non-Western cultures are more likely to value the skill of listening as a responsibility and sign of respect. This and other differences between cultures and communication styles may lead to biases and negative attitudes that interfere with communication. 

In a study by University of Georgia professor Donald Rubin, native English-speaking undergraduates were divided into two groups: one was shown an image of an Asian instructor, and the other was shown an image of a white instructor. Both images were paired with the same recording of a lecture given in General American English (i.e., “standard North American English”) by a native English speaker. Undergraduates who thought the speech came from the Asian instructor rated the speech as “more accented” than those who thought the speech came from the white instructor, and, more surprisingly, their listening comprehension scores were lower than those who thought the speech was coming from the white instructor. This study suggests that the biases we bring to the table have a significant effect on communication.

Recognizing and questioning your own biases may be a lifelong – but life-changing - process. The Office of Diversity and Outreach at the University of California, San Francisco, provides practical strategies to address one’s own unconscious bias.
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2. Know your Audience.  This is sound advice no matter whom you are communicating with. However, with respect to communication partners who speak English as a second language, it is helpful to know something of the national cultures to which they belong. Culture can be thought of a lens through which communication is filtered. 

Social psychologist Geert Hoftstede suggests cultures can be defined along the following five dimensions:
 
a)  Power Distance is the extent to which the less powerful members of a culture accept and expect unequal power distribution.
 
b)  Individualism is the degree to which individuals are integrated into groups.  On one end of the spectrum, members of individualist cultures are expected to take care of themselves and their immediate families. They value independence and individual success. Members of collectivist cultures, on the other hand, share responsibilities among a larger communal or familiar network.  Collectivist cultures tend to value listening, harmony with others, and conformity. 
Collectivist cultures are often high-context, which means that the meaning of messages relies highly on context, tone, and nonverbal cues, whereas individualistic cultures tend to be low-context, which means meaning is derived more explicitly on words.
 
c) Masculinity refers to the level of assertiveness and competition among members whereas femininity, on the opposite end, refers to the level of modesty and caring in a culture.
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 d) Uncertainty Avoidance refers to a culture’s tolerance for uncertainty and ambiguity; uncertainty avoiding cultures minimize risk and value security. 

e) Long-Term Orientation refers to cultures that value thrift and perseverance; values associated with short term orientation are respect for tradition and fulfilling social obligations.
 
There’s far more to culture, however, than what can be summarized at a national level; subgroups related to race, ethnicity, gender, politics, socio-economic class, profession, organization, and countless other categories can all have their own unique cultures.
 
In addition to trying to understand your communication partner’s cultural perspective, it’s also helpful to tune in to your partner’s level of ease with English. Overuse of idiomatic expressions and jargon, references to American sports and old TV shows may be meaningless to your communication partner. Furthermore, particularly if your partner has not been in the US long, it may be helpful to slow your speech down and enunciate clearly. If you sense discomfort or misunderstanding on the part of your partner, rephrase using simpler terms.  Again, bringing a positive attitude pervades this advice; modify your speech in the spirit of helpfulness as not to become patronizing.
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3. Become a Good Intercultural Listener. Much that has been written about intercultural listening is grounded in this simple idea espoused by Carl Rogers and Richard Farson in 1957 with regard to active listening: “Sincerely listen with understanding and respect.”  Again, what it means to be a good intercultural listener comes back to approaching communication with a positive attitude. 

Rogers and Farson’s work on active listening has been upheld as a successful model for intercultural listening. While members of low-context cultures (such as Germany and the United States) tend to believe that listening is a passive skill, requiring little more than hearing, members of high-context cultures (such as Brazil and China) tend to believe that listening is a skill requiring the active use of the whole being, as represented by the Chinese characters, ting.  As pointed out in research by Melissa Beall, “The characters in ‘ting’ represent the eyes, the ears, the heart, (the total being) and undivided attention…Listening requires the whole being to be involved when trying to understand what is being communicated.”

4. Acknowledge the Complexities of English.  Another aspect of bringing a positive attitude to the table involves empathy. For those Anglophones who do not speak a second language, the complexities of speaking another language, especially one as difficult as English, may go unnoticed.  English is a highly non phonetic language, which means that the spelling of words does not provide a clear guide to their pronunciation. For example, we have “to,” “do,” but also “go.” In fact, we have five vowels but approximately 14 different vowel sounds. We have “berry,” “Barry,” and “bury,” which all sound exactly the same in many parts of the United States. But let’s not forget regional variations in dialect across the U.S., as well as differences in standard Englishes across the globe. For example, many people who move to the United States from other countries have learned other dialects of English, such as British English or Australian English, or they may speak a variety of English that is unique to their region.

​Furthermore, people who speak English as an additional language far outnumber those who speak English natively. Who’s to say that the native speaker is speaking correct English? Nobody, in fact. There is no governmental or royal society that dictates correct English. What is “correct” varies by region or context. A more useful way of looking at English as a lingua franca may be to ask oneself, “What is standard usage or pronunciation for the context or situation?”  All of this to say, English is complex and controversial; show empathy for those who speak it as something other than their first language.  In the words of author Amy Chua, “Do you know what a foreign accent is? It's a sign of bravery.”
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5. Ask for Permission to Provide Feedback.  In the spirit of friendship and helpfulness, you may ask your communication partner (in private) whether he or she would like feedback on language use. If he or she consents, you could tell him or her how you would have phrased or pronounced something differently. Some nonnative speakers appreciate the feedback. But if your partner declines the help, let it go. My rule of thumb is to ask myself whether my feedback is both necessary (i.e., will it increase comprehensibility?) and elicited (i.e., does the speaker want my help?).
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In summary, the first tip, bringing a positive attitude, pervades all of the tips here. By showing respect, empathy, and a sincere willingness to understand, you can learn to be a successful intercultural communicator. With effort and practice, you can uncover and let go of biases, learn about the cultures of your communication partners, adjust your speech to your listeners, and become an active listener. In addition to increasing your understanding of another and minimizing miscommunication and errors, you are communicating your respect towards him or her, increasing the likelihood that your messages will also be met with respect and understanding.

Ready to learn more? Every Voice delivers research-based  intercultural communication programs to address communication problems and cross-cultural misunderstandings within your business or organization. 

By Jennie Parker

Mid-semester, my students, who came to the U.S. from many countries, including Colombia, Mexico, Italy, China, South Korea, and Ivory Coast, gave oral presentations. The main learning objective was to deliver a well-prepared, organized, coherent presentation. A secondary objective was to address English language skills. As part of this, I designed a special section of the rubric where I listed mispronounced words and their corrections.

I will never forget a student from China who spoke clear English with a Mandarin accent. Though she had presented beautifully and earned an A, when I handed back her feedback, her face got red, and her hand shot up in the air. She scolded me in front of the class for implying that her accent was “wrong” and somehow inferior to mine.
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I was taken aback. That was certainly not what I had intended to do, and the only reference to accent at all on the rubric was implicit: the list of mispronounced words and their corrections. I thought I was helping her and her classmates to communicate more clearly with their North American peers and professors.

Was I wrong to include pronunciation? I felt ashamed for having offended her, but also confused. Wasn’t part of my job as an ESL instructor to address pronunciation? If so, how could I have done so in a way that would have been better received? The search for these answers led me to a wealth of sociolinguistics literature on accent.

First, let’s be clear, we all speak with an accent. The way we pronounce vowels and consonants and apply word stress, rhythm, and intonation all contribute to what is our accent. In the United States, the majority of people speak English with an accent referred to as General American English; most Americans would say this accent lacks any distinctive characteristics, and it may be erroneously described as “unaccented.” In addition to this standard accent, some estimate there are roughly 24 additional nonstandard accents in the United States, which may point to a speaker’s regional, ethnic, or socioeconomic characteristics. But when you think of English as a global language, for it is spoken by nearly 1.5 billion people around the world, the number of accents increases to roughly 160.

So, which accent is correct? No governmental or royal society exists to regulate the English language, and most linguists would agree that there is no one correct, valid English accent. Well, then, which accent is most desirable? That depends on the listener. Own-accent bias suggests that people prefer to hear their own accent. Accent helps us to distinguish our in-group from out-groups. The logic goes, those who speak like us are the most similar to us. But is that true?

Our perceptions of others’ accents depend on our social and cultural associations with that accent. In other words, accent triggers our stereotypes of a speaker. According to accent prestige theory, accents are used as cues to judge characteristics of speakers. More specifically, these characteristics can be divided into two categories: status (including intelligence, education level, social class, competence, and level of success) and solidarity (including friendliness, trustworthiness, and kindness). Studies have shown that the standard accent is rated higher in both categories by people who speak the standard accent (such as General American in the U.S.). However, those who speak with a nonstandard accent also give higher ratings to those who speak with a standard accent in the status category, but rate those who speak with an accent similar to their own higher in the solidarity category.

Since moving from the Midwest to the South over 20 years ago, I’ve become more sensitive to how some of these stereotypes tend to play out in movies. It seems that oftentimes, characters with a Southern accent in film and animation are friendly but dim-witted. Think Mater in Cars. In contrast, British accents in American theaters are often correlated with prestige or intelligence. Think James Bond.

Unfortunately, in the real world, these accent biases create opportunities for discrimination. John Baugh, a linguistics professor at Washington University, coined the phrase, “linguistic profiling,” which refers to discriminating against a person based on auditory cues, such as dialect and accent. His studies have shown that ethnicity can often accurately be determined from short speech samples – as short as “hello” – and that those who speak with a dialect or accent devalued where they live may fall victim to discrimination in areas such as housing, banking, and medicine. I remember a friend’s British husband joking that in the process of becoming an American citizen, whenever he had to go through security checkpoints in government buildings, he just had to say “hello” and was waved through, avoiding the scrutiny that others endured. Of course, more than auditory cues may have contributed to the guards’ prejudices, but I thought of Baugh’s studies.

Perpetuating accent bias is a real danger of accent training. Awareness should be raised as to the concept of accent bias: of course, a speaker’s accent is not actually an indicator of his intelligence, success, or trustworthiness, for example, but it can elicit social evaluations, perhaps even unconsciously, that put him at an unfair advantage or disadvantage. And completely changing one’s accent to suit the environment is neither easy nor desirable for most. Accent training should, therefore, be approached sensitively with these issues in the minds of both the accent coach and the client.

Certainly, the concept of accent is heavy with meaning: identity, stereotypes, a source of pride or stigma. Yet, another aspect of accent is often overlooked in discussions on it: intelligibility. One’s accent consists of features that trigger far less of an emotional response: pronunciation, word stress, rhythm, and intonation.  To a large extent, these features need to be addressed in language education to help learners be understood. It’s been nearly a decade since I taught that FE class.  In that time, I’ve taught pronunciation (or accent) to thousands of English language learners living in the U.S. who fall up and down the socioeconomic scale, with education levels ranging from little to no formal education to post-graduate degrees. Their feelings on accent have ranged from pride in their native accent to pride in cultivating a General American accent, as well as learners who have given accent identity little to no thought. While anecdotal, I feel comfortable drawing the following conclusion with a degree of certainty: despite their differences, all of these learners want to be understood.

With that in mind and with all I’ve learned about accent and its weight, I’ve devised a simple two-pronged test when it comes to providing feedback on pronunciation. The first question I ask myself is if the feedback is solicited. In other words, has the learner come to me specifically for accent or pronunciation work, or has she come to me with another primary goal, such as fluency or grammar improvement? Next, if the feedback is solicited, I ask myself whether it is necessary. I can only know if it is necessary if I know learners’ goals. Over the years, most have told me that they want to be better understood in English; others have said that they want listeners to focus more on the content of their message and less on the delivery. Far fewer have said that they want to speak English like a North American. These goals determine whether my feedback is necessary. That is, am I providing a correction that improves intelligibility or am I correcting every phoneme that is inconsistent with a General American accent?

When I think back to the FE section that I taught, my pronunciation feedback failed the two-pronged test. The student who was rightly upset with me hadn’t solicited my feedback on pronunciation. Registering for a freshman experience course is very different from registering for an English pronunciation class. I imagine pronunciation feedback was nowhere on the published course description. Second, I hadn’t asked her about her learning goals as they relate to pronunciation, and, furthermore, I would have readily admitted that her English was already highly intelligible. But I gave her feedback, anyway, exposing my unconscious bias that my standard accent was the correct one.
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I cringe when I think back on that experience now (and if you’re reading this, dear student, please accept my sincere apologies). Over the years, I’ve come to regard accent training as moving along a continuum that stretches from unintelligible to intelligible speech for a target audience. The continuum looks different for each English speaker because the audiences may be different and what lies at the very end of the intelligibility scale is the speaker’s target accent. That target may be speaking intelligible English with a Spanish accent, for example, or it may be speaking English with a General American accent, or Received Pronunciation (i.e., the standard British accent), or any of the other over 150 English accents around the globe.  Thus, an effective accent training program must be learner-centered and highly customizable.

​I also think of “schwa” as lazy because we turn many unstressed syllables into the “schwa” sound. In fact, roughly 20% of words in English contain a “schwa.” The sound can be spelled with any vowel, as in relative, elephant, mistake, today, and difficult, and a few vowel combinations, as in motion. So, within a word, unstressed syllables are often shortened to “schwa;” in addition, within a sentence, unstressed words (i.e., function words) are often shortened to “schwa,” as well. (See “Understanding the Rhythm of English” for more on rhythm and function words).

In these examples, the vowels in many of the function words are reduced to “schwa.” Remember, function words include articles, prepositions, pronouns, and positive auxiliaries.

For some fun facts about “schwa,” see language blogger and linguist Arika Okrent’s post, which describes “schwa” as the laziest sound there is! https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/56821/9-fun-facts-about-schwa
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*the same sound is also sometimes represented as /ʌ/ when the syllable is stressed, as in under and Doug.

This blog post first appeared in English Unraveled on the Service Speak, LLC site on October 11, 2017.

First, it is useful to understand that English is generally considered a stress-timed language, whereas many languages are considered syllable-timed (though some would argue that all languages are stress-timed but to varying degrees). To the English language learner, however, I think that understanding the concept of stress-timed is helpful; it is not necessary to debate the degree to which English rhythm is similar or dissimilar to the rhythm of other languages.

In each of these sentences, only three syllables are prominently stressed. I have highlighted the stressed syllables in all caps. A stressed syllable is louder, longer, and higher in pitch than the other syllables. Because English is a stress-timed language, it should take the speaker roughly the same amount of time to say each sentence because each sentence has three stressed syllables, despite the fact that the sixth sentence, for example, has nine syllables, and the first has only five.

As a result, many of the unstressed syllables get smooshed (my very scientific way of describing the phenomenon).  Take, for example, the fourth sentence. A native speaker does not clearly articulate "should have" but says, "should-ə"  or "should-əv." In the fifth sentence, "children will" becomes "children'll."  In the sixth, "playing" becomes "playin'."  In general, the unstressed syllables are shortened and weakened. This may explain why many non-native English speakers complain that when they first arrive in the U.S., they feel that Americans slur their speech or speak too quickly.

As I mentioned above, luckily, the stressed words are somewhat predictable.  We call the stressed words content words and the unstressed words function words.  Content words carry most of the meaning of an utterance. They generally include nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, and negative auxiliaries, such as "won't," "didn't," "shouldn't," etc. Function words include most other words, such as articles, prepositions, and positive auxiliaries. As with most aspects of English, there are always exceptions to these rules, but this is a general framework that is useful to understand.

As you might have guessed, rhythm in English is more complex than the difference between content and function words. Other major concepts include thought groups and focus words, as well as reasons to break these general rules. However, the distinction between content words and function words is the best place to start, and future blog posts will address some of these other concepts.

Now what? So, hopefully, you understand what a stress-timed language is and how to distinguish between content and function words. But how do you apply this knowledge? It is not something that will come quickly to you at a dinner party, for example, as you are talking with your friends. However, it is something that you can start to be aware of as you listen to native speakers around you, listen to the radio, and watch television. Start to hone in on the strong and weak elements of their speech.  When you practice rhythm at home, I suggest that you download transcripts of audio material and mark the content words (NPR.org is a good resource for this). Then listen to the audio several times and check to see whether your markings were correct.  Then practice the transcripts. And practice. And practice. You might want to record yourself. You will be surprised by what you catch in your speech when you listen to a recording of it. Slowly, with time and practice, this rhythm pattern will become part of your natural speech.

One of the most pervasive pronunciation problems in English is the distinction between /i/, as in "sheep," and /ɪ/, as in "ship." Your first language will influence whether you can easily hear and articulate the distinction between these two vowel sounds. This distinction is very clear to native English speakers, and many words lose their intended meaning if the wrong sound is substituted.  The following list of minimal pairs gives you an idea of why it is so important to pronounce these vowels correctly (and it also provides good listening practice):

The /i/ phoneme is an example of a tense vowel.  When articulating tense vowels, the muscles in your lips and tongue should be tense, or tight. To make the /i/ sound, open your mouth slightly, and move your tongue high towards the roof of your mouth and forward towards your front teeth (but not touching your teeth). The sides of your tongue should be pressing the roof of your mouth.  We particularly like the Sounds American channel for phoneme practice.  I've posted the /i/ video below.

/ɪ/, however, is a lax vowel. The muscles in your lips and tongue should be relaxed.  To make the /ɪ/ sound, open your mouth slightly, and move your tongue high towards the roof of your mouth and forward.  Your tongue should be relaxed and not touching your teeth or the roof of your mouth. The Sounds American video is below:

Spelling in English can be tricky. The /i/ sound is most often spelled with a "y," as in pretty, lady, and kitty.  The /ɪ/ is most often spelled with an "i," as in brick, middle, and lid.  Please see our Sound Chart for a more complete list of spellings.

In 2005, when I was training to be an English instructor at the British Council in Istanbul, our trainer, who was a native English speaker from Tasmania, always teased me and another Midwestern American classmate about the way we referred to "you" in plural form: "you guys." He'd say, there's no "guys" in the grammar books! And years later, when I started teaching English in Atlanta, Georgia, my "you guys" gradually changed to "y'all." This is one example of dialectical variation within the United States.  Some estimate there are over 24 different English dialects in the United States alone. Dialect includes not only word choice and grammar, but pronunciation, as well.

Therefore, I am always amused when English language learners say their goal is to speak English without an accent.  While I applaud such learners for their ambition and motivation, it would be impossible for anyone - even native speakers - to speak without an accent.  A more realistic goal would be to speak English with a clear accent.  In the United States, when English language learners refer to "English without an accent," they may be referring to General American, the dialect of English that they often hear in media, particularly national radio or television broadcasts. This dialect is often found in the central region of the United States though it is worth noting that even within this area, variations of speech exist (see map below).
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​So, what makes an accent clear?  The short answer is that a clear accent is easily understood by others.  This may seem simple, but if you've learned English in your home country and re-located to the United States, you may be surprised by how UNCLEAR native English speakers seem to you.  That's probably because the textbook English that you learned is very different from how native speakers actually talk.