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Heading off to Besig in Poland |
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Greetings all,
Soon be heading off to Poland for the Besig conference and am looking forward to the mix of entertainment and education it will no doubt offer. I’ve foolishly got my name down to do a couple of talks and thought I’d give you a sneak preview of the first entitled ‘If only the English would speak English.’ Basically, it’s a bit of research looking at how the non-native English speaker tries to cope with the native English speaker in telephone conference calls. Over 150 people completed a questionnaire which was designed to look at their experiences and strategies during international conference calls. The idea was to be able to draw out some guidelines for the non-native speaker and the native English speaker − bringing the two sides together by establishing a joint international English protocol, so to speak. In some ways, the results were as expected in that native speaker speed of speech and accent (I think meaning lack of clear articulation) were felt as significant problems. And unsurprisingly, the non-native speaker cited a lack of vocabulary as the major reason they struggled to get their message across to the native speaker. If only more words, wouldn’t communication work better?
I don’t want to give the whole game away so you’ll have to wait until after the conference for the full research results but I wanted to run a couple of ideas past you. It’s now really the time to start teaching the English to speak English! As EFL trainers, shouldn’t we be offering training to native speakers located either in the UK or expatriated on how to communicate to non-native English speakers? In fact, isn’t this a whole new line of business for us? But what exactly is the product? What is the syllabus? What are the teaching methodologies? What duration is required to see progress? How do we measure native speaker competence in this area? What would level B2 competence look like for the native speaker using English as a mother tongue to non-native speakers? And which publishers will develop the materials? Any ideas? Is anybody doing this? And if not, why not? Oh, I do love questions!
And secondly, and worryingly, why are non-native speakers still seeing a lack of vocabulary (even at B2 level) as the main driver of their international communication problems? I have a feeling that the use of a few communication strategies such as active listening (fully implemented) and KISS (keep it short and simple) speaking behaviours (properly applied) would work wonders. So why is vocabulary still seen as the major problem? And we may be guilty here as a profession − as a language teaching profession rather than an international communication profession − of reinforcing false assumptions and false perceptions about why communication fails. And before you disagree too quickly, I said ‘may’;)
More to come after the conference. Hope I whetted the appetite!! Talk more after Poland!!
BOB DIGNEN is a director of York Associates. He specialises in intercultural skills programmes and international team seminars which he delivers to clients in Germany, Switzerland, Iceland and Sweden. He is accredited to use The International Profiler (an intercultural profiling tool) and is also an advanced practitioner of TMP (Team Management Profile – an international team profiling tool). As an author, he worked on English365 for Cambridge University Press and has written 50 Ways to Improve your International Presentation Skills. He is also co-author of Developing People Internationally, a multimedia international team training resource. |
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