Speaking Intelligibly

 “I’m a native speaker of Tamil.  Though I had my education in the medium of English, my spoken English is not up to the mark. My colleagues who speak good English have commented that I speak English the way I speak Tamil. Are there ways to improve my accent?”

“I am a medical postgraduate from Cochin, Kerala. I wish to get a voice accent training done and thereby eliminate mother tongue influence. I searched on the internet for such centers / professionals but was in vain. I would be much obliged if you could name a resourceful person or an institute in Cochin or in Trivandrum for the above purpose…”

“Is it necessary to speak English like a native speaker of English?” “Is it possible to achieve a natural speech-flow in English? “How to make my pronunciation a native-like one”

Quite often I receive queries related to acquiring skills and becoming native-like English speakers. Similar queries have been raised by own students and teachers of English whom I have met on different occasions. 

It is true many non-native speakers English are obsessed with trying to sound like native speakers of English.  Very often they are not successful in their attempts. Most non-native speakers of English have at least a trace of their mother tongue.  Even those Indians who have lived in the UK or the USA or Australia for over a decade have not achieved native-like accent.  Who are these native speakers of English?  Americans? Britons? Australians? Yes, they are native speakers of English. But they all have different accents.   Within the UK there are many different accents.  The so-called Queen’s English is not spoken by all even in London.  It is said that only about two percent of Britons speak with the Received Pronunciation (RP) accent in its pure form.  There is nothing called ‘BBC English’.  Many different varieties of English are heard on the BBC. 

Then whose accent should we try to ape or acquire?  It is a complex issue.  In my opinion, it is not necessary, and not advisable, to try to change our accent or imitate native speakers of English.   The reason is having an accent is part of having a cultural identity.  The moment we try to imitate others we lose our individuality and our attitude towards our mother tongue or social background changes.  It is going to be counter-productive in many ways.  Basically, we should ask ourselves, “Does my accent distort my pronunciation?  Do others find it difficult to follow what I say?”  What is important is to speak intelligibly and make others understand what we intend to communicate.  The main goal is to communicate and to communicate effectively. 

According to Gower, “working on pronunciation is important for two main reasons: to help learners understand the spoken English they hear, and to help them make their own speech more comprehensible and meaningful to others”.

A student who came late to the class drew my attention with an excuse:   “Yes kiss me, sir”.  My reply to him was, “Sorry, I don’t have the habit of kissing any man.” The whole class laughed and the guy replied, “Sir I didn’t ask you to kiss me.”  I said, “Did you try to say something.  Please write the phrase on the board.”  He wrote, “Excuse me, sir.”  Then I asked him to read it aloud.  His pronunciation was so bad that he read it as “Yes, kiss me.” 

On another occasion I wrote the sentence “I fell on my knees” and some students to read it aloud.   When one of them read it as “I fell on my niece” I said, “Why did you fall on your niece?”  The class laughed but he didn’t understand the joke.  The words ‘knees’ and ‘niece’ are pronounced differently.  The former has /z/ sound at the end and the latter has /s/ sound at the end.

Very recently, a participant was making a presentation at a conference.  The audience became restless as they could not follow his presentation. The person sitting beside me whispered, “Is he speaking English?”  Yes, the presentation was in English but the problem with the presenter was that he caused so much strain on the listeners that they couldn’t understand what he was saying.

Yes, good pronunciation is important for effective communication.  Mispronunciation leads to miscommunication which in turn leads to misunderstanding.  Look at the following examples taken from the book English Pronunciation in Use by Mark Hancock (CUP, 2003)

·         Watch or wash?  You’ll have to watch / wash the baby.

·         Riches or ridges?  You’ll find riches / ridges you’ve never seen.

·         Save or shave? He didn’t save / shave at all last year.

·         Use or juice? What’s the use / juice?

·         What’s or watch?  What’s / watch the time?

In all standardized English proficiency tests such as TOEFL, IELTS and BEC speaking is one of the four components.  The candidate’s performance in the speaking test is assessed based on the following criteria:  Fluency and Coherence, Lexical Resource, Grammatical Range and Accuracy, and Pronunciation.  

What is good pronunciation? Do you have good pronunciation skills?  If you are able to use the correct sounds in English words, speak in a clear and pleasant manner, do not cause strain on a listener, and your listener(s) can understand you easily, then you are said to have good pronunciation skills.

The second part of the article will focus on the importance of pronunciation for effective communication.