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COMMUNICATION SKILLS
First Things First
The techniques described previously will go a long way toward encouraging students to feel comfortable in your classroom, to be confident that you care about their learning, and to accept differences in your spoken English and your classroom communication. It is true, however, that some undergraduate students have limited or no experience interacting with people from other cultures and may find accents different from their own foreign and hard to understand. Your accent may be the first thing they notice about you and one thing they continue to worry about. There are, however, several measures you can take now to promote communication—while your language is developing.Focus on your delivery
Speak at a moderate rate of speech and use effective pausing. This facilitates comprehension even of heavily accented speech. If you are used to speaking quickly or if you find native speakers asking you to slow down, you should probably reduce your rate of speech. Speaking at a moderate rate with appropriate pauses not only makes it easier for students to understand you, it also makes it easier for them to take notes. Speak at a steady but not fast rate, and make sure to pause briefly at the end of meaningful phrases. Make sure to tell your students to raise their hands and stop you if you are going too fast.Speak with enough volume so that students in the back row of the classroom can hear you. Speaking loud enough, besides increasing students’ ability to understand you, indicates energy and confidence. Do remind your students to raise their hands and tell you if they are having trouble hearing you.
Raise the pitch of your voice, as well as your volume, to emphasize important points for your students. Using speech dynamics (varying your volume, rate of speech, and pitch) can also show enthusiasm and generate interest of students. Native speakers of American English find it difficult to process a consistently flat pitch (or “monotone” delivery), and their ability to pay attention quickly lapses. The same content, presented with varied intonation patterns, will hold students’ attention much better.
When I speak in English, I am very aware of the different communication patterns and behaviors in the U.S.A. I try to speak clearer, louder, and slower than when I speak in Korean. I found out that this helps others understand my foreign accent. After trying hard for several years, now I know that I can’t change my accent in a short time and possibly never. Also, I don’t think I need to change my Korean accent, BUT still I can be a good speaker of English as long as I am aware of the different ways of making my speech effective and use them.
– Soonhyang Kim, ITA, Teaching and Learning, South Korea
Make your intonation & stress patterns a priority
Research shows that appropriate intonation and emphasis on certain parts of a word or sentence (stress patterns) are more important than accurate production of consonants and vowels when it comes to helping U.S. undergraduates understand non-native speakers (Stevens, 1989). Intonation and stress patterns communicate grammatical and attitudinal meanings. Further, they direct the listeners’ attention to important, new, or contrasting information and they signal the beginning and end of parts of your lessons. Thus, improving your intonation and stress patterns will help to structure the spoken information for your students and guide their learning.To help you review intonation and stress patterns relevant to your teaching, you might want to ask your native English speaking colleagues in your department to record typed lessons or specific pages from a textbook in your field onto a tape. You can then practice at home, repeating parts of the lesson, imitating the speaker’s stress and intonation. Pay attention to how the stress and intonation are used to emphasize important information and contrasts or to signal the beginning or ends of sections of the lessons. (You can ask your supervisor or a colleague for a copy of a lesson, choose lessons from a textbook or lab manual, or practice with a sample lesson from one of the ESL texts available online via the Spoken English Program.
Practice correct pronunciation of discipline-specific terminology
Some field-specific vocabulary may be so new to some of your students that it sounds, in fact, like “a foreign language.” If you struggle in pronouncing key technical terms or produce inaccurate representations, your students may not be able, even with extra processing time, to figure out what you said. And if they spend too much time trying to guess what you said, they will not be concentrating on what you have moved on to discuss next. Ask a colleague for a list of commonly used terms and expressions used in your field. You may also be able to find such terms listed in a glossary or index of an elementary textbook in your field. Lists of discipline-specific terms are included as well in Communicate: Strategies for International Teaching Assistants, by Smith, Meyers, and Burkhalter (1992). As with intonation, you can ask a native English speaker (e.g., a colleague or your TA supervisor in your field of study) to record this list onto a tape so that you can practice the correct pronunciation of these terms. It is also a good idea as you plan your lessons to list words you are not sure of, look up the pronunciation in the dictionary, or ask one of your colleagues, and then practice these words the night before you teach. Your efforts will be rewarded.I always have difficulty saying “bioavailability,” but I am working on it.
– ITA, Taiwan
Let your students know those sounds/words that are particularly troublesome for you to pronounce
If your students can anticipate pronunciation mistakes, they can adjust to them. For example, if you have trouble distinguishing between /l/ and /r/, tell your students, giving an example: “I am working on pronouncing English /r/s and /l/s, but I am still having some trouble. Sometimes I pronounce ‘loss’ as ‘ross.’ So if I say ‘profit and ross,’ I hope you will understand what I mean.” In general, it is also a good idea to write words that are difficult for you or new to the class on the board to provide a visual as well as the verbal representation.If I am substituting /p/ for /f/, please let me know. I work hard with that but I still sometimes say “perm” for “firm” or “pactor” for “factor.” I will write it on the board.
– ITA, South Korea
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