Did you know that according to several studies, native speakers are the world’s worst communicators?!
“A lot of native speakers are happy that English has become the world’s global language. They feel they don’t have to spend time learning another language,” says Chong. “But… often you have a boardroom full of people from different countries communicating in English and all understanding each other and then suddenly the American or Brit walks into the room and nobody can understand them.”
I want to tell you about two of my students, Sara and Lia. Their stories are quite typical in my experience. See if you can see yourself in them.
This is what Sara told me:
I have a lot of self-doubt and I’m starting to get really stressed because of my English. I have meetings three times a week with international colleagues. Mostly on conference call. My biggest problem when I am in the meetings is that I can’t understand very well the native speakers. There are often people from Manchester in England on this call and every week there are two people in Portland in the US.
I can’t understand them most of the time and this has a lot of negative effects on me. I don’t want to keep saying ‘Can you repeat?’ it’s making such a bad impression on my colleagues and I feel very unsure sometimes what I actually need to do.
Thankfully there is an Italian colleague who is very nice to me and explains a lot of the call afterwards. But this is not sustainable and not fair on her either. I need to do something, fast.
Sara
This is what Lia told me:
I moved back home about a year ago after living in New York for two years. I still keep in touch with my friends there, but I’m losing a lot of my vocabulary.
When I hear English being spoken, most of the time I understand the gist and I follow the conversation well … but I’m missing some of the finer details. I can’t catch some words and expressions and I feel frustrated and too embarrassed to ask …
Lia
I wanted to share these experiences with you to show that it is a common problem that can cause unnecessary stress and anxiety.
And here’s the thing! … It doesn’t have to be this way.
In any international professional context; meetings, networking events, job interviews, negotiations, there will likely come a point in the conversation when you don’t understand something that is being said.
You are going to learn WHAT TO SAY in these situations in order to DEAL WITH the CONVERSATION in a calm, confident and SUCCESSFUL manner.
Let’s get started!
