Banter Speech & Language

Sydney speech pathologists helping adults and children speak for themselves.

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Common accent challenges: more free pronunciation fact sheets

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Working on your accent? Helping a non-native English speaker to be better understood?

We’re pleased to introduce our free fact sheets about common accent issues and training targets, now UPDATED to include common issues for even more languages, including Korean, Mandarin Chinese, Hindi and Vietnamese.

Each fact sheet is designed to help clients, ESL teachers, and speech pathologists chose what to work on first. While you’re here, check out our articles on some of the latest accent modification research to brush up on what matters most when it comes to being understood by native English speakers.

Enjoy!

P.S. We’ll add at least five more language fact sheets this year. If your language fact sheet isn’t up yet, just send us an email and we’ll add it to our ‘to do’ list.

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Hi there, I’m David Kinnane.

Principal Speech Pathologist, Banter Speech & Language

Our talented team of certified practising speech pathologists provide unhurried, personalised and evidence-based speech pathology care to children and adults in the Inner West of Sydney and beyond, both in our clinic and via telehealth.

“What did you say?” 10 evidence-based ideas to help others understand your speech

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Speaking is pointless if you’re not understood.  But opinions diverge on how best to improve intelligibility – or even how to measure it.

Having worked with adults and children with a range of communication challenges – from speech disorders, language disorders, fluency disorders, voice problems, professional communication needs and accent issues – a few basic themes crop up time and time again when trying to help clients improve their intelligibility.

Now, no one speaks perfectly in all places with all people.  I certainly don’t – especially in the mornings.  But we can all do things to make it easier for others to understand us – especially if people regularly ask us to repeat ourselves (or, worse, ignore us).

If you are having regular problems being understood by others, here are some no-cost, low-tech, evidence-based ideas to try out before seeking professional help:

1. Focus on saying all your speech sounds – particularly at the end of words

One standard measure of intelligibility is the percentage of sounds you get right.  Leaving sounds out – particularly at the end of words and phrases – makes it much harder for listeners to understand what you are saying (Derwing et al., 2014).  This is one reason strangers find it hard to understand children with speech disorders and many adults who speak English as a second language.  It’s also why speech pathologists often target patterns of missing sounds first, and then “wrong sounds” when treating people with speech disorders and helping people to modify their accents and improve their communication.

2. Learn about and apply the basic rules of speech “prosody”

As we’ve said before, a focus on prosody – things like speech stress, rhythm and intonation – can lead to greater comprehensibility than a focus on speech sounds (Derwing et al., 1998; Seferoglu, 2005).   Sentence stress is probably the most important thing to get right for intelligibility.  This is simply making important words – especially words that convey new or essential information – longer and louder than the words around them.  For example:

  • I want to go to the BEACH (not the office).
  • They’re coming TOMORROW (not today).
  • The BLACK shoes are missing (not the blue ones).
  • The black SHOES are missing (not the black socks).
  • The black shoes are MISSING (not here).

3. Smooth out the rough edges

Hesitations, awkward pauses and repetitions can all hurt your intelligibility – especially if they make it hard for listeners to tell where different thoughts start and end.  Reducing the “ums and ahs”, and pausing between thoughts at grammatically correct times can increase your intelligibility dramatically – even if you make the same number of sound errors (e.g. Kohn et al., 1990; van der Merwe, 2007).

4. Increase your volume

Many speech treatments, notably LSVT LOUD, are based on the simple idea that increased volume will help increase intelligibility.  Increasing volume not only makes you louder.  It’s also been shown to increase articulatory precision and breath control (e.g. Dromey & Ramig, 1998).  This applies both for people with neurological diseases like Parkinson’s Disease as well as to chronic mumblers.

5. Look after your voice

Voice quality and resonance can also affect your intelligibility (e.g. Susman & Tjaden, 2012).  It can be almost painful listening to someone with a very rough, strained, breathy or monotone voice.  At best, it’s distracting.  Here are some tips for protecting your voice.

6. Slow down

Rate control has been described as the most powerful single, behaviourally modifiable variable for improving intelligibility (Yorkson et al., 1992).  But it’s easier said than done.  For some simple ideas to try to control your speech rate, check out this article.

7. Pretend you are speaking into a microphone

Sounds silly, I know.  But there’s evidence to say that some speakers perform better when placed in front of a microphone (e.g. Goberman et al., 2010).  It’s called a “performance effect”.  (Incidentally, it’s one reason speech pathologists can over-estimate a client’s intelligibility when they conduct formal assessments, usually with the client seated in front of a microphone).

8. Don’t multi-task while speaking

Studies of people speaking while balancing a tray, walking around obstacles, standing on tiptoes or sorting out buttons consistently show that dual or competing tasks negatively affect intelligibility (e.g. Bunton & Keintz, 2008; Dromey et al., 2010).  Focus on what you are saying!

9. Pretend you are speaking to the boss

Speakers vary the precision of their articulation on a continuum from highly formal to informal speech depending on who they are talking to and why (e.g. Lindblom, 1996).  You don’t talk to your partner in the same way you talk to your boss or the guy at the service station (unless they are the same person).  Now, it’s better to turn up to a smart casual dinner party in a suit, than a black-tie event clad in flame-retardant tracksuit pants.  The same holds for speech – especially when you are trying to convey important information.

10. Use body language (and everything else at your disposal) to support what you are saying

Speech pathologists sometimes get obsessed by speech sound accuracy, forgetting that much of our communication is conveyed in noisy or distracting environments requiring lots of repetition and the support of non-verbal cues such as gesture and facial expressions.  Even the setting can add (or detract) from your intelligibility.  In face-to-face and video communications (e.g. Skype) we can use these things to help support what we are saying and to increase our functional communication – even if our speech isn’t clear.  It’s much harder on the phone.  But, if you’ve ever watched a group of cranky football fans share critiques with each other in a packed, loud pub, you’ll know just how effectively we can communicate our thoughts and feelings without clear speech signals.

Good luck!  And, if none of these things works for you – and even if you think your speech is getting worse – don’t panic!  Speak to a speech pathologist who can run a full intelligibility assessment on your speech, and then tailor therapy to your specific needs and challenges.

Principal source: Miller, N. (2013). Measuring up to speech intelligibility. International Journal of Communications Disorders, 48(6), 601-612.

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Hi there, I’m David Kinnane.

Principal Speech Pathologist, Banter Speech & Language

Our talented team of certified practising speech pathologists provide unhurried, personalised and evidence-based speech pathology care to children and adults in the Inner West of Sydney and beyond, both in our clinic and via telehealth.

Who we help: meet Rakesh and Alice

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In addition to traditional speech pathology services for people with communication impairments, we work with professionals, business owners and others who need to improve their professional communication skills to achieve their work and life goals.  We’re passionate about helping professionals and business owners communicate more effectively with their employers, employees, colleagues, clients and other stakeholders.

What’s the big idea?

To work for and to compete with the best, you need advanced business communication skills.  We’ve seen plenty of talented, smart people held back – in work and in life – by limited communication skills.  We wanted to do something about it.

Some clients need specific training in aspects of business presentation and writing skills that are letting them down.  We have a wealth of experience communicating complex ideas to sophisticated clients, orally and in writing.  We know what’s expected at the top level.  And we know from personal experience how to do it.

Can we help you? Examples of client profiles* for this service

Rakesh

Meet Rakesh. He’s an A-type perfectionist. He’s smart, ambitious, diligent, and well-read.  A born leader.  Senior management relies on him to get the job done.  To solve their problems, on time, and below budget.

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But something’s holding him back.  He’s been stuck in middle management for too long.  He’s losing momentum, despite his talents and promise.  He’s sick of seeing less qualified people promoted above him.  It makes him angry.

Rakesh knows people don’t always understand what he’s saying.  He often gets asked to “say it again” – especially on conference calls.  At a presentation last year, his audience switched off.  Some walked out.  Perhaps it’s his accent – but that hasn’t stopped others. Maybe it’s because he speaks too quickly – his brain running ahead of his mouth.  Maybe it’s a combination of the two.  Or something else altogether?

Alice

Alice brings a lot to the table.  Her clients love her.  So does her staff.  In person, she’s a persuasive communicator.  But she has a problem.  She can’t write a business proposal to save herself.  Alice used to get by with help from her team.  But management now wants her to work solo on sensitive projects, including pitches and tenders.  Though she’s fine on her feet in beauty parades, her business writing is letting her down.  Her boss had to re-write her last proposal from scratch, and is concerned Alice isn’t up to the job.

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Rakesh and Alice are examples of the kind of clients we help: motivated, smart people let down only by their communication skills.

If you’re a bit like Rakesh or Alice, we’re uniquely placed to help.  As senior lawyers, we’ve worked in executive legal and banking roles managing cross-border teams for big multinationals.  We know what and who you’re up against.  We know what’s required.

We’re also qualified speech pathologists trained to assess and treat motor speech, articulation and pronunciation issues.

We’re proud of our unusual skill-mix.  And we’re committed to helping professionals like you improve their speaking and writing skills to restore their confidence and achieve their potential.

So what are you waiting for?  Let’s get to work!  Give us a call.

* For client confidentiality reasons, clients’ names and other identifiers have been changed.

Images: http://tinyurl.com/kmlzt7h, http://tinyurl.com/m7py4sf

Hi there, I’m David Kinnane.

Principal Speech Pathologist, Banter Speech & Language

Our talented team of certified practising speech pathologists provide unhurried, personalised and evidence-based speech pathology care to children and adults in the Inner West of Sydney and beyond, both in our clinic and via telehealth.

Common pronunciation challenges for people who do not speak English as a first language: fact sheets

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To help professionals, business owners and others who:

  •  speak English as a second (or later) language well or fluently; but
  •  have some English pronunciation issues,

we are compiling some fact sheets about common pronunciation challenges (and therapy targets) related to the differences between their first languages and English.

To help as many people as possible, we are prioritising our fact sheets by reference to Census data on languages (other than English), that are commonly spoken at home in Australia.  To put this mini-project in perspective, in 2011, the most common languages spoken at home (other than English) were:

As we complete each fact sheet, we will enable the link to the language above.  We hope you find these summaries useful when thinking about your priorities for improving your intelligibility or comprehensibility.

If you speak English well or fluently, but feel that your English pronunciation skills are holding you back, please get in touch with us.

Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics – 2011 Census Data.

Image: http://tinyurl.com/pomlqtj

Hi there, I’m David Kinnane.

Principal Speech Pathologist, Banter Speech & Language

Our talented team of certified practising speech pathologists provide unhurried, personalised and evidence-based speech pathology care to children and adults in the Inner West of Sydney and beyond, both in our clinic and via telehealth.

Is your speech hard for people to comprehend? Research tells us this could be affecting your career prospects

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We’ve talked about the importance of intelligibility before.  Intelligibility is an objective measure of whether your speech is understood.  We all want to be intelligible and it is often a key goal for our clients.

But what about your comprehensibility? 

Your comprehensibility is how simple (or hard) it is for a native-listener to understand what you are saying.  In other words, how hard does a native English speaker have to focus on what you are saying to make sense of it?

You might be completely intelligible when friends or colleagues pay close attention to what you are saying.  But you might not be comprehensible to a job interviewer or shop assistant who doesn’t put in the effort to listen to you carefully.

We know that things like grammar, pronunciation, prosody and speaking rate can affect your comprehensibility.  We also know that, unfortunately, people’s prejudices – e.g. against a certain accent or dialect – can cause some people to mark down a person’s comprehensibility, even if they are (objectively) intelligible.

Why does this matter?

In a 2006 study, researchers found that a person’s ethnicity did not affect their employability if their accent was mild (see citation below).  This supports an earlier study that found people from a number of backgrounds can be effective communicators – even if they speak with a different speech style.

The study also showed that people with accents or dialects that required listeners to work hard to comprehend what they were saying were less likely to be employed than people who were easily comprehended.

Bottom line

The study was small (only 3 speakers) and limited in lots of ways (e.g. it had no control group).  But it suggests that speakers with an accent that makes it hard for others to comprehend them may benefit from accent modification therapy.  Ideally, therapy should focus on aspects of their accent that make it most difficult for other people to comprehend them.

Carlson, H.K., & McHenry, M.A. (2006). Effect of accent and dialect on employability. Journal of Employment Counseling, 43(2), 70-83.

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Image: http://tinyurl.com/l7gyor6

Hi there, I’m David Kinnane.

Principal Speech Pathologist, Banter Speech & Language

Our talented team of certified practising speech pathologists provide unhurried, personalised and evidence-based speech pathology care to children and adults in the Inner West of Sydney and beyond, both in our clinic and via telehealth.

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