Tip – Importance of stress and intonation in speech

I read an interesting article on the web about why native speakers of English sound different.
Here it is –

English is considered a stressed language while many other languages are considered syllabic.

What does that mean?

It means that, in English, we give stress to certain words while other words are quickly spoken. In other languages, each syllable receives equal importance. English however, spends more time on specific stressed words while quickly gliding over the other, less important, words.

You need to understand which words are generally stressed and which ones are not.

Words that get the stress are the nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs.

Now, log in to some online sources, listen to how native speakers concentrate on the stressed words rather than giving importance to each syllable. You will soon find that you can understand more because you begin to listen for stressed words. All those words that you thought you didn’t understand are really not crucial for understanding the sense or making yourself understood.

Stressed words are the key to excellent pronunciation and understanding of English.

Question Tags

Like I mentioned earlier, the English we speak is largely influenced by our regional language thought process. Typically, we would use a ‘No’ as a question tag, at the end of our sentences when we speak in our first language.

For example -
“I told you about him, No?”
” We met that day, No?”

The question format in English should be -
” Didn’t I tell you about him”
” Didn’t we meet that day?”

Or if using a question tag makes you feel ‘good’ then replace the tag with a ‘right‘ or ‘didn’t I/ we ‘ instead of ‘No’.

For example -

I told you about him, didn’t I?
We met that day, didn’t we?

But almost never over do question tags.

Tip – Avoid Indianisms

We think in our first language and frame sentences in English. The effect of that is grammatical and structural errors. Indianisms (as we call it) greatly affect the quality of communication- both written and spoken. Learn to avoid Indianisms to make your communication crisp, short and effective.

* When writing emails, always remember to use active voice
* Use short sentences
* Do not repeat words for emphasis
* In speech,do not use question tags at the end of sentences
* Watch out for Subject – Verb interchange
* Avoid unnecessary explanations

Tip – Listening

Here’s a fact: We only listen to the first 10% of what is spoken.

Better Listening skills can improve your communication. Wait for the other person to complete talking before you respond. Take turns while talking. Here are a few things to keep in mind to be a better listener:

* Listen without the intervention of any thoughts
* Pay more attention to others
* Empathize with the speaker
* Build rapport
* Listen intelligently

There are no ready solutions to improve Listening. You have to TUNE IN.

Use of Can and Able

When you say ” I can” or ” I cannot” , it talks about ability. It means ” You are able to or you are not able to.” Therefore, using ” can” and “able” together in the same sentence is an error.

Ex- Instead of saying ” I can able to remember the details” say, ” I can remember or I am able to remember”

Tip – How to speak lesser errors.

The best way to keep your sentences error free, is to speak shorter sentences. The longer the sentence, the more the errors. When you think in your first language and speak in English, the scope of errors increase. You tend to add a few extra words or speak in the continuous tense. By making your sentences shorter, these errrors can be avoided.

What is this blog about?

Hi there. This blog is intended to share tips, tricks and methods to improve your English speaking skills. I intend to share stories, anecdotes, links, quips, tips and my experiences from the training programs that I conduct.

I intend to update the blog regularly – God be with me – and also invite my trainees to ping me with their doubts and clarifications. I do not declare I know all the answers, but together we can find out!