06-08-09

Focused individuals and groups like the Beatles, Tiger Woods and Tony Robbins have made the efforts to make the correct muscle movements to become very good at using their fingers to play an instrument or playing a sport and even speaking effectively.   Yet, some folks do the same thing repeatedly without changing.

What is the difference?  Having someone scoring you via a scorecard or placement in sports; having an audience that gives feedback or an audio-recording that indicates when unwanted notes were played.  Scoring yourself……

Yet, in speaking another language, especially English, we often do not get the quick feedback of how well we are using our motor speech system to hit the target pronunciations.

Our listeners often consider reminding another of the mispronunciation or asking for clarification as being  “rude”.  Rather, our listeners go ask other folks what we just said or just ignore what we said entirely…..

The speaker only begins to realize that they have not spoken to be understood after they get ignored for a promotion, a prime project or have received a smaller than expected raise.
For some ESL speakers, this can take several years to become apparent.

In Malcolm Gladwell’s popular new book, “Outliers: The Story of Success”, Chapter 2, he cited research showing that even though one may have talent, it will take practice….around 10,000 hours of practice….to become Extremely good at anything. This is two to four years of daily practice.

How to Harness the “Power of the 10,000 Hours”: Three of Ten Strategies
1. Speak English only every waking moment for 2-4 years.  Using 16-8 hours/day at 365 days/year, this adds up to about 10,000 hours.  Considering that many folks have been in English working environments for over 2-4 years, this should not be too much of a problem.

2. Become one of your own coaches….. Audio-tape yourself DAILY when speaking on the phone. Rewind, put your earphones in and listen to yourself.  Put yourself in the other person’s place.
What did your colleague hear?  Dropped articles? Dropped syllables? Stress on the wrong syllable? Sound substitutions? Speaking at the speed of light?

3. S-L-O-W Down!  Listen to an audiotape you made of yourself (See #2). Time yourself for a minute from the middle of the tape.   Count EVERY –uh; -ah; as well as EVERY word. Do this in 2-3 second segments. It may take an hour to get it right. And . . . It is worth the effort.

This is VERY Important.  If you are over 110 words/ utterances in a minute, you are way too fast for your listeners to understand you and your accent

Recap:   Speak English EVERY DAY for 16 hours.  Audiotape and Listen to yourself.  SLOW Down!

Remember, do you want to be passable or Extremely good at speaking English?  Just one of the team or a top manager?

This entry was posted on Monday, June 8th, 2009 at 10:26 am and is filed under 10 Steps. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.