English Speaking Skills for Non-Native Speakers: Video Demonstrations and Prosody Guide

Hi, I'm Matt McGarity. I'm a principal lecturer in the Department of Communication here at the University of Washington. I teach public speaking, argumentation, rhetoric. I designed an introduction to public speaking course, a MOOC. It's run on Corsair and edX and it's had about a million enrollees to date. It's hard to say that there's a single mistake that everybody makes, but I will say that when I work with students and when I work with clients, what I really try to get them to do is do presentations more like they engage in conversation. And I mean that in terms of how they relate to the audience and how they sound. Certainly there are certain times when highly scripted, highly practiced, really polished speeches are called for, but for most of us, the day-to-day presentations or workplace presentations would benefit a lot more if we spoke the way we speak.

Probably the biggest challenge I think non-native speakers have is one of prosody. Now prosody is a term that describes all the things that's going on when you speak besides the words and the syntax. So prosody is stuff like speaker rate and pitch and stress, these sorts of things. And they help us as listeners predict what you're going to say, they help us understand what you're trying to say, and of course they also change meaning. So in English, of course, there's a big difference between I didn't say that and I didn't say that. Right? Those are the exact same words and the exact same order, but very different meanings. Now prosody is really difficult for non-native speakers. I was a student in Russia and I never got Russian prosody right, but we know this and there's been a wealth of research into prosody and even in fact into non-native speakers of English and English prosody. I was reading a study earlier this week and it was research into international TA. So here in the US, we'll have people come and study at American universities from all over the world. And while they're here getting a master's or PhD, they might have an opportunity to teach an American class. And so depending on the university, you'll have a non-native speaker of English in front of a primarily English-speaking audience.

One study looked at what some of those challenges were. They found that the international TAs, as non-native speakers of English, had a lot of problems with prosody, and in fact it made it difficult for some native English speakers to understand them. Specifically, non-native speakers weren't really providing intonation units, those small chunks or phrases. They weren't providing those phrase breaks. Also, many non-native speakers of English had a narrower pitch range, so they weren't raising and lowering their pitch as much as is common in English. So that's the problem. What to do about it? Well, it varies. One of the easiest things actually came from that same research study and it says, well, if the problem is pitch modulation in English, one thing you can do is just practice pitch modulation. It's really easy. You can get a pitch program on your phone, speak into it, and it gives you a simple spectrograph. As you practice, you can try to increase that pitch modulation.

The other thing I think is a little bit more challenging but perhaps more important is to focus less on individual words and more on phrases. When I work with non-native speakers, I find that depending on their fluency with English, they often focus on words, trying to plan each word in sequence. The result is the prosody cues kind of drop out. They end up talking more at the level of the word, which is hard to listen to because I want to hear entire phrases that cluster together ideas. So my advice is: put pauses between phrases, not between words. That's tough and requires improving overall English skills. But if you have to choose between fluidity (pauses between phrases) and perfect grammar, choose fluidity. As an English speaker, I can understand around a wrong word or grammar mistake, but if phrases aren't properly grouped, it's much harder to follow.

Endings and conclusions depend on the genre. How you conclude a eulogy is different from how you conclude a business presentation. If a business presentation sounds like a eulogy, it may not work well. In business or formative presentations, when reaching the conclusion, think about summarizing the key points and signaling that the speech is ending. In speaking, repetition is fine for reinforcing points. Slowing down the last line and dropping pitch signals the audience that you are done. These are prosodic markers, and while saying "thank you" is polite, it isn't necessary if your conclusion lands well. You need practice to make sure the last line has impact.

If something unexpected happens during your speech, acknowledge it and adapt. This could be a sudden noise or distraction. Ignoring it makes the speaker look less competent. Successfully handling this requires public speaking skills and mastery of the topic. Being able to respond and remain on message is a hallmark of an excellent speaker. Controlling the room while maintaining focus, even when veering off topic, is challenging and requires strong public speaking abilities. Public speaking is difficult, and not everyone excels at it, but with the right techniques and practice, non-native speakers can improve their presentations significantly.