Nonnative Speaker in English

PROBLEMS OF PRONOUNCIATION FOR NON-NATIVE ENGLISH SPEAKER

WHAT IS NON-NATIVE ENGLISH SPEAKER?
Non-native English speaker result from the common linguistic phenomenon in which non-native users of any language tend to carry the intonation, phonological processes and pronunciation rules from their mother tongue into their English speech. They may also create innovative pronunciations for English sounds not found in the speaker's first language. Current English speech recognition systems are commonly trained from speech data of native English speakers. Although these systems can work very well for native English speakers, their performances drop dramatically for nonnative speakers. In general, it is difficult to train speech models for each foreign accent due to wide varieties of accent, different proficiency levels of English and limited amounts of available data (MacDonald, 1989).

PRONOUNCITATION PROBLEMS FOR NON-NATIVE SPEAKERS OF ENGLISH

The speech of non-native English speakers may exhibit pronunciation characteristics that result from such speakers imperfectly learning the pronunciation of English, either by transferring the phonological rules from their mother tongue into their English speech ("interference") or through implementing strategies similar to those used in primary language acquisition. They may also create innovative pronunciations for English sounds not found in the speaker's first language (MacDonald, 1989).

The age at which speakers begin to immerse themselves into a language (such as English) is linked to the degree in which native speakers are able to detect a non-native accent; the exact nature of the link is disputed amongst scholars and may be affected by "neurological plasticity, cognitive development, motivation, psychosocial states, formal instruction, language learning aptitude," and the usage of their first and second languages (Munro & Mann, 2005)

English is unusual in that speakers rarely produce an audible release between consonant clusters and often overlap constriction times. Speaking English with a timing pattern that is dramatically different may lead to speech that is difficult to understand (Zsiga, 2003).

More transparently, differing phonological distinctions between a speaker's first language and English create a tendency to neutralize such distinctions in English, and differences in the inventory or distribution of sounds may cause substitutions of native sounds in the place of difficult English sounds and/or simple deletion. This is more common when the distinction is subtle between English sounds or between a sound of English and of a speaker's primary language. While there is no evidence to suggest that a simple absence of a sound or sequence in one language's phonological inventory makes it difficult to learn, several theoretical models have presumed that non-native speech perceptions reflect both the abstract phonological properties and phonetic details of the native language. Such characteristics may be transmitted to the children of bilinguals, who will then exhibit a number of the same characteristics even if they are monolingual (MacDonald, 1989).

Many efforts were made in improving recognition accuracy of foreign-accent speech. One way is to use general speaker adaptation techniques to adapt speaker independent models to the characteristics of a foreign-accent speaker, for example, first - Using Maximum Likelihood Linear Regression (MLLR) which is more specifically, regression analysis helps one understand how the typical value of the dependent variable changes when any one of the independent variables is varied, while the other independent variables are held fixed. Most commonly, regression analysis estimates the conditional expectation of the dependent viable given the independent variables — that is, the average value of the dependent variable when the independent variables are held fixed (David A. Freedman, 2005). Second is Maximum a posteriori (MAP) estimation which is a mode of the posterior distribution. The MAP can be used to obtain a point estimate of an unobserved quantity on the basis of empirical data. It has been recognized that although speaker adaptation can improve recognition accuracy for both native and nonnative English speakers, a much larger amount of adaptation speech data is needed for a foreign-accent speaker than for a native English speaker (Harold W. Sorenson, (1980).

Most people encounter non-native speakers of English or ESL students (students with English as their second language) in their classes at one point or another. Although native speakers of English also have problems with writing, non-native speakers' problems can be quite different, and the approach taken by the instructor needs to be different as well. The following list of ideas and suggestions will help you recognize and respond to the typical problems for ESL students. Some services are available on campus to help non-native speakers, but the majority of the improvement will need to come from comments made by the instructor. Although standards for grading must remain the same for native and non-native speakers in a class, the instructor may need to alter the approach of teaching and commenting slightly for the non-native speaker (Sheryl Holt, 2008).
SOLUTIONS

Many non-native speakers have trouble communicating in English. Many speak at a native level, but many do not. This can be very annoying to some people in other country especially those who practice pure English like British and United Kingdom and it's quite tiring. This is because there are so many immigrants working in the United Kingdom now and according to research they always find themselves having to be patient, and teach them rather than be annoyed with them. Credit should be given to the British people for being so tolerant and more understanding. Here are the example taken from Cultural Awareness International, Inc – 2009 :

• Be sensitive and respectful to individuals who have invested the time to learn English. Learning a new language is a large undertaking. They have sacrificed many years to learn English. To help them with this, try learning and using several phrases of another language. It’s quite humbling.
• Be aware of the factors that can enhance miscommunication. For example: Is the miscommunication a language misunderstanding? Is it based on differences in gender, age, national culture, or corporate culture? Is the miscommunication linked to technology malfunctions? Is it caused by more implicit variables, such as non-verbal components, context of message, or relationships based on hierarchy? By understanding the nature of the quandary, you can find more efficient solutions.
• Pause. Native English speakers will often ask a question and not allow enough time for the listener to process the words, think about an answer, find the appropriate wording (based on their relationship to the speaker), and then execute a grammatically correct sentence. If it is information you are seeking, then pausing can work wonders.
• When conducting meetings and conference calls, provide an outline or overview ahead of time. Give clear and simple statements of what is to be expected and define the length of discussion points.
• Avoid slang, professional jargon, and acronyms at all costs. A statement like this can be confusing to non-native English speakers: “Please send the RFP by COB on hump day. Are we all on board?” Rephrasing can be advantageous: “Please send the Request for Proposal by 5 pm on Wednesday. Is that agreeable?”
• Communicate with story. Often times bullet points and lists of information lack the ability to show the elusive. Example vignettes from your experiences or someone else’s (including personal stories, folktales, and historical tales) can provide clarity, and at the same time, keep respect and honor for all members by not pointing out the flaws in others.
• Have listeners rephrase what they think they heard you say. This is much better than asking, Do you all understand? and eventually receiving unsatisfactory outcomes.
• Speak clearly and enunciate properly. Pausing before and after significant words can help improve communication, too.
• Avoid verb phrases that sound very similar to non-native English speaker. "Look out" sounds very close to "look for." Both are similar to "look out for." Many times you can use another word in these cases. (Example: look out = be careful, look for = search for, look out for = watch for).
• As much as possible, avoid using filler and colloquialisms ('um...', 'like...','Yeah, totally.') as non-native speakers, especially ones of lower proficiency levels, may get hung up on these thinking the filler language is vocabulary that they don't possess. Colloquialisms are likely to be unknown as well, especially if they are not easy to find in the dictionary.
• If asked to repeat something, first repeat it as you said it the first time. Then again. It could be that they simply didn't hear you. If your listener still doesn't understand, however, change a few key words in the sentence. It may be that they couldn't understand one or two of the words. Also repeat the whole sentence and not just the last couple of words. It's time consuming, but it helps prevent confusion.
CONCLUSION

Not all non-native speakers have trouble communicating in English. Many speak at a native level, but many do not. The ability to communicate with people who speak a limited amount of English is actually a skill that can be developed over time with practice. Whether deal with non-native English speakers often or rarely, the solution will lead to solving the problems that being faced by the non-native speakers of English. Soon it will help them to overcome the problems. If students can read this sentence with ease, then they might be one of many who take communicating in English for granted. Not only is English the second most spoken language in the world, impressively, it is the most widely used language on the internet and the most widely used platform for business and education practically worldwide. What often leads to disastrous outcomes when conducting business is the assumption made by many native speakers of English that non-native English speakers will understand them clearly and effortlessly when they speak and write.