IELTS-Blog::How to get people to understand your spoken English

How to get people to understand your spoken English

Posted: 01 Apr 2014 03:30 AM PDT

Did you know that pronunciation affects your IELTS score? It is a fact that 1/4 of your Band score depends on how you pronounce English words.

If your English is generally good and your writing is easy to understand (be it your emails, notes, essays or anything else), but when you open your mouth and say something people look lost, it's probably because you aren’t speaking clearly. It can be so frustrating when you think there’s nothing wrong with the way you speak, but people obviously struggle – they move their faces closer to you (as if they want to hear you better), they keep saying “I beg your pardon?” or “Say it again?”, and from their answers you see they totally didn’t get what you were asking. Imagine what would happen if your IELTS examiner couldn’t figure out what you were saying!

And the reason is your pronunciation. While learning English we pick up a way to pronounce words, and we stick to it, but it’s not always correct. The trouble is, we are more concerned with what we say, than how we say it. We rarely give our pronunciation a second thought, even though the way we pronounce words can make a perfect sentence sound like nonsense.

“But why can't they understand me?!”

Georgie Taylor, a well-known Australian speech pathologist, says that these two basic things are very important – the rate and volume of your speech. Very often if you slow down and talk louder, people won't have to concentrate so hard to understand you. Watch this short video where Georgie explains how you can easily fix problems with these two areas and have an immediate improvement in your pronunciation:

If you know or suspect you have a problem with pronunciation, Georgie can help – click here to watch her free video lesson on commonly mispronounced words. She is the founder of Star Pronunciation course and helped numerous people to finally be understood – without repeating what they just said over and over again.