How to Foster Effective English Communication: It’s All A Balancing Act
Return From Vacation - Back To Our Regularly Scheduled Programming.
After returning from my trip, I see things with a refreshed perspective.
It’s great to be back - to come back to a sense of familiarity, routine and expectation after a period of spontaneity, inscience and nomadism.
It brought a positive and grounding change in perspective, highlighted specific nuances in culture and communication, as well as provided insights into language learning and the barriers, hurdles, and challenges of non-native speakers.
So let’s talk about it.
BALANCE IN PERSPECTIVE.
Our perspective is personal. How I approach English communication is specific to my upbringing, experiences learning English, and my lens as a second-generation immigrant.
I am already biased in my perspective because I grew up a native English speaker. I didn’t learn English at a later time in my life. It was something learned from birth.
Going to Hong Kong and being forced to acknowledge my ineptitude in Cantonese, especially as a grown adult with complex, multi-faceted opinions and perspectives was challenging. I am restricted in my capacity to express those thoughts and feelings fully and my ability to express them as lesser, shallow, or incomplete thoughts certainly leaves much left to desire.
Having a balanced mindset is both humbling and empathic.
It is a compassionate view to communication which ultimately makes you a more effective communicator. If you can understand, appreciate, and acknowledge the challenge that communicating in another language can be, you can be more patient with those who are learning, you can apply intuitive communication strategies to confirm you have understood the message correctly, and you can ultimately make communication an experience that is not terrible or humiliating for others.
Whether it’s a job interview, receiving or offering a service, friendly banter, or anything else, if you are intentionally and openly interacting with someone, what is the role of making that communication experience terrible for the other person?
Regardless of whether English is your first language or not, we’ve all had experiences where we haven’t or didn’t have the opportunity to communicate our thoughts and needs effectively. Whether that was because of our nerves, the language barrier, the specific communication partner’s attitudes and biases, the environment, the power dynamics or anything else in between, this feeling of inadequate communicative effectiveness is not limited to simply language.
Therefore, I implore you to develop your balance in perspective.
Because a balance in perspective builds communicative success.
BALANCE IN APPROACH.
The second benefit to travel of perspective, following the theme of balance, is the balance in approach needed to learn effectively. To me, it means recognition and appreciation for moderation in learning approaches.
It means that it’s important to recognize the benefit of moderation, the importance of the middle ground, and what effect that it can have on our English language journey.
Let me explain.
When people first embark on learning English, they have a vague and arbitrary goal.
I want to speak like a native English speaker.
I want to be fully fluent.
But I think there’s more to delve into, acknowledge, and account for in those labels of ‘fluency’.
In your native language (whatever language that is), are you 100% confident you are communicating the best that you can? Compared to another speaker of your language, are you identical in your communication or are there differences that separate you?
Are you more or less confident as a speaker?
Are you more or less persuasive as a speaker?
Are you more or less formal in your speech?
Are you more or less charismatic?
My point being ‘speaking like a native English speaker’ or ‘fully fluent’ are spectrum goals. They aren’t black and white and even comparisons between two native speakers of a language reflect significant variance in communicative success and effectiveness.
So, when you learn English, you learn the individual sounds, the individual words, the individual sentences, the different grammar structures, the different tones of speech, and the different ways to phrase the same question/request/statement. But it’s a more all-encompassing and varied task that needs multiple approaches.
You can’t just sit in a class and practice with the expectation that that will be enough.
You can’t just read English books or internet sites with the expectation that that will be enough.
You can’t just talk to English speakers at MeetUps or Coffee shop classes with the expectation that that will be enough.
It is the mix of all those things that will build you up in all of those different areas necessary to be a well-rounded communicator.
Yes, there are times when effective ultra focus and burrowing ourselves in the nitty-gritty is important, but it builds a lopsided foundation for your English communication.
For example, throwing yourself into YouTube videos about video games such as Diablo 4 or Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom requiring you to listen and read in English is very niche material. It can build passionate interest, and be a motivational drive, but it can lack significant foundational building blocks necessary for English communication, such as grammar or build highly specific and non-transferrable communication, like character names and contexts.
On the flip side, studying the foundations solely, doing the classwork and applying English in specifically professional or educational settings is unlikely to translate into lifelong use. People don’t normally talk as taught in class. There’s slang, colloquialism, endearment, tonal differences and much more that cannot be covered in foundational classes.
Deliberate intentions for balance are necessary to forge a balanced communication style.
Recognizing that, it can be helpful in designing a lifelong learning curriculum while remaining an effective and refreshed individual.
If we force ourselves to constantly study textbooks, learn the language as it should be learned and don’t find functional relevance in how we communicate in our learned language, we will burn out on our language learning.
It’s like the music lessons you never wanted.
It’s like the useless algebra classes you took when you wanted nothing to do with math.
It’s like your chemistry classes when you didn’t care for chemistry.
You no longer use those skills and knowledge because they aren’t irrelevant to your life.
If we try to force ourselves to scrutinize every aspect of our language learning journey in all facets immediately and always, then we will have a terrible perspective of the language and our understanding of it because we’ll be so focused on how we are inadequate. Even the most resilient, most persistent and effective communicators will not enjoy speaking a new language if all they hear, think about and feel is how incompetent they are in that language.
So striking a good balance of focused scrutinized language learning, whether that be a focus on pronunciation, enunciation, use of pauses, use of intonation, use of social phrases, etc, one at a time is good. Doing too much too often with no reprieve or fun is bad.
And vice versa.
Focusing solely on watching or listening to your passionate interests without building a foundational understanding of English is likewise detrimental as it doesn’t give you enough structure or prerequisite understanding of the language to support your use of the language.
Building a balanced approach is important.
Designing a balanced approach that allows you to target highly specific subject areas in English and then allow yourself to disregard those specific nuances or specific issues and then instead focus on the overall communicative effectiveness is important.
Sure, you pronounced a word incorrectly, and used a rising intonation instead of a falling intonation which communicated more of an uncertainty or question rather than a factual confident statement, but sometimes it’s important to celebrate that you still got your message across - that you still communicated successfully enough.
Having that balance maintains one’s motivation. It maintains that passion for learning. It stabilizes and tracks your progress, allowing you to recognize in the forefront of your mind that you continue to grow as an English communicator. And it’s this growth that is vital for motivation, passion, and enjoyment.
So What Are Some Things to Balance?
One key detail I need you to internalize and understand is that it has to be deliberate. The way you design your learning experience will have implications on how well you learn. It’s not something that will passively happen to you and it’s something you need to intentionally decide, design, and foster for yourself. Otherwise, you will likely not achieve what you want because you aren’t actually studying or learning what you want.
For example, imagine you do tons of presentations at work. You get good at practicing your presentations. You learned to practice beforehand, and you became an effective practicer. You practice for hundreds of hours before a presentation. You know your presentation inside and out. You practiced all the words you needed for your presentation. You’ve got it down to a science, and you always stay within your allotted time constraint - 10 minutes.
But you only practice that.
Well, what happens when there are interruptions during your presentation? What happens if your boss doesn’t understand something, goes on a tangent during your presentation, or asks a relevant but not directly relevant question about the business and not specifically to do with your presentation?
Would you be able to handle the questions?
Would you be able to deviate from what you practiced?
Finding a balance in how you practice and learn the language is important; recognizing the areas of balance needed helps you become a more well-rounded communicator.
Consider the following:
Deep Focus & Wide Breadth Focus
Having a range of communication skills versus very in-depth skills is important. Just like a software engineer can know specific coding languages or know a specific industry better to write appropriate code or how a dancer has understanding of their body control but in a specific genre dance and cannot simply do all the dances because they are good at moving their body, deep focus and wide breadth make you a more balanced individual.
Meticulous Scrutiny & Overall General Communication
Focusing on specific areas of language learning, such as grammar or vocabulary help you complete deep focused work on that modality. But it is equally if not more important to put it all into perspective and understand the overall goal is to be transmit your message from your head to your listener’s head. That is the overall goal and focusing on that goal is equally as important as pronouncing the word perfectly or using the most correct grammar structure.
Structured, Highly Controlled Learning Environments and Contexts & Organic, Unstructured and Spontaneous Learning Environments and Contexts
Structured communication environments help us focus on our communicative goals and need-to-know’s. They allow us to practice, design, and be effective with our word choice. Presentations, essays, speaking engagements and the like give us the time to prepare, rephrase, and become efficient communicators.
Organic, unstructured and spontaneous communication demands that we be flexible, rely on our quick wit, and not ramble incoherently and incessantly. It demands that we be coherent, get straight-to-the-point, and gives us insight on how people organize their thoughts.
The Multitude of Communication Modalities: Speaking, Listening, Reading, Writing, Nonverbal Communication
A well-rounded communicator needs to be able to read, write, speak and understand. They need to have body language that is consistent with their verbal communication and effective communication requires that all of these individual modalities work together.
Communication About Topics of Interest and Familiarity & Communicating About Topics of No Expertise and No Familiarity
Talking about yourself and what you are interested in is often the easiest style of communication. Because you are knowledgeable in those areas because they interest you. When you have no knowledge and no interest, it becomes a more challenging task because you are required to be inquisitive. You need to find something you can be interested in, something to ask questions about. You need to engage the other communication partner. You cannot simply ramble on about what you care about.
Talking To New and Unfamiliar Speakers & Talking to Familiar Friends and Family
When you communicate with someone new, they do not know your tendencies, communication style, or speech patterns. You don’t necessarily feel comfortable talking to them, and they probably do not feel comfortable talking to you. Learning how to foster that comfort with new people builds resilience and confidence because you can expand your skills by communicating with new people who may provide you with new insights, new skills, and new perspectives.
Talking to familiar friends and family who are already comfortable with you, your style of communication, and your speaking habits, allows you to push the boundaries of what you are comfortable with. Maybe try a new word, a new phrase, a new sentence structure or a new slang term that you learned.
Talking Under Time Constraints & Talking Freely With No Constraints
Talking with a time constraint forces you to be deliberate with your word choice, your rate of speech, and the amount of information you provide, and maybe forces you to decide that you cannot share everything you want and instead, you have to choose only a few things to say. Maybe talking under a time constraint makes you realize that the intention behind talking was to listen to your communication partner’s problems, and therefore you shouldn’t talk much - simply listen. Maybe that’s the path to being a more empathic and considerate communication partner.
When you get to talk freely with no constraints, you can learn about people more deeply. You can get to know people fully, and understand parts of their character and thinking that cannot be addressed or learned shallowly. You can feel more connected to others in this way and also build trust to forge more meaningful relationships.
Each of these balancing acts is important in its own way and develops important communication aspects. They do not apply solely to English but extend to all communication, irrespective of the language. But my point is finding that balance when you speak English is important because it develops and hones your skills as they pertain to English. You may already have these developed nuances in your other languages, but sometimes it takes deliberate intention and decision-making to target these in English.
But that balance is something you need to decide for yourself. It is a highly personal endeavour but it is a necessary endeavour to communicate fully.
So, find your balance.
