- Luis Henrique, or is it Luey, I can never tell, asks:
Hi Julian. In your personal opinion,
what's the most important skill in English?
Good question; let's talk about that.
(energetic music)
Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening.
I'm Julian Northbrook from doingenglish.com
What, in my personal opinion, is the most important skill
when it comes to speaking English as a second language?
That would be, quite simply, the ability to be clear
when it comes to speaking the language.
I mean, when you're speaking to someone,
you're explaining something, you're telling a story,
you're talkin6g about something,
the people who come across
as being very, very proficient users of English
are people who really get the language,
get the fundamental, basic langauge
on a very advanced level
and are able to talk, explain things, speak
in a very clear, precise, simple,
but still quite deep kind of way.
They're not the kind of people who know
lots of big, complicated, advanced words and grammar,
but really actually don't know
how to use them in an appropriate way.
If you can't explain something simply,
famously said Albert Einstein,
you don't understand it well enough.
And that is very, very true.
Check out this video here for more
detailed discussion on this.
Clarity is also very important
when it comes to the way that you actually sound.
Research has shown time and time again
that people have an aversion,
quite a strong aversion,
to people who are difficult to understand,
because they've got a strong accent
or bad pronunciation or because their rhythm or
their pronunciation is off in some way.
And that makes it hard to catch
and to hear and to really understand
what it is that they're trying to say.
For example, there is research, very good research, in fact,
that very clearly shows that when native speakers
are asked to rate how proficient
they believe an English learner to be,
they always rate the people who have clear,
easy to understand pronunciation the highest.
Even if, in reality, those people
are actually quite a low level.
And the same is true vice versa.
People who are what we would consider an advance level,
they probably have very high test scores,
but sound like shit
and are really, really hard to understand.
Native speakers actually judge them
to be quite poor in the language.
There's also research that shows that many native speakers
are actually naturally biassed against,
prejudiced against, and distrust people with strong accents,
even if they're not actually aware of it.
This really all comes down to the way that
human beings tend to form groups, tribes of people.
Watch this video here for a detailed explanation of that.
In terms of conversation or theory,
but also, it's relevant to this, as well.
Now this of course doesn't mean
that you have to sound like a British person
or have to sound like an American person.
No, you don't have to have any specific accent.
What is important is not the actual accent that you have,
but rather how clear the way that you speak is.
And an important element of this is chunking.
Do you chunk your language properly?
Because that is one of the really big defining factors
in how clear and easy to understand you're going to be.
Because native speakers don't speak
using individual words and grammar rules,
computing those in their heads
and speaking word by word by word.
No, we store chunks of language in long term memory
and we speak using those chunks.
This means that when we're speaking,
we are naturally chunking our language as we go.
See what I did there?
Get good at doing that.
Learn in chunks first and foremost.
And get good at pronouncing and speaking in chunks.
If you're not sure how to do that,
you're gonna wanna check out my book,
Master English Fast, which goes into
immense detail and shows you step by simple step
how you can change your focus
when it comes to learning and perfecting your English.
And really start to speak in the way
that native speakers do.
Masterenglishfast.com or click on the link
in the description.
It's available as a paperback on Amazon.
And regardless, you get the audiobook
with it for your listening enjoyment.
Another way that clarity is very important
in the way that you speak is that the actual things
that you are saying make sense
and are clear as to why you are saying them
to the people that you are talking to.
For example, when I first came to Japan,
I would often try to insert
British humour into my Japanese speaking,
thinking, ah, it would make me funny and people would laugh.
What it actually did was just confuse the hell out of people
because nobody understood why this crazy British guy
was saying things like beautiful day today
when it was obviously pissing it down with rain.
Being clear then also means getting the culture
of the people that you're talking to
and the expectations of what they think
you're gonna say and mean
by the things that you're gonna say.
Watch this video for an example on that,
where I talk about an experience that I had
when I went to Manila.
So I hope, Luey, Luis, whichever it is that you use.
My youngest son is called Luey, but we spell it with the S.
It's a silent S, but other people are forever confused.
Is it Luey, is it Luis, I don't know,
Mr. Luey, Luis Henrique.
I hope that answers your question.
What do I believe to be
the most important skill in English?
The ability to be clear when you speak.
Check out Master English Fast, if you haven't already.
And this is me, Julian Northbrook,
signing out from another video.
Thank you; take care.
Don't get caught doing anything that I wouldn't do.
And I'll see you same time, same place tomorrow
for the next exciting instalment.
Goodbye.
When is it better to use those difficult, advanced
lexis and jargon in order to become
more clear in your speaking?
Check this video for a discussion on that
and have a look at this video right here
for my top five tips on becoming advanced
in English conversation.