If your manager is a good listener, you are very fortunate. Good listeners create authentic connections with others who feel heard and appreciated.  ESL specialists inform their colleagues in elementary schools that a new student who speaks little English when entering kindergarten or the early primary grades may speak very little in his or her first year and should not be given a lower grade for not participating in discussions. However, this same young child is carefully listening and observing, actively learning and absorbing the sounds and meanings of English. Everyone may be  quite surprised, when, in the second year of school, this child begins to speak English quite well and quite clearly for his or her age.  

 

   This  headline seems ridiculously self-evident so why wouldn't the same rule apply to pronouncing a foreign language? Our clients have already learned English; they have been reading and writing English at least since middle school and many have earned advanced degrees at American universities.

   Most have also experienced the shock and frustration of not being understood when they speak English--either some of the time or most of the time AND they never know when this will happen.

    I had one client, a software tester, who had a severe accent and who always ate lunch alone, never socialized and communicated with her colleagues and manager by email whenever possible. She was a charming lady, married to an American, and yet she had been socially isolating herself at work for TEN years until she began her training with Triangle Speech Services.

   Others often tell me that they hold back at meetings, not sharing their ideas and really dread having to contact someone by phone for the first time.