How the Conversation in English Relates to the Non-native English Speaker’s Mentality
After attending university, there is a phenomenon that some international students from China can’t speak English confidently. Plenty of them often speak English in a low voice, and some of them even try to avoid conversations in English.
I used to be shy in speaking, too. When I was in high school, I came to the United States to attend summer school. Although I have spoken English since kindergarten, I was very unconfident in communicating with others, especially native speakers. I feared that they would mock on my dysfluency and incorrect pronunciations.
One day, I went to a McDonald’s to buy an ice cream cone.
“Welcome, what would you like to order?” The food counter attendant asked enthusiastically.
“Hi,” I said in a whisper as usual, “May I get a cone?”
The food counter attendant hesitated with a puzzling frown and said: “A coin?”
“Yes,” I replied. My lack of self-confidence started to make me question myself if I said correctly.
“Um, a coin?” The food counter attendant repeated. While she was saying, she took out a coin and pointed the coin at me.
I suddenly realized why she was so confused — I pronounced the word “cone” as “coin.” “Well, I mean a cone: C-O-N-E,” I explained. Finally, the food counter attendant understood and placed the order for me.
I could still remember that there were a lot of people waiting in line at that time, and my pronunciation with Chinese accent caused me to spend much more time explaining what I wanted to buy. I felt extremely embarrassed and awkward because plenty of those people behind me were very impatient and restless; some of them were even mocking at me.
This experience is like a “dark shadow” buried deep in my mind. It caused me no longer want to step into that McDonald’s during the rest of my days in the United States. After I went back to China, I even started to avoid speaking English as much as possible to avoid potential embarrassments. As time went by, my passion for English has diminished, which influenced my grades for English courses. Thus, I began to think about why I was so afraid of speaking English. After consideration, I realized that I was not ashamed of my English pronunciation but was scared of being mocked by others. I even think about that if I do not have the thought that I am bad at pronouncing English in the first place, probably I will be much more confident when buying the cone and nothing bad after that event would happen.
In fact, the fear of being laughed at by others is not a psychological disorder that only I have, but almost every non-native English speaker has this type of disorder, which makes he or she lose confidence in communicating in English. Although inaccurate pronunciation can largely decrease people’s self-confidence, the most vital purpose of language is to express ideas and thoughts. In other words, the correctness or the accuracy of expressing meaning is far more crucial than pronunciation. More critical, misunderstanding will be avoided only if people express their own thoughts firmly and daringly. Besides that, people should realize that facing the problems of communication, such as expressing a word inaccurately, is not shameful, but normal. Since the goal of speaking English with native speakers for non-native speakers is to improve English, speakers should treat problems that happen during the conversations as valuable experiences and learn to use the proper word choices as the native speakers do. In this way, their abilities to speak English will be improved.
Generally speaking, it is tough for non-native speakers to speak English as same as native speakers. Hence, small moments of embarrassment caused by pronunciation and other mistakes are inevitable. However, people should not take them as shames and let them become obstacles in learning English. On the contrary, they should keep being positive and confident toward speaking to native speakers, which may improve their English more effectively.
