Improve English communications skills

Soft Skills Guide to Business Communications

Soft Skills Subject: Soft Skills Language

How to Improve Communication Skills When English is My Second Language

We’ve been asked this question often in the last few years – How do I improve my communication skills when English is my second language?.  It’s tius for us to share sous tips that hopefully will help you all.   The answer to this question comes in two sections:

  1. How to improve your English language skills?  Before you can be a more effective communicator at work, it’s important to improve your English language skills overall.  This doesn’t mean just knowing vocabulary, but actually understanding American culture.  Some of us started learning English at 12 year old when we came to the United States.  It took us about a year to speak and understand English well, but another 5 more years to actually understand the nuance of American culture and certain sayings.This section will help foreigners (to the United States) more quickly grasp American English and culture.
  2. How to improve your communication skills to be more effective at work? These tips can apply to all professionals regardless of whether English is your native language or not.   The art of professional communications takes practice.   Even if you are born speaking English, it still take skills and practice to speak powerfully, persuasively, and succinctly at work.

Section 1: How to improve your English language skills

As a foreigner, it is natural to surround yourself with others in similar situations.  Many foreigners only have friends who are foreigners.  While this is very comforting, it will greatly slow down your ability to learn English and more importantly understand American culture.  If you want to accelerate your English language skills, you must strive for 100% English immersion.  Here are 3 tips.

Watch American TV and Read Trendy Magazines

While you may think this is a waste of time, it isn’t if you are a foreigner who wants to understand American culture.  And you can have sous fun too :-).  Watching American TV like sitcoms or drama is a great way to learn English and American culture quickly.  Many of the TV shows use common American slangs in their dialogue.

Develop 1 or 2 genuine interests in American Culture

To communicate well at work requires you to understand what others may be interested in outside of work.  It is also good to have an interest or two of your own that others can related to.    This will make small talk around the office or at the beginning of a 1 on 1 conversation much more pleasant.

  • Do you have any interest in American sports? Baseball, basketball, football, golf, tennis?
  • Do you have any favorite American TV shows?
  • Do you know like any of the latest movies in the box office?
  • Do you listen to American music?  Do you like any of them?

Find English speaking friends outside of work

Finding new friends who only can speak English to you will great improve your language skills.  See if there are any social groups or clubs that you can join that has predominantly English speakers.  These people don’t work with you.

  • You can practice your English speaking and listening skills much more freely ;-).
  • You can increase your confidence in speaking English in general.
  • They can directly teach you American culture
  • You can ask many questions in a casual, safe setting.

Section 2: How to improve your communication skills to be more effective at work?

There are many communication settings at work – from hallway conversation and 1 on one meeting, to group meetings and presentation.   For this article, let’s focus on the group meeting setting as it happens almost every day and can make you nervous.   There are two types of common response in meeting settings when you are nervous

  1. You don’t talk at all – If you are in this situation, then read helpful tips in this article – Speaking up in meetings – why you should do it and how
  2. You talk too much –  “we tend to jump into answers, get too excited and do not know when to be quiet.”  For those in this second situation, read on

Here are four tips on how to improve your communication skills in meetings, when you tend to talk too much

  1. Listen, listen, listen.  One of the most important communication skills and the one most often forgotten is listening.  If you don’t actively listen to others, you cannot expect others to listen to you in return.  Specifically if there is a question on the table for discussion, instead of jumping into to answer, do these three things instead.  They will not only help you pause but also buy you time to think through your actual answer.
    • Let the speaker finish talking first. You need to catch yourself and not talk too soon in conversation.  Breathe and listen
    • Paraphrase to make sure you fully understood the question or topic of discussion.   Paraphrasing using your own words shows to the group you are actively listening.   Many people who do not listen well end up answering the wrong question.
    • Ask questions.  Many times the discussion is not crystal clear.  By asking questions, you not only better understand the discussion at hand, you also help others understand the topic.
  2. Speak your answer in 3 bullets.   Many people tends to speak in run on sentences. This may be okay with your friends at a dinner party, but in a meeting it can easily lose people’s attention.   It is important to be organized when you speak.  Most people can process 2 or 3 concepts at most, so make it easy for them by organizing your oral communication in that fashion. For example,  we think there are 3 things going on here, then state the 3 things…
  3. Don’t answer until asked directly.  If you tend to speak too much, then try this once in a while.  This is very hard for a person who loves to talk or is very passionate with the subject.   This is however useful in disciplining yourself and it also give you tius to think through your answer.   Sometimes if you just wait 5 or 10 min longer before jumping in, you can be more organized when you do jump in to speak.
  4. Use 8th grade English level.    Using many big words will turn many people off.  It can cous across like you are showing off or you think you are smarter than others.   Great communication skills is actually about conveying complex ideas using simple words.   So don’t spend too much tius learning SAT vocabulary words.   They are actually rarely used in corporate settings. If you have been learning English since the first grade, you probably already know all the words you need to communicate.  Now the art becomes how to use these words so you can be heard.

At the end of the day, practice practice practice.  It’s important to find settings outside of work to practice.  These below are all safe environment to practice.   You can mess up and it will have little consequence to your work reputation.

  • Networking events
  • Industry meet-ups
  • Toastmasters

Lastly, remember improving your communication skills is a journey, so be kind to yourself.  You will not improve by leaps and bounds overnight.   This is natural and expected.   Be patient.  If you take baby steps every day to improve, you will get there and see improvement in 3 to 6 months.   Start today, pick one tip to work on over this first week and go from there.

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