In Real Life Your English is Judged by Your SPEECH!

By Robby

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VIDEO TRANSCRIPT BELOW:

Hi guys!

It’s Robby here from EnglishHarmony.com and welcome back to my video blog!

In today’s video, I’m going to touch upon a subject that I haven’t actually spoken about before, namely – the fact that you or me or any other foreign speaker for that matter,

We’re all judged based on our spoken English performance!

Non native English speakers are judged by their spoken English

When we meet with other people, when we go about our daily business, when we communicate with others, it’s the spoken fluency that we are being judged upon.

It only makes sense because people don’t see – they can’t – there is no obvious indicator of how well we understand them. People can’t immediately see how good readers or writers we are. But, what they can see, what they can hear, to be more specific, is the way we speak!

So, it only makes sense that we are being judged on the basis of our ability to speak with other people. Yet, at the same time, the traditional English teaching setting facilitates all those other aspects of our English, namely, our ability to understand, and write, and listen, but spoken fluency has always taken the back seat.

And on top of that, all those exams like TOEFL and IELTS, they all focus predominantly on your ability to understand and provide written answers.

Yes, there is the spoken part of those exams. But still in my reckoning, the spoken part should constitute about 50% of the end mark of the final evaluation. But in reality, it’s not the case!

You could be a top-notch listener and writer. You could provide exceptionally well-crafted responses and you would be perfectly able to understand everything. Right? And…

You could be mediocre or even below the average in the spoken department, but you would still pass the exam with flying colors!

If mighn't be able to speak in English but you'd still be able to pass English exams

So, basically, that evaluation process doesn’t focus predominantly on your ability to speak fluently, but in real life that is pretty much the only criteria you are judged upon!

Granted, if you are employed based on your specialty, on your technical abilities, on your diplomas, and say, for example, you’re an IT professional, and then you’re obviously evaluated based on your degree, on your previous work experience, your achievements in the professional aspect, and then your English fluency comes second to that.

And in that particular aspect, you are probably judged not so much on your ability to speak, but based on your ability to perform the particular tasks.

But, that’s not what I’m talking about.

I’m talking about when you meet people face-to-face, what is the first thing that they hear?

They hear the way you speak!

When English speakers meet you in real life, they want to speak with you instead of writing or reading

And, so, their first opinion – and the first opinion is the lasting opinion – that opinion is going to be based on the way you speak during the first minutes of your conversation.

First impression is the lasting one!

The first impression is the lasting one

So, therefore, I think that all academically-based evaluation methods should take the spoken fluency performance more into account than they do now.

That is my belief and I think that you will agree with me, my friends, because it’s so obvious, isn’t it?

When you go about your daily business in real life, meeting real people, that’s when you’re judged based on your oral fluency 100%. You are not judged based on anything else. Whereas, school studies don’t really focus on spoken fluency so much and they don’t evaluate you as an English speaker based on your ability to speak, which is actually a little bit funny because there’s a contradiction.

You are an English speaker and that’s how you should be evaluated – as a speaker. But, just because the whole academic English teaching setting is based predominantly on textbooks and the same old grammar translation method, which they will tell you is not really the case, but it is the case, believe me, in so many spots around the world just because this whole atmosphere, this whole culture still exists.

That’s why the evaluation system is predominantly focusing on those other aspects!

The traditional English teaching system doesn't evaluate your ability to speak in English

So, that’s the funny thing I wanted to share with you. It’s not really funny because it’s so obvious that in real life you are judged only based on your spoken fluency. So, that’s what they should teach you in school. They should prepare you for real life, which is not the case. It’s not happening and it’s an absurd situation.

So, it’s about time I stopped recording this video because I’ve explained pretty much everything I wanted to explain. And, obviously, all your comments are welcome. If you’ve got anything to add in relation to this subject or anything else about spoken English fluency improvement in general, please publish your comments below.

Thanks my friends for watching this video and bye-bye!

Cheers,

Robby

P.S. Would you like to find out why I’m highlighting some of the text in red? Read this article and you’ll learn why it’s so important to learn idiomatic expressions and how it will help you to improve your spoken English!

P.S.S. Are you serious about your spoken English improvement? Check out my English Harmony System HERE!

P.S. Are you serious about your spoken English improvement? Check out the English Harmony System HERE!