中国人说英语最大的障碍是什么？ 第7页

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The biggest barrier is that you’re thinking too much. Because I don’t care how your English sounds. If there’s one thing you take away from this article, this would be it. As an ABC, senior executive, and boss, all I care about is whether I can understand you and you can understand me. Regarding how good your English needs to be when communicating with people like me, that’s all that really matters.

Before going on, I’ll mention that I’m a native English speaker. However, my 2nd language, Mandarin, sucks! It’s terrible. And this is after living and working in China for over 20 years! So I have huge respect for anyone who can learn a 2nd language without even having lived in another country before. Not only is this incredibly impressive to me, it describes millions of Chinese professionals who speak English far better than I speak Mandarin.

Yet, I meet so many people here who lack confidence when communicating with foreigners in English. Their biggest problem is they don’t feel their English is good enough. But whenever they speak to me, I’m not thinking this at all. In fact, it’s the opposite. In almost every instance, my requirements and standards for their level of English are much lower than what they’re thinking. Or put another way, the English standards in your mind are much higher than what foreigners like me actually need and expect from you.

I hope the following perspective will help raise your confidence and approach when speaking English with the foreigners in your job and work.

We’re not nearly as critical of your English as you think! – Actually, I find that Chinese people are much more critical of each other’s English than we are. For instance, before my staff introduces someone for me that we’re considering to hire, they’ll often say, “We like this candidate, but his English isn’t that good.” But when I interview them, their English is fine. No problem. This is almost always the case. It’s fine to me because I can understand everything they say.

So here’s the most important thing I’ll say about communicating with a foreigner, especially a foreign manager or executive. Greater fluency isn’t the key. As long as you can express your thoughts and main point(s) of what you want to say, your accent, grammar, or how slowly you talk doesn’t matter. to me. If you can make yourself understood, that’s good enough.

I emphasize this point because many people worry too much and get too nervous when speaking to a foreigner. They overthink everything. They think their vocabulary isn’t big enough, they make too many grammar mistakes, their accent is too heavy, or they speak too slowly. But I’m fully aware that English is your 2nd language. I’m not interested in criticizing your language skills. I just want to understand what you want to tell me.

I’ve been in many meetings where a Chinese person is presenting something to foreign managers or executives. Not once have I ever heard one say afterwards, “I don’t like his proposal, his accent is too heavy.” Or, “His grammar isn’t good enough for me to consider his recommendation.” That’s not even close to what we think or care about.

What matters to us are that we can understand you, and be understood by you – What we care about are really just two things: 1) You can express your thoughts and what you want to say to us, and 2) You can understand what we’re asking and telling you.

Listen, business communication is very practical. It’s about being understood. What you say doesn’t need to sound beautiful, formal, or highly educated. You don’t need to use big words or fancy sentences. To be understood easily, you actually want to speak in just a simple, straightforward way. This means using simple, straightforward words and sentences.

As a foreigner working here, I can also tell you that I make every effort to understand your key points and ideas. In business situations, there’s usually a clear purpose or objective. It’s to understand a situation, solve a problem, get something approved, etc. It’s not a language contest.

So I’m always going to do my very best to listen carefully to what you want to say to me. This is the same for every foreigner in China who needs to communicate with non-native, English speakers. Frankly, most of us are terrible at languages. We speak little or no Chinese. So we’re happy about whatever English you can speak to help us do our jobs here well.

It’s about the quality of your thoughts and ideas – In addition, what we pay attention to most is what you have to say. As long as it’s something interesting or beneficial, I’m going to give you every chance to say it. When speaking with your boss, your senior management, or a client, it’s the quality of your thoughts and ideas that matter to us.

One candidate that I interviewed for my career development book, Develop Yourself As A Future Executive, Today, understood this well. In his job, he often had to communicate with senior managers who were foreigners. For a long time, he would always get very nervous speaking with them.

Finally, he realized that these senior managers weren’t judging what he said by how fluent his English was. They were assessing what he had to say. So if his ideas and thought process were good, then whatever he said would sound good.

He began providing more facts, references, and background information, which, low and behold, helped make him more easily understood by others. As he focused more on making sure what he said had merit and weight, he became more confident and much less nervous when speaking to others in English. As he put it, “If your thoughts are solid then what you say will be solid too.”

So when determining if a person’s English level is good enough to work for me and our company, I just consider three things. Again, they have little to do with how good you sound. I ask myself these three questions.

1）Can you reasonably express your thoughts and ideas to me? – There will be many instances where I need to know what you think about something. For instance, your assessment about a situation, or how you plan to handle something. To let me know, you need to be able to communicate your thoughts to me clearly and simply. You need to be able to share your logic sense and the reasons why what you’re telling me is a good idea, and how you plan to make it happen.

What I don’t want to do is to play 21 questions with you. I don’t want to have to spend a lot of effort figuring out what’s going through your mind. You need to be able to tell me what’s happening and what you’re thinking. I’m okay if what you say doesn’t sound so smooth, as long as I can understand your key points.

A Good Tip: Keep things simple! When expressing yourself in English, don’t overthink your words and sentences, or try to sound impressive. In business, keeping things simple and straightforward is always preferred, especially when you’re talking to managers and executives. Again, it’s the quality of your thoughts that impresses others.

2）Can you accurately understand what I’m saying? – Perhaps even more critical than how well you can express yourself to me is how well you can understand what I say. I speak at a normal speed. And as an American, I don’t have a heavy accent. However, some of our clients have heavy Indian, British, or Australian accents. So if you can’t understand me very well, I have big concerns about your ability to understand and handle business with some of our clients.

For me, I need you to understand at least 80% of what I’m saying. Otherwise, there’s going to be too much miscommunication. You’re going to miss important points that I need you to know and details of what I need you to do. This will greatly impact your ability to deliver high quality, accurate work for me and our company.

A Good Tip: Record what they say. In a meeting or even one-on-one, people in our company will record what I say. I don’t mind this at all. In fact, I like it. It shows their professionalism and desire to catch all my key points, in case they can’t immediately understand everything I say. Listening to what I’ve said later also helps improve their English. It takes more time, but will help you do your job better.

3）Can you communicate clearly enough in writing? – Even if you don’t need to speak English often, in a foreign company it’s likely that most, if not all, of your written communication will be in English. Even for technical and engineering professionals, you’ll often need to correspond by email with overseas colleagues.

In our interview process, we have candidates write responses to several open questions to help us assess their ability to express their thoughts in writing.

Fortunately, most people write better than they speak in English. Writing is also not a rea-time situation like speaking. When writing, you have the time to think about exactly how you want to say something.

A Good Tip: Use available tools. These days, there are tools like spell check and grammar check to help you. For some reason, however, many people here don’t use them. But to eliminate and correct many basic mistakes, you just need to run what you write through these tools. The extra 2-3 minutes that this takes will make your written communication look and sound much better.

So if you’re someone who lacks confidence in your English abilities, they may actually be much better than you think? They may already be good enough to communicate effectively with the foreigners you interact with. Your responses to these three questions can give you a better sense of this, and how much your current level of English really needs to improve.

Of course, improving your English skills is a great investment for your future. The higher you go in a foreign company, the more you need to interact with foreigners. Ultimately, however, fluency is not the key to communicating well with others in English. What matters much more is the quality of what you say than how you say it.

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For more great career development and career success-related expertise, insights, and advice, follow Larry Wang's personal account on Wechat, at Larry聊职商<LarryWangABC>

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