What Is the Most Important Aspect of Speaking English Well?

If you would like to know the most important aspect of speaking in English as a second language once you reach the intermediate level, then this article will show you.

Supposedly Albert Einstein once said:

“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”

Whether Einstein really did say this or not, I don’t know.

But regardless, it’s true.

This idea is especially relevant to people learning to speak English as a second language: especially if you want to be considered an intelligent-sounding, proficient speaker (which let’s face it, is the goal of most people).

One of the biggest mistakes people learning English make is thinking that learning difficult or ‘advanced’ words and grammar will somehow make them sound advanced. But this simply isn’t true, and often it has completely the opposite effect and makes your English sound worse. Why? Because you confuse the people you’re talking to.

Research from the University of Princeton shows that essays written in clear, simple English are judged as much more intelligent sounding than essays packed full of big, complicated lexis and jargon (that’s difficult words) and long sentences. The reason why is simple — those big, so-called ‘intelligent-sounding’ words and sentences just confuse the reader and hide what is actually the most important part of the essay: the ideas.

Well, this is exactly the same when speaking English as a second language well.

The problem is that people learning English mistakenly believe ‘simple’ English to be easy, and therefore not worth spending their time getting good at. But it’s not easy at all, and neither can you compensate for poor use of basic English by filling it with “advanced” stuff.

To put it simply: basic knowledge of advanced English doesn’t make you advanced; advanced knowledge of basic English does.

This is not to say that big complicated words are never useful, of course. All words are used somewhere, but the point is, it depends on the context and who you’re talking to.

For example, if I’m talking to another academic about my research in Applied Linguistics, terms such as “lexical bundle” or “native-like selection” will be much clearer and precise than words like “chunk” or “naturalness” — but this only works if the listener has enough shared knowledge of the topic and language to understand these terms easily. And importantly, I use these technical words in this context to be clear: not to impress.

In a nutshell, clarity is all about being able to use English in a flexible, appropriate way. It’s about being able to choose the right words to communicate your message as simply as possible to the listener.

And you know what?

This is hard to do and you’ll need to consciously practise doing it. But if you do, I can guarantee you’ll benefit as an English speaker.

There are hundreds of free English learning tips just like this one waiting for you over at https://doingenglish.com/