Correcting Non-Native Speakers May Hinder Their Learning

Coauthored with Sangitha Aiyer

In his 1913 play Pygmalion, George Bernard Shaw wrote: “It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him.”

While Shaw was referring to communication between native English speakers, his statement applies even more aptly to communication between native and non-native speakers.

When non-native speakers open their mouths, regardless of the content or quality of what they have to say, they will be judged (i.e., “if I can’t understand your accent, I can’t trust you”) or even corrected for their grammar or pronunciation. However well intended, these corrections might induce unintended negative effects on ‎non-native English speakers.

It is generally seen as impolite to correct people’s grammar in social situations or public contexts. Yet, this paradigm seems not to apply to the speech of non-native speakers. Possibly, this is out of supposed altruism—when a native speaker corrects a non-native speaker, they may be doing so to be helpful. However, this often has the opposite effect and leaves the learner feeling embarrassed or discouraged from continuing to try.

After all, adults learn the language differently than children. When children ‎learn any language, they are bold to make ‎mistakes. Conversely, when adults learn a new language, any correction may bruise their ego or hinder their ability to improve. ‎Although bilingualism is not a liability but an asset, people who speak with a foreign accent are considered incompetent, unintelligent, and socially inferior.

The conquest of English as a global language means more adults will start learning English. Although those adults need to master grammatical and pronunciation rules, they should not be corrected in social spaces because that may harm their psychological profile. English is such a difficult language to learn, especially for those zero-gens who learn it as adults; they grew up speaking languages that do not resemble English.

A further issue arises when we consider the impact that speech has on how we are perceived by others. Language is often used as a gatekeeping mechanism, as a proxy through which the ‎intelligence and social class of the person ‎are ascertained. Researchers from Northwestern University and the University of Southern California found that there is a direct link between language and social class, which is often determined using comparisons to ideal speech standards.

This is inevitable because of the economy of attention in the modern world: admission committee needs to decide the best applicants, employers need to find the best employee, and professionals need to maximize efficiency. In all cases, language becomes a tool through which the character of the person is assessed. If the language is inadequate, the person’s character is called into question. Many applications for jobs and schools are denied simply because of grammatical and awkward errors.

Within social groups, a similar phenomenon appears. Humans ‎focus on the accent, sound, and voice—from which they ascertain the ‎identity of the speaker.‎ As John McWhorter, a Columbia University linguist, wrote: “[S]peech can communicate identity as well as ideas: How people talk reflects how they perceive themselves within a society.” As a result, non-native English speakers are often ‎relegated to an inferior status simply because ‎they do not speak the language natively. This can impact the formation of social groups and cause non-native speakers to be excluded due to their communication.

The superiority that native speakers are awarded in society is questionable. Sound, voice, and accent are all natural endowments. Where language is concerned, what matters the most is comprehension and intelligibility, both of which are objective measures that can be operationalized. But voice and accent are subjective factors—what sounds awkward to some may sound natural to others.

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Standard ‎English writing is a formal genre appropriate ‎for solemn and learned contexts. Therefore, where language is ‎concerned, context matters: the meaning-making process is conducted within a certain ‎context. People may ‎be annoyed by a grammatical awkward error when they listen or read. ‎However, unless that error interferes with the ‎process of meaning-making, readers and ‎listeners should direct their energy into ‎understanding the thought. Language is a ‎medium through which thought is transferred and, as a result, should not be the center of attention. ‎It is merely an angle through which to conceive and perceive thoughts.

Although language has the ability to separate people on the basis of how they speak or the errors they make, it also has the ability to bring them together. At no other point in history has there been so much communication across racial, social, and cultural groups. Native and non-native speakers should not be seen through the lens of differences but rather through the unique ability to communicate using the same language.

Sangitha Aiyer is a Benjamin Franklin Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania.