Back to School - Speaking to New Listeners
Tips for Practicing Vocabulary Words
Speaking to New Listeners
It’s time for many people to go back to school either as students or professors, or the combination of both as teaching and research assistants. Maybe you’re starting a new job, have recently moved, or are just in a situation where you will be talking to new people. That means talking to people who are new to listening to your particular accent or way of speaking. Once they have had more time to listen to you, they’ll be more familiar with your style of speaking and their brains will adapt to small differences. However, there are some things you can do to help express your meaning more clearly to get off to a good start.
Practice vocabulary
Practice prosody
Today, let’s talk about how to practice vocabulary.
1. Start Practicing Your Vocabulary Words
Focusing on the vocabulary used most often in your course, professional field of work, or social speaking situations is a great place to start. Just putting stress on a different syllable of a word can distract listeners and cause them to miss what you said after that, even if every sound in that word was pronounced correctly. There’s also the incorrect assumption that if you can’t pronounce a word well then you must not understand it well. Anyone, not just professors and teachers, may lose credibility in the minds of their listeners if they are mispronouncing an important word.
Practice those words by looking them up in the dictionary and noticing which syllable is stressed. The stressed syllable will be marked by a tiny little line just before the stressed syllable.
The vowel in that syllable is stretched longer and pronounced with a higher pitch than the vowels in unstressed syllables. Listen to the dictionary’s audio example and repeat.
For example, search for the word “semester” at Merriam-Webster.com and listen to the audio on the website: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/semester.
The stress is on the second syllable (“me”), so that should stand out to the listener when you say it.
This word doesn’t have multiple pronunciation options, but many words do have options. The main reason I prefer Merriam-Webster to other dictionaries is that it will show you the optional pronunciations. When you see more than one pronunciation listed, they are in the order of most common to less commonly used.
Another dictionary I like is Dictionary.com because it shows you the pronunciation with the IPA symbols and without. It uses bold to indicate the stressed syllable when written the way it sounds without IPA symbols.
Listen to the audio on the website: https://www.dictionary.com/browse/semester
2. Create Meaningful Vocabulary Lists
Using words that are already meaningful to you means you’ve already stored (encoded) that word in your memory with the context in which it is used and that makes the ability to recall it stronger than words you haven’t used or seen before.
Creating your own word lists to apply word stress patterns to is so much better than a list someone else made for you. You’ve already got the word stored in your memory and it’s easy to recall, now you’re adding a layer of metalinguistic awareness to that word. This means that you’re able to think about and use a word analytically. Attaching this level of analysis to a word that you use in your daily speaking situations increases your awareness of how you are pronouncing it, notice any errors, and know how to change it if you need to.
Listening is practicing speaking if you’re aware of what to listen for. If you’re listening for word stress, the action of practicing specific words or patterns of stress placement will increase your awareness of those words and patterns overall. When you hear a word with that pattern when you’re watching a movie, a video, having a conversation, overhearing other people talking - you’ll notice it more than you would have before.
This is called the frequency illusion or Baader–Meinhof phenomenon. It’s a cognitive bias that happens when your increased awareness of something creates the illusion that it’s occurring more frequently when really, it may have been there the whole time and you just weren’t aware of it. This takes the processes of learning and practice out of the book and into the world all around you where you are really speaking.
Start Practicing
Most common question: How can you be sure which syllable is stressed?
Most simple answer: Look it up in the dictionary.
Use an American English dictionary for more than just definitions. Look for:
Syllables - division, stress
Schwa /Ə/ symbol that sounds like “uh”
Spoken example
US vs UK English differences
Etymology (history) of the word
Keep a Word List (always mark the stressed syllable.)
New words
Words that you have mispronounced in the past
Important words in your field of work or study
Words that are spelled differently than they sound
Listen to Native Speakers
Colleagues, teachers, other students, people in stores, tv, movies
Listen for how they really said it, listen for the stressed syllable
Repeat after you hear it, even if it’s just humming the pattern without words
Write it down (compare spoken & written forms)
3. Organize Your Words
Organize your vocabulary words in any way that makes the most sense to you and is easiest for you to remember. If there are words with sounds that you know you have to be more careful with, make lists of words based on those sounds.
I created a spreadsheet with columns for different word stress patterns. You can identify the vowel sound in the stressed syllable in column B. That vowel will be pronounced with a higher pitch and you’ll stretch that vowel longer than the other vowels in the word. Then, type your word in the column that has the same stressed syllable. Now, when you practice words in that column, they will all have the same word stress pattern and you should fall into a rhythm when you say them one after the other.
You can download the spreadsheet from Gumroad for free. That page also has a link to a video of me demonstrating how to use it or you can access it directly on YouTube.
From Words to Sentences
Feeling confident about your word stress is a good step to take to start making improvements to your professional speaking skills. Pronunciation of important words used in your professional speaking life is important because just putting stress on the wrong syllable can reduce your credibility.
Beyond pronunciation, there’s a whole world of benefits of prosody when you use it to express yourself with authority, empathy, friendliness, trustworthiness, and all the ways that people perceive your intentions no matter which words you use. Prosody is also used to direct your listener’s attention to the important words, indicate changes in topics, and order of events. We’ll look at that in more detail in the next post.