---
title: Helping out the non-native speakers in the room
description: Read how to help out non-native speakers in the room and learn which sentences might be difficult for them to understand.
---

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 January 21, 2020

# Helping out the non-native speakers in the room

 By  [Martin Wheeler](https://hs.targettraining.eu/training-business/author/martin-wheeler)  ·   1 minute read

**Advice on how to improve your business communication skills is often directed at helping the non-native speakers communicate better, but what about the native speakers? What could/should they do to have a more successful outcome? Below are two considerations for native speakers preparing for meetings with mixed language ability colleagues. The examples shown below are from the observation of *English* native speakers, but the advice holds true for any meeting with different nationalities present.**

## Reformulate

It’s hard to cross-check yourself as a native speaker, especially when you are in full-flow and a strong, educated talker. It may be worth, however, trying to reword what you have just said- especially when you do catch yourself seeing some blank looks. The following expressions are taken from an actual meeting. Consider how difficult they might be to understand for a non-native English speaker. One way to evaluate this is by asking yourself: “Have I ever heard the other people in the room use this expression?” If the answer is “no”, then you should consider reformulating.

- It’s all a bit clunky
- We didn’t want to go there (not referring to travel, but a topic)
- It didn’t go down very well
- One-upmanship
- That does seem a bit steep

## Reduce excess words

English native speakers are especially good at using 'softeners'. Softeners are words used to modify the potential force/impact of the message. For non-native speakers, the use of softeners can be ambiguous or confusing. Extracting the important information from someone’s speech is not always a simple task for a non-native English speaker. Take a look at the following example:

“We need **some sort of** decision **probably** by the end of the week”

This sentence could be interpreted as meaning, ‘I only need to think about part of the decision and I have no firm deadline to do so'. Non-native English speakers sometimes view softeners (the words in **bold**) as indicating that the real information they support is not that important. For a native English speaker, softeners are very hard to eradicate. On a simple level, however, you can see that softeners increase the number of words in a sentence and therefore might make comprehension of key facts trickier. This is not to say that softeners aren’t a useful tool, but factor in when it might pay to simply not use one.

## More on meetings

Our blog features a number of [posts on meetings](https://www.targettraining.eu/tag/meetings/).

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