Nitty-Gritty of English Language - Lingua Franca


When it come to language proficiency often people talk about English both at the higher education level  and at work. English is a lingua franca and most widely spoken common language across the boundaries. Essentially, it is the language of business. I colloquially tell all my budding students that Tamil is my Voice and English a commercial noice that I make to survive. It is a language that has become inseparable part of everyone's life who wish to work or live outside their country.

From my personal experience at work we weigh communication skills ahead of one's technical proficiency because certain critical positions across departments  in the organization goes beyond administrative/operational  to tactical and strategic. Despite, all these demands from the society why is most of us are unable to learn and speak proficiently? Let's break it down within the context of India and understand the basis before some tips to speak fluently in English.

Everyone is born with a mother tongue, the influence of mother tongue is high for all of us therefore when we have  learn a new language we are replicating the sounds of our mother tongue to learn a new language for example when you have to say  I'm coming there people say I'm coming there only" the literal translation is (Naan angathaan  varukiren) which is incorrect. We make mistakes when we learn our language through mother tongue. So, what is the alternate to that. Yes, language is purely based on sounds and also the influence of your thoughts. Learning to think in English step by step helps you to become proficient in a few months or a year. So, how do I do that? Life is all about situations, start looking at your environment, be a focused  observer, start looking at everything  and verbalize each one in english which enables you to think in english. From words you start constructing sentences, refer a dictionary to know the words, also when you are unable to figure out things. This helps you to process every information you gather in your mind in English, bear in mind, data becomes information, when you analyze the information it becomes knowledge  that leads to wisdom.

Having learnt the key aspect of developing language proficiency what is the next step to sound more like a native speaker or atleast be good in english. Here is another key point. The study of sounds in language is called phonetics. Yes, there are phonetics in english language which are basically sounds/vibrations your body creates when you utter those. There are close to 44 phonetics in English. If you are aware of those vibrations  in your body you are more likely to sound better in intonation/accent.

Students at the school level and at the college level must start practicing these to become  good at it. Nowadays, even at the kindergarten level I've seen teachers expose kids to these phonetics-  monophthongs  and dipthongs making the language integral part of life. A data suggests that more and more people are learning to converse in better english on common topics but when it comes to technical discussion from a

To sum up, reducing your mother tongue influence,  by being aware of  the above key points and by  practicing it helps one speak the language proficiently.


Mantra for Success  : Practice, Practice and Practice

Let the Noise you create be heard across the boundaries and may you all  fly high in your careers, in maintaining strong social bonds and in life.

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