English is the world’s lingua franca, but the 400 million native-English speakers are a minority compared to the 2 billion people who learned English in a classroom. With these numbers, it’s no surprise that most people speak English ‘badly’.

The problem is that, when people speak with a strange accent, pronounce words wrong, or use unusual grammar, we form an impression of their intelligence and capability that has nothing to do with their actual abilities. So this week on The Mind Tools L&D Podcast, we’re joined by author, consultant and TEDx speaker Heather Hansen to explore the benefits of speaking English badly!

We discuss:

• Why ‘accent bias’ is a problem
• How to become better listeners in a global setting
• How we can better communicate with others.

You can watch Heather’s TEDx talk at: ted.com/talks/heather_hansen_2_billion_voices_how_to_speak_bad_english_perfectly

Find out more about Heather at: globalspeechacademy.com/ 

You can also find Heather on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/hansenheather/

In ‘What I Learned This Week’, Ross discussed Alan Rickman’s showbiz diaries: theguardian.com/film/2022/sep/24/alan-rickmans-secret-showbiz-diaries-harry-potter

Nahdia discussed research into accent bias in Britain: Bias-Britain-Report-2020.pdf">accentbiasbritain.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Accent-Bias-Britain-Report-2020.pdf

We opened today’s show with a clip from Mind Your Language.

For more from us, including access to our back catalogue of podcasts, visit mindtoolsbusiness.com. There, you'll also find details of our award-winning performance support toolkit, our off-the-shelf e-learning, and our custom work.  

Connect with our speakers  

If you'd like to share your thoughts on this episode, connect with our speakers on Twitter:

• Ross Garner - @RossGarnerMT
• Nahdia Khan - @NahdiaKhan
• Heather Hansen - @HeatherHansen