Tower Of Babble: Non-Native Speakers Navigate The World Of 'Good' And 'Bad' English

Picture this: A group of non-native English speakers are in a room. There's someone from Germany, Singapore, South Korea, Nigeria and France. They're having a great time speaking to each other in English, and communication is smooth.

And then ... an American walks in the room. The American speaks quickly, using esoteric jargon ("let's take a holistic approach") and sports idioms ("you hit it out of the park!"). And the conversation trickles to a halt.

Decades of research shows that when a native English speaker enters a conversation among non-native speakers, understanding goes down. Global communication specialist Heather Hansen tells us that's because the native speaker doesn't know how to do what non-native speakers do naturally: Speak in ways that are accessible to everyone, using simple words and phrases.

And yet, as Hansen points out, this more accessible way of speaking is often called "bad English." There are whole industries devoted to "correcting" English that doesn't sound like it came from a native British or American speaker. Try Googling