Un artículo publicado en inglés y español, que te ayudará en tu lectura, pero principalmente sirve para expresar una opinión.

An article in English and Spanish which will help you in your reading, but mainly serves to express an opinion.

Are You Deaf, or What?

¿ESTÁS SORDO, O QUÉ?

Do we always speak in a clear and careful way? Is it easy to understand what we say? No, according to one man who has to struggle to hear us.

‘Yes, I’m deaf, but I’m not as deaf as you make me.’ The speaker was Dave, a carpenter and builder with whom I’d become friendly when he helped me with some work for a few weeks.

I was surprised and a bit upset at his comment – what had I done? Of course he meant ‘you’ in the plural as in ‘all of you’ but as there is only one word in English for ‘you’, plural and singular, it was a natural mistake to make.

Dave explained what he meant and it occurred to me that speakers of a foreign language, and teachers of English as a foreign language, could benefit from noting what he said. I list his comments:

'You – all my listeners – make my hearing problems even worse because –

1.  You speak while you are facing in the other direction or when I’m facing in the other direction and my back is to you.

2.  A speaker often has a hand over his or her mouth when speaking.

3. The person speaking may have something in their mouth, like a candy or chewing gum. This obviously affects pronunciation.

4.  You wander off out of the room but continue talking at the same volume.

5. Other noises affect my hearing and the person speaking usually creates them. For example, turning on a water faucet (tap) or switching on the radio.

6.  You bend over looking for something and the volume of your voice drops by about 50%.'

Dave summed up, ‘In practice I could hear a lot better than I do if people would only remember these points. It’s not that I need to lip-read, although that might be a small factor, it’s just that I need the clearest, most direct line of sound.

Everyone does – you’d hear better and not have to say, "pardon?" or "What?" so much if everyone remembered these points of speech.’

I think we all fail at some times on these points, especially when speaking English to novice students of EFL who have not had much practice in listening to English. So we can all improve. Or perhaps I should say, as Dave nearly did, you can improve.

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