Accomodating ESL speakers

Theodore Ts'o tytso at mit.edu
Tue Jul 8 16:06:31 CEST 2003


On Tue, Jul 08, 2003 at 05:46:25PM +0300, Jari Arkko wrote:
> 
> And of course, the worst case scenario is an ESL speaker
> (original language X) speaks incomprehensible English
> and another ESL person (original language Y) tries to
> understand ;-)
> 

It's a problem when some really smart people try to talk as fast as
possible to keep up with their thoughts.  The problem isn't
necessarily limited to native english speakers, too.  I've sometimes
really had problems trying to follow an ESL speaker who spoke English
with a very heavy accent, but who was also speaking very quickly, and
on a technically deep enough topic that trying to decipher his accent
as well as keep up with his train of thought was a very large challenge.

						- Ted


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