Impetus for the study

Members: French, Swedish, Portuguese, Finnish, Japanese, Spanish.

“I was sitting in one of the IAA Committee meetings and listening to the discussion. Suddenly I thought that the meeting was missing an essential point and I started to plan an intervention. It took a few minutes to prepare myself, especially to find the right English words etc., and suddenly I realised that the discussion had moved on to another subject.”

“I was in the middle of an intervention talking about that interesting subject when in the middle of a sentence I realised that I had forgotten the correct English word to use.”

These are just two of a number of situations a non-native English (NNE) speaker finds himself in every now and then.

Of course, if you are an intrepid speaker you continue with a homemade translation, but we must admit that a fair number of us would more and more hesitate to speak publicly.

Are there any remedies or solutions to this problem that most probably results in a predominance of the Anglo Saxon views being forwarded?

This report highlights some of the concerns felt by GCAE members and illustrates some of the difficulties and frustrations encountered by non-native English speakers in meetings.

The final paragraph suggests an underlying assumption that some of these difficulties result from the dominance of ‘Anglo Saxon’ views in the organization, despite their minority status in terms of numbers of members.

It is interesting to note that some members of the organization had thought about these issues in some depth and come up with their own reasons for such difficulties. These they divided into three subsections: (a) cultural; (b) organization; (c) language barrier. As can be seen from the extract relating to ‘cultural’ issues, reference was made to differences in working styles and the need to give participants an adequate amount of time to respond in meetings, as well as to the tendency to defer to more senior associates.