This is not the place to go through all the problems that lecturers with English as their second or third language face due to interference from their native language.

It must be emphasised, however, that a wrong pronunciation of individual words – and not least technical terms – is threat number one to students’ grasping the information. A grammatical error and a badly chosen word now and then do not have the same negative impact on the students’ learning as has the pronunciation

If you are not sure how to pronounce a given word, check http://howjsay.com.

Many online dictionaries offer help, too. At http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/grammar/pron/,you will find very good advice and good exercises.

Of course, the pronunciation should be as perfect as possible; of course, the vocabulary used should be adequate and, of course, one’s language should not be a mixture of British and American English.

However, teaching in or through English is not only a question of being able to speak the language. It is important to appreciate that students whose native language is not English, must go through a double loop to process the information given by the lecturer: First, they have to translate the information into their own language, and then they have to process it in order for them to store it in their long-term memory. Altogether, their working memory is under pressure.

This means that the lecturer must be conscious about his/her language and his/her teaching practice. As to the language part, s/he must attend to pronunciation, vocabulary, and pace as well as to word/sentence stress. Also, paraphrasing is an important factor in this context. As to the teaching part, the lecturer should work with a sufficient amount of breaks, reflection activities, and have the students work with the subject after class. See ‘The teaching practice’ > ‘Starting and getting through the class’.

First of all, as most people know, there are distinct pronunciation differences between British and American English. The individual has to make a choice him/herself as to which variety s/he wants to use – and then be consistent so that the language does not become a British-American hybrid.

This goes for the written language as well, and if you write official letters, brochures, web texts, etc. with Aarhus BSS as the sender, the two varieties must not be mixed up: https://medarbejdere.au.dk/en/faculties/business-and-social-sciences/language-policy/.

Under ‘A few facts on differences between written British and American English’, you will find some of these potential traps.

Below you will find a list of important differences between written British and American English spelling:

<-our / -or>

British spelling: behaviour, colour, favourite, flavour, honour, mould

American spelling: behavior, color, favorite, flavor, honor, mold

<-re / -er>

British spelling: centre, kilometre, litre, theatre,

American spelling: center, kilometer, liter, theater

<-ce / -se>

British spelling: defence, licence, offence

American spelling: defense, license, offense

<-se / -ce>

British spelling: practise (verb); practice (noun)

American spelling: practice (both verb and noun)

<-ll / -l> (stressed)

British spelling: traveller, labelling, cancelled

American spelling: traveler, labeling, canceled

<-l / -ll> (unstressed)

British spelling: fulfil, enrolment, skilful

American spelling: fulfill, enrollment, skillful

<-ise / -ize>

British spelling: realise, organise

American spelling: realize, organize

<-isation / -ization>

British spelling: globalisation, organisation

American spelling: globalization, organization

<-yse / -yze>

British spelling: analyse, paralyse

American spelling: analyze, paralyze

<-t / -ed>

British spelling: spelt, learnt, dreamt

American spelling: spelled, learned, dreamed

Like the intonation of many other languages, the English one is all but constant – it goes up and down to an extent that often surprises people without considerable experience.

It is impossible to give guidelines here, but if you feel you have a problem with the intonation and are often influenced by the intonation of your native language, listen to English radio (news), Ted Talks, etc. and try to grasp the sentence tone.   

At https://www.youtube.com/user/doingenglishDOTcom?feature=watch there is much help and advice.

Paraphrasing helps the students understand technical terms or similar expressions, the reason being that they are helped through the double loop described under ‘What is most important when teaching through English?’

A couple of examples:

• The OECD closely monitors public expenditure trends, in other words, developments in the value of goods and services bought by state governments.
• In-group bias, that is to say favouring one’s own group over another, is a remarkably universal feature of inter-group relations.

It is not easy to establish exact rules for stress in English words, but there is a rule-of-thumb that might be helpful:

• In originally English words, the stress generally lies on the first syllable: ‘daily, 'maker, 'handwriting (' shows where the stress is).
  If a longer word starts with an English preposition or a syllable without real meaning like be-, the stress generally lies on the syllable after the preposition (on the stem syllable): over'come, under'stand, with'draw, be’lieve.
  ‘English words’ means words that have been part of the language from time immemorial. We find many counterparts in e.g. Danish and German: compare English daily with Danish daglig and German täglich.
• In words of foreign origin, the stress can lie almost anywhere. The crucial factor is the language from which they come, typically French and Latin: ’region, o’riginal, tempera’mental. Here the stress is imported from the original language.
• Note that cognate nouns and verbs often have a different distribution of the stress:  contri'bution : con'tribute, exami'nation : ex'amine, modifi'cation : 'modify.

Note the stress in these nouns: 'concept, i'dea, 'process.

It is important to use an easily comprehensible language. This does not mean a simple version of English, but there are certain fields where caution is required:

• Metaphors and fixed expressions are a good and important spice in one’s oral presentation, but if the use of such expressions becomes too advanced, it hampers the students’ understanding. E.g. I was just making a tongue-in-cheek remark (said it for fun), we’re not out of the woods yet (there is still a long way to go; the problems have not been solved yet), I’m not going to beat around the bush (I will not discuss it without coming to the point), this is only a castle in Spain (a daydream).

Colloquial language and jargon should be avoided. First of all, this goes for swearwords. There is nothing as difficult as swearing in a foreign language, and swearing is much less used in English than in Danish; this applies not least the notorious ‘f-word’ or the word shit.