Originally Posted by
lhrsfo
Surely the key is to make it easier for someone to understand what you are saying? If so, speaking fairly slowly and enunciating clearly are more important than the specific choice of words.
Indeed. Foreign colleagues of mine who've become fluent in spoken English have said that the hardest part to learn was how to separate words when listening to a native speaker. (Reading proper English is much easier than hearing it conversationally.) Because of this I slow down my rate of speech, enunciate carefully, and structure my cadence around key phrases. Several colleagues have said they find my English easier to understand than anyone else's.