Non-native speakers navigate the world of 'good' and 'bad' English

The article does seem to mix up "accent" with word use though (I was going to say "conflate" but then I'd fail the above rule!) Problems with word use seem much more legitimate to raise than accent - so long as an accent can be understood, it's rarely a problem and "correcting" it is rude and unnecessary, but in cases where word use is simply incorrect and confusing, it seems fair to try to get people on the right track (politely of course).

In my experience a number of these usage problems come from incorrectly inferring the meaning of a word commonly done by an overconfident speaker and much as being inclusive is nice if you use the wrong word that actually means something else it's not helpful for anyone's understanding, native or nonnative.

The main criticism I would have of the article is that it doesn't really support the case that nonnative understanding is undermined by the presence of native speakers - it feels like it's just taken as given because it's easily pointed to rather than having a basis in any serious evidence. It could quite easily be that without any native speakers the nonnative speakers merely think they all understand each other.

Quite often people get praise for their "good" English because they've adopted a British accent even when their grammar isn't right or use words with the wrong meaning.

Personally I don't care if someone speaks English with a Spanish, German, French, Dutch, Indian, Swedish, or any other accent. Americans don't sound like Brits, Brits don't sound like Kiwis, Kiwis don't sound like Canadians, but they're all native speakers. I prefer someone who can communicate effectively in the language over someone who can fake an accent the best.

Also regarding English tests, it goes both ways, many Chinese students in Australia pass those tests but can't communicate in English to save their lives, let alone do an academic assignments.

As a French person surrounded by non native speakers, I am sad to hear this. Many French people should quit their elitism with respect to the language and start bothering about the content instead. Languages are tools, not an end in themselves (they are also a very interesting topic).

It is still useful for non native speaker to be corrected and they usually appreciate it (foreigners has told me many times that French people don't correct them enough and they were happy I did). They usually want to improve! There are ways to do it without disrupting the conversation:

- come back to a mistake at a later point after the conversation is over - a correction should not interrupt the conversation taking place, except maybe for critical mistakes or to fix an ambiguity (and then it's often better to ask than to blindly correct, because it feels better for everybody and sometimes you are just wrong). It's already hard to speak in another language, it should be clear to everyone that making mistakes is not important. It's better to let people express themselves intuitively, smoothly, with mistakes, than a conversation where they have to think hard about the grammar and the language and where it is difficult to express themeself.

- pick frequent mistakes

- mistakes are a great opportunity to have interesting discussions about both the native language(s) of the speaker and the language being spoken. I've been learning many things thanks to this kind of discussions and they probably make me better in English.

- keep in mind that you are probably an absolute shit in the native language of the person compared to their level in yours, and they are actually doing very well.

There is nothing fundamentally wrong with making language mistakes, don't be a dick about them.

Also: it's not common, but still acceptable and not weird at all in some languages, like the Portuguese "fazer o necessário".