Your accent is not what lowers the score
Speaking tests measure how easily a listener understands you, not how native you sound. A clear Indonesian accent is compatible with the top bands.
Word endings, and why they matter so much
Two things combine here, and together they make word endings the biggest single issue.
First, sound: Indonesian does not release a final stop and has no consonant clusters at the end of a syllable, so English endings get swallowed or simplified — asked becomes ask, friends becomes frien.
Second, grammar: Indonesian does not mark plural or past tense on the word at all. Number and time are shown with separate words. So there is no habit of listening for, or producing, a -s or an -ed — the ending is not just hard to say, it is easy to forget it should be there.
| What you meant | What it becomes | What was lost |
|---|---|---|
| She works here | She work here | third-person -s |
| I walked home | I walk home | past tense -ed |
| Two books | Two book | plural -s |
Practise it as a physical habit, not a rule to remember: read a paragraph aloud and exaggerate every final -s and -ed until finishing the word feels automatic.
Consonant clusters
English stacks consonants together where Indonesian does not, so the cluster gets broken up or simplified.
- street is str, not se-treet
- asked ends in -skt — say all three slowly
- texts, lists, costs are hard for everyone; slow down rather than drop part of it
The sound contrasts worth fixing
| Sound | Why it's hard | What a listener may hear |
|---|---|---|
| /θ/ and /ð/ (th) | Not in Indonesian; become /t/ or /d/. | think → tink, they → dey |
| /v/ | Not in Indonesian; becomes /f/. | very → fery |
| /z/ | Rare; becomes /s/. | zoo → soo, is → iss |
| /ʃ/ | Approximated with /s/. | she → see |
| /ɪ/ vs /i:/ | Indonesian has no long/short vowel contrast. | ship / sheep, bit / beat |
| /ʊ/ vs /uː/ | Same reason. | full / fool |
The last two rows matter more than they look. Indonesian has no vowel-length contrast at all, so several English word pairs collapse into one — and the listener hears a different word.
Rhythm: English is not evenly weighted
Indonesian gives syllables roughly equal weight and does not reduce unstressed vowels. English leans hard on one syllable per word and lets the rest collapse to a weak uh.
- comfortable is three beats in real speech, not four.
- Content words carry the stress; a, the, of, to, is are said fast and quietly.
- banana is really b'NA-n', not three clear vowels.
Leaning harder on the stressed syllable and weakening the small words makes you noticeably easier to follow, and costs nothing in accent.
How to practise
- Record yourself. As you speak you hear what you intended, not what came out.
- Spend the first weeks on -s and -ed alone. This is both a sound and a grammar habit, and it moves two scores.
- Then the vowel pairs — ship / sheep, full / fool — with minimal pairs, until someone else can tell them apart.
- Practise in sentences. A sound you can produce alone but lose in a sentence is not learned yet.
Aflo scores your speech sound by sound and shows you which sounds were hardest to catch.
For the test, and for real life
For the exam: finish your words, especially the -s and -ed, and separate the long and short vowels. That is most of the score.
Outside the exam you may want to sound more American or more British, for work or for yourself. That is a reasonable goal and a separate one from scoring well. Clarity is what the test pays for; the accent can stay.
Frequently asked questions
Will my Indonesian accent lower my speaking score?
No. These tests score intelligibility rather than native-likeness, and Aflo's pronunciation scoring has a floor so that differences which are only accent stop affecting the score. What lowers a score is missing word endings and collapsed vowel pairs.
Why do I keep forgetting the -s and -ed?
Two reasons stack up. Indonesian does not release final consonants and has no final clusters, so the ending is hard to say. And Indonesian does not mark plural or past tense on the word at all — number and time are shown with separate words — so there is no habit of producing an ending in the first place. Practise it as a physical habit rather than a rule.
Why do ship and sheep sound the same to me?
Indonesian has no long/short vowel contrast, so several English pairs collapse into one sound — ship and sheep, full and fool. The listener genuinely hears a different word, so these are worth working on with minimal pairs.
How do I know which sounds to work on?
Record yourself and get an external check; you cannot judge your own pronunciation while producing it. Aflo compares your speech with the expected pronunciation one sound at a time and reports the sounds a listener was most likely to miss.