Your accent is not what lowers the score
Speaking tests measure how easily a listener understands you, not how native you sound. A clear Spanish accent is compatible with the top bands.
The one everyone notices: e before s
Spanish has no word that begins with s plus another consonant. Words like escuela and español carry a vowel in front. That vowel tends to travel into English:
- school → eschool
- Spanish → Espanish
- street → estreet
- study → estudy
This one rarely stops a listener understanding you, but it is the most audible feature of a Spanish accent in English and it is easy to fix, so it is worth doing early.
The real cost: vowels
This is where the marks actually go. Spanish has five clear vowels. English has around twelve, and several of them sit inside the space of a single Spanish vowel. So English word pairs collapse into one sound, and a listener genuinely hears a different word.
| English pair | Why it collapses | What the listener hears |
|---|---|---|
| /i:/ vs /ɪ/ | Both land on Spanish i. | sheep / ship, beat / bit, leave / live |
| /æ/ vs /e/ | Both land near Spanish e. | bad / bed, man / men |
| /ʌ/ vs /ɑ/ | Both land near Spanish a. | cut / cart, but / bought |
| /uː/ vs /ʊ/ | Both land on Spanish u. | fool / full, pool / pull |
| /ə/ (schwa) | Spanish vowels keep full value; English reduces unstressed ones. | banana said with three clear a sounds sounds foreign and slows the listener |
The schwa is worth special attention. English throws away the vowels in unstressed syllables — banana is really b'NA-n'. Giving every vowel its full Spanish value makes your speech sound evenly weighted, which makes the stressed syllable harder to find.
The consonants worth fixing
| Sound | Why it's hard | What a listener may hear |
|---|---|---|
| /b/ vs /v/ | Spanish treats them as one sound. | vote / boat, very / berry |
| /h/ | Spanish h is silent; the sound may be dropped or hardened to a j. | hello → ello or jello |
| /dʒ/ vs /j/ | Yes and Jess can converge. | yellow / Jell-O, year / jeer |
| /z/ | Most Spanish varieties have no /z/. | zoo → soo, is → iss |
| /θ/ and /ð/ (th) | Latin American Spanish has no /θ/; it becomes /t/ or /s/. | think → tink or sink |
| final /-ed/, /-s/ | Spanish rarely stacks consonants at the end. | worked → work, asks → ask |
The last row costs you twice: English carries grammar at the ends of words, so a dropped -ed or -s is heard as a grammar mistake, not only a pronunciation one.
Stress and rhythm
Spanish gives syllables fairly even length. English compresses the unstressed ones hard and leans on one syllable per word. If every syllable gets equal weight, the listener has to work to find the word.
- COM-fort-a-ble is three beats in real speech, not four.
- Content words carry the stress. A, the, of, to, is are said fast and quietly, with a reduced vowel.
How to practise
- Record yourself. As you speak, you hear what you meant to say, not what came out.
- Start with the vowel pairs. They are where real words get confused. Use minimal pairs — sheep / ship, bad / bed, fool / full — until someone else can tell them apart from your voice alone.
- Then drop the /e/ before s-clusters. Quick to fix, very audible.
- 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, so you work on the few that matter.
For the test, and for real life
For the exam: separate the vowel pairs, finish your word endings, and start s-words on the s. That is most of it.
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 Spanish 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 collapsing English vowel pairs into one sound, and dropping word endings.
What should I fix first?
The vowels. Spanish has five and English has around twelve, so pairs like sheep/ship, bad/bed and fool/full collapse into a single sound and the listener genuinely hears the wrong word. That costs more than any consonant.
Why do I say 'eschool' instead of 'school'?
Spanish has no word beginning with s plus a consonant, so a vowel is added in front — escuela, español. The habit carries into English. It rarely blocks understanding, but it is very audible and easy to fix: start the word on the s itself.
Does dropping the -ed ending matter?
Yes, and it costs you twice. English carries grammar at the ends of words, so 'I worked' pronounced as 'I work' is heard as a past-tense error. The same habit lowers your pronunciation score and your grammar score.