Anxious?
Anxious? Most important strategy: Preparation My personal favorite: Rehearse out loud My newly found tip: Arrive one hour early and meet and greet people at the door. Rerun from 12/30/2013 and 03/27/2017
English Speaking Training: The Fragile Nature of Intelligence
English Speaking Training: The Fragile Nature of Intelligence I’ve felt it. You have probably felt it, too. You feel especially smart and funny when talking to one person and then feel unintelligent and unable to speak fluently with another. It’s not your imagination. Experiments show that when people report feeling comfortable with a conversational partner, […]
Breath Pauses
Breath Pauses One of my favorite strategies is to mark breath pauses in your narrative for a presentation. Many people, especially nonnative speakers of English, polish their presentation by writing it out their script or narrative. Many people forget to include pauses. Listeners need the pauses to process what you are saying. Marking your copy for breath […]
English Speaking Training: Understand that Strange Spelling
English Speaking Training: Understand that Strange Spelling Did you ever wonder why some words in English have such strange spelling? For accurate pronunciation of many words, you say the consonants loud and clear using the positioning for English, not for other languages. And for most words, using the English spelling rules for vowels, you can […]
Easy Tips to a Better Voice During Presentations
Easy Tips to a Better Voice During Presentations Here are some easy to do tips to get you a better voice during presentations: Avoid the restriction of tight clothing that might keep the abdominal area from expanding. Tight clothing is especially restrictive if you have just eaten a heavy meal. Better yet, do not eat […]
Public Speaking Training: Great Exercises for Coping With Stress
Public Speaking Training: Great Exercises for Coping With Stress Here are some of my favorite “coping with stress” exercises. For some people, anxiety is a problem whenever they do presentations. Are you like many people and also feel stressed out during your daily work or academic life? These exercises are good training in your […]
How to Solve the Problem of a Very High-Pitched Voice from Anxiety
How to Solve the Problem of a Very High-Pitched Voice from Anxiety Here is another tip for a problem that is very common with improper breathing – a very high-pitched voice. When we get nervous or anxious, our pitch generally rises because of increased tension in the throat area. When you combine anxiety with having to […]
Public Speaking: How to Relax Before You Present
Public Speaking: How to Relax Before You Present The beginning of a presentation is often a difficult time to maintain your focus. Try taking a slight pause at the beginning and thinking of a word to help you focus. That word might be “focus” or for me it is “twinkle” to remind me to enjoy! It is […]
How to Fix the Common Voice Problem of Glottal Fry During a Presentation
How to Fix the Common Voice Problem of Glottal Fry During a Presentation Here are is a tip for a common voice problem called glottal fry during a presentation. The Problem: Glottal fry is a popping sound or voice with a low pitch and rough voice that can be heard toward the ends of sentences […]
Public Speaking: How to Do Practice for Being Direct and to the Point
Public Speaking: How to Do Practice for Being Direct and to the Point Ahhh, to be direct and to the point in your communication. I have heard that wish over and over. What can you do to improve that skill? You can learn to be direct and to the point by simplifying a story to […]