#How to Become a Great Public Speaker?

Undoubtedly this element will finally show and convince others about your confidence and fluency in English.

# I meet so many young students,professionals ,teachers and managers who come up to me after my training workshop and tell me that even though they have lot of ideas and good hold on English Grammar,they are still not able to speak with confidence.

#So what is it that one needs to do to become a great speaker?

#Let us discuss few important pointers and as usual not talking about easy breezy tips, I would love to share some powerful and practical tips today ,that will surely help you to improve your speaking skills:

#1. MT = MT stands for “Mirror Talk” , sounds cliche but it really works believe me I say so because I did this a lot myself. 

     I would like to acknowledge that I was a very reserved and a shy girl at school and college even though I had great ideas, I never had the courage to stand up and share those ideas but I soon realized after I stepped into the corporate arena that if my ideas were to be heard they have to wear my voice and it was then, that I decided I will do everything possible to improve my speaking skills.

     

I    I found my best friend in mirror and I started sharing everything with my friend before I could actually speak up in front of the others and it really helped,because mirror just like a true friend never interrupted and also it gave me regular feedback in terms of  my body language my confidence while I was speaking and rehearsing ,it gave me a clear picture about how and what I was speaking and I was wise enough to note every bit of it and hence I started working on it too.

     So the first tip is to do a lot of “MT” Mirror Talk, it is a lot of fun too believe me and it helps us to feel like a celebrity and I enjoyed every bit of it and let me share openly  that  “I do MT even today”  before going for my seminars, guest talks or motivational talks, I still practice in front of Mirror and it really adds to my confidence.

Surely there is a lot of psychology that goes behind it , like it helps you to see how confident you look , it helps you to add more intonations and on top of  it, this helps you to improve your facial gestures and body posture too.

Mirror is certainly a true friend, it supports and it encourages you to look good, feel good and sound good.

  

#2. Magical moment  of movements : Well, it plays certainly the biggest and the most powerful role in communication.

Some call it as Body language, some name it as “Non-Verbal” language and now the new term is ruling that is “Bio Language” however If I have to talk about my journey of connecting and communicating with professors, Teachers, students, friends and corporate geeks I would say I have always experienced a magical connect when I communicate with the confident bio language along with the words as it supports and add more power and grace to the words.

It could be as simple as a curve on my face while I greet and meet or it could be use of my hands to express my opinion and point during a training workshop.

So, do practice the magical technique and use these small yet powerful bio language tips to make you sound and look likes a celebrity and a true star.

Believe me just few quick tips that I am about to share will help you to work on your bio language.

1. Please use your hands and facial expressions along with the powerful words by understanding the meaning of the content first.

2. Always maintain an eye contact but do not stare at people and embarrass them and point to note here is

A. Always focus on the face of the other individual but not on their lips and cheeks

B. Focus on their forehead, eyes or at the bridge of their nose. So don’t keep your eyes glued at one position.

3. Use of hands confidently.

4.Feet Talk : We never focus on our feet, because we are so much into face , upper body posture that we ignore totally the feet talk.

A. We point our feet  towards the interesting zone, it could be people or that place so make sure you are not pointing your feet away from people you are talking to.

B. Stand confidently and while giving presentation or lectures you can move around slowly and as I am not an expert in body language but out of my experience I would just say that context is more important because one body language gesture could mean something else in a different context but the main idea here is to share the importance of the feet language too.

C. For ladies it looks very elegant when they sit with legs crossed at ankles.

 #3. Intonations : Well, language is like a river that flows ,and to speak in a beautiful flow we must master the art of Intonations too.

I strongly agree that being a non native speaker we need to practice this art however if you start to understand the words and have good vocabulary it will be easy to master this art of Intonations.

Well, let us define “Intonation”.

Simply put the high pitch and the low pitch in our voice, when we speak can be defined as Intonations and if you want a simple word to relate it means “Speech Music” .This speech music will help us to understand the meaning of the words better.

Let me support with an example.

When you understand what you speak and you make sense out of it, just like your mother tongue you don’t need to practice it separately just focus on understanding few concepts.

1. When you ask a question, your pitch will go high.

For instance: Could you please get me  a book ?

So this means that the sentence ending should be in high pitch.

2. If you are saying a simple statement or declarative you should have a low pitch .

My name is Anu.(Pitch will go down)

3. If you have many things to mention in one small sentence then you go in a flow.

For instance:

I love to study,dance,swim and travel.

So words like study, dance and swim will go in the same flow and the pitch will fall down with the word travel.

4.    Connect the words: When you practice speaking , please make sure not to stress on every word too much ,(remember that language is like a river it needs to flow)try to connect the ending of the word with the beginning of another word.

For Instance : Bob is on the phone

Will sound like  “Babizon da foun” If a native speaker will speak.

 #Points to remember:

·         Try to emphasize the important words or when you have something important to share and

·         Use a low pitch when you finish the sentence or when you see a period/full stop.

For Instance : 

Tomorrow I have a meeting at 4:00 clock. (Important information is meeting, so do stress on it )

4:00 clock (Pitch would go down as it is the last word in the sentence before the period).

Stretch the words: It is also seen that native speakers sometimes stretch the words where they want to draw attention.

Example : I request all of you (“Awwwlllll “instead of all ,so this word is stretched to show the stress and importance of the word “All”)

Contract the words(Squeeze two words) : Remember while you practice your speaking skills, in order to sound natural, please do learn to contract the words like  “Shouldn’t “ instead of “Should not”, ”Wouldn’t” instead of “would not” , “They’ve” instead of “They have”.

So it means two words are made shorter for speaking purpose by adding apostrophe as explained above.

 #4.JAM Sessions : Well, just as much as this word sounds sweet, so are the results, it is indeed a great exercise for the beginners to practice speaking these are “Just A Minute” sessions ,wherein you have to think about any topic randomly and quickly start talking about it without stopping and pondering too much, see how and what you will talk, your brain will try to talk continuously and certainly the tongue will support, its magical and entertaining too, you can play this JAM with your friends or even entire family ,just pick a simple or any topic of your choice that comes to your mind, like let me give you a few now:

1.Family

2.Challenge

3.English Language

So, hope you tried all the above three  topics and enjoyed it ,make sure you do this and later when you get time to think , do get some nice ideas dressed in beautiful words and vocabulary.

 #5.Grammar: When we talk about fluency in English most of us dread about the grammar part, but to be very frank we shall not worry about it so much as it is not a big deal to master all the tricky parts of grammar, all we need to speak fluent English is understanding of  few concepts like tenses, subject and verb agreement and I don’t think we need a separate grammar book to learn this because when we are reading, listening and speaking we are acquainting ourselves to these grammar concepts which will come naturally and the grammar that we are taught at school.

Having said that it doesn’t mean that you stop focusing on the grammar rules, as we are living in the era where technology is helping us learn so we shall make best use of it ; even today when I have few questions , I immediately check it on you tube and prepare my own notes (I maintain a separate notebook for Grammar ) as we have many videos which are presented by great English teachers in India and from teacher all over the world, so never stop learning.

Few days back in my English Grammar book I prepared the tenses chart , so you can also do the same to just keep going back to the nuts and bolts to stay correct and flawless .

And to add this tinge of confidence,please do register for my upcoming book titled "English & Business Etiquette" and just drop a line @ vinumanhotra@gmail.com