The last weeks have been busy. A wave of public speaking opportunities have come by.
There is TEDxDelft, followed by TEDxAmsterdam and TEDxAmsterdamWomen and a national Toastmasters Humorous Speech competition thrown in for good measure.
Toastmasters International is a worldwide community of people who come together every two weeks to practice their public speaking skills in a very structured way.
They work their way through the Competent Communication Manual at their own pace.
They prepare short speeches which they present to their club. Each speaker receives an evaluation in which the positives are highlighted and suggestions for improvement are given.
Speakers are free to chose the topic of their speeches.
There are also opportunities for improvisation where speakers are asked to speak 2 -3 minutes off the cuff.
After the CC manual has been completed speakers move on to advance manuals.
Twice a year there are competitions on a local, regional, national and international level.
My local toastmasters club, Toastmasters of The Hague is a vibrant international group with very diverse backgrounds.
Performing on an international podium
On the whole we see a trend of non-native English speakers who want to shine and share their story on an international stage. The world is getting smaller and people want to connect with each other across borders, oceans, cultures and languages. English is the lingua franca, like it or not and this will not change anytime soon. On the contrary, Chinese kids are learning English at increasingly yougn age. Non-native English speakers must rise to the challenge. Heavy regional or national accents are no longer cool. Why? Because in many instances they obscure the message. Misunderstandings arise and the story is quickly forgotten. Not a good thing if your idea is an idea worth spreading. Your message has to stick. So it has to be dynamic, to the point and gripping. What challenge?This it the challenge: To deliver a stellar speech or tell a gripping story in a language you learned later in life. Non-native English speakers must rise to the challenge.
Heavy regional or national accents are no longer cool.
Why?
Because in many instances they obscure the message. Misunderstandings arise and the story is quickly forgotten. Not a good thing if your idea is an idea worth spreading.
Your message has to stick. So it has to be dynamic, to the point and gripping.
Asking for coachingA few of the TEDxDelft speakers have come to me for help. Why did they come?They came because they want to speak in clearly articulated English or because someone suggested they get in touch with me.
They came because they realize that the better they articulate the sounds of spoken English the better their message will be heard, rememberd and shared.
The Spoken word is as good as the Written Text
The text is the basic architecture on which your story hangs.
If yo have a rickety architecture your story will not stick.
Foprget all that nonsens of erroneously cited Mehrabian research about body language and being yourself. That is balderdash. Words form the foundation of your talk. You can gesture all you want but if the words aren't there you won't have a talk.
So, the spoken word starts with the written text.
When you write a story or a speech in your native language, say Dutch, it will not guarantee that is has the same impact it may have had in Dutch when you translate this story into English.
Often this is because the spoken language is entirely different from the language we use when writing. And this is how most Dutch speakers write their speech. When they try to tell their translated story they get lost in long sentences, often written in the passive form with lots of connecting words like more-over, however and furthermore. And that is when they lose the audience.
Long sentences
Because the sentences are too long, and they have not committed the talk to memory, they start searching for words and lots of uhm and ahs appear as by black magic. Granted, a few uhms and ahs are o.k. but when your story is full of those filler words listening quickly becomes tedious. Sometime other filler words appear, Dutch filler words such as JA or Hè, making you sound insecure and asking for validation. Your cadence, your pace go out the window and the interest of you audience goes with it. Structure, style & retorical devicesA vital ingredient of my work is to work with the speaker on the structure and style of their talk. Usually that means re-crafting the entire speech from beginning to end.
It's like a sculpture that gets more and more definition as time goes on.
The best way to do this is in a co-creational process with the speaker. This is not always possible. Sometimes I reconstruct the message of the speaker using short sentences, retorical devices such as asking a question, the rule of three and the rule of repetition and in a relatively short time you have a talk with drama, a talk with speed, a talk with impact.
We make sure it has equal doses of Logos, Ethos and Pathos.
Once the speaker agrees that the new speech is indeed articulating the essence of their message the practising can begin. Practising the Talk; first reading aloudThe speaker practices reading the story aloud. During this process the text is adapted, tweaked and massaged so every word counts and is in exactly the right spot so the sentence can be spoken without running out of breath or tripping over words.
I listen for pronunciation -For many Dutch speakers the pronunciation of the -th- is tricky. Is often becomes an -s- as in sink, meaning think, or a -d- as in modder, meaning mother or a -t- as in smootie meaning smoothie. The other pronunciation challenge for many Dutch speakers is the pronunciation of the short vowel sounds; the -a- as in hat, the -u- as in but, the -o- as in pot. Most Dutch speakers speak these vowel sounds in the front of their mouth creating these typical Dutch polder sounds. With some awareness and practice they learn to pull the corners of their mouth backward thus achieving the perfect pronunciation. Another challenge are the final sounds -d- and -t-. bat - bed hat - hadrat - fadThe first ones having hard sounding -t's- at the end. The second ones sounding soft. dddddAnd finally the so-called tongue twisters; words of three syllables or more like prepostrous, obnoxious. individual, identity, improvisation etc. To pronounce these words properly you need to know where the emphasis is. So we practise them in kindergarten fashion; by pronouncing each syllable separately and clapping them with the pronounced emphasis where it belongs. We exagerate the sounds at first until the articulatory settings are reset. I make a sound file of the challenging words in the talk so the speaker can rehearse in the car and on the go using their smart phone or their iPad.
I also type the words in a big font size with the parts that are emphasized typed in bold like:
Emphasis, preposterous, obnoxious, individual, identity, improvisation etc.
Plus I bold the words in the sentence where the sentence stress should be. Usually the words with the most meaning. Like so.After the first reading I jot down the words that need extra pronunciation practice. Line-by-line reading; listen and repeat after meWe conclude the session with a line by line reading in the age old listen and repeat fashion. I read each sentence with the proper word and sentence stress and pauses and the speaker repeats after me. This concludes the first session typically lasting froam 90 minutes to 180 minutes.The speaker practices the speech at home and ideally commits it to memory. Yes people, knows it by heart, inside and out. How to do this read the book The Memory Palace by Joshua Foer. It just came out in translation. There's nothing wrong with committing a speech or a talk to memory. Which is not to say you have to tell it verbatim when you present it. No, you don’t want to memorize the speech, you want to embody the message. That is an entirely different thing. 2nd sessionIdeally we have another session to fine tune the presentation in terms of: - Vocal Variety- Body Language- Facial Expression- Volume- Cadence - Pacing- Power
Generally speaking the speaker can turn up the volume, vocal variety, gestures and expression depending on the size of the venue. Big venue, big gestures, expression and volume.
Make sure to practice with a good mike and someone who can finetune the mike to suit the voice.
Dutch speakers are often afraid to overdo it, but truly on a big stage you may have to exaggerate. You want the people in the back of the space to be equally enthralled. Project your voice to the last speakers in the audience and do the same with your eye contact even if you can't see them.
I also teach the speakers a way of channeling their energy, to release nervous energy and collect
energy needed to get the message accross.
Skype coaching sessions
If time permits and distance is an issue we have a final skype session, with the images of the presentation in place. We discuss the images and the fonts uses on the slides.
Images should be clear and in high resolution with maximal impact. They should also be free of rights.
Fonts should be big so few words are used on the slides. The fewer the better.
European champion Humorous Speech ContestMy Toastmaster coachee, with whom I have been working of and on for a few years won the Dutch national championship Humorous Speech with her perfectly calibrated speech Shopping at 30.000 feet'. She will now present the European championships in Basel in a few weeks. My TEDxDelft clients will have their Dress Rehearsal tomorrow in the cavernous Aula at the University's conference center. TEDxDelft is taking place on Monday, November 7th. Theirs is also a competition of sorts. It has no medals or certificates but the possibility of their TEDTalk being published on the TED.com channel were it will be seen by millions of ted fans all over the world is in itself a big prize.
For me it will be interesting to see how my work with them translates on to that big stage and onto the video.
For TEDxDelft I worked with three different people; different in age, background and personality.
How will their presentation stack up against the speakers who received no coaching, or were coached by a different coach.
Will I see a positive difference? I can't wait to see.
I hope my speakers have now committed their talk to memory and get a good nights sleep
Monday I want them to feel fit and rested and ready to shine having the Talk of their Life!
