Public Speaking: Slides: How to Make the 30 Seconds Viewing Time Work

Keep the key principle in mind—presentations are merely another form of communication.  Visual aids are an ingredient in the recipe of presentations. Visual aids make it easier to communicate complex topics.

Now for critical information for you.  The viewing time for most slides tends to be 30 seconds.  Yikes.  Not much time.  So what’s a presenter to do? Let’s get specific for that 30 second viewing time.

The Words–Tips for Optimal Power Point Type Visual Aid

• Restrict your coverage to one idea per slide page.
• Use as few words as possible to get your ideas across clearly.
• Where possible, use key phrases rather than full sentences.
• Keep text to no more than eight words per line and eight lines per aid.
• Create concise titles that tell viewers what to look for in the slide and that reinforce your message.
• Maintain design consistency across all slides. Use the same combinations of fonts, upper- and lower case lettering, styling (use of boldface, underlining, and italics), and spacing.
• Use colors consistently across all slides. If an object is red in one slide and you repeat the same object in another slide, do it in the same color.
• Apply the same style and typeface to titles throughout all slides.
• Carry through any repeating symbols, such as logos or pictograms, across all slides.

Be sure to watch our English Speech Tips videos and Accent Reduction Tip videos  for more English pronunciation and accent reduction exercise.

Check out our new advanced weekly speech tip program, our new subscription called ClearTalk Weekly, www.subscription.cleartalkmastery.com

Responding to Their Need- Part I

Here are some phrases you can use to respond to the needs of others:

“Based on what you just said about needing … I know someone who would be a good person for you to talk to.”

“If I could schedule a lunch meeting with you and …  would that be helpful?”

“I heard you were looking for  …  ABC Company is hiring.  The person to call is …”

Public Speaking:  The Top 6 Tips for Using Visual Aids in Your Presentation

People remember 30% of what they hear. 40% of what they see and 50% of what they see and hear.

Thus, using visual aids when doing a presentation is a fantastic way to boost what people remember of what you say.

The key is to remember that presentations are communication.  The danger is to let the visual aid take over your presentation and communication.  Remember, the most powerful visual aid is you.  No set of power point slides or other graphics can be as engaging as the speaker.

Thus, here are some tips to keep the balance just right between you, the speaker as center of focus, and the wonderful tool of using visual aids.

Tips for Successfully Incorporating Presentation Aids into Your Speech

1. Talk to your audience rather than to the screen. Don’t turn your back to the audience.
2. Concentrate on maintaining eye contact with the audience.
3. Avoid putting the aid directly behind you. Place it to one side so that the entire audience can see it and you can move away from it and still face the audience.
4. Display the aid only when you are ready to discuss it.
5. Incorporate any aid you plan to use into your practice session. Continue to practice with the aids until you are confident that you can handle them without causing undue distractions.
6. Best way to use a pointer is that once you’ve indicated the point you wish to make with the pointer, then put it down.

Guidelines for Powerful Listening 4-7

1. Be eager to learn something from the conversation. That will also prompt you to ask follow-up questions.
2. Listen with the intention of gathering information, connecting, and developing rapport.
3. Listen for what you have in common.
4. Listen for information that can open the door to other relationships.

Accent reduction: Grab the Power of Vowels

There’s incredible power in vowels.

Have you noticed that it is the multiple syllable words that people are most likely to say to you “What?”  “What did you say?”

Today, I’ll give you a tip that will make a huge difference  in people understanding your multiple syllable words.

The tip? Say each vowel in a multiple syllable word clearly.

When people speak multiple syllable words in English, they often shorten or reduce unstressed syllables to a very short vowel sound. They do this because it is just easier not to move the tongue very much.  In fact, sometimes the speaker moves his tongue so little that  the vowel is so short in time that the listener is actually unable to determine which vowel letter it represents in the word. The academic term for that is “schwa vowel.”

However, many studies show that when speakers are aiming to talk more clearly, they will say the vowels more clearly. When they say the vowels more clearly, listeners say, “It is so easy to understand you.”  This is true for clear speech in English and in other languages.

For our training for clear American English, we train speakers to make all vowels in a word more accurately to match the written vowel.  For example,   the “ment” in “appointment” would be pronounced as “ment” with a short vowel “e” and not “mint” with a short “I”  or a schwa, which is an indistinguishable vowel.  By aiming for accurate pronunciation to match the written vowel letter, the speaker makes it easier for the listener to process accurately “ment.” This is a suffix which often changes verbs into nouns.

Also, by paying attention to the vowels and saying them more accurately, the speakers are anchoring better in their brain the accurate spelling. One most important reason to master accurate spelling is that meaning is in the spelling.  For example, “ment” is a suffix which takes a verb and makes it a noun.  “Mint” is a flavor  such as in “peppermint” or “spearmint.”

The prefix syllable “ex” is another example.   Saying the short American vowel “e” in “ex” clearly makes it easy for listeners to process the prefix “ex” and understand the meaning of the prefix with the rest of the word.  For instance, “exit,”  “extreme,” “extend.”   If the speaker made the vowel sound like a short “i” as in “ix”  or an indistinguishable vowel  as in a schwa  and closer to “uh,” then the listener would not know he was hearing the very common prefix, “ex.”  Being able to easily and quickly process the “ex,” means that the listener can identify the word right away and combine it with the other words in the sentence to easily understand the information of the entire sentence.

Here is a second  additional important practical reason to master spelling. In the last five years, more and more employers are asking us if we can help our students (and their employees)  get spelling more accurate because it is embarrassing to them when emails go out with inaccurate spelling.

Yay, yay.  The extra effort to speak the vowels very clearly has big time benefit  — to the speaker, the listener, and also to the employer and the individual’s career advancement.

Be sure to watch our English Speech Tips videos and Accent Reduction Tip videos  for more English pronunciation and accent reduction exercise.

Check out our new advanced weekly speech tip program, our new subscription called ClearTalk Weekly, www.subscription.cleartalkmastery.com