I really identify with the struggle ESL executives face when putting together a speech. It’s difficult to give a solid presentation without struggling with the language, let alone trying to manage phrasing and articulation while presenting. That’s a lot to juggle. During my years as a speech coach in New York City and New Jersey I’ve seen a lot of ESL executives give a lot of different types of speeches. Here are three mistakes I see most often:

1. Focusing too much on the articulation of individual sounds, and not enough on the musicality of the language – It’s important to circle trouble words within your speech outline, and work on their pronunciation, but it’s equally important to make sure you circle the focus words within a phrase , and lift your intonation on them. The rhythm and intonation patterns of the language are more important to master than individual sounds.
2. Going too fast! – If you are an ESL executive, here is the best piece of advice I can give you about presenting… YOU CANNOT SPEAK TOO SLOW! I know, I know, you feel like you are boring the room. But would you rather take the risk of being a little too boring, or not being understood? Pausing is powerful. Take your time. Focus on your articulation.
3. Using complex words when simple ones will do – I recently had an executive who was giving a major speech at a conference and he was throwing out a number of four and five syllable words like “instrumentation”. Naturally, he was stumbling quite a bit. There’s no need to use complex words, in fact the worlds greatest speakers (including Winston Churchill ) generally advocated using simple words while presenting.If you want to make improvement on your articulation, join me for an upcoming online accent reduction course.