Is Your Regional dialect Diminishing the Effectiveness of Your Talk?

In order for a speaking engagement to be successful it is crucial for the audience to understand the presenter. Different factors can impact the audience's comprehension including the speaker's choices of words and ideas along with physical characteristics such as ambient room noise. One other characteristic that can be a factor is that of accents.

A presenter needs to make sure that the impact of an accent will be minimized so that the listeners get as much out of the talk as possible.

But how do we do this?

Here are a few tips that may help:

Slow down your speech. Often we permit our fear to control the speed of our seminar. As we speed up, our natural speech tendencies take over and our accents become more pronounced.

Make a habit of reading aloud. Ten to twenty minutes of practice each day will make a significant difference.

Construct a list of words that you know you have difficulty pronouncing. Ask others who do not have a regional dialect if they can point out some for you. Focus on pronouncing the words in this list first

Making sure that your audience understands your information is critical to a successful lecture. One area that can impact your listeners' comprehension is that of accents. Honestly evaluate your own accent and start implementing these strategies if a regional dialect is impeding your communication abilities.

If you need to make presentations or speeches then please consider visiting EffectivelySpeaking.Com. The section titled Does Your Audience Understand has additional information about dealing with accents while speaking in public. In addition, there is other valuable information throughout the site including a free set of white papers on how to overcome your fear.

David Mudie is an accomplished speaker who has presented for the JD Edwards Focus Users Conference, The Oracle Collaborate Users Conference, The University of Windsor Law School, The City of Cambridge and many other organizations. In addition, he has won numerous public speaking competitions. David currently helps individuals overcome their fear of public speaking - primarily through his website EffectivelySpeaking.Com.