ClearTalkMastery

Tips for Teleconferencing

Tips for Teleconferencing Use emotion in your voice. Emphasize emotion so you don’t speak in a flat tone. Use metaphors and similes to create word pictures for others.         Rerun from 07/28/2014

Tips for Teleconferences

Tips for Teleconferences Pause so another person can speak. Save complex questions for e-mail unless you need an immediate answer.       Rerun from July 7, 2014

Practice Makes Perfect

Practice Makes Perfect Rehearse out loud. The only way you can tell how your speech will sound is to do it and listen to it. That means you have to say it out loud. Doing the speech in your head and listening to it doesn’t work – that is not the voice your audience will hear.   […]

Earn Your Audience’s Attention!

Earn Your Audience’s Attention!  Let’s turn our attention to those first words for your presentation. 1. The audience has given you their time. But their attention is something you have to earn. 2. The only way you get them thinking and participating is to seize their attention, to grab them. 3. Questions are good grabbers. So are […]

Pauses In A Presentation, Part One

Pauses In A Presentation, Part One If you are an ESLer, your audience welcomes pauses in a presentation. If it is a lengthy pause of more than two seconds, smile at them, so they won’t think you forgot what to say next.  1. Pauses give the audience time to process words when they are said in accented English. […]

Don’ts for Effective Preparation and Speaking

Don’ts for Effective Preparation and Speaking 1. Never read a speech to an audience. They deserve better and so do you. Recall your own experience. Have you ever been impressed when a speaker read a talk or sermon to you? If you answer is, “No,” then don’t inflict the same injury on others. 2. What about reading notes? […]

Where Should Your Hands Be?

Where Should Your Hands Be?   1.   Where should your hands be? When you begin, they should hang naturally by your body. Then they should describe and emphasize what you are saying. 2.   Ideally, you should gesture with one hand at a time. When you move both you waste energy without getting any […]

Careers – Getting Hired— Four Steps to a Perfect Resume

Careers – Getting Hired— Four Steps to a Perfect Resume Did you know that companies have favorite times for eliminating positions… and you.  I know from personal experience—the experience of our students in the last 15 years. Thankfully, organizations actually do try to avoid eliminating positions and letting go of employees before or after the […]

End Your Presentation With A Bang

End Your Presentation With A Bang   The end of a presentation, especially at a luncheon, needs to feel like dessert – sweet and satisfying. Show your enthusiasm through lively gestures, facial expressions, and speech volume. Restate your viewpoint.  Send them back to work with a lift.

Acknowledgements and Confirmations- The basics

Acknowledgements and Confirmations- The basics “Life is not so short but that there is always time for courtesy.”  Ralph Waldo Emerson Letters of acknowledgement and letters of confirmation are similar.  The letter of acknowledgment says, “I received your letter (email, telephone call, gift, materials).” The letter of confirmations says, “I received your letter (email, message, […]