Chances are, the way you’ve been trying to improve your speech has been doing more harm than good. For 20 years, people have been coming to me to improve their communication skills.
Their goals are to be crystal clear, highly influential, and very confident during speaking situations. They want to speak better. Almost always, people think the solution is to improve their articulation and the pronunciation of sounds.
Wrong!
Pronunciation is Over-Rated
Working on your pronunciation of sounds makes you sound less intelligible, significantly less interesting, and just plain old hard to follow. And maybe even a bit pompous. Why? Because your speech becomes staccato and even-steven.
Our brains have evolved to process information based on intonation, not specific sounds.
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There are many moving parts when you’re learning to speak better, but your focus should be on intonation.
What is intonation?
Good question, thanks for asking. Intonation is the placement of emphasis in the form of volume and duration of a vowel within a syllable.
Let me explain. The use of intonation in Standard American English (SAE) is a mystery to most. Romance languages have strict rules for emphasizing words and sentences. And when there’s a change in emphasis, they use an accent mark.
Asian languages also follow rigid intonation patterns. Usually, those consonant and vowel patterns have an even emphasis on each syllable.
In SAE, there seems to be no rhyme or reason to where we place emphasis, but there is a reason — and it’s a real reason as to why we place emphasis where we do. We use intonation to convey information that goes beyond the words we speak.
We disperse a lot of information using emphasis alone.
Intonation is information.
Have you ever had a television program where the volume was too low to hear what the actors said but could still make out their speaking cadence and sound? You still got the gist of what was going on, right? That’s because our American brains are programmed to process intonation as information.
5 Steps to Eliminating Filler Words Forever
Have you ever gone to a conference with great interest in the subject matter only to start dreaming about what you’re going to have for lunch five minutes after the speaker starts? Well, most likely, it’s not your fault. In an honest attempt to speak with great emphasis, it’s the speaker’s fault, using staccato speech with no intonation.
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Why Poor Intonation = Poor Speech
I want to show you what even emphasis on each syllable looks like. If you could hear me speaking right now, that would be great. But let’s settle for font formatting.
“Thank you all for coming. Today I’d like to discuss the business practices of the green monkey.”
Say the above sentence out loud. I bolded the vowels. When you come across a vowel, make it louder and longer. Do you hear how it sounds staccato and even? It’s how most people try to improve their speech.
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Want to be more influential? We all want to communicate our most important messages in a way that encourages others to take action. Whether that action is voting for our candidate or picking up milk from the store, the words we use and how we speak play a huge role in getting the job done.
Listening to someone speak in a staccato tone makes me think about lunch. “Should I get chicken cutlet on a roll with mayo? Or should I be really good and get a salad?”
I will do anything other than listening to what the speaker says if she’s using an even-steven tone. The more I hear this drone, the more I think I have to treat myself and get the sandwich.
I’m here to help.
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Using Intonation to Improve Your Speech
Let’s try that sentence again the right way. Here’s what you do:
First, determine which words provide the most information and emphasize them and only them. Ok? Good start. It gets a little trickier.
Now determine which syllable in those words gets the main stress and only emphasize that vowel. There should be no more than 15% of your vowels considered important.
Reduce the other 85%. I mean crazy-reduced to the point that they may not exist. Let’s try it together.
“Thank you all fr coming. T’day I’d like t’ discuss th’ bizness practices f’th’green monkey.”
How exciting is that?! Hello! That is so much more interesting. You can make what you consider to be the most boring topic in the world interesting. Resulting in people loving your presentations & following your call to action.
Speak Better
Following my direction gives you control over your speech, yourself, and others. Contact our team right now for a free, no-obligation speech assessment. We’ll make you sound crystal clear and smooth. Learn a bit about me.
5 Steps to Eliminating Filler Words Forever
“Just be yourself!” Possibly the most well-meaning but awful advice. It’s tough to be ourselves when we’re nervous. You’ve got a speaking event or a first date or a toast at a wedding, and your friends & your mom suggest you just be yourself. Thanks! It’s so complimentary because they obviously think “yourself” is something special. But the advice is ineffective.
When we’re feeling nervous, we have a tough time being ourselves. Someone else comes out. Someone stiff, maybe awkward. Someone who’s not as funny and smart as we are.
An Introduction to Accent Reduction
This brief introduction will get you started on the road to speaking Standard American English.
Speak Better During Presentations
Here are a few solutions to being yourself & speaking better during challenging situations:
- Relax. I don’t mean that obnoxiously. I mean literally. Learn to eliminate the tension from your musculature. That tension is closing up your throat & cutting off your access to your brain. That’s where the stuff is that you’re trying to get across to your audience. Once you’re relaxed, you can speak better.
- Love your audience. Don’t focus on yourself. Don’t think about what they’re possibly thinking about you. (You don’t know because you’re probably not a mind reader.) Think about what they know, what they need to know & how much you love them.
- Open your throat. This is part of relaxing. But if you learn the trick to keeping your throat open, it will also keep your mind open & allow you to be yourself. Do you know the expression “choked up”? It means that you feel so much emotion you can’t speak. Of course, there are varying degrees. In charged situations (like giving presentations, going on a job interview or a first date, during an argument with a colleague or family member), our throats literally close up & we lose our ability to get our genius out! That’s how you speak better during presentations 🙂
How to Be Yourself
When are you totally yourself? It’s when you’re in comfortable situations with the people you’re most comfortable with. When do you need to be yourself? When do you need to be an effective & persuasive speaker?
It’s when you’re in situations that don’t lend themselves to relaxation. Ha! You need to be amazing in the times & places that are the most anxiety-ridden. That’s where the money is.
So yes, you can forgive yourself for not being the best communicator in the world during high-pressure situations. But you don’t have to live with it. Set up a meeting to consult with me & we’ll get you started on your journey to speaking better & sounding amazing!
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Three well-summed points here.
It’s initially difficult to relax before a talk, but with time that becomes easier. What has helped me is sharing something, rather than memorizing a speech. I think about my audience’s biggest challenge and share thoughts on how they can overcome those. It makes me comfortable while speaking, which rubs off on the audience.
Keep these insights coming 🙂
So true, Vishal! Good for you! Thanks so much for the positive feedback 🙂
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Cheers for the content and for writing!
It’s so true about the pronunciation being so much less important than we think. I definitely over articulate when I get a little nervous.
Love how in-depth this goes. I think we do place too much importance on this like pronunciation, and not enough on the overall presence
Wow, Ita, this article is genius. The concept that the importance of pronunciation is blown out of proportion and intonation is under-rated makes perfect sense to me now. I never realized that. I even took a diction course in college where they taught me to “over-articulate” everything. I remember thinking something was wrong but not having a grasp of what that was.
Thank you! thank you! thank you!
I really appreciate your lovely comments. They keep me going!
What an informative and inspiring article. Really helpful tips on intonation! My voice is often flat and resembles a robot. It has always been an insecurity of mine and I thought I was stuck with this voice forever. I am excited to begin practicing techniques to help improve my intonation.