Common with today’s forms of communication the communications that we send and receive are often in short bursts: 140 characters for Twitter, 128 characters for Windows Live Messenger and 100 characters for LinkedIn updates and the newly implemented 420 characters on Facebook (from 160). Characters, not words!

Our listeners and readers are overloaded with information. They expect to be given short, pointed and strategic information.  This means we must strategically prepare what we are planning to say.

Linguists indicate that the average English sentence is between 2.3 words (“Valley Girl” study) and 14.3 words (average adult). Doing the math, that’s an average of 8 words per sentence.

On Twitter, at about 4.5 characters per word (+ 1 space per word), you’d be allowed about 3 sentences. On LinkedIn, it would be two. Not easy. Try it!

 

Spoken Messages

An Elevator Speech – A strategic message – is usually one minute.

Most listeners readily understand us when we speak at an average of 125 words per minute. When we go faster or have an accent, our listeners must either screen out parts of the message or struggle to understand. That means that we have few than 10 short sentences, including pauses, to get our message across.

The basic format follows the Toastmasters International tenet of:

• “Tell them what you are going to tell them”: two sentences.
• “Tell them”: four to five sentences
• “Tell them what you told them”: two to three sentences
• “Tell them what action you want: the ‘call to action’: two sentences.

If we craft what we say before we say it and keep it within a select number of words and minutes, we will be better received and understood by our listeners.

We’ll be much more likely to get what we want when we use the K.I.S.S. method.

Example:   This is the Winning Pitch at the MIT Global Start-Up Workshop:

For more help with developing your elevator speech skills, contact your local Toastmasters, International club. www.toastmasters.org.  For those who want help with speaking better Business English and presentation skills, contact me at www.AccentManagementGroup.com

 

Speaking in American Standard English is a fluid process.  Sounds from one word merge into the next word until we have, at times, what sounds like one long word.  This is called “linking”.

You have heard this on TV and in daily interactions.

“How are you” becomes “Hau-war-yu” and has a singing quality.

 

Another type of linking is in association with “word reductions”.

“Where Did you…” becomes …/Di-ju../  and “What’s your leadership…” becomes /..wha-chur/.

 

In a TED Talk by Simon Sinek on “How Great Leaders Inspire Action” the first sentence is linked to sound like: “How’deh’you-weksplain whenthingz-don/go-azwee-a’sume…or\bedder….”

 

Mr. Sinek merges “How do you” as /How’deh’you/.  He does maintain a professional speaking style keeping clarity of appropriate vowel production with a clear /u/ in “you” instead of saying /How’deh’yah/ .

 

A common practice that can be heard in an example TED Talk is changing the pronunciation of a two-syllable word with a medial voiceless consonant so that the final syllable is distressed as in ‘or better’ being pronounced as “..or\bedder”.  In other words, the motor speech system often hunts for “efficiency” of movement.

 

This is true in all sound systems, even when one “speaks the Kings English”. Listen to Sir Ken Robinson, who speaks a very crisp King’s English, as he says “Why wu’ju lower them….” When giving his RSA Animate speech.

 

To learn about having more success speaking and presenting in Business English, contact Phyllis at p.thesier@AccentMgtGroup.com

Dropping syllables and changing stress patterns reduces the credibility of the speaker. This is particularly difficult issue for some Asian and East Asian speakers of American English when trying to pronounce American English words which contain three or more syllables.

Many Asian/ East Asian speakers find themselves omitting unstressed middle syllables. Omitting them makes the listener have to work harder, sometimes missing other words as they process what was said.

A few distorted words and your listeners stop listening for an extended period or completely.  Ouch….

 

An example from a recent Mim’s Bits article in Technology Review, http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/mimssbits/26403/, uses multi-syllables words with low stress patterns:

“Information was just a click away, disconnected and segregated processes were consolidated and made whole...”.

When spoken, issues that may arise with the sentence include omitting de-stressed syllables. For example:

o        /Dis-connected / erroneously becomes “Dis-nek ted”;

o        /Se-greh-gated/ shortened to “se-gra-ted”;

o        /Pro-ces-sehs/ said as “Process – ” with the last de-stressed syllable omitted;

o        /Con-SO-lih-DA-ted/ said incorrectly as “con-SO — DA-ted”.

In addition to omitting the unstressed /eh/ sound, speakers may omit another consonant in the middle of  the word. Example: /Dis-con-nec-ted /  to  /Dis –  neh ted /

The listener is doubly confused.

In order to help correctly pronounce these types of words, have your mentor help you draw up a list of five words that have four to five syllables, then:

1)  Focus on slowly pronouncing all of the syllables of one word at a time with the correct consonant cluster sounds, rhythm and stress. Repeat 5 times.

2)  Record your efforts, listening and refining until you can say the word correctly 5 times in a row.

3) Build phrases to sentences with one multi-syllable word, record and practice until correct.

4) EXAMPLE: Special significance: It has special significance. The book has special significance to me. “Special siG-NI–feh-cance”.: “It has special siG-NI–feh-cance”. “The book has special siG-NI–feh-cance to me”.

Accent Management Group offers, at no cost, initial telephone consults. Call today at (920) 458-2767 to set up an appointment.