If you’d like to learn more about how you can immediately adapt your spoken English to communicate more effectively with other global professionals of different language backgrounds, then I’m going to share something with you.
I’ve worked with busy professionals, industry experts, leadership program participants, etc. That is, pretty smart and driven people who need to communicate via some medium that is not face-to-face. Telephone, videoconference, and teleseminar to name a few.
I’m going to share with you how I always start my global English speech training programs. I believe this is useful for native and non-native speakers of English alike. The common denominator here (and there are more I’m sure) is that you need to communicate effectively with multilingual speakers via a virtual medium.
Grab a mirror! Grab a recording device!
Vowel Enunciation
In my communication training programs for international speakers of English (ESL and EFL), I go into more depth about how vowel enunciation is critical for working with English rhythm. We work with a few speech features, such as the differences in vowel length and the voicing of vowel sounds. We zero in on the physical production of sound.
One good starting point that I can share with you here has to do with mouth movement. More mouth movement creates clearer enunciation. Clearer enunciation generally improves communication during telephone calls, videoconference meetings, and teleseminar sessions.
Below are a few words that I use at the beginning of my programs. Practice saying them out loud and concentrate very carefully on how you are producing the capitalized vowel sounds. Stretch your mouth to exaggerate these vowel sounds. When you look in your mirror, pay attention to this stretching.
- fOOd
-
kEY
-
glObal
-
skYlIne
-
ChicAgO
-
strAtegy
-
repORt
-
mEOW
Now, talk about a topic for 30 seconds and record yourself. Speak very slowly and concentrate on exaggerating the clear vowel sounds of the important words in your message—the words that are critical for the listener to catch. Listen to your recording. How is your vowel enunciation?
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