Written by: Ekaterina Matveeva, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
As you can guess from my full name, I’m forming a part of an international community, however, I’ve been for a long time in UK, especially in Scotland, which made English my first language. However, it was not always like this.
In my student years, I was terrified to express my opinion in foreign languages, I would get stumbled on my own thoughts and struggle all the way to finish a sentence. Now, this may happen only when I’m in distress, something really big must happen to shutter me in any language. But how to go from a shy foreign speaker to a bright shining keynote in a foreign language? And I’m referring not only exclusively to English.
Occasionally, you may read various tips on this matter, especially, provided by TED speakers. And I agree with them, having myself gone through the preparation for my TEDx. However, all these tips and strategies are missing something. And that is the focus on your struggles as a non-native.
Here are my two cents:
Work on your phonetics. Some may disagree and say that they would prefer to keep their native accent. And I am fine with that. However, if you’d like more people to get you, given that you’re planning to spread your ideas across the globe, then you need to get an accent as neutral as possible. Consequently, your listeners will be grateful for the ease they can listen to your thoughts with. Hence, it’s not only about the sounds, it’s as well connected to the pitch, tempo, intonation, pauses, accents, and various details that can form a strong accent.
I personally struggled with my phonetics for years as my professor of phonetics was very intimidating in her pursuit of perfection, and I ended up getting my “right” accents in languages only when I got out of that class. Eventually, it went down to certain muscle exercises, articulation exercises, observation, mimicry, and imitation.
Speak as plainly as possible. Perhaps you are one of those, who would like to put as many sophisticated definitions in your speech as you have in your pocket dictionary. However, I would strongly advise against it. Imagine, if you get too nervous during your presentation and get blank, what and who will help you to rephrase the complexity of your thoughts on the spot?
It’s good though at times drop one or two complex concepts with advanced vocabulary. While preparing your speech, you need to focus on your audience, their level, their background, and try to find a way to convey your thoughts in as plain a manner as possible.
You may feel sheepish about that if you’re in academia. But I can assure you, nobody likes extremely intricate speeches, they are simply hard to follow. Just recently I’ve been working with graduate and PhD students in Scotland preparing for their research showcase, and one of the takeaways was on the difficulty to describe their work in a few simple sentences. Therefore, speaking in an uncomplicated way doesn’t mean that it’s easy, but you can make it sound like this. And remember, if you can explain complex ideas in simple words, it’s a sign that you’ve grasped the concept itself.
Write detailed scripts. I used to hate writing scripts for speeches and videos. I thought that if I knew my subject well, I could simply go and deliver. Oh boy, how wrong was I! Back in 2013 in Portugal, I had the experience of pitching for the first time and being filmed on camera for a short documentary about the EU initiative for our student projects. I applied my approach of not writing down my words and ended up torturing our cameramen for over an hour standing on his knees to get the right shot of me. As you can assume, my shot eventually wasn’t included in the work at all. Since then I’ve been always working with a script. You need a script. It helps you to organise your thoughts, keeps your grammar in check, clears up your filler words given that you know the order of your points well enough.
Even though it sets certain limitations while you’re trying to follow the script for your speech, it also gives you the freedom to improvise. You don’t have to memorise the whole text by heart, but you need to know it well enough to be able to add changes to it on the fly. My biggest experience to date was on the TEDx stage when part of my brain just took the liberty to add one more example to a well-rehearsed speech. While that part of my brain was carrying me forward, somewhere at the back of my brain I heard my voice frantically screaming to stop and get back on track as we were short of time. As you may see in the official video, everything went well, and you may even never notice where exactly I improvised and where I was reciting my script word for word.
Take into account culture. This is a big one. And not many trainers talk about it. If you are multilingual and multicultural, you may have found yourself in awkward situations while sharing stories at least a few times. This happens mainly due to differences in perception of humour, authority, relationships, happiness, and main human values that seem similar but actually differ. Before giving a talk you need to find out where your audience is coming from, what is the main cultural setting. Even if a conference is global, still there will be certain patterns, cultural clusters. You can even ask at the start of your talk, where people are from, this is easy to do if you’re giving an online talk.
And if it’s an in-person event, you can ask the organisers for statistics. Once you know about the presence of certain cultural groups in your audience, you can make socio-cultural references that would be understood by these people. The range is wide starting with music finishing with hashtags. This may also work when you go to a specific country to give a talk, you can simply check on the current events, trends, Twitter hashtags, big stories in the past years, and see whether any of them can get connected to your talk. This effort of yours may pay off later in the way of a strong link between you and your audience. Even if you are a foreigner, speaking for them, these little things may make them accept you as a local just because you made an effort to understand them and get integrated into their society.
Relax and embrace your imperfections. If you are just starting preparing for your first speeches in a foreign language, embrace your imperfections. Imperfections are beautiful and they can help you learn so much more. I know from my experience that sometimes people from the same culture meeting you in a foreign language may tell you something negative about your speech as if they were running competition against you. Turn a deaf ear to such comments. You’re constantly growing, learning, and making your presentations better and better. You have had to prove more than native speakers that you deserve to be on stage and make your voice heard. Be proud of yourself! And if you feel that you’re struggling with your future speaking gigs, there are plenty of resources and people to help you get through to the next level. Keep it up!
Ekaterina Matveeva, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Ekaterina Matveeva is a linguist working in 9 languages, award-winning entrepreneur, learning designer, founder of Amolingua, and leader of the ErasmusPlus funded project Lingo+. She is a TEDx speaker, best-selling author, and researcher developing her theory “Language Alter Ego.”
She has been training people worldwide for over 14 years and is now set to develop bespoke training for educators to teach in a multilingual, multicultural environment. This year she is running the MM Universe conference. Ekaterina is on a mission to create a better connected multicultural, multilingual world.
She believes in communication across cultures. She has been working with world thought leaders from TED to Singularity University, serving as a public speaking coach at Talkboutique, and an invited professor for executive programs at the Universidad de Palermo.
Education and entrepreneurship form a huge part of her life. She is an advisory board member of 3 Day Startup, helping university students acquire entrepreneurial skills. Her motto is: Dream, Decide, Do.
