Do you want to sound confident?
Do you want people to have confidence in you when you speak?
Sounding confident can make the world of difference in every aspect of your life,
and I'm going to give you five very quick tips that you can put into place right now
to start sounding confident today.
I'm also going to let you into a very special little secret that will change everything.
But before we start, real quick:
my name is Anna English, this is English Like a Native and if you are an English language learner,
then you're in the right place.
Just be sure to hit that subscribe button and the bell notification button so you don't miss any future lessons.
Right, let's get started.
Number one: Choose the right voice type
Now, people will typically speak in one of three ways:
with falsetto, in modal or with fry.
Falsetto is higher in the range.
It's very weak and wispy and doesn't sound very confident.
Someone who speaks with falsetto sounds a little bit like this.
Many people say it's irritating to listen to.
It certainly doesn't instill a feeling of confidence in your listener,
so avoid falsetto.
At the bottom end of the range we have fry.
It's lowing your voice while bringing together the vocal folds very slowly, and it makes a creaking sound.
A bit like this.
Hello, my name is Anna and I am teaching a lesson right now on voice confidence.
Culturally, this has become quite popular recently.
However, vocal fry is not a natural sound within the English language.
It's also being debated as to whether it's healthy for the voice or not.
So, my advice is to avoid both fry and falsetto.
Let's go for the healthy modal voice.
This will certainly make you sound more confident.
If you're unsure whether you are using the right voice type or not, then try this little exercise:
in the middle of your range, so not pushing the voice up or down, standing up straight, say for me
It's got what we call a glottal onset.
It's a very strong onset.
Now take that feeling and make the sentence "Everybody eats apples",
and feel that same glottal onset: everyone - eats - apples.
Everyone eats apples.
And there, hopefully, you'll've found a nice strong modal voice.
Number two: Speak at the right speed
A lot of people will speak too fast, and some people speak too slow.
But very few people speak at the right pace.
Those people who speak too slow tend to add lots of pauses and drag the words out
and they sound like they're not quite sure what they're going to say next.
That doesn't make me feel very confident as a listener.
It also can bore the listener, so get to the point!
However, if you speed through what you're saying, then it sounds like you just really, really want to get it out
because you're not very confident and you just want to leave and you don't really want to speaking right now
so you just talk talk talk talk talk talk talk.
And if you speak too fast, people just shut down.
They stop listening, they just look at you and smile and nod and go "okay".
The best thing to do is to take a deep breath, to have a generally steady pace, adding in a few pauses
at important points in the speech.
What I tend to do is watch videos of incredible public speakers.
You'll notice that they have a nice steady pace and they allow big pauses
at points where they want to really give emphasis to a point, to allow the audience to think, and absorb.
Number three: Clarity
There are many natives who are quite lazy with their diction.
They miss off sounds, the ends of words, or in the middle of words.
They sometimes miss out complete syllables.
Don't follow their example.
Be in love with the language.
Enjoy making the sounds.
Chew on the words.
If you have better articulation and diction then people will just enjoy listening to you.
Number four, nice and easy: Vocabulary
Spend a little bit of time each day learning a new word or two.
Try to enrich your vocabulary so that you feel empowered and excited
about the things that you're saying, rather than using the same old words over and over again.
For example, if you say, uhm, "My business meeting was very good",
and you always say that things are "very good",
then why not look up another way of saying "very good"?
My business meeting was exciting.
My business meeting was interesting.
My business meeting was inspiring.
Number five: Body language
Your body language can tell the audience so much.
So don't think that having a confident voice alone is going to be enough to convince your audience
that you are confident and that they should believe in you.
What you need to make sure is that you're not betraying yourself with any nervous tics
or any bizarre behaviours in your body
For example, some people might tap with their hand or tap with their foot.
Some people might scratch a lot when they're nervous.
Some people might wring their hands or constantly wipe their brow.
So just be aware of what you do physically when you feel nervous and try to keep that under control.
A good confident speaker will have a very open posture: they won't cross their arms,
they won't have their hands in their pockets; they'll be very open and relaxed.
Just... be loose, and chill, and... yeah, relax.
Alright, it's time for the big secret.
Okay.
The big secret, the trick, as to how to achieve a confident voice,
to make people confident in you when you speak is:
Pretend
If you pretend to be confident, if you tell yourself "I am confident, I know what I'm talking about,
they're gonna love me, and I'm just gonna go out there and pretend", something incredible happens.
You go out there, pretending;
the audience don't know that you are pretending, so the audience straight away relax,
and they believe you, they go with it.
And because they relax, and because they seem to believe you,
you naturally start to feel more and more confident.
So, suddenly, it's this big circle of you pretending, the audience believing,
then you believing, and they believing and you believing, and you're confident, and they're confident,
and you're confident; and voilà... voilà... voilà... why am I speaking French?
Uhm... I didn't even say it properly, I said "wala" it's "voilà".
Anyway, the point is, and trust me on this because I have done it countless times,
if you go out there pretending that you are good, pretending that you are confident,
it will breed confidence.
Think of the alternative:
if you go out there thinking "I'm rubbish, I'm scared, they're not gonna like me,
no one is gonna be interested in what I have to say", then that's going to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
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Until next time, take care and goodbye!