Welcome back to JForrest English training.
I'm Jennifer and today, you're going to learn how to sound more professional and confident.
When speaking English in public, and I'm going to share 10, bad speaking habits that you
need to avoid.
Let's get started.
The first bad habit is using one word answers.
Let's say you were at a conference and your boss asks, you how was the conference and
you
Fly back.
Can you say good?
Great, awesome.
What do you notice about these answers?
They're all
one-word
answers.
Now, it might seem a little comical that that's all you would say.
But I hear this from students all the time, I'll ask them about their vacation and they
were on a two-week vacation in another part of the world, and all they say was good.
Great.
Okay, not bad, very short answers, this doesn't sound very professional and you definitely
don't sound advanced in English.
The an easy way to solve this problem is to answer in a complete sentence, repeat the
question.
The conference
was
good, now still, this isn't enough information, you can then expand on that and you can provide
the reason why
why?
Or you can provide one example from the conference or the trip.
The conference was good because I meant a lot of new people in my field and I have a
lot of new contacts.
This sounds so much more professional and advanced compared to good.
Our next bad habit is using weak words?
Let's say your boss asks, you if
You can have the report finished by the end of the day and you reply back and say I think
so I'll try these are all weak words because they imply that you might not finish the job
or finish the request.
So instead of saying I think I can change that to something more confident, something
stronger.
I know, I can finish.
Wish the report by the end of the day, I promise I'll finish the report.
By the end of the day, you can count on me to finish the report by the end of the day.
The next bad habit is using very basic words.
Basic words like good okay fine.
All of these are very beginner words and they don't sound very professional and they don't
make you look very calm.
I didn't either.
So if you simply change that to something more advanced instead of saying the conference
was good, you see the conference was very beneficial and then you can move on and provide
more information.
Like we talked about in the first bad habit because often the one word answers that you
want to avoid are also very basic words.
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Now let's move on with our next point.
One bad habit.
You definitely want to avoid is speaking too quickly.
So imagine right now I'm telling you about the rules.
Something and I'm speaking very fast, do you think you'll be able to understand very well
if that's how I spoke what a lot of students actually think they speak too slowly but in
my experience, that's not true, they actually speak too fast and when you speak too, fast
is difficult to understand and to follow your story.
So just take a breath, put some pauses into your words as well.
And that will help you slow your pace.
Now, let's talk about word, fillers, word, fillers, are those words like well you know,
like these words that don't have any meaning but people add them to their speech when they're
trying to think about what to say next.
So imagine you're in a meeting and your boss asked you to tell everybody about how the
project is going.
Wing and you reply back and say, well, I'm the projects going, pretty good.
Well, you know, we just need to obviously that doesn't seem very professional and you
certainly won't feel very confident when you have all those thumbs.
Let's talk about eye contact.
This can be a very difficult one, especially because culturally people have different rules
for eye contact in North American culture.
ER it's considered polite and professional to make eye contact with the person you're
talking to but you don't maintain eye contact 100% of the time.
You can absolutely Look Away.
Look down look up.
But you want to maintain eye contact at least 50% of the time.
Next, let's talk about intonation.
Intonation is the natural raising and falling?
Your voice our voices, do this naturally.
Now if I'm a way up high on the no come down low and then I go way back up high and then
I come down low.
That's not very professional and it won't make you look very confident but you also
don't want to talk on one specific note and maintain
that
know, right now I probably sound more boring to you because I don't have intonation in
my voice that
That's the impact of not having that natural rising and falling.
And I hear this from students all the time.
So you could do some vocal exercises and try to go up higher and then comb down lower and
just try to vary your intonation, which is the rising and falling of your voice.
When you speak to sound more professional and to appear, more confident are nice.
Bad habit is on enthusiasm.
And a lack of enthusiasm.
What do I mean by this?
Well let's say you went to this conference and you want to tell your boss and your colleagues
that the conference was very beneficial and you learned a lot and you made a lot of useful
contacts.
But if you deliver this, if you communicate this without enthusiasm, they're not going
to understand.
And the message, the conference was great.
I'm met a lot of people.
It was very beneficial, it was really interesting, a lack of enthusiasm.
Your intonation goes down, your volume goes down, just think of it as being very tired
or bored or not interested.
So think about the enthusiasm that you have in your voice.
Now, part of showing your
Easy as mmm.
And part of being confident, is also your body language.
Notice how I said, when you lack enthusiasm, it's like you're tired.
When you're tired, you have a hard time keeping your body up, but it doesn't look very professional
and I probably don't look very confident right now.
And same people often they speak, they cover up their body which makes them appear.
Very small that doesn't seem very
Confident either, when you're confident, just bring your shoulders back and take up about
as much space as your shoulders.
Go think of that as your box, your Communications box and that's where you want to be.
You want to make sure you stay upright in this box when you're communicating because
that will make you seem very confident.
And then also that will help with your intonation and your
Susie azzam because when your body is all crunched down, it actually impacts the intonation
of your voice and when you're upright more, you can get more enthusiasm or intonation
from your voice as well.
So remember shoulders back and pay attention to your body language.
Now, finally, let's talk about hand gestures.
So hand gestures is just simply using your hands when you communicate.
Kate.
Now there are some things you don't want to do like completely not having any hand gestures.
So if I did the entire video like this, maybe you could watch it for 30 seconds but imagine
watching it for 10 minutes where you don't see my hands at all.
Now if my hands are like this, most likely my body is going to start to to Sag as well,
and I'm not going to have good body language.
But when I bring my hands into it I'm more likely to keep my shoulders back.
Remember I said you want to have a communication box because you also don't want your hands
wailing and frailing about and just being all over the place as well.
You want to keep your hand gestures within this Communications box.
So just keep them very slight, very natural.
You don't want to go too far.
Far away.
Just close to the body but just keep them going and that will again help you with your
body language.
It will make you look a lot more confident and you'll appear more professional.
Because all professional speakers use their hands when they're speaking.
And if you avoid these 10 bad speaking habits, I know you're going to look instantly more
professional and you're going to feel
More confident as well.
So, which bad habit?
Do you think you need to improve the most?
Share that in the comments below?
And remember, you can use the platform LiveXP to take one-on-one lessons with a private
tutor, so you can start improving your communication skills.
So, remember, you can get that trial lesson for only 99 Cents.
And when you're ready to subscribe to the LiveXP platform,
You can use my code JForestEnglish30 to get 30% off your membership.
So you can use the QR code.
Click the link in the description or you can click right here on the screen.
So, take a screenshot now and I'll see you in the next lesson.