When was the last time you listened to someone speak and thought, Ooh,
she sounds nervous?
What exactly made her voice sound nervous?
If you had closed your eyes and only listened,
how would you describe the way a nervous voice sounds
in English? We tend to use words such as shaky, weak,
and uncontrolled,
to describe the way someone's voice sounds when they're nervous.
And unfortunately, when we feel anxiety,
our voice can betray us. Others can hear that shakiness.
It's annoying. Isn't it?
The good news is you can learn to control your voice so that
even if there is some internal anxiety, for example,
just before presenting to a large audience,
you can sound confident and clear in your English.
You can train your voice to be powerful and to inspire trust
with four simple steps,
you're going to learn how to control your voice and sound confident in English
in this lesson today,
Before we start, if you don't already know,
I'm Annemarie with Speak Confident English,
everything I do here is designed to help you get the confidence you want for
your life and work in English.
One way I do that is with my weekly Confident English lessons,
where I share targeted grammar, practice, pronunciation tips,
and fluency and confidence building strategies,
just like in this lesson today. So while you're here,
make sure you give this lesson a thumbs up and subscribe to my speak,
Confident English channel on YouTube. So you never miss one of my lessons.
And now let's get to work on controlling your voice so that you sound
powerful and confident in English.
The steps you're going to learn in this lesson today work for everyone native
and non-native speakers alike.
We all have the potential to be overcome by anxiety.
When speaking to an audience, whether your audience is
537 people at a conference or three people in a business meeting,
gaining control of your voice and communicating in a strong,
steady manner, ensures that you're able to fully engage your listener.
Moreover, your voice can project confidence and certainty.
If you're pitching an idea in a business meeting, for example,
or presenting on behalf of your company,
the confidence in your voice can reassure your listeners and
inspire trust.
So the first step in this process to controlling your voice and sounding
confident in English is to reduce or even remove that anxiety.
Now I know that sounds challenging. Learning to overcome our anxiety.
Isn't easy,
but there are three simple steps you can follow to control the
shakiness in your voice. When feeling anxious,
those three steps are to breathe,
relax your jaw and tongue and fixate.
I know those steps sound simple, but most people fail to implement them.
Let's take a look at each one more in-depth, and we'll start with breathing.
When we're nervous, we tend to take quick shallow breaths.
And unfortunately,
that kind of breathing only heightens our anxiety.
I want you to picture for a moment how someone tends to breathe when they're
really upset or nervous. You can imagine someone taking those
kinds of breath instead to begin overcoming that
shakiness in our voice and to become more calm.
We want to slow down our breathing and we want to take a deep
breath. If you're familiar with yoga, or if you practice meditation,
you're certainly familiar with the power of deep, slow, slow breathing.
However, if you're not really sure about this,
let me give you an example of how you should breathe.
When you want to remove that shakiness from your voice,
instilling more power and confidence.
I like to tell my students to imagine smelling something beautiful or something
wonderful.
Maybe it's walking into your grandmother's house and she has just baked
a fresh loaf of bread,
or perhaps it's a particular flower like walking by a Jasmine plant.
How do you breathe in those moments?
When you really want to enjoy the smell of something you breathe in
slowly and deeply. It's like, you want to keep that smell.
And that is exactly how you want to breathe,
to calm things down and get control of your voice.
Once you've got control of your breathing,
you want to relax your jaw and tongue.
Have you ever noticed before a big game,
you'll see football players or basketball players shaking out their arms and
their legs moving their shoulders around. They're shaking off the anxiety.
They're loosening up their muscles so that they're able to perform better.
Your mouth is full of muscles and when nervous,
they tend to get stiff,
which means they don't move as easily to loosen your jaw
and tongue. You can do a variety of mouth movements,
opening and closing your jaw and moving things
around to get those muscles loosened up. Lastly,
choose something or someone to fixate on.
What this means is to focus your gaze,
to focus your eyes on a specific point or on a specific person.
If you're in a room,
the best choice is to fixate on something that is just above the heads
of your audience and toward the back of the room. If you're online,
you can fixate on the top of the screen.
Not only will this help convey that you're speaking directly to your listeners,
but it can also help to relieve pressure or anxiety that comes from
looking at everyone, listening to you and help you relax.
Now that we have those first steps in place to overcome
anxiety, let's talk about step number two,
be conscious of your flow while speaking,
just like overcoming anxiety and controlling a shaky voice
using your breath and pausing can help control your flow.
In other words, when you slow down,
you have more control over your word choice and how
your sentences flow or transition from one into another.
This may be counterintuitive and you might be thinking right now,
but Annemarie, if I want to sound fluent, shouldn't I be speaking faster.
And that is one of the biggest myths of fluency.
Speaking too fast without any pauses is a sure way
to sound anxious and uncertain. Listen carefully to how I speak.
Do you notice that after every few words and at the end of a sentence,
I tend to have a short, tiny little pause, those little pauses,
give me time to breathe. And they allow my words,
my sentences to flow. Moreover,
those pauses guarantee that you,
as my listener are able to better understand everything I say,
I'm communicating with clarity. Now,
if you are not sure how or where to pause when you speak here are
three recommendations. Number one, pause at the end of a sentence.
Number two,
pause before and after a word you want to emphasize.
And number three,
pause in places where you would normally write a comma.
Let's take a look at some written sentences to see this in action.
You'll notice that I have some punctuation and commas to act as
a guide for where I might want to pause while speaking.
And there may be one or two words in those sentences that I want to emphasize.
As I say these sentences aloud.
I want you to listen carefully for those tiny little pauses I use at the
end of a sentence where there are commas. And when I want to emphasize first,
we need to identify a strategy that resonates with our clients and
allows us to move forward. From there. We can begin implementation.
I want you to compare that example. To first,
we need to identify a strategy that resonates with our clients,
and that allows us to move forward. From there.
We can begin implementation when you compare the two different ways that
I spoke those sentences out loud,
which one sounded more controlled and confident to you.
It's all in the pauses.
Number one absolutely sounded more confident. Now,
before we begin, step number three,
you may be wondering how can you actually practice this?
And if you haven't yet,
I highly recommend that you download my How to Say What You Want Training.
It's a free training available on my website. And in that training,
I share a step-by-step method I use with all my students to practice
speaking aloud and learning how to develop
true confidence in fluency.
You can practice what you've learned here with the strategies in that training.
And now step number three for controlling your voice and sounding confident,
be clear and project. In strategy number one,
we highlighted the use of fixation or focusing on a certain
point in the room to help you control anxiety.
Fixation can also help you project your voice,
projecting your voice doesn't mean that you have to be obnoxiously loud or
yelling at the room. However,
it does mean that you need to speak with an appropriate volume
enunciate and ground yourself to speak at an appropriate volume.
Consider the environment you're in and how distant you are from your audience.
If your audience is close to you and you're in a small room, for example,
in a business conference room, there's no need to increase your volume.
However,
if your audience is large and you're in a room where you're quite
far away from everyone, you will need to increase your volume.
And that fixation point above the heads of your audience
and toward the back of the room will help.
You know how to increase your volume.
If you imagine that your voice needs to reach that point,
that you're focused on toward the back of the room,
you will naturally increase your volume and project your voice appropriately.
In addition to using appropriate volume,
an enunciation is key to clear communication when practicing
enunciation break down words into syllables and practice
saying them clearly the key to enunciation is slowing down.
So the steps we discussed in number two,
using your breath and pausing will help you do that to practice this.
You can also select a short text, read it aloud, carefully,
slowing down,
paying close attention to enunciating or clearly producing each syllable,
doing this will help your mind be aware or conscious of
those sounds and the syllables of the words.
Once you're confident in your enunciation, in your ability to say those words,
clearly you can speed up your speech to have better balance,
to further strengthen your voice and ensure that you're projecting
appropriately. It's important to ground yourself,
focus on the source of your voice earlier.
I mentioned that when we're nervous, we tend to take quick shallow breaths.
And as a result,
we tend to speak from our throat as opposed to using our whole body.
When we speak,
when you're preparing to speak and you're working to reduce that anxiety.
I want you to think about the ground that you're standing on or where you're
sitting, be aware of your whole body and allow it to relax.
Just like you might have loosened up the muscles of your jaw,
loosen up the muscles of your body.
And then imagine that your voice is coming from deep inside your body.
Imagine that your voice is starting at your feet and moving its way up
and projecting out of your mouth. Doing this will help your voice,
maintain its volume and sound stronger.
And now our fourth step for controlling your voice and sounding confident in
English is to relax and enjoy.
You can help your body relax and help yourself begin to
enjoy the process of speaking by smiling and maintaining good body
posture. This might sound surprising,
but smiling is particularly effective for calming nerves.
Smiling not only improves the tone or mood of your voice,
but it can also help you move past your anxiety.
Smiling for even a minute,
can trick your brain into thinking that you're in a relaxed, positive state.
In addition to smiling,
maintaining good upright posture will contribute to your ability to
project your voice, maintain your volume,
and it will resonate confidence to your audience.
Now that you have these four steps to control your voice and sound confident in
English. I have a quick question for you the next time.
You're feeling anxiety before you speak English,
which of these steps are you going to use first to help you sound
confident?
And I'm curious if you have any tricks or methods
that you've used in the past,
that help you control your voice so that when you speak, you sound controlled,
clear, and confident.
I'd love to hear what strategy you're going to use or any tips that you
have. And you can share with me in the comments below.
Thank you so much for joining me.
And don't forget if you found this lesson helpful. I would love to know.
You can tell me by giving this lesson a thumbs up here on YouTube.
Thank you again. And I'll see you next time for your Confident English lesson.