And that really brought me out of my comfort zone,
but at the same time it helped me to be more articulate.
What comes to mind when you think of someone who is articulate?
Do you think about someone who's on stage
talking in front of an audience of 10,000 people or maybe someone who has done a
Ted Talk or at least someone who sounds really eloquent in their speech.
Today I'm going to give you
eight powerful ways how you can become more articulate.
Being articulate is nothing more than being
able to express your thoughts and ideas in a way that people can understand
exactly what you're trying to say.
So it's nothing more than accurate communication.
Secret number one is to expand your vocabulary.
And I'm not talking about the dictionary of difficult words.
When I finished high school, and I first went to college for the first time,
I really wanted to sound more articulate and so what I did was
I bought this dictionary,
this is the same dictionary I bought in college and I wanted to learn more words,
more difficult words.
So I studied this everyday.
I would work on a different alphabet and I was study these difficult words and
what I found was that people didn't understand what I was saying because
difficult words, when you're
expanding your vocabulary and you're using harder words,
the thing about being able to articulate is that you
want people to understand what you're saying. So if you're using difficult words,
the less likely they are going to use those words in every day language,
which they won't understand what you're saying.
Being articulate means expressing your perspectives clearly.
So it's not about expanding your vocabulary to words that are harder,
but more to focus on words that express your emotions.
So focus on descriptive words, especially words that help express how you feel.
Secret number two is to practice improvising.
Learning how to be more expressive of your
emotions will help you to convey the meanings behind what you're trying to say.
And really people connect with how you're saying the words rather than exactly
or precisely the
words that you are trying to use.
One way you can practice improvising is to take an Improv or
an acting class because they teach you how to improve your expression using your
body language and your speech. So after I bought my dictionary in college,
I was a very shy person and I really didn't feel comfortable
talking in front of people,
let alone expressing my emotions or conveying my perspective on things.
So during the second half of my degree,
I auditioned for a musical and that really brought me out of my comfort zone,
but at the same time it helped me to be more articulate in terms of being
expressive, acting on stage. And also singing too,
that was what helped me bring me out of my shell.
And after that experience of auditioning, even though I didn't get the part,
but that experience of auditioning
for the part and training to become the actor that they would select,
that really helped me to free my mind
to be able to express myself in an authentic way.
Secret number three is pause.
You want to strategically insert pauses before and after the points that you're
trying to emphasize. Using pauses is better than using filler words,
but of course if you are accustomed to using filler words
or if that's a habit for you, it's okay to use them once in a while,
but not all the time. And it's okay to use pauses instead of filler words.
So what I mean is that get used to,
you want to get used to having silence because not all silence is awkward.
So get used to inserting silence and pause strategically when you want to
emphasize something you just said.
Secret number four is to pay attention to your tone and your accentuation tone
is simply a change
in the pitch of your voice. In some languages, like Chinese for example,
tone is word specific. If you change the tone,
you change to a completely different word. But in English,
tone is statement specific, which means that if you change your tone,
you're changing the meaning of what you're saying.
Let me illustrate what I mean by changes in tone and how it changes the meaning
in English. I'm going to be saying the phrase,
I didn't say your website was outdated.
So that's the phrase I'm going to use and I'm going to change the tone for each
word
and you can see that it changes the meaning of that sentence and I'm not going
to incorporate any body language to this at all.
Just verbally and you'll see when I changed the tone that it changes the meaning
of the sentence.
So the sentence once again is I didn't say your website was outdated.
Okay, here we go. First word is I.
If I say I didn't say your website is outdated versus I didn't say your website
was outdated. I didn't say it. So that means it implies that someone else said it.
Or if I changed the tone of the word say,
then I didn't say your website was outdated.
So that means that I didn't say it. I might be thinking it.
Now if I change the tone of when I'm saying the word website,
it sounds like this.
I didn't say your website was outdated.
So that means it's not your website that I think is outdated.
It's something else of yours that I think is outdated.
Or if I change the tone of the last word, I didn't say your website was outdated.
So that means that I didn't think it was outdated.
I was thinking something else about your website.
So you can see how changes in tone really change
the meaning in English of what you're saying.
So pay attention to your tone in your speech and that will help
you to become more articulate. So that was tone.
Now let's talk about accentuation.
Accentuation is when you simply make certain syllables more distinct by either
seeing them more loudly or putting more emphasis on them. So to illustrate,
let's choose the word P. R. E. S. E. N. T.
So if I were to accentuate the first syllable, it would be present.
And that is one meaning, right? I give you a present, give me a present,
give him or her a present. If I accentuated the second syllable,
it would be present.
So it changes the word from a noun to a verb.
So pay attention to both your tone and accentuation to
help yourself to become more articulate.
Secret number five is to listen to yourself.
So listen to yourself in normal conversation and pay attention to how you feel
when you hear your own voice. Do you feel energized or drowsy?
Do you feel pleasant or irritated? Chances are if you feel a certain way
about yourself, then chances are other people feel the same way too,
and try recording yourself also
in normal conversations so that you can have opportunities to listen to yourself
more often. Also,
another good rule of thumb is to get feedback from other people that you trust
and give them
permission to give you their honest feedback and criticism on how they felt when
they listen to you in
conversation and asked herself in these instances when you hear yourself and
when you get a feeling for how you and others feel when you're talking to them,
ask yourself what can you do to improve so
that you can come across more pleasant and give people a more positive feeling
when you're talking to them.
Secret number six is to portray confidence and self assurance because people
don't see you through their eyes.
They see you through your eyes.
So give them the impression that you're 100% confident that you're
an authority in the subject matter that you're talking about.
And you also believe what you're saying.
Part of portraying confidence is to project your voice.
A good rule of thumb is to be able to talk so
that someone who's 10 feet away from you can hear you.
So project your voice with such intensity
that someone who's 10 feet away can understand what you're saying.
Secret number seven is to use variation.
You want to vary the length of your sentences. So for example,
once you've used a long sentence then
follow up with a short sentence and vice versa.
This also helps to get your message across more clearly because for example,
if you use three or more long sentences in tandem,
then you might lose your audience due to overload of information.
You should also try to vary your speed and your volume.
This can help people to understand and
follow what you're trying to say. For example,
you can slow down when you want someone to
understand certain words and phrases and then speed back up again when you're
sure that they understand and they've caught onto what you're trying to say.
Speed and volume will also help you to become more expressive as well.
So for example, if you're trying to express something happy and exciting,
then you can speak louder and faster.
But if you're telling a sad or a serious story, then you can speak
slowly and more softly. Secret number eight is to understand yourself.
Get a solid understanding of why you have a lack of articulation.
Maybe you've had some tensions or social anxiety that led to your
perceptions of yourself,
or maybe it's a fear of being at the center of attention and embarrassment,
but whatever it may be,
you can work to overcome the root causes and give yourself the peace
of mind and the confidence to get out there and articulate truly how you feel.
Comment below. What have you learned? If you'd like my content,
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