I was helping a client perfect their business slide presentation the other day.
I, again, saw a thing that quite a few people fail doing right.
It is so simple, yet quite easy to fall for.
The person doing the presentation wasn’t careful enough with the clarity of certain vocabulary that, for me, should precisely be one of the clearest words for the audience.
Guess what? Things as simple as their name, their job position, the name of the company or the product, or various other profession related words.
No matter your sector, I would expect you to say all the job related information with correct and clear pronunciation in English, in order to see you as a convincing professional on stage.
To give you an example: this presentation was about setting up a user profile page. The presentation had a clear structure, visuals etc, but person doing the presentation was repeatedly using the word “profile” with wrong accentuation.
Instead of “PROfile” she was saying “proFILE” every time.
Is this a major thing? Not really, in itself.
However, the effect in the listener can be distracting and negative when this is repeated, and when other mispronounced job related words are also heard through the presentation (which usually happens).
Or, I remember an Italian client who worked in the health industry for instance. The company’s name had the word “health” in it. Every time she mentioned the company’s name, she said it with a silent “h”.
Why? Probably because in Italian the “h” is silent.
However, if you are doing your presentation in English, “health” should be pronounced the English way, especially if it is part of the name of the company that you represent and you repeatedly mention in your presentation.
1-Minute Tip ⏳
No matter the sector. You should know get your lingo right.
If you are promoting something, make sure you get clear on the pronunciation of the key vocabulary first.
You will sound more professional in front of your audience.
As obvious as this may seem, in my experience people often forget about this.
Perhaps it is because their company, their position etc. are so close and daily experiences for them that it creates a sense of high familiarity. And when something is familiar, there’s no need to “over-explain” it. I agree.
However, no need to worry you are over-explaining anything to your audience, because your audience may actually be listening to you for the first time.
- Whenever you mention your company’s name, say it clearly, especially if it has English words in it.
- Whenever you mention your position, say it clearly.
- Whenever you mention service related concepts, say them clearly.
No matter how “boring” they may be to you, to your audience they will be fresh and new.
As a listener, I wouldn’t mind if you slightly mispronounced vocabulary unrelated to your profession. For instance, if you share a short anecdote about your weekend to spice up the presentation, explaining what a great ice-cream place you found in town, then I wouldn’t care much if the name of the ice-cream flavours sounded unclear or even “mispronounced”.
However, professional vocabulary in my opinion should be used clearly to sound convincing about whatever your presentation aims to show, teach or sell.
If you need help to figure out how to get your presentation to sound more pro and be effective and you’re not sure how to do it, I am here to help. You can connect with me on LinkedIn.
This content is authentic and it is not AI generated. I write it weekly for you based on my 20+ years of teaching experience.
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👋 Hi, I’m Gábor
I am an English speech fluency trainer, specialized in pronunciation training.
Talk to you next time 🙂
Gábor 🙂
Connect | Gábor Légrádi | MA, RSA/CTEFLA