Is your mother tongue Spanish? Have you ever done a presentation in other language? English, for example. English presentations are always a challenge for me because I doubt about the pronunciation and words to use but my English teacher advised me not to do presentations like this:
If in your native language it is difficult have an oral presentation, in other language it has to be difficult too. But I think it’s worst because you are nervous and sometimes you can’t express things exactly the way you want them.
That’s the purpose for today’s post, I want advice you to have successful oral presentations in English when you are a Spanish native speaker. Let me share the advice I learned:
- Take time to plan the presentation. Take your time to think about the number of slides, you have to measure the time to talk in every slide and think about the kind of audience to plan the contents.
- Use visual aids to show your idea. In this particular case, if you have to speak in other language, it is very important you use visual aids that help you to remember the words. At the same time, your audience can see the idea even without listening to it. These visual aids can save you from embarrassment and unlock your ideas and words. Warning: Don’t read the slides please!
- Take your time to speak, take a breath. When speaking in other language, you have to take your time to relax and think about the ideas you want to express. But you have to be careful! If you spend a long time in pauses, your audience will get bored or maybe think that you don´t know what you say and they feel you like an insecure person.
- Speak with enthusiasm, if the public feels your emotion, they will identify with you and they will “buy your idea”. Remember, enthusiasm is contagious!
- Practice a lot. In this point you have to know everything about the topic, in your mother tongue and in English. You have to know as much as you can about it, this can help you to control your nerves. Like a teacher once told me: “who knows more about the topic? …. Obviously the speaker, so if you are the speaker, why so nervous? ”
As you can see, English oral presentations and Spanish oral presentations are the same, the particular difference is that you don’t know the language as much as Spanish, this represents a challenge to say the ideas in your head with the words that you know.
In summary, you have to do 5 principal things: Planning the presentation, building a presentation with all the visual aids that you need, being relaxed speaking, but speaking with enthusiasm, and practicing the speaking. If you do these 5 actions, I’m sure your presentation is going to be a successful presentation!
Oh! And don’t forget to invite me to be in the audience!
An extra! You have to see this video, can help you!
Until next time!
