Have you ever stood in front of people with the intention to instruct them, teach them something you know, or something you’re learning? Most of us, have had to do this, maybe because we were studying at a school or university, or because of our job we had to stand in front of more than one person and we had to start talking about a topic we knew or a topic we did some research on. However, have you ever had to give a speech in a foreign language?
I know, that’s a different story. It’s more difficult than it is in your own language, and it is way more difficult if you are shy. However, don’t worry too much, here we’ll give you some ideas on how can you prepare yourself to give a Speech in a foreign language.
The info is like food
Every good thing requires preparation. If you are thinking about sharing ideas to a group of people in a foreign language, you definitely need to be prepared because it is as if you’re a chef who is serving food to them, and the food needs to be appealing and good in order for them to like it. So, how can prepare yourself to do this?
If the information that you are going to present is something your audience and you are learning, a good thing to do is to get thewhole picture and understand the info as much as you can. I mean not just understanding in your own way, but trying to transform the info in something as simple as possible.
You can do this by breaking the info in different parts (divide and conquer). When you apply this, you can get the main points easily. When you get the main points of the info then it’s easier to get the full meaning of the topic and give the speech in a proper and appealing manner.
Search on dictionary
Don’t think you know it all, just because you can speak Spanish. You may have made amazing advancement in the language, but there is always be some words you don’t know how to use properly. There are also some synonyms you don’t know yet that would perfectly fit the speech you are going to give. Go to the dictionary if you don’t understand perfectly something, and you will find amazing information that will help you get the speech more appealing and simple.
For example, you can look for synonyms of some of the most difficult words in your speech, and change them to make it easier for your audience to understand you. This way you won’t lose the purpose of your speech, your important points and content will not disappear, it will be like changing some ingredients in your food, to get the food taste better for the people you’re giving it to.
divide and conquer
Do research
Research is very important when giving a speech. Would you go to any market to buy the food, you and your family want to eat? Would you buy fresh fish or a fish that has been there for long enough for you to notice is not fresh? I bet you would not buy an old fish. It’s just the same with the information you need for your speech. You need to do proper research in order to give an accurate and good presentation.
Can you imagine putting time doing research and then people telling you and others that the info you gave them wasn’t right? That would be embarrassing! Researching also helps you. When you research topics you are forced to learn new words and their meaning, and you’re also forced to learn new phrases. These things will help you, be more accurate when giving the speech.
Rehearse
Would you say that a soup made by someone that makes it the second time, is the same soup made by someone that makes it the 50th time? Surely not. The person that has done it for 50 times, surely knows more about how to make it properly. He knows how much salt, how much water and how much of the other ingredients he needs to put.
The other person instead, it’s just learning and it’s just getting used to these new things. Basically, this one has to read the instructions, he has to call someone, or maybe watch a video about that, and if he messes with one of the ingredients, most of the time he doesn’t know how to handle that. Yes, there’s a difference between rice and a rice soup!
With speeches and rehearsing it’s basically the same. You don’t have to rehearse a speech 50 times to do it well. However, you need to rehearse it a good amount of times to be better at it. When you rehearse you start feeling more confident about the speech and you start losing the fears that may have.
For example, if you make mistakes you know how to change the speech to fit what you are talking about. Also, when you rehearse, you start learning the speech and it would be easy for you to highlight the most important parts of it.
Who is your audience?
This is the main reason you have been doing all this work. You want your audience to enjoy, you want them to be smarter, you want them to be relaxed, and you want them to feel like at home. So, when preparing, you can do all of what we talked about, but if you don’t do this, you will not succeed.
To everyone is very important to feel special, to feel that someone else has any interest in them. So, before you give a speech, you should think about whom you are going to talk to. You don’t want to be just throwing facts and info at people, maybe saying things they are not going to remember or something that they don’t care about. You don’t want people to walk away in the middle of the speech, if that happens, you will be destroyed after seen that.
So, you need to think carefully, who is your audience? What’s their interest? How can you make the topic interesting to them? What facts about the research that you have done will change their view of the topic? When you do these you are actually making your food (Speech) very appealing and something worth listening to.
So, work hard now, and reap the fruits of your hard work later. There’s nothing like having an audience paying very careful attention to what you have to say.
For more tips on foreign languages, keep tune at spanishtomind.com.
