Held my (fith!) conference today. Looking for tips. UPDATED

So I've been doing conferences in English at the language center of my school. I traded this with my teachers for the year's worth of English class and I much prefer it.


today I held my third and after the fact had the usual talk with the designated grading teacher. She brought up a point I've found recurrent over all three thus far. I talk too fast.

Now.

when I say too fast. I don't talk any faster then you might've heard on voice chat. I talk the same speed I usually do. It's just I'm facing an audience that's here for listening practice that counts on their year's grade in English and that has a .....well... abysmal level in English.

I want to do something about this. Any pointers for how I might make myself speak slower naturally without loosing the thread of what I'm saying?

Speaking using overly fancy and complex words usually does the trick for me when I'm talking too fast

If I were you, I'd focus on the pronunciation, the tone and the level of your voice. Also, if you practice it slowly, without letting yourself speed up, you'll be able to go slower when you actually do it. It's a shame that you're so far ahead of your classmates, and you're getting a "complaint" because of it.

When I'm giving a talk at conferences, I usually force a pause in talking when I go to the next slide. That way the audience can process what I had just said. It's usually not so much the fast talking, but rather the lack of time for the audience to process stuff you said. It also allows you to take a good look at your audience and see if they are horribly lost.

It's a bit freaky at first to just stand there and not talk for what seems like ages even if it's only two seconds, but that goes away.

Of course, if you don't use slides, you'll need to force pauses another way. Like writing <pause here> in your notes or something.

(Btw, this is for PhD level science talks, but it probably works in general)

^Adding a pause like denim said is a great idea. If your content is good then it needs pauses for people to take in and think about the content you are talking about.

If you are a non-english speaker it is very important to work on enunciation of your words. Don't speak slowly because this often sounds un-natural, but ensure you are speaking clearly. Try listening to videos/audio of english spoken by english people - not americans or non-native english speakers. This is the best way to try and lessen your french accent and pick up good english pronunciation.

Rather than randomly pausing, it's better to pause at things you want to emphasize, and whenever you've discussed a "chapter" of your story / when you're switching points. Pauses can be a great way for people to catch up, to give them a moment to think rather than to listen.

Well, it's not random. It's at the end of a slide. And, yeah, that usually coincides with a point you want them to think about. I mean, if you go through two slides without having anything you want to get across, you probably didn't want to have those slides in your presentation anyway.

An important part of knowing your audience / good public speaking is being able to accommodate their level of understanding. So the complaint is valid, especially when judging competence of English.

More than anything, all you should do, @tatsujb, is slow down. Even if you think you're already speaking very slowly - this is something all public speakers initially struggle with. There's a connection to how fast internal thought processes go (i.e. thinking something is faster than saying something) as well as the difference between speaking informally (with friends, relations) and speaking formally. Speed plays the largest factor in this.

Pauses, breaks, anything else people have suggested in here? Good suggestions. But more than anything if people say you're speaking too fast, it's because you're speaking too fast. I honestly mean 100% of this, no personal agenda here. I frequently speak too fast, even as a native-born English speaker, and I studied the language to a high enough level to feel confident in giving tips about it.

Practise speaking slowly. Enunciation, natural pauses due to taking breath . . . these will all come later. You'll get better at all of that simply through practise. I'd definitely say you're doing well enough.

Pause as if the audience was going to applause to each of your ideas/paragraphs.
Act a little as if you were in a play or giving a political speech. Politics always try to convince the simpliest minds so their speeches have to be easy to follow.

ok I'll try that. I'm really a sucker for using fancy words even when it's uncalled for anyhow. the thing is I do it already and still go fast. even if it makes me search for it.

I'll try practicing that. thing is this is where I start to forget what I have to say. I have to be careful. memory isn't my strong suit.

this really sound like good advice, thanks! (I do use slides. Last conference and the one before were incredibly active slides with many pictures to illustrate what I was saying. I tried giving this one a less "I'm reading feel" because I wanted to show that I really know my topic and have it flow more naturally but this resulted in me going too fast and spewing to much information. I even went over the 40min mark).

I have no accent ^^

many people who've had me on voicechatt then had me tell them I'm french were like "get outta here". I've lived six years in the U.S. starting age 8 and since then I've practiced oral and written english every day.

I'll try to see which works out better yeah (starting to see some contrary opinions ^^) I'm worried about slower not because it'll feel unnatural to the public (it wouldn't they'd loooove that) but because it'll make my brain focus on the words I'm saying and the action of saying them rather than their meaning)

yeah, that's what denim was going for I think.

I agree, the complaint is valid. as the teacher well put I'm not speaking to an audience of english PHDs. I need to tone it down.

yeah I can literally not realize I'm speaking fast. In the other conferences I had a teacher who'd help me out by giving me signals for me to slow down which really really helped me as weird as that sounds but the effect of her signaling me would only last a minute.

that explains alot.

well thanks ! I will!

@gmase ...hermmm ..nnno

He's one of the greatest orators in history, you'd be a fool to not at least try to learn from what he did. The man convinced thousands, millions to blame their problems on totally unrelated groups of people and to go to a war to take over the world. He must've done SOMETHING right. (Though he was bonkers. Just TRY to read Mein Kampf)

Edit: the phone grammar! The horror!

errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrm nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnno

I was shown that video at a training session at my job and I thought it was a good speech (the form, not the content), do you disagree or do you think you can't apply anything from it?

I just think it's bad to even begin to check it out. There are other examples of spokesperson you can learn from without ever needing to delve into such depths and expose yourself to such content : Martin Luther King Jr, Nelson Mandela, heck I even think Barack Obama gave some stunning speeches, not to mention some of the amazing monologues you will find in movies.

I think it comes of as odd and of bad taste to want to take hitler as a model despite that. I do take your point though.

ZAPHOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well, as you mentioned there are other very good alternatives. It may also be helpful to look at videos of very good speakers that are speaking on the subject you are, so you can see how the pauses (and other things that they do) fit in with a similar material to you.

By the way, what are you speaking about for 40 minutes? What kind of English class is this?

so this is my fith conference. it's on linux :
I dumbed it down way more but I think I was still speaking too fast. there were still moments where my (french!) crowd clearly understood nada otherwise I would have been getting answers to my questions.

Have you considered that it may simply be because it's boring?

No offense, but i don't really care about OS comparisons, and i turned it off after 4 minutes. It doesn't maintain my interest, and it make it much harder to keep attention.

Secondly, what kind of crowd are you actually speaking to? You use things like OS, but do people understand what it is, what it means? If you're speaking to a class of people in IT or programming they may understand, but many others may not. In my experience, it's extremely easy to overestimate people's technical knowledge of things. Not because of stupidity, but plain apathy towards the subject.

Thirdly, as to speed, it's extremely varying even over a single sentence. It obviously shoudn't be super monotone, but i get the feeling you want to spit out certain words and parts really fast.

I'm trying my very hardest >< it's sooooo stressful to be standing in front of 25+ people and coordinate movements, a presentation and knowledge, your voice, your posture, your terminology...

Butr I'm conscious of this. I had avoided most technical words but OS slipped in there regardless. I'll take this feedback and implement it for my next one.

as for boring : i dunno. you learn alot in this conference.

you either have the skill to sell the biggest bullshit to any crowd and have them interested, or you're like the other 99% that has to get to an appreciable level of presenting skill through sheer hard work. I'm not a natural presenter either, it's something you learn by doing. For me it's mostly overcoming the sheer terror of the first five minutes.
You definitely have an extra challenge with people being at a mediocre level of english.

Boringness has nothing do to with learning anything. it's whether the topic matches interest. I don't have the context to know what people you're talking to. it depends on the crowd. If people sit there cause the topic interests them, the comment about it possibly being boring can be ignored.

The worst kind of crowd is people that have to sit there to get their points for whatever kind of course and program. Nothing you do will ever interest them.