Accent Etiquette: Front Page Article in Today's Sun-Sentinel July 1st, 2013

 Yes, si or oui?

For South Florida's bilingual population, breaking through language barriers can be a maddening matter of etiquette.

By Johnny Diaz, Sun Sentinel

Article in the Sun-Sentinel July 1, 2013: Yes, Si, or Oui?

"We live in a bilingual place, but it's hard for the people who want to improve their English," says Lisa Jeffery, who runs the Speech and Accent Academy in Miami and leads Accent Reduction Miami, a free monthly meetup group where people can hone their English-speaking skills. The group has 554 members from Palm Beach to Miami-Dade counties. "They say to me, 'I can't find anyone to practice English with,' " Jeffery adds. Her advice for people who meet someone speaking in an accent or struggling to find the right words in English: "Ask them their preference." But in what language?

"The question should be asked in the language the person is speaking. Or, well, I wish it happened that way," Jeffery says. "My preference is to help them speak English. They don't know if they are going to accent-reduction classes or trying to practice English. I think people may be doing it out of kindness to speak to them in Spanish when they see them struggling in English."
Knowing when to set aside your native tongue or to speak English is a sensitive issue many South Floridians agree to disagree on.

I believe a new trend is happening in South Florida. It's not about language anymore, people are beginning to concentrate on speaking elegantly in any language, and it's exciting to see!

Lisa Jeffery, Speech and Accent Academy 


 

Be An Elegant Communicator by Lisa Jeffery

Elegance in Communication is like Dress for Success only it goes deeper than the clothes. Elegant communication involves every part of your being: your actions, your speech, your non-verbal communication, your choice of words, and your character.

Elegant communication involves your mannerisms, your manner of speaking and basically, your manners - to yourself and others - at all times, especially in a crisis. Elegance involves having grace under pressure.Both men and women can be elegant communicators. John F. Kennedy was an elegant communicator, so was Abraham Lincoln, especially in his debates with Douglas -- when as an unknown, he won the nation's heart. Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu-Kyi of Burma was one of the most elegant communicators of all times. In a violent pro-democracy protest, she could silence a crowd using only her eyes and immense dignity.

And Nelson Mandela's elegance and grace under extreme pressure and hardship helped change the world in the 20th century.Many of the most elegant communicators of all times were not born with their skills, but worked very hard to acquire them.

Grace Kelly was so ashamed of her harsh Philadelphia accent that she asked her father at 18 for a tape recorder and worked hours listening to her voice and correcting inflections with great discipline. Later, as a successful actress and Princess in Monaco, this discipline and determination made a monumental difference in her communication to the people of the Monaco, Europe, the world and helped her serve as an elegant ambassador of the American culture and people.

The ancient Greek orator Demosthenes, was the classic example of someone who worked very hard to become an elegant communicator. He was born with a serious speech impediment, and people jeered at his stammering in his first public assembly. To learn to speak distinctly, he talked with pebbles in his mouth and recited verses while running uphill. (Not only did it force him to improve his speaking abilities, but also it got him in great physical shape (another aspect of being elegant.) To strengthen his voice, he spoke on the seashore over the roar of the waves. His discipline and determination helped him become one of the greatest orators of Ancient Greece.

You can learn the skills you need to become an elegant communicator. I call them the "Elegant Dozen" -- guidelines you can follow that can change your life.How can you become an elegant communicator?There are 12 crucial ingredients for elegance:

1. Honesty - Practice rigorous honesty in everything you do, all your transactions, all relationships.
2. Confidence - Develop confidence, and exude it, without arrogance, help others to be confident.
3. Flexibility - Adjust and adapt quickly to unexpected changes. Life is "Plan B" -- be adaptable to changes.
4. Passion - Exude passion in everything you do. Feel passion. Do things you are passionate about, and do them often!
5. Practice - Practice hard, for long periods of time until you are tired, and practice often.
6. Praise - Be enormously encouraging to yourself and to others. Give Praise showers.
7. Play - Yes, play. If you want to be elegant, learn how to play. Play creates balance in our lives and allows us to be more creative and productive when we work.
8. Posture -- When you have good posture, your performance improves. Don't let yourself be lazy. Posture yourself as a person with good character and UNRELENTINGLY stay there, no matter what the circumstance!
9. Physical fitness -  Strive to be fit, it gives you confidence and keeps you at your best.
10. Be interesting - Learn, have a varied life, read, go to workshops, study, have hobbies, have adventures!
11. Be interested - Have and show interest in others. Ask questions often. Ask questions always!
12. Discipline - Be highly disciplined, find ways to bring discipline into your life. Have focus and use discipline to keep your focus. Have Goals, every day, every month, every year!

7 Tips for Giving a Speech for People Who are Not Accustomed to Public Speaking

I am so proud, because it's time for my biggest event of the year. For years, I have been coaching my clients to give speeches to raise money for scholarships for injured Israeli combat soldiers. I get to coach injured soldiers who stand up and bravely tell their stories and make speeches - like ROCKSTARS! It's not often that I am in the presence of so much courage and valor in one room. Last year, in Boca, they raised more than a million dollars in one night - 50 Scholarships! This year, they are aiming for 55 scholarships. I have to glue my feet to the floor because I am so proud of them, I want to jump and down like a wacko cheerleader... BRAVO!!!!! after their speech. The FIDF helps people in ways we can't even imagine, and I am blessed to be there to help, to be a part of goodness, which begets more goodness... miracles.

 

What are my recommendations to the soldiers who are not experienced in public speaking and need to give a speech to a large audience?

1.  Don't write down your speech. It's YOUR story, and YOU KNOW IT BY HEART.  Give your speech by heart.  When you write it down, it makes you nervous to shift your eyes from the audience to the paper, hoping you find your place.  The audience doesn't know what's on the paper, and it's better if it comes from your heart.  So I recommend you OUTLINE your speech, not write it down.

2. The winning formula is 20% preparation and 80% practice. You should not still be on the computer the night before your speech, you should be walking around the laun practicing your speech (just like John Kennedy used to do).  You should be saying it in the car, in the shower, and in YOUR SLEEP!

3.  Record yourself, and practice the speech with your own voice.  It's the quickest way to learn a speech on short notice, or if you have a short time to prepare.  You also get to know what you left out and what you should say differently.

4.  TIME YOURSELF.  Good timing does not happen by accident.  Amateurs ramble, professional speakers speak with precision, and timing is the result of tight planning and practice.

5.  Build your confidence.  It takes confidence to give a speech, and confidence does NOT arrive by Fedex, I always say.  You have to build it.  So use positive self talk, and visualize your speech being a success... visualize it in detail, from beginning to end.  This is a tool athletes use too, and are just some of the tools for confidence building in public speaking.

6.  Body language - Delivery:  practice with your feet grounded and your elbows bent, for natural gestures. Don't fold your hands in front of you, it creates a barrier between you and the audience. Don't 'fly' the podium.  The new style is to get out and move around.

7.  Smile.  Yes, smile.  Find the places in your speech you CAN smile, and practice smiling while you are giving the speech... it relaxes you and it relaxes your audience.  Studies show that if we like you, we believe what you are saying is a good idea.  So smile.  Practice in the mirror... it works!   

Good luck!  (But luck has nothing to do with it!)  Practice, practice practice!

"Lisa-isms"


Amateurs ramble, professional speakers know that timing is a SKILL!
--Lisa

Due to the Movie, Having a Speech Coach is 'Chic'!

Wednesday, February 9, 2011'King's Speech' brings clamor for voice coaches

Business Of Life Crain's Chicago Business

'King's Speech' brings clamor for voice coaches: Business Of Life Crain's Chicago Business

"Voice coaches are feeling the buzz of “The King's Speech,” the film about King George VI of England, which has snared 12 Oscar nominations. Business at Chicago-based Total Voice Inc. was up 25% this January over last, following the late-December opening of the film about the king and his coach, Lionel Logue. “The film is capturing something in the ether,” says owner Kate DeVore, 41. “It's making people aware that vocal coaching is even a service.”

A Word from Lisa:
One day in February 2010, I realized I was suddenly overbooked with my accent, voice and speech coaching, and had to go to a waiting list!

In the middle of the night, I bolted up in bed from my sleep, and yelled, "It's The King's Speech! That's it! It was nominated for all those academy awards! THAT'S IT!" The dog barked, the birds stirred and said, "go to bed," and even the cat raised it's head in curiosity. Of course, it immediately went back to sleep. I didn't. "Wow," I replied, scratching my head in wonder, "Wow." "Say it right!" quipped my African Grey, Valentina Dinero (she loves vowel sounds and plosives.)
Because of this movie and all it's nominations for academy awards, it is now not only stylish to work with a speech coach, but it's 'officially chic'! I have not had a chance to see the movie yet, but a couple of my clients called me from New York and said, "Lisa you HAVE to see this movie, it reminds us of our sessions with you... doing all those strange and fun things you made us do, like talking with corks in our mouth!"

So I researched on the internet, and sure enough, I found my midnight hunch was correct. So I thank the writers and producers of the movie for showing the public that working with a speech coach is FUN, EXCITING and it works!

"Lisa-isms"



I cried when I watched the movie The King's Speech!  Some of my clients did too!
--Lisa

The Art of Explaining Things

Take Some Tips from the Best: Use Magic and a bit of Stardust

That's it. I'll tell them, Ivan. My friend Ivan called from Alaska and quipped that I need to go to Washington to tell them how to explain the stimulus package so people understand. I said, "Hey, that's what my newsletter is about this month, The Art of Explaining Things!" Then my Persuasion class at Barry University decided that the White House needs to explain the stimulus package in a way that the people in Liberty City understand! (Liberty City is a particularly rough area in Miami, the home of may historical racial riots.) "So that," I said, "is your final exam!" They screamed. I was joking.

But I did think about my hero, the best 'explainer' in the universe; the man who explained physics to millions; the man who explained the Space Shuttle Challenger's o-ring problem on live TV in the 1980s; the late physicist and Renaissance Man, Richard Feynman. I discovered Mr. Feynman's gift when I checked out his 1963 lectures on Physics from the library. I was hungry for thought on long boring drives. Little did I know that Feynman would pack my imagination into a rocket, and shoot me to the moon! My brain was never the same after listening to Richard Feynman. I was amazed at how smart I was, and how much I knew about Physics. He said that we are made of stardust, the same particles that make up the stars, and now I understood chemistry of the universe, completely. He took me to a new point of view.

When Feynman explained nanotechnology, he described how we could write the 24 volumes of the encyclopedia Britanica on the head of a pin. When he explained the fun of understanding systems, he called the workings of machines 'the guts'. The examples go on and on. I could listen to Feynman forever. Feynman is the acknowledged inventor of quantum computing, an expert in nanotechnology, but he was gifted in explaining highly complex things to ordinary people. (And he had so much fun at it!) We loved to listen to him, and gave him the Nobel prize. Feynman died of Cancer in 1988. The world lost one of its comets.

So I began to study Richard Feynman: the way he talked, his brave and courageous way of living life and explaining life. How did he do it? How can I learn (and teach) the magical techniques of this gifted communicator? How can I use Richard Feynman's style to help people learn to motivate others, captivate audiences, win clients, influence and inspire people? After reading most of his books, and books written about him, I came up with some ideas to practice communicating as dazzling as Richard Feynman.

5 Ways To Explain Things so People Remember Them - Feynman Style

1. Use vivid, visual words. (Create a visual snapshot in people's minds). For example, Feynman uses jumping into a pool to explain light.

2. Evoke the senses: Feynman explains the Space Shuttle Challenger accident with glass of ice-water on TV, and dropped the shuttle's o-ring in it, clamped. When he pulled it out, it remained misshapen when the clamp was removed -- showing that the cold prevented the o-rings from contracting!

3. Break down information into a journey. For example, you can use train trips and each point is stop. You can use a flight, a mountain climb, a hike. Feynman used "exploring a new continent" to explain nature. He said, "We see water and call it a river because that's what we know. But actually, it's a lake!"

4. Make up a metaphor, use something people know. Turn complex things into things that we know and which we can relate. I use "self-esteem does not arrive by FedEx" to explain that you must learn and apply techniques to raise your own self-esteem.

5. Don't explain something the boring way, no one will remember it. Be brave, be different. After practicing metaphors in my coaching session, one of my clients created a brilliant metaphor to explain a quantity of liquid used in his manufacturing process. Instead of "ml" or "millileter" he said the amount of liquid "equivalent to the weight of the ink in a fingerprint." (Bravo, George! Now that is a Feynman-style thing, something people remember!)

You Can Practice! Two Feynman-Style exercises to help you transform your 'tech-talk' or 'sales talk' into music:

1. Imagine your information as place. Feynman used a pool. You can imagine your 'thing' as a building! Take auditing, for example. What does the entrance way of auditing look like? When you enter a room, what do you see? What does the basement look like? This technique works for flight safety as easy as it works for the steps in mediation or meditation! Play with your visual journey until you perfect your message in a way people can "see" what you are explaining. You may have to experiment with several places before you find the right one that works.

2. Choose an unrelated object, like an orange, or something odd. People will connect your information to the visual and will remember what you are saying. Be unusual. For example, use an orange to explain a mortgage! (What happens when you turn it into juice?) Have some "Feynman" fun! I was coaching a client on how to present her complex natural therapy in 5 major steps. We used the poster in the room - a Dr. Seuss poster of the "Cat and the Hat" -- to move from point to point. All five points fit the five things the cat was juggling! (She didn't use the poster in her presentation, but she mastered the technique of helping people move from step to step.) And that's the "Feynman-style" trick of getting people to REMEMBER what you are saying. (Hooray, Amy!)

Try these exercises to explain anything: your relationships, your business, your service, your product, your vision, physics, or (yes!) even stimulus plans!

It takes some practice to acquire the skill, but it's fun, and highly effective. You won't find your answers on your first try, but you get better at it! Mr. Feynman, you did much more than teach us physics, you taught us the art of explaining things!

Fun With Feynman

Here are some fun Videos about Richard Feynman:

Feynman explains confusion by talking about the ape, two sticks and a banana.

Feynman explaining nature as a game of chessFeynman talks about uncertainty
The Website for Feynman online

"If you have any talent, or any occupation that delights you, do it, and do it to the hilt.

Don’t ask why, or what difficulties you may get into."

- Richard Feynman

Hear more about the techniques of Richard Feynman and other Excellent Communicators in Lisa's The Art of Being Memorable Workshop and KeynoteA fun and lively program that helps you polish your authentic self, find the sparkle that's inside you, and ignite it. Learn techniques to improve your authenticity, listening skills, confidence and impact. (Also available in private executive coaching.)

For more tips on being a great public speaker, contact Lisa Jeffery for private executive coaching, workshops or keynotes.

Lisa Jeffery's Lisa-isms (Saying of the Month)

Lisa-isms

Saying of the Month

Like Richard Feynman, aspire to light your words on fire!

Spanish Speakers like Yellow

It's yellow! No, I mean it's jello! Well, jou know what I mean!

I get tickled with how my Spanish speaking accent reduction clients always get the "Y" and "J" sounds mixed up. I love the yellow/jello problem. It's typical in the accent of Spanish speakers speaking English. Why does it always happen and how do we stop it? That's a question they always ask me. We both know that they know how to make both sounds correctly, but it always happens.

What's going on with that? Well, first of all, it's not a speech mix up, it's a brain mix up. The brain gets confused and wants to switch the sounds in the Spanish-speaking mind. You want to say J when you're supposed to say Y and vice versa and you keep getting it mixed up. It's because the language of Spanish switches it. So how do you fix it?

Well I like to suggest tricking the brain. Say it wrong, and say it right, say it wrong, and say it right. Stand up and change positions as you say, this will signal the brain that something different is happening. Say each sound until the brain understands.

If you've ever seen fresh snow, kids love to make a path through the fresh snowfall. If it's deep, all the kids follow the same crooked path to school. That's what you have done for the sounds these letters make in your brain. You will keep following the path until you build a new one.

Here's a trick for jou (I mean you!)

To make sure you say the Y sound correctly, say i as in "it". Hold the sound i, then push your toungue forward, but don't let it touch the gum ridge. So here's how you practice:
i-yellow
i-you
i-young
i-yes
i-yell

It sounds strange at first, but the more you practice this technique the easier it will be to say the y sound instead of the j sound.

Then, move on to sentences and have some fun! Here are some practice sentences:

Joe dropped the jo-yo into the yam-flavored jam.
Jill will yell if Jake Yates drops the yoke on her jacket.
You young jury jerks just yell and yell and you jeer too!

Accent reduction does not have to be a miserable, tedious process. It can be fun if you can laugh at yourself while correcting yourself. My accent reduction clients often begin correcting themselves in about the third week of accent reduction coaching. That's when the miracle happens!

For more information on accent reduction coaching, classes and helpful hints, visit my website and sign up for my mothnly newsletter. http://www.crossingborderscommunication.com/.

Timrod and Dylan

Steal Like Crazy Until You Make Yourself Up!

The Constantly Reappearing "Stolen" Techniques of the Great Speakers

I have a fun assignment in my public speaking class. We study the greatest speeches ever made. My stack of these speeches is now a mile high, because I’m very greedy and love finding new speeches. A funny thing happens as we start to study the great techniques of the masters: the same techniques pop up over and over again. They all copy each other! For example, Abraham Lincoln’s message in the Gettysburg Address was the same message in the funeral oration at the ancient Greek leader, Pericles's funeral during the Peloponnesian War as described by Thucydides!So after great delight in studying these speeches, I came up with a brilliant stolen idea: “Steal like crazy until you make yourself up!” (I’m talking techniques, not plagerism!) So here are some of the techniques that appear again and again in speeches. You too can steal these ideas. They turn a speech into magic!

1. Techniques to Copy from the Great Speakers:
2. Use parallel sentences: Start your sentences (or paragraphs) the same way.
3. Us vs. them (one or the other) (polarizing)
4. The Seesaw Effect (ask not what… but what)
5. Metaphors (highly successful!)
6. The List (the Homeric List – Homer first made use of the list. It’s powerful!)
7. Repetition, repetition, repetition
8. Play on words -- Using unusual words in different contexts
9. Opposites - contrast
10. Comparison
11. Pushing the boundaries, risk
12. Use word pictures (trickling down our economy) (twilight struggle)
13. Use what I call “sparkling” words.
14. Story telling, and parables
15. Weaving a (metaphor) theme….. throughout the speech
16. Tapping into a shared myth
17. Shock
18. Irony
19. A new twist to an old theme
20. The use of asking questions (and sometimes answering them.)
21. Evoke the senses
22. Create a sense of community
23. Conversational style
24. Alliteration
25. Ask Questions instead of statements (and repeat them throughout the speech.)

"Lisa-isms"



"Steal like crazy until you make yourself up!"
--Lisa