What verbal cues do speakers use to draw listeners attention to specific words that they want to emphasize?

Experienced speakers use techniques to make them more interesting to listen to and to help them hold the attention of their audience. Try some of the following the next time you give a presentation.

1. Practice, practice, practice

Rehearsal is essential to speaking well. It will help you keep to a time limit and will allow you to try out various techniques in a low-pressure environment. It will also help you to know your material well, which makes it easier to remember and stay on point. Practice standing and speaking so that you get used to delivering a talk before you have to give it to your audience.

2. Speak, don’t read

Don’t simply read your talk, word-for-word, from a paper. This gets pretty boring for listeners. Spoken language is less formal and wordy than written language, so reading makes you sound stiff and will dampen any sense of energy or spontaneity in your performance. Reading from a paper forces you to look down, instead of speaking to the audience. Instead, if you have a ‘script’, turn it into notes that you can talk from, and glance at only occasionally. It’s less important that you capture the text word for word than that you present the main ideas in a natural and relaxed way (this is where rehearsing helps - it not only improves your performance skills, it enables you to better remember what you want to say).

3. Be yourself

Even in a formal speech, allow your personality to come through. When you’re nervous, it’s easy to tense up and become a little awkward or wooden, but make an effort to stay natural. Smile and make eye contact. You will establish better rapport and credibility if you are being yourself, and your audience will listen more if they can see you as genuine, even if it means being a little less technically perfect.

4. Aim for a positive state of mind and a confident attitude

Try to project confidence, even if you don’t feel it. Remind yourself that you can do it, and that the audience want you to succeed. Visualise a positive outcome. Harness your nervous energy and tell yourself that you are excited - that you have interesting, engaging materials to share with the audience. As you walk to the front of the room, carry yourself in a confident manner. Stand straight, look at the group, take a breath, and smile. Concentrate on what you will tell the audience, rather than your degree of nervousness. This will help you forget your nerves and focus on your topic and your listeners, so you’ll be better able to get them engaged in your speech.

5. Use verbal signposting

Giving an indication of what will be coming later in your talk is an effective way of maintaining audience interest. Use transitions to draw your audience a ‘road map’ of your presentation. For example:

“In a moment I’ll provide some interesting examples, but first ...”

“There are four ways of preventing this. Firstly - secondly - thirdly - finally”

You can also link ideas or sections of your presentation to help your audience follow the overall structure:

“ As I mentioned earlier, the first method was unsuccessful ...”

6. Use examples, illustrations and humour

Use examples or verbal illustrations to create interest. Choose them to suit your audience. An example that comes within their experience of the audience can create interest, a humorous remark can ‘break the ice’ and establish rapport, especially early on.

7. Ask questions and invite participation

Asking questions of your audience throughout your talk helps hold their attention and interest. It also develops a connection between you and the group. Asking questions means you are inviting them to participate and drawing them in to a mutual thinking process. For example:

“Who can estimate the number of individuals left permanently injured by road accidents?”

“Can anyone suggest some alternative uses for plastic bubble wrap?”

“Someone’s home is broken into every seven minutes. Can you believe it?”

You can also speak directly to individual audience members, if appropriate. For example:

“I take it from your reaction that you’ve read something similar, Sarah . . .”

8. Be aware of eye contact and body language

Make eye contact with the audience to help establish a connection. Glance at the faces of group members and don’t be afraid to meet people’s eyes, but don’t stare - use the 3-second method. Look straight into the eyes of an audience member for 3 seconds at a time. Aim for direct eye contact with a number of people, and every now and then glance at the whole group while speaking. Eye contact not only establishes a bond, it can help you register your progress. Faces can indicate interest, confusion and boredom, so you can gauge reactions to what is being said.

Body language is also important. Standing, walking or moving about with appropriate hand gesture or facial expression is far preferable to sitting down or standing still with head down and reading from a paper. Use audio-visual aids or props for enhancement if appropriate and necessary.

9. Learn from the Pros

A great way to learn what good speakers do is to watch them give speeches, note what works and what doesn’t, and adopt these examples into your own style. Note which lecturers are particularly interesting - attend class and watch what they do. Watch some TED Talks online. They tend to be high-quality presentations and provide some great examples.

10. Be aware of technique

Pace

Speaking to an audience requires a pace slower than normal conversation. Nervous speakers tend to speed up, so avoid this. Try varying your pace to create different effects. Try: slow measured speech for a point which is serious or needs emphasising speeding up a little to lend excitement or urgency

Pitch

Aim for a comfortable, medium pitch. High-pitched voices can sound harsh, and a high pitch is often due to shallow breathing and nervousness. Deep, steady breathing and a deliberate attempt to lower the pitch will help reduce nerves. Variations in pitch can be effective. For example, pitch could be raised to add emphasis to a question. However, use with care; too frequent use of high pitch can irritate an audience.

Tone

Tone is the vocal quality which expresses feeling. It can lend warmth and sincerity to your voice or reveal how strongly you feel about a topic. This can evoke a similar response from the audience. In academic presentations, a harshly critical or judgemental tone should be avoided.

Volume

Your voice should be loud enough for the listeners in the back rows to hear comfortably. You can also vary volume to make your talk more lively, but avoid shouting.

Pausing

Inexperienced speakers are often afraid to pause; they see pausing as a failure in fluency, but experienced speakers use pauses to good effect. Pausing can focus attention on what has been said or what is about to be said, can also allow the audience to digest information, or can be used to prepare them for a change in ideas.

* Adapted from: Pitman, 1988, Business Communication.

Make complex information easier to digest!

Imagine you're preparing a presentation for your CEO. You asked everyone in your team to contribute, and they all had plenty to say!

But now you have a dozen reports, all in different styles, and your CEO says that she can spare only 10 minutes to read the final version. What do you do?

The solution is to paraphrase and summarize the reports, so your boss gets only the key information that she needs, in a form that she can process quickly.

In this article, we explain how to paraphrase and how to summarize, and how to apply these techniques to text and the spoken word. We also explore the differences between the two skills, and point out the pitfalls to avoid.

What Is Paraphrasing?

When you paraphrase, you use your own words to express something that was written or said by another person.

Putting it into your own words can clarify the message, make it more relevant to your audience, or give it greater impact.

You might use paraphrased material to support your own argument or viewpoint. Or, if you're putting together a report, presentation or speech, you can use paraphrasing to maintain a consistent style, and to avoid lengthy quotations from the original text or conversation.

Paraphrased material should keep its original meaning and (approximate) length, but you can use it to pick out a single point from a longer discussion.

What Is Summarizing?

In contrast, a summary is a brief overview of an entire discussion or argument. You might summarize a whole research paper or conversation in a single paragraph, for example, or with a series of bullet points, using your own words and style.

People often summarize when the original material is long, or to emphasize key facts or points. Summaries leave out detail or examples that may distract the reader from the most important information, and they simplify complex arguments, grammar and vocabulary.

Used correctly, summarizing and paraphrasing can save time, increase understanding, and give authority and credibility to your work. Both tools are useful when the precise wording of the original communication is less important than its overall meaning.

How to Paraphrase Text

To paraphrase text, follow these four steps:

1. Read and Make Notes

Carefully read the text that you want to paraphrase. Highlight, underline or note down important terms and phrases that you need to remember.

2. Find Different Terms

Find equivalent words or phrases (synonyms) to use in place of the ones that you've picked out. A dictionary, thesaurus or online search can be useful here, but take care to preserve the meaning of the original text, particularly if you're dealing with technical or scientific terms.

3. Put the Text into Your Own Words

Rewrite the original text, line by line. Simplify the grammar and vocabulary, adjust the order of the words and sentences, and replace "passive" expressions with "active" ones (for example, you could change "The new supplier was contacted by Nusrat" to "Nusrat contacted the new supplier").

Remove complex clauses, and break longer sentences into shorter ones. All of this will make your new version easier to understand.

4. Check Your Work

Check your work by comparing it to the original. Your paraphrase should be clear and simple, and written in your own words. It may be shorter, but it should include all of the necessary detail.

Despite the undoubted fact that everyone's vision of what constitutes success is different, one should spend one's time establishing and finalizing one's personal vision of it. Otherwise, how can you possibly understand what your final destination might be, or whether or not your decisions are assisting you in moving in the direction of the goals which you've set yourself?

The two kinds of statement – mission and vision – can be invaluable to your approach, aiding you, as they do, in focusing on your primary goal, and quickly identifying possibilities that you might wish to exploit and explore.

Paraphrase

We all have different ideas about success. What's important is that you spend time defining your version of success. That way, you'll understand what you should be working toward. You'll also know if your decisions are helping you to move toward your goals.

Used as part of your personal approach to goal-setting, mission and vision statements are useful for bringing sharp focus to your most important goal, and for helping you to quickly identify which opportunities you should pursue.

How to Paraphrase Speech

In a conversation – a meeting or coaching session, for example – paraphrasing is a good way to make sure that you have correctly understood what the other person has said.

This requires two additional skills: active listening and asking the right questions.

Useful questions include:

If I hear you correctly, you're saying that…?
So you mean that…? Is that right?
Did I understand you when you said that…?

You can use questions like these to repeat the speaker's words back to them. For instance, if the person says, "We just don't have the funds available for these projects," you could reply: "If I understand you correctly, you're saying that our organization can't afford to pay for my team's projects?"

This may seem repetitive, but it gives the speaker the opportunity to highlight any misunderstandings, or to clarify their position.

When you're paraphrasing conversations in this way, take care not to introduce new ideas or information, and not to make judgements on what the other person has said, or to "spin" their words toward what you want to hear. Instead, simply restate their position as you understand it.

Sometimes, you may need to paraphrase a speech or a presentation. Perhaps you want to report back to your team, or write about it in a company blog, for example.

In these cases it's a good idea to make summary notes as you listen, and to work them up into a paraphrase later. (See How to Summarize Text or Speech, below.)

How to Summarize Text or Speech

Follow steps 1-5 below to summarize text. To summarize spoken material – a speech, a meeting, or a presentation, for example – start at step 3.

1. Get a General Idea of the Original

First, speed read the text that you're summarizing to get a general impression of its content. Pay particular attention to the title, introduction, conclusion, and the headings and subheadings.

2. Check Your Understanding

Build your comprehension of the text by reading it again more carefully. Check that your initial interpretation of the content was correct.

3. Make Notes

Take notes on what you're reading or listening to. Use bullet points, and introduce each bullet with a key word or idea. Write down only one point or idea for each bullet.

If you're summarizing spoken material, you may not have much time on each point before the speaker moves on. If you can, obtain a meeting agenda, a copy of the presentation, or a transcript of the speech in advance, so you know what's coming.

Make sure your notes are concise, well-ordered, and include only the points that really matter.

4. Write Your Summary

Bullet points or numbered lists are often an acceptable format for summaries – for example, on presentation slides, in the minutes of a meeting, or in Key Points sections like the one at the end of this article.

However, don't just use the bulleted notes that you took in step 3. They'll likely need editing or "polishing" if you want other people to understand them.

Some summaries, such as research paper abstracts, press releases, and marketing copy, require continuous prose. If this is the case, write your summary as a paragraph, turning each bullet point into a full sentence.

Aim to use only your own notes, and refer to original documents or recordings only if you really need to. This helps to ensure that you use your own words.

If you're summarizing speech, do so as soon as possible after the event, while it's still fresh in your mind.

5. Check Your Work

Your summary should be a brief but informative outline of the original. Check that you've expressed all of the most important points in your own words, and that you've left out any unnecessary detail.

So how do you go about identifying your strengths and weaknesses, and analyzing the opportunities and threats that flow from them? SWOT Analysis is a useful technique that helps you to do this.

What makes SWOT especially powerful is that, with a little thought, it can help you to uncover opportunities that you would not otherwise have spotted. And by understanding your weaknesses, you can manage and eliminate threats that might otherwise hurt your ability to move forward in your role.

If you look at yourself using the SWOT framework, you can start to separate yourself from your peers, and further develop the specialized talents and abilities that you need in order to advance your career and to help you achieve your personal goals.

Summary

SWOT Analysis is a technique that helps you identify strengths, weakness, opportunities, and threats. Understanding and managing these factors helps you to develop the abilities you need to achieve your goals and progress in your career.

Permission and Citations

If you intend to publish or circulate your document, it's important to seek permission from the copyright holder of the material that you've paraphrased or summarized. Failure to do so can leave you open to allegations of plagiarism, or even legal action.

It's good practice to cite your sources with a footnote, or with a reference in the text to a list of sources at the end of your document. There are several standard citation styles – choose one and apply it consistently, or follow your organization's house style guidelines.

As well as acknowledging the original author, citations tell you, the reader, that you're reading paraphrased or summarized material. This enables you to check the original source if you think that someone else's words may have been misused or misinterpreted.

Some writers might use others' ideas to prop up their own, but include only what suits them, for instance. Others may have misunderstood the original arguments, or "twisted" them by adding their own material.

If you're wary, or you find problems with the work, you may prefer to seek more reliable sources of information. (See our article, How to Spot Real and Fake News, for more on this.)

Paraphrasing means rephrasing text or speech in your own words, without changing its meaning. Summarizing means cutting it down to its bare essentials. You can use both techniques to clarify and simplify complex information or ideas.

To paraphrase text:

Read and make notes.
Find different terms.
Put the text into your own words.
Check your work.

You can also use paraphrasing in a meeting or conversation, by listening carefully to what's being said and repeating it back to the speaker to check that you have understood it correctly.

To summarize text or speech: