Metaglossia: The Translation World

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Dear Abby: I'm really bad when it comes to speaking. It's hard for me to squeak out the few words I can. I am shy and not very sociable, so when I'm with people, even my two friends, I feel like I come across as rude.

Trainer's tip: Your presentation is ready – but is your voice? Christina Hession limbers up.

As a trainer your voice is an essential part of your equipment - so it's important to look after it.
You need to ensure that before a training session you warm up your voice so it doesn't get strained. This is especially important if you are delivering an all-day training session, or if you have a number of sessions very close together over a few days.

Through years of experience in amateur dramatics, I've developed six top tips to prepare your voice for speaking:

Drink more water: Being dehydrated will affect all the lubrication systems in your body. Drink eight glasses of water daily. Keep the dehydrating tea, coffee, alcohol and soft drinks to a minimum. If you have a dry throat while training, sip a small amount of water, hold it in your mouth for a second, and then swallow.
Rest and sleep: Sufficient rest and sleep are vital to keep the voice healthy. If the body is tired, it will not be able to support the voice effectively. Don't forget to rest your voice if you have been practising a lot, or you have a cold.
Relax: Avoid stress if possible as it contributes to vocal fatigue and strain. If you're feeling stressed try to find time to relax – even if just for a few minutes. Also try walking, swimming, tai chi or yoga.
Irritants: Irritants like smoke are best avoided. Cigarettes dry the throat and affect the mucous lining. Apart, from making you more prone to sore throats and coughs, smoke will impact negatively on your breath control. Fumes from varnish or paint can also affect the throat, so household tasks involving both, should be avoided (a good excuse to ask someone else to do them!)
Exercise: Regular exercise and keeping fit are also important. However if you are doing sit-ups or weight training in a gym, care is needed. It is easy to get tight around your throat area and strain your voice.
Warm up: All the muscles connected to voice production, and not just the vocal chords, need to be warmed up before going into action, just like the other muscles in the body. A five minute vocal workout (see below) should be sufficient.
The simple vocal workout:

Learn how to improve your speaking skills using some techniques as Shadowing, maybe like many people you've heard of it, but don't actually use it. Now is a good time to start.

http://www.engvid.com Other or another? Make or do? Fun or funny? In this lesson, I'm going to teach you how to avoid FIVE very common mistakes in spoken Eng...

Can you speak multiple languages? Does that mean you are qualified to be both a translator and interpreter?