Get Organized to Learn More Effectively

You're busy, so the least you can do to prepare for your next meeting or presentation is to practice a few words that you struggle with so that you can speak more confidently and create a stronger impression.

In another article, "Get the Rhythm of Effective Speaking: 4 Easy Steps," I shared with you one of the most common reasons people are misunderstood and a process you can use in preparation of effective communication. The fourth step was to "create a word list then practice accordingly." But how will you do that?

You'll find a few ways you can organize your word list here in this article.

Long list of words? No problem. Break it down into smaller parts.

If you have a long list of words you would like to pronounce differently so that you can speak more effectively, no problem. Learning these words can be easy with a little bit of know-how and organization.

Most of your words will end up in one of the four categories below.

Vowel Length

Let's say that you thought the stress for the word "speCIFic" should be "SPEcific," or maybe you say "COMponent" instead of "comPONent." In these cases, you can write the stressed syllable in ALL CAPS.

Not sure which syllable to stress? Look it up in a dictionary and see where the apostrophe is. In the screenshot below from Merriam Webster Dictionary, there is a tiny apostrophe before the second syllable, indicating that we make that syllable's vowel longer.

So, for vowel length, you can organize your list by which syllable is the longest--the first, the last, or somewhere in the middle. (If you want to get very specific, you can organize based on patterns found in English by suffix or part of speech, but my guess is you won't need to do this, nor have the time for it.)

Vowel Sound

Alternately, you can organize your list by vowel sound of the longest syllable. This would be useful if it sounds like you are saying "campus" when you are trying to say "compost," for example.

Do you have difficulty distinguishing between vowel sounds? Check out this technique where you can organize your vowels by color: the Color Vowel system. In this case, you would add "COMpost" to your list under "OLive" words.

For an easy way to learn a word's color, you can install an extension in your Chrome web browser so that all you have to do is right-click on a highlighted word. This will give you the option to open Blue Canoe's Pronunciation Dictionary where you can clearly see the underlined stressed syllable and hear the color of that peak vowel.

Number of Syllables

Another way to categorize words is by the number of syllables. You could count syllables or simply indicate to yourself whether there are more or fewer syllables than you originally thought.

For example, let's say that you thought that "surprised" was pronounced with 3 syllables: "sur-pri-sed."

Surprise! There are only two syllables. So you can categorize it as a 2-syllable word or as a word with Fewer Syllables: "sur-PRISED (2)."

Confusing Consonant

It is no secret that English has many sounds that other languages lack (and vice versa, of course). While there are many "right" ways to pronounce words (as in the many ways that the "th" is pronounced and understood--see "Dialectal realizations"), there are some ways to pronounce sounds that will only confuse listeners.

For example, if you want to say "ice" but you instead pronounce it as "eyes," that /s/ versus /z/ (and differences in vowel length) distinction could make a listener pause. So here, you might add "ice" to a list of /s/ words. Note the underline.

Similarly, if it sounds like you are saying "boat" when you mean "vote," you will add "vote" to a list of /v/ words.

Not sure how to organize your list? Send me a message.

After you organize, then what?

Ready? Set! Learn!

Now that you're organized, it's time to learn the pronunciation. Not sure how? Have a look at the article I wrote called "So, you can't pronounce that word. What are you going to do about it?" for some tips.

Once you pronounce English words so that others can understand, you will be able to speak more effectively and confidently.

Watch a free training video here to learn more about how you can speak English more effectively and confidently in less than 3 months so that you can do your part to promote sustainability.