[SOUND] Hello, I'm Leah Attruia. Welcome to the third module in our Capstone course. In this module on Successful Speaking, you'll review the key points from the course Speaking Professionally in English and practice more skills to build your fluency and your confidence. Finally, to continue where you left off in the final assignment of that course, you'll organize and deliver a presentation about a personal accomplishment or a sales pitch for a product or service. Through the things you'll learn in this course, you'll be able to build on the presentations you practiced earlier and incorporate vocabulary and skills acquired throughout the course. Before you begin to plan your presentation, I recommend you do a self-evaluation. You learned many ways to improve your pronunciation through the speaking course and you made several recordings of yourself speaking. What parts of your speech worked well? What areas didn't seem so successful? And how can you improve those areas? To answer these questions, you need to evaluate or think about your pronunciation. What does this include? Let's take some time to review what you learned from our Speaking English Professionally course. Try to answer the next evaluation questions with one of these options, yes, somewhat, or no. For your convenience, I've added a checklist handout as an additional resource. So feel free to print that out before continuing with this lesson. First, Word Stress. As you know word stress is key. Do you stress the correct syllable in your content words, especially the key words? What about compound nouns, proper nouns, similar nouns and verbs, and words with suffixes, are you putting the stress on the right syllable? Let's do a quick review for some of these words. Where should the stress be in these words? Check your answers while listening to the correct pronunciation. Bookshelf, Mexico City, present, majority, photography. What about can and can't? Are you pronouncing them correctly with the right a sound? Can your listener understand when you say a teen number or a ten number? How about your word endings? Are your past tense -ed verbs clear and easy to understand? What about words with -s endings, are you pronouncing them correctly? For the questions you answered somewhat, or no too, go back to some of the practice resources from the speaking course and try to improve those areas that need improvement. Next, let's evaluate your sentence stress and intonation. Again, try to answer these questions with one of these answers. Are you careful to put the most stress on your content words, the important nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs in your sentences? Can your listeners really hear those words? If you pronounce very clearly, your listeners will even be able to see your words. To read your lips. To have this clear English pronunciation, you have to open your mouth more than you might feel comfortable with. Next time you watch a movie or an American news cast, notice how the actors or broadcasters open their mouth when they speak, all to make it easier for you to understand them. So as you practice, remind yourself to relax and open your mouth. If you just keep doing it, it will become easier and it'll make you easier to understand. What about your intonation? Does your voice rise at the end of yes/no questions? Does your voice rise and fall on the last important content word in a statement or WH question? Does your intonation signal to your listener when you've finished a sentence or asked a question? Next, what about your speed and volume? Do you remember not to rush and speak slowly? Do you pause before and after important points to give your listeners time to think about your message and to give yourself time to take a breath, to relax? Speaking too fast without much pausing is a sure way to lose your listener's attention and your focus. Let's think about your volume this time. Do your listeners have to ask you to raise or lower your voice? Does your voice carry your energy? Do your listeners get excited with you or lose interest? Again, for the questions you answer somewhat or no to, go back to some of the lessons or practice resources from the speaking course and try to improve those areas that need improvement. Aside from pronunciation, the way you organize your presentation or pitch will affect how you sound. Think about the three tells you learned about in the speaking class. It's also a great idea to include appropriate transition words like first, second, third, or first, next and finally. If you are easy to understand, your listener will enjoy the experience and wants to build the relationship with you. To review organization, look again at lesson one in module five of our Speak English Professionally course. Once you evaluate your skills, you'll know what you need to focus on as you go forward. Now, I want to end this lesson with two very different activities to strengthen how you look and how you sound. As a teacher and a presenter over the years, I know that shaky nerves are probably the biggest reasons speaking moments just don't go well. When you feel nervous, your body language and your pronunciation can really look and sound bad, and when you're communicating a new language, shaky nerves can happen anytime. So what can you do to calm those nerves? I think we've all said it but I'll repeat it, practice, practice, practice. And I don't just mean for a special event, an interview, a meeting, or a presentation. I mean speak English as much as you can in everyday situations. Engage in lots of small talk and phone conversations. Find people you can practice English with and then do it. Another way to calm your nerves is to practise how to relax. In today's fast stressful world, learning how to relax is an important skill and if you do it, it will help your speaking as well as reduce your stress. The simplest care for a stressful speaking moment is to slow down and breath, breath deeply, breath in and breath out. This deep breathing feels good and produces a calming feeling. As I mentioned in the Speak English Professionally course, practicing the power pose developed in Amy Cuddy's TED talk is another way to boost your confidence and calm your nerves. Finally, if you want to try something that's fun, challenging, and another great way to practice and improve your fluency, give yourself a tongue twister workout. Do you know any tongue twisters? She sells sea shells by the seashore. Peter piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. Unique New York. Try that one three times in a row. Unique New York, unique New York, unique New York. In many speaking classes, tongue twisters always make everyone laugh. So be sure to do them with a friend or family member, especially a very young family member. Record them on your phone and share them. In fact, your smartphones are another great tool, use them to film or record yourself. Evaluating your speech carefully and identifying your strengths and weaknesses is a very important part of improving your overall speaking skills. In this lesson, you're doing a self evaluation by reviewing the important speaking skills you'll need for your final assessment in this course and for your own professional success. Your self-evaluation should include how well you are with word stress, sentence stress, intonation, speed, volume, organization and a little bit of body language. Again, use the checklist chart to help guide you better with the evaluation. We also looked at a few ways to increase your confidence and to have some fun. In our next lesson, I'll have some more tips for preparing your final assignment. I look forward to seeing you again soon. 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