Member Article

Making jargon easy

With Simon Raybould of Curved Vision Theatre

I’ve spent a few days recently training computer programmers – and judging by their company’s success, very good programmers! However, they were aware that they weren’t, as a group, very good at telling people about what they did, what their programs did and how they did it. I was able to help in two ways: firstly, we were able to work on confidence and projection. Secondly, we noticed that the typical jargon-laden sentences they used weren’t helpful or easy. Now, I’ve written about how to check for jargon before so today here’s a tip about how to make them easier on your audience if you’ve got to have jargon…

It’s about diction. By that, I mean that clarity of pronunciation makes technical phraseology much easier for your audience. If you have a technical presentation, do two things:

• over-pronounce – you probably won’t actually be doing that, but try until it feels like it to you
• warm up your lips before your start – rub your lips and cheeks, smack your lips together and yaaawwwwn to stretch your jaw and cheek muscles

It’s embarrassingly simple, but you’ll be amazed how much easier it makes it for your audience to understand you! We use simple techniques like this on our training days and people are always amazed by how useful they are.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .