Learnship 04 - 2023/08/17
Business Language Coaching - Session 4 - Voice Power(2)
- review your homework assignments
- explore how pausing can help you communicate moe successfully
Voice Power: Word Stress
Look back at the excerpt from last week, in particular at the highlighted words. What do you think are the effects and benefits of adding emphasis or stress to certain words in a sentence?
You *know, | there are a lot of myths about speaking in public. | Myth number one | is that what you actually say | is only seven percent of the message. | Thirty-eight percent is how you sound | and fifty-five percent is how you look. | But think about it. | I mean, | if that was true, | you could go to a talk in Swahili | and still understand ninety-three percent! | Myth number two is that public speaking is most people’s greatest fear | - just above death. | The comedian Jerry Seinfeld has a great joke about that. | He says, | “Come on, | if it really was their greatest fear, | at a funeral | the person giving the eulogy | would rather be in the box!”
The benefits:
- people would pay attention
- easier to recall and recollect
- be more convincing
- expressing feeling/emotions
Voice Power - Word Stress
**In English, word stress is an important part of how we communicate, and changing what we stress can radically change what we mean. In each extract below underline the main stress in the two sentences.
a We haven’t seen a massive improvement yet. But it’s a good start.
b We haven’t seen a massive improvement yet. But my guess is we soon will.
c The market may be declining. But fortunately our market share isn’t.
d The market may be declining. Or this could just be a temporary blip.
e We do pretty well in the States. But we don’t do so well in Europe.
f We do pretty well in the States. But not as well as we could be doing.
g Turnover is up on Q3. But profits are down.
h Turnover is up on Q3. But that was a particularly bad quarter.
i It’s hard to gain a foothold in India. But not impossible.
j It’s hard to gain a foothold in India. But harder still to gain one in China.
k There are a couple of points I’d like to make. And both concern cash flow.
l There are a couple of points I’d like to make. And then I’ll hand you over to Jan.
Work in opposing teams. You are going to re-enact two dramatic presentations from the classic business movie Other People’s Money.
The scene:
Andrew Jorgenson is the patriarchal chairman of New England Wire and Cable. Once highly successful, his company has not kept up with new technology and both revenues and share price are down. Lawrence Garfield, known to his enemies as ‘Larry the Liquidator’, a corporate financier and one of the major stockholders, is trying to persuade the other stockholders at the annual general meeting to vote him in as the new chairman, so he can carry out his plan to sell off the company’s considerable assets before its share price falls any further. Of course, this will mean the closure of the firm and the loss of thousands of jobs.
Work together annotating this famous movie scene using the points below. Then rehearse and read it aloud.
TODO: listen to the audio and mark
I want to share with you some of my thoughts concerning the vote that you’re going to make in the company that you own. This proud company, which has survived the death of its founder, numerous recessions, one major depression, and two world wars, is in imminent danger of self-destructing - on this day, in the town of its birth. There is the instrument of our destruction. I want you to look at him in all of his glory, Larry the Liquidator, the entrepreneur of post-industrial America, playing God with other people’s money. This man leaves nothing. He creates nothing, he builds nothing, he runs nothing.
Vocabulary/Notes
- several months back