Wednesday 8 December 2010

Export English, what did Lord Alan Sugar mean?

I had to giggle the other day when Lord Sugar reminded the would be apprentices to talk in export English when they pitched their products abroad, what he really meant to say was when you present to an audience that English is not their first language certain rules need to be adhered to, especially if your accent is'nt BBC perfect. Be aware of:

 

1. pace, slow down let the audience get used to your accent, look our for visual body language that they are struggling to understand

2. TLA's (three letter acronyms) and jargon, cut it out altogether, don't assume that your audience will understand, keep it simple

3. get an undersatnding of the audiences vocabulary before you start to pitch, ask open questions, you may be suprised at how much or little they understand

4. watch out for cultural taboos and etiquette, you dont want to get off to a bad start!

5. if possible, put markers in place every couple of minutes to ensure the audience understands you, open questions work fine or quick summaries

 

As a golden rule, prepare the language of your presentation for an audience of 12 yr olds, you can always go up or down in complexity once you've covered point 3.