词汇大师-- A Fast Way to Make Yourself

　　AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: More advice about giving oral presentations.
Last week English teacher Nina Weinstein talked about ways to get mentally prepared. The most important part of any speech is you, Nina says. But for the audience, the focus is not you but the information they are there to get. And one way for English language learners to make themselves more understandable is to slow down.

　　NINA WEINSTEIN: "You can't make your pronunciation perfect if it's not there yet. You need to take pronunciation classes or whatever, but you still have to give your speech. And so one of the most effective ways to be understood is to cut your speed in half. Whenever you're speaking to a group you have to slow down anyway, even if you're a native speaker. So that's one technique.
"Another technique is to open your mouth wider. A lot of times students feel that they're pronouncing the 'th' sound or the 'w' sound or the 'b' sound fully¹, but in actuality if their mouths are not open wide, then maybe thirty percent of the sound is being trapped. And so just doing those two things makes it easier for the audience to understand you no matter what level you are."
RS: "So how would you practice doing these skills? Basically what we've talked about is the end game, of actually making a presentation. How do you get there? How do you practice -- can you divide this up into bits?"
AA: "Do you write out the speech word for word and try to memorize it?"
NINA WEINSTEIN: "No, no, I don't encourage my students to do that, and none of the places that I've taught have encouraged that. If you write it out word for word, then what you're ultimately² going to do is memorize it, and then you're reading. You just memorize something, and you're kind of giving that as if you're reading it. No, I have my students put it on three-by-five cards and just put lines as if they're outlining it, just put things that will help them with the sequence of it, so they don't forget something that they want to say.
"As far as the actual practicing of it, they practice in front of a mirror, we practice in class. But one of the things that they should do that I think is really effective is to have someone videotape them. Because one of the issues about giving a speech is controlling your body language.
"You don't want to stand like a statue, but on the other hand you don't want nervous gestures. I had a student who played with his hair the whole time, so that becomes really distracting³ and it focuses the audience's attention on the fact that he's nervous.
"So if you videotape, you're going to see something like that. Or sometimes students will kind of sway back and forth⁴ a little bit or maybe they're holding the cards in their hands and they're tapping on them with their index finger, or those kinds of things that can be caught if they videotape."
AA: "And kind of look back and forth across the audience as you talk, look in front and in back? What do you tell people to do with their gaze?"
NINA WEINSTEIN: "They need to make eye contact. What happens sometimes is that students will sweep the audience but they won't go all the way to each side, so the people on the ends are left out. And that's how it feels as an audience member if the speaker doesn't look at you, you feel as if you've been left out.
"So you want to make sure that you're looking at everyone. You don't have to actually look at them, but you have to look in their direction, so it feels like you're looking at them. In a small group, you actually will be looking at them. But let's say that you're speaking in front of fifty people or a hundred people. You won't actually be looking at each person, but you'll be sweeping⁵ the room so that it looks like you are."
RS: "And just moving on beyond the classroom, how do you think that by doing these kinds of oral presentations in the classroom can help them with their English language learning outside the classroom?"
NINA WEINSTEIN: "I think it can help them in every way. First of all, they get confidence because they feel what it is to be in control of English. I think when we learn another language we know that we're not in control. We're trying our best and we're juggling⁶ so many different skill areas and so forth. But the tricks that I teach them, the slowing down, the opening your mouth wider, if there's a grammar issue and people don't understand, you can go back to the basic grammar structure of subject-verb-object -- these are all tricks and tools for them to control themselves in English.
"And so I think once they feel that, my students tell me that they apply it to their other classes, whether they're giving oral presentations or they're just expressing their opinion in a class. It's basically the same skill."
AA: English teacher and author Nina Weinstein comes to us from the VOA bureau in Los Angeles. Her books are available through Amazon.com. And you can find previous segments⁷ with Nina at our Web site, voanews.com/wordmaster. And that's WORDMASTER for this week. Our e-mail address is [email protected]. With Rosanne Skirble, I'm Avi Arditti.

1 fully   

adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地

参考例句：

• The doctor asked me to breathe in,then to breathe out fully.医生让我先吸气，然后全部呼出。
• They soon became fully integrated into the local community.他们很快就完全融入了当地人的圈子。

2 ultimately   

adv.最后地，最终地，首要地，基本地

参考例句：

• It was a demeaning and ultimately frustrating experience.那是一次有失颜面并且令人沮丧至极的经历。
• Vitamin C deficiency can ultimately lead to scurvy.缺乏维生素C最终能道致坏血病。

3 distracting   

v.使（人）分心，分散（注意力）( distract的现在分词 )；打扰

参考例句：

• You're distracting me from my work. 你使我不能专心工作。
• Nothing is more distracting than a neurotic boss. 没有什么比神经过敏的老板更恼人的了。 来自《简明英汉词典》

4 forth   

adv.向前；向外，往外

参考例句：

• The wind moved the trees gently back and forth.风吹得树轻轻地来回摇晃。
• He gave forth a series of works in rapid succession.他很快连续发表了一系列的作品。

5 sweeping   

adj.范围广大的，一扫无遗的

参考例句：

• The citizens voted for sweeping reforms.公民投票支持全面的改革。
• Can you hear the wind sweeping through the branches?你能听到风掠过树枝的声音吗？

6 juggling   

n. 欺骗, 杂耍(=jugglery) adj. 欺骗的, 欺诈的 动词juggle的现在分词

参考例句：

• He was charged with some dishonest juggling with the accounts. 他被指控用欺骗手段窜改账目。
• The accountant went to prison for juggling his firm's accounts. 会计因涂改公司的帐目而入狱。

7 segments   

部分( segment的名词复数 )； 瓣； [计算机]（字符等的）分段； [动物学]节片

参考例句：

• He is eating oranges in segments. 他正在一瓣瓣地吃橘子。
• Gene cloning provides a means of purifying and propagating specific DNA segments. 基因克隆化提供了一种纯化和扩增特定DNA片段的方法。