Barriers, a barrier prevents you from doing something or it reduces your ability to do something. It frustrates you and makes it difficult for you to communicate. Of course the number one barrier, like I said before, is language. And I've struggled with Chinese, it's difficult for me. I don't study it, and I just speak it, and I'm not great but I don't really have too much trouble. Traveling, going to the doctor perhaps, going to the bank, or whatever, or talking to friends, or something like that, telling jokes. But I don't really have the technical ability to actually translate something, or act as a translator between a non-speaker and a native Chinese speaker. So I really should improve my Chinese, I know. I know I should. Technical barriers. Well generally, The barrier between you and me is not very much. It's language and maybe some cultures and audio perhaps. But between me and the people on the other side of that camera, worldwide, we have a barrier of the quality of the video, the sound quality. These could be two different areas. But of course today's modern technology, it's very good. So there's not much. But when you go talk to somebody in an office, on let's say a teleconferencing phone, and the quality of the audio isn't so good, you can't see them. You don't know their body language. You don't know what's going on. You don't have this ability. And so the technical barriers are definitely improved by using good quality cameras and good quality audio. Language, well language, of course. The language suitable for the area you're communicating in. If you're making a presentation about software then you should have background in software engineering. If you're making a presentation about cooking then you should know something about cooking. And describe the different instruments. Describe the different ingredients. Know how to describe how things are done and prepared. All these things are part of technical knowledge and developing your language skills. Visual. Of course, your PowerPoint should be clear enough that people in the last row can see it well. Generally I look at it this way. If it's four of five meters, the letter should be about four fingers wide. So when you put the display up here and go okay four meters five meters. You can pretty much one finger per meter it works fairly well for me, right. So if you know how big the room is you can setup the size of your text. Too large a text is not a problem. Too small a text is a big problem. And so, you really should be able to let the last person in the last row be able to read it. So, in other words, you know the room. You go to the room first. You check the room and say, where will the audience sit, how many people will be there. This also tells you about the audio. How far away will people be? Can people understand me by my spoken word? Do I need a microphone? See. Now, in this case the room is about five meters and I can speak loud enough but ain't bigger than that. And I'd be shouting and I'd feel uncomfortable after an hour or two. So usually if it's a little closer it's a little bit better. But I have a microphone so I'm okay. And cultural barriers. Now we have talked a lot about this because it is one of the big important parts about what we are talking about. But this is a barrier. If you don't understand each other's culture, what they think is right, what they think is good, what they think is beautiful, what they think is professional, what they think is useful, then you have a cultural barrier. If you can't adapt to your environment. The people you're with. So these are areas that you need to think about when you're preparing your PowerPoint delivery are the barriers you have to overcome to improve your communications with your audience. Overcoming the barriers. Okay, well Technical knowledge of hardware and software. Because we're in a software area I think, is an interesting area I've been involved in. Being able to communicate by analyzing the audience abilities, your audience's knowledge. And then fitting the technical knowledge that they need to know about the hardware, software to fit them. This is a very important part of making sure you speak at a level they can understand. You don't go to a bunch of software engineers and go, this is a computer. This is a display. Here's the mouse. You should be able to talk about white box, black box, and all kinds of different things like that if it's software engineers, right. Speak carefully and practice. Now you may have noticed that my language tends to be very formal. I'm a native speaker, but that's not the only thing. I'm a trained speaker. I used to be on the radio as a news director. And I trained myself to speak using broadcast English. In other words, every word I say means something. I don't come up with phrases like you know and I knock the ball out of the park these phrases you would have no idea about unless you lived in America. Instead as a professor or a announcer if you're like a news director. I have to able to communicate with the audience. In a way that they can't misunderstand me. That everything I say is proper, formal, and not something that's, I don't know, informal. I don't speak informally, and actually, I have to say, that when I go to America and I'm talking to people, people go, what are you, a professor? Yeah. Because I don't speak like normal Americans that much, but everybody understands me, and that's why I teach formal English. Because this is the English that you get when you watch television, listen to the radio, the doctor, the lawyer, the instructor, the lecturer. The teachers, they speak formal English. And so this is what I teach when I teach English anyway. Or I give a lecture. I teach in formal English. Now I hope you'll speak this way, formal English. Now if you want to do this, you can go online and find news broadcasts in English in America for example. Where the English is quite good. And I think cbs.com has the script. So you can watch the video know, what's going on. Read the script. Exact script dialog. Learn any words you don't know and go back and practice again. This is a very good way of learning better English if you want formal English. If you watch Fast and Furious and everybody's going [NOISE] and you're like whoa, I never heard anybody talk like that before. It's because we don't generally in the academic world. We generally speak properly and formally. We don't talk like people who are movie stars, acting cool, tough or dramatic or things like that. So there are different programs, what is it Friends? Now I've never seen Friends, because I've lived in Asia for 35 years, I don't watch TV. The only thing I've ever seen is the Big Bang. What was that, hang on, Sex and the City and Desperate Housewives. I don't think I've even seen because a girlfriend like to watch that. Okay I'll watch it. But anyway, so that English is pretty good. Friends i don't know, I've heard it's kind of slang, but I'm not really sure. So I would suggest you, if you want to practice developing your formal English. To make your presentation sound professional. Find some Academy Award winning movies from the 1930s to about the first part of the 1960s about rich people. Their English will be perfect. These are highly educated actors. Used to be actors you use to have to be really highly educated. because it's expensive to make a movie, you make a mistake, there's another $1000 wasted in film right? So actors usually were very intelligent and capable of remembering and speaking well. And these people spoke very good English. So, I think at Baydah Book Street down here, there's an old market used to be down there that sold academy award winning movies in black and white. It might still be there, but I haven't seen that in a few years. They might've changed it. I don't know, but you can, you have other ways to get the movies, I'm sure, right? And you can find these old movies, and you can download the scripts from scripts.com. And you can read the script. Watch the movie, read the script and you can learn formal English, and practice this before you make your presentations. Okay, sorry. Okay again prepare your slides to fit the room. I told you this before, the finger rule. One finger one meter, things like that. So your slides should have good contrasts. Red white, black white, a dark color light color. Contrast allows you to see things easier. I knew today I'm going to stand before a white screen. So I wore a black shirt. I knew the color combination would be red. So I wore a red tie, and for other reasons. Red's such a happy color. And so I tried to fit the environment. So your slides should have good contrast. Light on dark, dark on light. Okay. They shouldn't be too crowded with information. We've talked about that before too. They should be something that informs, educates, and makes you attracted to watch it and look at it, see? But I didn't do that today. No pictures. Sound requirements this is very important. If you have a microphone make sure it's working properly. Check, check and counter check. Again, because if people don't understand you they're going to fall asleep and not pay attention. If you're not communicating well, people can't hear what you're saying clearly, this leads to misunderstandings, and mistakes. When you have a room, check the room. How big is it, how much sound quality do you need, do you have the microphones, and audio equipment there? Really, I I don't care so much about the PPT as I do about the voice. Because that's the most important part to me, the presenter. And of course, know your audience. And we know all about that already, right?
