Change Your Words, Change Your Worth: How to Get a Job, a Promotion, and More by Speaking and Writing Effectively

By Patricia Blaine

SELF IMPROVEMENT

What do getting a job, earning a promotion, making the right friends, and boosting your confidence all have in common? Doing each one of those things is a whole lot easier when you can speak and write without making grammatical mistakes. Just ask any hiring manager, senior-level executive, or neighbor next door.

In this guide, author Patricia Blaine, a longtime professional writer, gives you the tools you need to write and speak effectively. You can learn how to

avoid common mistakes in verbal and written communications;

speak clearlyeven practice with tongue twisters;

master the usage of pronouns, prepositions, and basic punctuation;

finally master correlative conjunctions;

organize an effective rsum and cover letter; and

boost your overall vocabulary.

By using everyday examples of proper and improper usage, Blaine makes it clear which words and clichs to avoid. Start putting your words to work for you, and beat your competitors seeking jobs, promotions, and advantages in everyday life with the practical advice in Change Your Words, Change Your Worth.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Feb 28, 2014
• ISBN: 9781491722473

Patricia Blaine

Patricia Blaine, RRT, EdM, received a BA in English and psychology from Seton Hill University, an AAS in respiratory therapy from Brookdale Community College, and a master of education degree from Rutgers University. She has been a medical writer for more than thirty years. She currently lives in Pennsylvania.

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1.   First of All—Enunciate!

Clear speech is critical

If you cannot enunciate, or speak clearly, it doesn’t matter how you pronounce any words or whether you are grammatically correct because people will have a hard time understanding you anyway. It takes practice to speak clearly, to enunciate.

In phonetics, enunciation is the act of speaking. Good enunciation is the act of speaking clearly and concisely. The opposite of good enunciation is mumbling or slurring. Pronunciation means To pronounce sounds of words correctly and is a component of enunciation. While you learn to pronounce words correctly, you must learn to make the words understandable to others by projecting them to the front of your mouth rather than practically swallowing them

Perhaps because of texting and spending many hours on the Internet, many people don’t have the patience (or the ability?) to spell or pronounce a word correctly anymore. Social media is great, but correct English is still expected in a corporate environment.

Elocution is the study of formal speaking in pronunciation, grammar, style, and tone—the art of speaking clearly and effectively. Many people take elocution lessons to improve their speech for many different reasons—to improve their job prospects or just to improve their day-to-day confidence. Elocution lessons can improve anything from clarity of speech to removal of an unwanted accent if you choose. If your job involves making presentations to clients or colleagues, then voice projection along with good grammar will be immensely helpful.

After Diana, the princess of Wales, met her future husband, Prince Charles, she began to take elocution lesson to prepare for her role as a representative of the United Kingdom and for her future role as queen. She learned to speak more clearly by projecting words to the front of her mouth. The change in her speech was noticeable over time to people who heard her on television or radio news programs.

Many professional speakers take elocution lessons, and many ordinary people join Toastmasters to help them feel more comfortable speaking in front of others. The following information is from the Toastmasters website:

Looking to develop speaking and leadership skills? Win that job interview? Ignite your career?

Toastmasters International is a world leader in communication and leadership development. Our membership is 270,000 strong. These members improve their speaking and leadership skills by attending one of the 13,000 clubs that make up our global network of meeting locations.

Membership in Toastmasters is one of the greatest investments you can make in yourself. At $36 every six months, it is also one of the most cost-effective skill-building tools available anywhere.

How Does It Work?

A Toastmasters meeting is a learn-by-doing workshop in which participants hone their speaking and leadership skills in a no-pressure atmosphere.

Ask your parents or grandparents about the famous song Mairzy Doats, which was composed in 1943. The song made the pop charts several times, and a version by the Merry Macs reached number one in March 1944. It was successful on the home front and also a hit with American servicemen overseas, who supposedly used its nonsensical lyrics as passwords. This is an exaggerated example of how poor enunciation can be hard to understand.

At first glance, the song’s refrain, as written on the sheet music, seems meaningless:

Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey

A kiddley divey too, wouldn’t you?

However, the lyrics of the bridge provide a clue:

If the words sound queer and funny to your ear, a little bit jumbled and jivey,

Sing Mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy.

With this aid, the refrain is easily understood, and your ear can detect the hidden message of the last line: A kid’ll eat ivy too, wouldn’t you?

Wade Bradford, on his website (www. about.com/plays), suggests that learning how to slow down and enunciate is a major challenge. He suggests practicing tongue twisters to help in slowing down. A tongue twister is a phrase that is designed to be difficult to articulate properly and that can be used as a type of spoken (or sung) word game. Try the following tongue twisters (most are from Bradford, some are from me, and some I remember from my childhood). Each one provides an elocution workout, says Bradford. Take a few for a test drive. Say each line three or four times. Remember, do not worry about speed. Focus on speaking clearly, even if you must exaggerate at first.

Alphabet of tongue twisters

A—Alice asked Albert to accept the apple.

·   Alaska and Antarctica are almost always achingly cold.

B—Big black bug bit a big black bear, and the big black bear bled black blood.

·   Bake big batches of buttery brownies.

C—Can I cook a proper cup of coffee in a copper coffee pot?

·   How can a clam cram in a clean cream can?

D—Don’t doubt the doorbell, but differ with the doorknob.

E—Eleven elephants eating eggplant every evening.

F—Fine-feathered friendly finches fluttered in the fir tree.

·   Five fuzzy Finnish frogs frolicked through the fields in Finland.

G—Grab the groundhog from the glazed grass.

·   Gray geese in a green field grazing.

H—Henrietta hoped to help her high-school friend with homework.

I— Inexplicably mimicking him hiccupping.

·   I intend to imitate my Irish in-laws.

J—Jingle jungle jangle joker.

·   Jenny jumped for joy with the jump rope.

K—Knit kilts for nasty cold nights.

L—Little lucky Luke likes lakes; lucky little Luke likes licking lakes.

M—Monkeys make monopoly monotonous.

N—The next nest will not necessarily be next to nothing.

O—Octopi occupy a porcupine’s mind.

·   Only royal oily royal oil boils.

P—Peter Prangle, the prickly pear picker, picked three perfectly prickly pears.

·   A proper copper coffee pot.

·   Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.

   A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked.

   If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,

   Where’s the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?

Q—Queen Catherine quickly questions the quietness of the castle.

R—Roberta ran rings around the Roman ruins.

·   Round and round the ragged rocks the rugged rabbits ran.

·   Ricardo’s wretched ratchet wrench.

S—Some shun sunshine. Do you shun sunshine?

·   Six stick shifts stuck shut.

·   I slit a sheet, a sheet I slit, upon a slitted sheet I sit.

·   She sells seashells by the seashore.

T—Three thick thistle sticks.

·   The thirty-three thieves thought that they thrilled the throne throughout Thursday.

·   A Tudor who tooted the flute tried to tutor two tooters to toot. Said the two to the tutor, Is it harder to toot or to tutor two tooters to toot?

U—Unique New York, Unique New York, Unique New York.

V—Veni, Vidi, Vici (I came, I saw, I conquered)

W—Will’s wetsuit is round and wet and rough and wide and ready to go on a watery ride.

·   Wayne went to Wales to watch walruses.

X—Xylophones exist or so existentialists insist.

·   Xerces Blue is an extinct California