I am an Asian non-native English speaker. I am petite and soft-spoken. Sometimes, I\u2019ll take a few seconds to reply to you because I\u2019m busy translating what I want to say in my head from my mother tongue to English. Even after leaving my home country, Myanmar, and living in an English speaking country, Australia for almost two decades, I still speak with an accent. I was often too uncomfortable and embarrassed to hear myself speak in one on one settings, let alone speak in-front of an audience. That was until a few years ago. Today, I consider myself a pretty good speaker \u2014 warm, authentic and knowledgeable. I\u2019d like to share the top three myths of public speaking and how anyone can become a good speaker.<\/p>\n
Ted Talks had us believe that you need to have perfect English to be a great speaker. The Ted talk speakers speak so posh, with no grammatical mistake. As a non-native English speaker, I couldn\u2019t help but felt a bit inferior. It wasn\u2019t until I started letting go of my own limiting belief that I was able to allow myself to speak at major conferences. I\u2019m glad I did because it made me realize that how you deliver your content is much more important than how you pronounce a word or how you structure your sentence. A bit of a tip on how to deliver content that audience will respond well to: deliver it from your heart, with your personal experience, for the benefit of the audience.<\/p>\n