#Amaya pronunciation how to
#Amaya pronunciation full

I’m always glad that I can give them feedback that maybe nobody else has given them, like in Amaya’s situation with pronunciation of her most important research terms. It’s a lot to take on while at the end of the dissertation and post-doc days so when someone does, I admire their dedication to detail. Others only find me the week before their presentation to get my feedback and work on very specific things that will make them easier to understand. Some doctoral and postdoctoral students start working with me a year before they are expecting to present their research and graduate. That’s why starting improvement and practice of speaking about your research early is important for a successful presentation and for future job interviews.

#Amaya pronunciation how to

When anxiety increases, the ability to recall decreases, so the ability to recall how to say something and not just what to say is compromised. You know that you’ll be asked questions that require more explanation, you may not be able to explain in the same words that you could with people inside your field, and most stressful of all, you only get one chance at a dissertation defense. To present your research in front of an audience that includes people from outside your little world is stressful.

When you do interact with other students and professors, everyone knows the vocabulary you’re using and the general idea of what you’re talking about because it’s within a much more narrow scope than a conversation with a stranger. The higher you go in academics, the more your success depends on research and that requires spending a lot of time alone or in a lab with a small number of people. Since the majority of the people I work with are in the fields of science and technology, I have worked with many doctoral and postdoctoral students in those areas. When you’re not holding back on being heard for any reason, you’re confidence affects every aspect of how you communicate.

#Amaya pronunciation full

That confidence doesn’t just stay with pronunciation of specific words, it also influences how someone projects their voice to be easily heard by a room full of strangers listening to their presentation and interview answers. Pronouncing the important words in her research was meaningful to her and increased her confidence. Amaya’s goal when she started working with me wasn’t to sound just like an American English speaker, it was to gain insight into how she was communicating and learn how to make improvements. It’s these kind of situations where people who may not understand “accent modification” (or whatever you want to call it) don’t see the effect it has on people’s self-confidence. I assured her that I could understand the overall information and I got used to the substitutions being made in those words, but it was still a disheartening feeling for her to learn this after all that time. However, I was so surprised when she told me nobody had ever told her she had been mispronouncing those important words for years. Consistent is good, the listener can adapt to the same substitutions more easily than if the substitutions for sounds were constantly changing. My notes included several words that were so common to her research that she repeated them consistently throughout the presentation and, unfortunately, she consistently mispronounced all of them. She presented her research to me just as she would in an interview and I made notes. She had presented her dissertation to her department and colleagues and was confident about her research but wanted to get extra help to feel more prepared for these interviews. She had been in the US for four years of graduate school and 3 years of doctoral studies. Amaya had successfully graduated with her doctorate degree and was preparing for faculty interviews at US universities.