As presenters it is crucial for us to keep in mind that our ambition is to communicate knowledge and experience to our audience. It is our obligation to make sure that the audience understands what we are saying. This means that our choices of speech and the ideas that we choose to share must be appropriate - that is, within our audiences level of comfort and understanding.

In addition to the ideas and words that we choose, we must also make sure that the audience can actually understand what we are saying.

If as speakers, we speak so quietly that our listeners can not hear us, then we have done no better than using concepts that are beyond our audience's understanding. The listener doesn't care why they can't comprehend us. It is our call to discover the source and manage the difficulty.

That brings us to the touchy topic of regional dialects. It would be unreasonable for listeners to draw conclusions about the content of someone's seminar based on their accent. The information in the speech is completely separate from the way that they form words. Yet, if the listeners are unable to comprehend the presenter then they are also unable to discover any value of the substance.

We do this by recognizing and erradicating any extreme elements of our voice. We must minimize any regional dialects so that our listeners can understand what we are communicating.

But how do we do this?

If you are struggling with an accent here are a few tips that may help:

Be patient with yourself. Like anything worth while, reducing your accent will take some effort. Don't allow yourself to be discouraged. Being consistent in your approach will cause significant results in less time than you think.

Slow down. Often we allow our apprehensiveness to control the speed of our lecture. As we speed up, our natural speech tendencies take over and our accents become more pronounced.

Choose to focus on words that you use most frequently. There's not much point in learning to form a word perfectly if you never use it.

Making sure that your listeners understand your message is critical to a successful lecture. One area that can impact your listeners' comprehension is that of accents. Honestly evaluate your own accent and start implementing these strategies if an accent is impeding your speaking abilities.