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How to give a research seminar in English to non-native speakers

I spend a lot of time with French people listening to other native English speakers give scientific presentations and lessons. I also give a few lessons and talks in English to French and Finnish students. With the advice of my friends and colleagues who are at the receiving end, and from my own experiences, here are ten tips for giving a talk in English.

1. Don’t worry about the chatter
This is hard, but important. You need to be prepared for people to murmur and even look like they’re exchanging notes in your presentation. This is because people’s English level varies, people tend to sit with their friends, and in general, they all want to keep up. At a recent London Grammar gig here in Dijon, I could hear people in the crowd translating bits of the between-song banter from the band for their friends. You should expect the same.

2. Speak more slowly
This is obvious. If you are one of those people who practices your talk and realises it’s a bit tight in terms of timing, be kind and lose some material. It is better that people understand a little of what you do than be overwhelmed by a lot. Don’t rely on nerves to push you forward in one long stream of consciousness, but reduce your material and give people a break.

3. Don’t stray from your slides
Even when accents, background noise and the speed of delivery are all in favour of your message being received, you need to think about the relationship between what you say and what is written on your slides. There should be a good match. You can’t afford to have a slide saying one thing and you saying another, because a non-native speaker tends to make more reference to the slides than other groups. Don’t skip over slides, either. People may not catch why you’ve skipped over it, or they may think that they were expected to have read it. If you’ve got something to say unrelated to your slides, or that doesn’t need a slide, don’t linger unnecessarily on a ‘wrong’ slide. Why not have a blank slide? I can’t believe how few people do this.

4. Don’t patronize
English is not only the language of Science but of CSI Crime Scene Investigations and The Beatles. Unless you’ve experience of living and working in a second language, people’s English is going to be better than your mastery of whatever your second language is. It’s going to be much, much better in fact, and people’s level of English as listened to, is going to be far better than you can judge by a conversation with them too. No need to repeatedly stop and say ‘did you follow that?’ Although you may wish to check understanding once or twice, but not more so than you’d do usually. No need either, to pose silly questions like ‘do you have SPSS/the internet/The Walking Dead in your country?’ Or ‘Have you heard of Bill Clinton?’ Most importantly, things you might think are difficult usually, for example with first year students or lay audiences, might actually be easy. These people aren’t stupid. My experience is that most technical terms are either well known by non-native speakers, or are exactly the same as in English. The idea is not to dumb-down but make a shift in your style and delivery.

5. Do not read from your slides
Ever. For any audience. And for any language group. But you might like to pause and suggest that the listeners read it for themselves. Students and researchers will usually be even more comfortable with reading English than listening.

6. Point to graphs.
Numbers are difficult, and referring to blue bars and red bars places an unnecessary load on working memory; the need to hold in mind the red and blue bars whilst going through the act of deciphering what the results mean. Point to the bar you are talking about and show the differences. Likewise for numbers. Quick fire delivery of complex scientific numbers, such as, ‘59.4% of people in the audience are not listening to you, but two thirds of them are looking at the slides’ is difficult to follow. If the numbers are important, write them down. While we’re at it, a picture paints a thousand words, and in most languages all at once. So, go to town on the illustration.

7. Use animation sensibly
Animation can be your friend, because you can make it clear what part of a graph, figure or experimental plan you are talking about. You can also prevent overloading the listener with information which my interfere with what you’re currently saying.

8. Speak plain English
We all like to look clever. But sometimes it is more important to be understood than to appear to be clever. The use of plain English, like that which might be found in a scientific article, is better than a chatty style or the proof that you swallowed a dictionary. That said, you may like to load your speech with synonyms. Multiple words for the same thing is always helpful to the listener, when delivered with precision and at a reasonable pace. In short, avoid jargon, long words and slang.

9. Don’t make jokes
This is my personal bête noir. I can’t resist making jokes, and there really is little point. Jokes can alienate your listener and divide your audience into linguistic haves and have nots. They can also fall flat. Mine usually do. If you are used to being the life and soul of the conference, the fact that your joke doesn’t work may put you out of your stride. If you must make jokes, slow down, and make it clear in your delivery that what is coming is, in fact, a joke. Witty asides and ironic comments are not helpful. That said, you can fall back on a Far Side cartoon or a visual joke (mine was a golfer with Tim perfect’s head superimposed). Whatever you do, don’t dig yourself in deeper by explaining your joke. Move on.

10. Learn a few words
If you can say thank you in the host institutions language, it’s going to be well received.
Merci pour votre attention.