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Imagine that you are sitting in a very important,high-stakes meeting with your international team.
Everyone around the table is speaking in rapid,fluent English, and you are trying your absolute
best just to follow the rhythm of theconversation. Suddenly, the director of the
company turns
directly to you, says your name out loud, and asksfor your professional opinion on a very
complex problem. Instantly, your heart drops andyour mind goes completely, terrifyingly blank.
You have a thousand brilliant, nuanced ideasfloating around in your native language,
but you cannot find a single English word toexpress them.
It feels like your brain has just shut down, thesystem has crashed,
and the silence in the room becomes incrediblyheavy and embarrassing.
Welcome to your English Toolbox, your slow Englishpodcast, where we train your ears,
your mind, and your communication strategy. I amMartin.
And I am Julia.
Today is Episode 3 of our Public Speaking Series.
And today, we are going to solve the terrifyingproblem of the blank mind.
If you stay with us for this extended Masterclass,
you will discover that freezing in public isalmost never a vocabulary problem.
You freeze because you are trying to build acomplex house without a blueprint.
We are going to teach you the ultimate structuretrick that professional
speakers use to ensure they never, ever run out ofwords.
We will show you exactly how to buy time, how toorganize your messy thoughts instantly,
and how to easily pass the coherent sections ofthe IELTS or Cambridge oral exams.
Before we dive into this strategy, I want to askyou one quick favor.
If you learn a new technique today that makes youfeel more confident and less afraid,
03:02
please leave a comment on the platform where youare listening.
Your comments are the lifeblood of this project.
They help our show grow, they help us reach moreinternational professionals who are struggling,
and they keep our community alive week after week.
Let me tell you a story about a former student ofmine named Ravi.
Ravi is a brilliant, highly educated softwareengineer from India
who is currently living and working in Berlin.
His reading and writing skills in English areabsolutely excellent,
easily a solid C1 level on paper.
He can write beautiful, complex emails withoutmaking a single grammatical mistake.
But Ravi had a massive, paralyzing problem withspeaking in public
or participating in spontaneous office debates.
One Tuesday morning, Ravi was sitting in acritical project,
planning meeting with senior management.
His director suddenly looked across the table andasked,
Ravi, do you think we should delay the softwarelaunch until next month?
It was a relatively simple question,
but it required a thoughtful, professional, andpersuasive answer.
Ravi knew the answer perfectly well in his head.
He knew they desperately needed to delay thelaunch
because his team had found several dangerous bugsin the code.
But instead of answering clearly, Ravi frozecompletely.
He started one sentence, realized he did not knowhow to finish it,
stopped, apologized,
started a completely different sentence, and thenjust fell totally silent.
He felt incredibly embarrassed, and looking at thefaces of his colleagues,
he believed his English was just not good enoughfor his senior position.
After the meeting, he called me in an absolutepanic.
He told me he needed to buy a new textbook
and memorize 500 new advanced vocabulary wordsimmediately.
But Martin, you told him the absolute truth abouthis English, didn't you?
Yes, I did.
I told him,
Ravi, your English is already fantastic and yourvocabulary is huge.
Your problem is not your dictionary.
Your problem is your total lack of architecture.
Let us deeply analyze exactly what happened inRavi's brain in that specific meeting.
06:05
When you are asked a sudden, unexpected question,
your brain produces abstract ideas at lightningspeed.
But if you do not have a safe, predictablecontainer to put those ideas into,
you experience something called cognitiveoverload.
Cognitive overload is a fantastic psychologicalterm for our listeners to understand.
It means your working memory is receiving too muchinformation at once,
and the mental system simply crashes.
Exactly. Ravi was trying to translate his entirecomplex technical thought process
directly into English all at the exact same time.
He was frantically searching his brain for theperfect grammar,
the perfect vocabulary, and the perfect tonesimultaneously.
And let me be very clear, that is impossible to doin real time,
even for native English speakers.
Native speakers do not speak in perfect, complexparagraphs when they are asked a sudden question.
Native speakers speak in frameworks.
They rely on invisible structures to guide theirsentences safely from the beginning to the end.
This brings us to a very important concept foranyone taking an official speaking exam,
like the IELTS, TOEFL, or the Cambridge AdvancedTests.
We need to talk about the concept of coherence.
When an examiner is sitting across from you with aclipboard,
they are not just counting your big vocabularywords.
They are listening for coherence.
Coherence does not mean using beautiful poeticlanguage.
Coherence simply means that your ideas arelogically connected,
well organized, and incredibly easy for thelistener to follow.
Examiners and business managers do not want tohear a disorganized, chaotic genius.
They want to hear a structured, logical, and calmcommunicator.
When you have a structure, your brain finallyrelaxes.
You stop panicking about what word to say next,
because the structure dictates what comes nextautomatically.
So, how do we actually build this structure?
How do we give our brain a reliable map so wenever get lost in the middle of a sentence again?
The absolute best solution to this terrifyingcognitive overload
09:05
is to memorize a universal, unbreakable framework.
We call this powerful framework the three-partrule.
Some communication experts and exam evaluatorsalso call it the point-example-conclusion method.
Whenever someone asks you a spontaneous question,
you must force your panicked brain into thesethree highly predictable boxes.
Step one is the point.
In this very first step, you give a direct,
incredibly simple answer to the question in oneshort sentence.
You do not try to explain why yet.
You just state your professional position asclearly as possible.
Step two is the example.
Here, you provide a personal story, a specificfact,
or a logical reason to support that firstsentence.
This is the exact place where you can safelyexpand your ideas
and use your beautiful, descriptive C1 vocabulary.
And finally, step three is the conclusion.
You briefly summarize what you just said,
you bring the idea back to the beginning,
and most importantly, you stop talking.
Knowing exactly when to stop talking is anabsolute superpower in public speaking
and in official Cambridge exams.
Let us look back at Ravi in that stressfulboardroom meeting.
If Ravi had used this exact structure,
his answer would have been effortless and highlyprofessional.
He would look at his director, take a breath, andsay,
yes, I strongly believe we must delay the softwarelaunch.
That is his direct uncompromising point.
Then he would say,
For instance, my engineering team found threemajor security bugs yesterday
that will completely ruin the user experience.
That is his clear, undeniable example.
And finally, he would say,
Therefore, waiting one month is the safest
and most responsible option for the company'sreputation.
That is his confident, strong conclusion.
Notice how incredibly simple and effective thatflow of information is.
There are no complex grammatical acrobatics,
just pure professional coherence.
12:35
But, Martin,
I can hear our listeners asking,
there is always a gap between hearing thedifficult question
and starting the three-part rule.
That is a very sharp and realistic observationfrom our friends listening.
You cannot always jump instantly into your pointlike a programmed robot.
Sometimes your brain desperately needs three orfour seconds
to find the right file in the mental filingcabinet.
And dead silence in a professional conversation oran IELTS exam
feels incredibly awkward and heavy.
This is exactly why you must learn how tostrategically buy time
using professional fillers.
Amateurs get nervous and say,
or they just stare blankly at the wall in purepanic.
Professionals use elegant linguistic bridges
to delay their answer without looking foolish orunprepared.
If you are sitting in an IELTS Part 3 exam
and the examiner asks you a weird philosophicalquestion,
you can use a filler.
You can look at them and say,
that is a fascinating perspective,
let me consider that for a brief moment.
Or you could say,
to be completely honest,
I have never thought about that before,
but I would probably say,
These specific phrases are absolute magic
because they give your brain three preciousseconds of breathing room.
You are speaking confidently,
your pronunciation is great,
but you are not actually saying anything ofsubstance yet.
You are just laying down the red carpet before youwalk safely on it.
You also need simple linking expressions
to connect your three parts smoothly
so the examiner can follow your logic.
To move gracefully from your point to yourexample,
you should use phrases like, for instance,
Let me give you a clear example,
or my personal experience with this is,
15:03
To move down to your conclusion,
use phrases like,
So ultimately, that is precisely why I believe,
or to sum it all up.
Now, let us do a live mini exercise
to show you exactly how powerful this structure isin real time.
I am going to put you on the spot, Martin,
and ask you a random, difficult question.
And I want you to answer it using the exactformula
we just taught our listeners.
I am completely ready, go ahead.
Okay, here is the question for your imaginaryCambridge exam.
Do you think that remote work is ultimately better
for modern society than working in a traditionalphysical office?
That is an incredibly interesting question.
Let me think about the social impact of that for asecond.
Yes, I strongly believe that remote work
is significantly better for our modern society.
For instance, when professionals avoid commuting
for two hours every single day,
they invest that recovered time back into theirfamilies
and their physical health.
I have seen my own colleagues become much happier
and much more productive
since they started working from their livingrooms.
So ultimately, the flexibility and freedom ofremote work
creates healthier, more balanced citizens.
That was absolutely perfect,
and it sounded completely natural.
Let us break down exactly what you just did forour listeners.
First, I used a strategic filler
to buy myself two seconds of time to organize mythoughts.
Then you made your direct point.
Yes, remote work is better.
Then I gave my detailed example.
I used the concrete concept of commuting,
and I mentioned my colleagues to make it personaland real.
And finally, you delivered your clear conclusion,
starting with the linking words,
so ultimately...
It creates a beautiful, logical circle
that is incredibly satisfying
for any examiner or manager to listen to.
So let us quickly recap the core lesson
of today's masterclass.
When you freeze in public or in an exam,
it is almost never a vocabulary problem.
It is a structural and architectural problem.
18:00
You do not need a bigger dictionary to survive ameeting
or a Cambridge oral test.
You just need a much better map.
Always use the three-part rule,
point, example, and conclusion.
Use strategic, professional fillers
to buy yourself time gracefully.
And connect your ideas
with simple, effective linking expressions.
If you enjoyed this episode,
please write a small comment before you go.
Tell us, what is your absolute favorite phrase
to buy time when someone asks you a difficultquestion?
Do you use a specific English filler
or do you prefer to just take a deep, confidentbreath?
Your comments show the podcast platforms
that our community is real,
active, and growing every single day.
We need your comments
because your voice is far more important thanours.
Your voice and your comments
will show us the exact right path for our futureepisodes.
Thank you for listening
and keep practicing your structure.
