Welcome to working with words adding life to your oral presentation. I'm your facilitator Ray Stonehouse. Forrest Gump is known for having said Life is like a box of chocolates. It occurred to me in a dream one night that life is more like a bowl of strawberries. More precisely, public speaking, is like a bowl of strawberries. Let me explain.

A few strawberries freshly picked off the plant and immediately eaten can be delicious. a bushel basket of them in front of you with the expectation that you have to eat them here and now wouldn't be. But what about a nice strawberry sundae? Or a good sized, mouthwatering portion of strawberry shortcake of celebrating thinking about either of them right now? Well, actually both of them. When it comes to public speaking there are times when fewer words are better.

There are times that we are bombarded with a speaker telling us everything they know about a subject. There's too much to absorb, too. We tune out. Then there's a strawberry shortcake presentations. This is where the speaker wets your appetite gives you just enough of a serving that you're close to being full and leaves you wanting more. This presentation focuses on using words to help you become a more dynamic speaker.

Let's get started. How many words are there in the English language? According to the second edition of the 20 volume Oxford English Dictionary, there are full entries for 171,476 words and current use. There's 47,156 obsolete words and there are 9500 derivative words included a sub entries. Words have the power to poison to hurt, to heal, or to bless. You can have a powerful delivery, expressive voice and attractive appearance and thorough knowledge of your subject.

But if your words are poorly chosen, your speech will fail to communicate with the right words, you can communicate your thoughts, your feelings, your emotions. And with the right words, you can teach people, give them understanding, entertain them, persuade them to change attitudes, and even persuade them to do your bidding. But before you do any of that, you should learn as much as possible about words. Did you know that we have three vocabularies? In the next video, we look at them in detail