How to Stop Saying Sorry So Much in English at Work

I want to start with a confession. This morning, on my way to work, someone walked straight into me on the street. They weren’t looking where they were going. They walked into me. And I apologised to them. I’m British. I genuinely cannot help it.

Now, if you’re reading this as a non-native English speaker, you might find that either very funny or deeply relatable. Perhaps both. The British reputation for excessive apologising is well-earned and well-documented. But here is the thing: the kind of over-apologising I want to talk about today is not the British kind. It looks similar on the surface. It comes from a completely different place. And its effect on your professional credibility is significant.

The British Sorry — A Cultural Code

The British relationship with the word “sorry” is genuinely fascinating. Research confirms what most people already sense: British people apologise significantly more than Americans for everyday occurrences, including sneezing, interrupting someone, and making a joke that lands badly.

Linguists explain this through the concept of negative-politeness culture. Despite the slightly misleading name, this is not a criticism of British social norms. It simply describes a culture whose social rules are built around avoiding imposition, smoothing over friction, and maintaining harmony; even at the cost of sincerity. In British culture, “sorry” has become so instinctively used that it functions almost like a punctuation mark in everyday conversation; said not because speakers genuinely mean it, but because it is socially expected.

Within British culture, this works perfectly. Everyone understands the code. When a British person apologises for being walked into, no one in the vicinity thinks any less of them. The word carries a social meaning; I acknowledge you, I respect your space, I mean no offence; that is immediately understood by everyone in earshot. But here is where it becomes relevant to you.

When the Code Doesn’t Transfer

If you are a non-native English speaker working in an international professional environment, you are not operating inside the British cultural code. You are operating in a more neutral, cross-cultural professional context; one where the word “sorry” does not carry the same automatic social meaning.

Research on second language learners has found that people tend to transfer their home culture’s pragmatic rules and communication norms directly into English; meaning they apply their first language’s apology conventions when speaking English, which can create communication difficulties when interacting with people from different cultural backgrounds.

This matters enormously. If your first language and culture uses apology as a form of deference, humility, or respect; which many cultures do; you will naturally bring that habit into your professional English. But the effect in an international workplace is different from what you intend.

What feels like politeness to you can read as uncertainty to your colleagues. What feels like respect can read as a lack of confidence. What feels like being considerate can quietly undermine the professional authority you have worked hard to build.

Research on cross-cultural apology has found that although apologies generally increase forgiveness and reduce conflict across cultures, the way an apology lands, and the inferences people draw from it, varies significantly depending on the cultural context of both speaker and listener.

In short: the same words mean different things in different rooms.

The Three Types of Professional Over-Apologising

In my coaching work with professionals from across the world, I see three distinct patterns of over-apologising that consistently undermine professional credibility. Each has a simple, natural replacement that sounds more confident, without sounding abrupt or rude.

Type 1: The Pre-Emptive Sorry

This is the sorry you say before making a point; to soften it, to apologise in advance for taking up space in the conversation.

It sounds like this:

“Sorry, I just wanted to say…”“Sorry, I think maybe…”“Sorry, could I just add something?”

The intention is entirely understandable. You want to be polite. You don’t want to appear pushy or overconfident. You are aware that you are contributing in a language that isn’t your first, and you want to signal that awareness respectfully.

But here is what your colleagues actually hear. They hear: I’m not sure I should be saying this. They hear: I’m not confident in what I’m about to say. They hear: you don’t have to take this seriously. That is the opposite of the impression you want to create.

The replacement: A confident entry phrase that does the same social job, signalling that you are about to contribute; without the self-undermining effect of an apology.

“I’d like to add something here.”

“Building on that point…”

“I see it slightly differently, in my experience…”

“Could I make a point here?”

Type 2: The Permission Sorry

This is the sorry you use to ask for space in the conversation — to interrupt, to ask a question, or to make yourself heard when others are speaking.

It sounds like this:

“Sorry to interrupt…”“Sorry, can I ask something?”“Sorry, I didn’t understand that.”

Again, the instinct is good. In many cultures, interrupting is considered genuinely rude, and softening it with an apology is the correct social move. In some professional contexts it still is. But in most international English-speaking professional environments, there are more effective tools that signal the same consideration without the same credibility cost.

For contributing or interrupting:

“Could I just come in here…”

“Can I add something to that?”

“I’d like to pick up on that point…”

For asking questions:

“I have a question about that…”

“Could you say a little more about…”

“I want to make sure I’ve understood correctly, are you saying that…”

For when you haven’t understood:

“Could you say that again, please?”

“I didn’t quite catch that.”

“Could you give me an example of what you mean?”

Notice something about all of these phrases. They are direct. They are clear. They do not apologise for your presence in the conversation. And, counter-intuitively, asking a direct, clear question without prefacing it with sorry makes you appear more engaged and more confident than hedging it with an apology.

Type 3: The Filler Sorry

This is perhaps the most common pattern and the most invisible, because it has become so automatic.

The filler sorry is the “sorry?” used as a default response to confusion, surprise, or simply not having heard what someone said. Just one word. Rising intonation. A reflexive response when something unexpected happens in the conversation.

As noted above, in British English this is entirely normal, nobody thinks twice about it. But for non-native speakers who are already opening sentences with sorry and prefacing questions with sorry, adding it as a filler compounds the overall impression of uncertainty.

The alternatives are simple and immediately sound more assured:

“Could you repeat that?”

“I didn’t catch that, could you say it again?”

“Pardon?”, slightly more formal, perfectly natural in most professional contexts

“Say that again?”, direct and confident

Why This Matters More Than It Might Seem

This is not simply a matter of swapping one phrase for another. There is a deeper psychological dimension worth understanding. There is a well-established concept in communication research called linguistic self-presentation; the idea that the words we choose do not merely convey information, they communicate how we see ourselves. And they shape how others see us.

Research suggests that habitual over-apologising is often not about genuine remorse at all, but about managing our own discomfort and meeting social expectations; which means it frequently functions as a signal of anxiety rather than consideration.

When you habitually open your professional contributions with sorry, you are not just being polite. You are presenting yourself as someone who needs permission to speak. And over time; across meetings, calls, and presentations; that self-presentation accumulates. It becomes, quietly and without your intention, part of your professional identity in the room.

The good news is that this works in reverse. When you begin replacing sorry with confident entry phrases, something interesting happens. Your colleagues begin to perceive you differently. And, perhaps more importantly, you begin to perceive yourself differently. The language leads the confidence. Not the other way around.

Research comparing British and American apology strategies found that the way apologies are used and interpreted varies significantly even within English-speaking cultures; suggesting that the pragmatic meaning of sorry is far less universal than most speakers assume.

This is precisely why explicit coaching on professional language, rather than simply immersion in English, makes such a difference. Immersion teaches you the words. Coaching helps you understand the social and psychological effects of how you use them.

A Note on Cultural Values

I want to be careful here, because this point matters. Many of my students come from cultures where deference, humility, and putting others first are deeply held values; where asserting yourself too confidently is genuinely considered disrespectful or arrogant. I want to acknowledge that explicitly. Those values are real, and they come from real wisdom about how communities function and how relationships are maintained.

Cross-cultural research on workplace apology has found consistent differences in apology behaviour across nationalities, shaped by factors including power relationships, social distance, and the cultural norms around responsibility and face-saving. There is no single universal standard for professional communication, and anyone who tells you otherwise is being culturally arrogant.

I am not saying is that you should abandon your cultural values. What I am saying is that international professional environments operate by a particular set of norms and that navigating those norms effectively, while remaining authentically yourself, is a learnable skill. Part of what good coaching does is help you hold both things at once: your values, and the communication tools to be fully seen in the contexts you operate in.

Stopping the over-apologising is not about becoming someone you are not. It is about letting who you already are be visible.

References

Balban, M.Y., Neri, E., Kogon, M.M., Weed, L., Nouriani, B., Jo, B., Holl, G., Zeitzer, J.M., Spiegel, D., & Huberman, A.D. (2023). Brief structured respiration practices enhance mood and reduce physiological arousal. Cell Reports Medicine, 4(1), 100895. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.xcrm.2022.100895

Brooks, A.W. (2014). Get excited: Reappraising pre-performance anxiety as excitement. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143(3), 1144–1158. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0035325

Gilovich, T., Medvec, V.H., & Savitsky, K. (2000). The spotlight effect in social judgment: An egocentric bias in estimates of the salience of one’s own actions and appearance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78(2), 211–222. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.78.2.211

Isagozawa, A. (2025). An exploratory study of cultural differences in behavior and intentions in workplace apologies: With the perspective of responsibility. Japanese Psychological Research. https://doi.org/10.1111/jpr.12454

Schumann, K., & Ross, M. (2010). Why women apologise more than men: Gender differences in thresholds for perceiving offensive behavior. Psychological Science, 21(11), 1649–1655. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797610384150

Shafa, S., Harinck, F., Ellemers, N., & Beersma, B. (2017). Sorry seems to be the hardest word: Cultural differences in apologizing effectively. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 47(10), 553–567. https://doi.org/10.1111/jasp.12460

Wang, K., & Li, S. (2009). Cross-cultural differences in apology. Journal of Asian Pacific Communication, 19(1), 21–56. https://doi.org/10.1075/japc.19.1.02wan

Willis, H. (2024). I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry. Substack. https://hannahwillis096.substack.com/p/im-sorry-im-sorry-im-sorry

YouGov (2019). British people say sorry more than Americans. YouGov survey data reported in Bustle, January 2019.

Zhang, Y., Hwang, S., & Chen, L. (2007). A cross-cultural study of apology speech act strategies among British and American apologies. Journal of Pragmatics, 39(5), 792–810.

Why Your English Is Better Than You Think — And Why the Gap Is Costing You

At the end of my last article on how to sound more confident in English meetings, I made a promise. I said I was going to explore something that connects directly to everything we have been discussing in this series: why your English is almost certainly better than you think, and why the gap between your actual ability and how you perceive that ability is costing you professionally.

Today I want to make good on that promise.

Because in thousands of hours of coaching professionals from all over the world, the pattern I see most consistently is not people whose English is too weak for the situations they are in. It is people whose perception of their own English is far more negative than the reality, and whose behaviour, as a result, is shaped by a false picture of themselves.

That false picture has real consequences. It keeps people silent in meetings where they have something valuable to say. It makes people over-prepare, over-apologise, and over-qualify their contributions. It stops people applying for jobs they are qualified for, speaking up in rooms where they belong, and charging what they are actually worth.

This article is about where that false picture comes from, why it is almost certainly inaccurate in your case, and what to do about it.

The Reverse Dunning-Kruger Effect in Language Learning

You may have heard of the Dunning-Kruger effect; the well-documented cognitive bias whereby people with limited knowledge in a domain tend to overestimate their competence. The unskilled, in other words, do not know enough to know what they do not know. But the Dunning-Kruger effect has a lesser-known mirror image, one that is, in my experience, far more common among the professionals I work with.

Research in second language learning has confirmed what the original Dunning-Kruger studies established more broadly: skilled performers, people who actually know a great deal, tend systematically to underestimate their abilities. A study investigating the Dunning-Kruger effect specifically in second language speech learning found that while low performers overestimated their accuracy, high performers showed the opposite pattern: they underestimated their performance relative to external assessments.

Read that again: the better your English, the more likely you are to think it is worse than it actually is.

This happens for a specific reason. As your English develops, your ability to detect what you are doing wrong develops faster than your ability to recognise what you are doing right. You become exquisitely aware of every hesitation, every grammatical slip, every moment you could not find the word you wanted. What you do not notice, what is genuinely invisible to you, is the vast amount of English you are producing fluently, accurately, and effectively. The mistakes are salient. The successes are silent.

Language Imposter Syndrome

There is a related phenomenon that researchers have begun calling language imposter syndrome, and it is worth naming directly, because if you are reading this article, you may well be experiencing it.

Imposter syndrome, first described by psychologists Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes in 1978, refers to the internal experience of believing you are not as competent as others perceive you to be; of feeling like a fraud despite objective evidence of your ability. It was originally observed in high-achieving women, but subsequent research has found it is widespread across genders, cultures, and domains.

In the context of language learning, research published in Frontiers in Psychology found that the impostor phenomenon in second language learners is associated with lower willingness to communicate and that this effect is mediated specifically by perceived competence rather than actual competence. In other words: it is not how good your English actually is that determines whether you speak up. It is how good you believe your English to be.

A separate study investigating the impostor phenomenon in English language learners found that impostors systematically underestimate their language abilities in comparison to external criteria; teacher evaluations, test scores, objective assessments. They consistently rate themselves lower than the evidence warrants.

This is language imposter syndrome: the experience of being genuinely capable, while being genuinely convinced that you are not.

The Native Speaker Standard — A Benchmark You Should Abandon

One of the most significant contributors to inaccurate self-assessment in English learners is a comparison that is both ubiquitous and deeply unfair: the comparison to native speakers.

Most of my students, when they assess their own English, do so against an imagined native speaker standard. They hear an accent, a hesitation, a non-standard construction and they mark it against a version of English they imagine a native speaker would produce. The gap between that imagined standard and their own speech becomes, in their minds, the measure of how far they have to go.

This is a benchmark I would encourage you to abandon entirely, for two reasons.

First, it is unrealistic. Linguistics research is unambiguous on the point that English as a global lingua franca; the English used in most international professional settings; is not the English of a native speaker. It is a negotiated, diverse, internationally intelligible form of communication that no single native speaker variety owns. Research on English as a Lingua Franca has increasingly argued that achieving international intelligibility should be prioritised over achieving native-like pronunciation, and that the emphasis on nativeness is, in the words of the research, “outdated and counterproductive.”

Second, it is counterproductive as a self-assessment tool. Research on non-native accented speech has found that most speakers of English as a second language are highly intelligible; in one study, transcription accuracy for non-native speakers ranged between 79% and 95%. More strikingly, a 2023 study found that exposure to non-native accented speech reduces listening effort and improves social judgments of the speaker over time; suggesting that the social penalties many non-native speakers fear are significantly smaller than they assume.

You are not being assessed against a native speaker standard by the people who matter. You are being assessed on whether you can communicate effectively. And if you are working as a professional in English, the probability is high that you already can.

Three Reasons Your Self-Assessment Is Probably Wrong

1. You are comparing your insides to everyone else’s outsides.

When you listen to yourself speak English, you hear everything: the searching for words, the internal panic, the grammatical structure you are monitoring, the anxiety underneath it all. When you listen to a colleague speak English confidently, you hear the output only; the finished product, not the process behind it.

The result is a comparison that is structurally unfair. Your experience of speaking English, from the inside, will always feel more effortful and uncertain than anyone else’s experience looks from the outside. This does not mean your English is worse. It means you have more information about your own performance than you do about anyone else’s.

2. You remember mistakes far more vividly than successes.

This is a well-established feature of human cognition; what psychologists call negativity bias. We are wired to attend to and remember threats, errors, and failures more readily than positive experiences. In a language context, this means the meeting where you could not find a word stays with you for days. The conversations where you communicated complex ideas fluently and your colleagues understood and responded; those feel unremarkable in the moment and fade quickly.

Your mental archive of your English performance is almost certainly skewed toward the negative. The successes are under-represented, because they did not trigger the same emotional response as the failures.

3. Your standard is moving faster than your awareness of your progress.

This is perhaps the most important point. As your English develops, your standard of what “good English” means rises simultaneously. The things that used to feel like achievements now feel ordinary. The level you once aspired to now feels like the floor, not the ceiling.

The result is that even as your English genuinely improves, your sense of how good it is may not improve at the same rate, because the goalposts have moved. You are a better speaker than you were two years ago. But you may feel exactly as uncertain, because the things that made you uncertain two years ago are now easy, and a new set of harder things has taken their place.

This is not a sign that you are not making progress. It is a sign that you are. The difficulty has followed you upward.

What the Evidence Actually Says About You

If you are a professional working in English as a second language, if you have built a career in a language that is not your first, here is what the evidence says about you specifically.

You have already demonstrated something that the vast majority of people in the world have not: you can function, contribute, and succeed in a professional environment in a second language. The cognitive effort that took, sustained over years, is genuinely remarkable; even if it now feels ordinary because you have been doing it for so long.

Research consistently shows that the gap between self-assessed and externally assessed language ability is largest not among beginners, but among advanced speakers. The more capable you are, the more sharply you see your imperfections, and the less credit you tend to give yourself for everything you are doing right.

The professionals I work with who feel most uncertain about their English are rarely the ones who need the most help. They are often the most capable people in the room — whose self-awareness has outpaced their self-compassion.

Two Things You Can Do This Week

First: collect external evidence, not internal evidence.

For one week, notice how people actually respond to your English; not how you feel about it while you are speaking. Do people ask you to repeat yourself? Do they seem confused? Or do they engage, respond, build on what you said, and ask follow-up questions?

In most cases, the external evidence will tell a very different story from the internal experience. Your colleagues are not having the same conversation about your English that you are having inside your head.

Second: compare yourself to your past self, not to an imagined standard.

Think about where your English was two years ago. Three years ago. What could you not say then that you can say easily now? What situations were terrifying then that are simply part of your week now? What is the evidence of genuine progress, not against a native speaker standard, but against the version of you that existed before?

That comparison, backward in time, against your own history, is the only fair one. And in most cases, the evidence it reveals is far more positive than the story you have been telling yourself.

References

Clance, P.R., & Imes, S.A. (1978). The impostor phenomenon in high achieving women: Dynamics and therapeutic intervention. “Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice”, 15(3), 241–247. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0086006

Gallego-Díaz, M., & Sánchez-Mármol, D.J. (2020). The impostor phenomenon in learning of English as a second language. “Revista de Psicología y Educación”, 20(2), 129–136. https://doi.org/10.23923/rpye2020.02.272

Jenkins, J. (2007). “English as a lingua franca: Attitude and identity”. Oxford University Press.

Kruger, J., & Dunning, D. (1999). Unskilled and unaware of it: How difficulties in recognising one’s own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments. “Journal of Personality and Social Psychology”, 77(6), 1121–1134. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.77.6.1121

Levis, J. (2020). Revisiting the intelligibility and nativeness principles. “Journal of Second Language Pronunciation”, 6(3), 310–328. https://doi.org/10.1075/jslp.20036.lev

Munro, M.J., & Derwing, T.M. (1995). Foreign accent, comprehensibility, and intelligibility in the speech of second language learners. “Language Learning”, 45(1), 73–97. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-1770.1995.tb00963.x

Pannhausen, E., Brauer, K., & Proyer, R.T. (2022). Impostor phenomenon and L2 willingness to communicate: Testing communication anxiety and perceived L2 competence as mediators. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 1060091. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1060091

Rovetti, J., Sumantry, D., & Russo, F.A. (2023). Exposure to nonnative-accented speech reduces listening effort and improves social judgments of the speaker. Scientific Reports, 13, 2879. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-29082-1

Saito, K., Trofimovich, P., Isaacs, T., & Webb, S. (2020). Dunning-Kruger effect in second language speech learning: How does self perception align with other perception over time? System, 100. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2020.102526

Tannen, D. (1994). Talking from 9 to 5: Women and men in the workplace: Language, sex, and power. Avon Books.

How to Give a Presentation in English Without Freezing.

An estimated 77% of the general population experiences some degree of fear when asked to speak in front of a group. That makes glossophobia; the fear of public speaking; more common than the fear of death, spiders, or heights.

If you are a non-native English speaker facing the additional challenge of presenting in a second language, that statistic likely feels very familiar. Because the anxiety of presenting is not simply doubled when you add a second language into the mix. It is compounded. You are managing your nerves, monitoring your English, tracking the audience’s reactions, and trying to hold onto the thread of what you want to say; all simultaneously, in front of people whose judgement matters to you.

This article is about how to do it well. Not perfectly, well. There is an important difference, and I will come back to it.

Why Presenting Feels Different From Speaking.

In a conversation or a meeting, you are one voice among many. If you lose a word, someone else speaks and you recover. If you hesitate, the conversation continues around you. The pressure is distributed. In a presentation, all of that changes. You are the only voice. Every pause, every hesitation, every moment of blankness is visible. There is nowhere to hide and no one to fill the silence.

Research on public speaking anxiety confirms that this specific quality; being the sole focus of an audience’s attention; is central to what makes presenting so difficult. Studies have found that presentation anxiety involves three interconnected elements: physiological arousal (the racing heart, the dry mouth, the shallow breathing), negative cognitive patterns (the inner dialogue of self-doubt and catastrophic prediction), and behavioural responses (avoidance, freezing, speaking too fast). What is crucial to understand is that all three of these elements can be addressed. They are not fixed features of who you are. They are responses; which means they can be changed.

The Single Most Important Insight About Presenting.

Before I give you the practical framework, I want to share the single most important reframe I offer every student I work with on presentation skills. The audience is not your enemy. They are not waiting for you to fail. They are not cataloguing your pronunciation or counting your hesitations. They are hoping you will be good.

Think about the last time you sat in the audience of a presentation. Did you sit there hoping the speaker would stumble? Almost certainly not. You wanted to learn something interesting, to have your time well spent, to feel engaged. You were, in other words, on the speaker’s side. Your audience is on your side too. They are not a panel of judges. They are human beings who have given you their time and are hoping you will make it worthwhile. The moment you genuinely believe that; not just intellectually, but emotionally; the nature of the experience changes.

Before the Presentation: Preparation Is Your Biggest Weapon.

The research on public speaking anxiety is consistent on one finding above all others: preparation is the most effective intervention available. The single biggest predictor of presentation anxiety is not personality, not language ability, and not prior experience of presenting. It is how prepared the speaker feels. This means that every hour you invest in preparation is an hour that reduces anxiety, and that reduction in anxiety directly improves your English performance, for the reasons we explored in earlier articles about the fight-or-flight response.

Here is what thorough preparation looks like in practice.

Know your opening cold. The first 60 seconds of a presentation are the most anxiety-provoking, and research on thin-slicing confirms they are also the most important for making a strong first impression. Prepare and practise your opening until it is completely automatic. You should be able to deliver it in your sleep. When your anxiety peaks in those first moments, having an opening that requires no conscious thought frees up all your mental resources for managing your state.

Structure, not script. Many non-native speakers try to write out every word they will say and learn it by heart. I strongly advise against this. A memorised script collapses under pressure; if you lose your place, you have nothing to fall back on. Instead, prepare a clear structure with key points for each section, and know your examples and stories well enough to tell them naturally. The structure is your map. The words are improvised within it.

Prepare for questions. The Q&A at the end of a presentation is often what non-native speakers fear most. Think through the three to five questions most likely to be asked about your topic, and prepare clear, brief answers. You will not be asked all of them, but the preparation reduces the feeling of unpredictability that fuels anxiety.

Practise out loud. Preparation done only in your head does not prepare your voice, your body, or your English production pathways. Say your presentation out loud; ideally in the room or the format where you will deliver it; at least twice before the real event. Record yourself if possible. Not to criticise every word, but to hear yourself as your audience will hear you.

The Framework: Tell Them What You Will Tell Them.

There is a structure for effective presentations that has been taught and refined for decades, and it remains the most reliable framework available: tell them what you will tell them, tell them, then tell them what you told them. It sounds almost absurdly simple. It works because it mirrors how the human brain processes information. We understand and retain new ideas most effectively when we are given context first, content second, and consolidation third.

In practice, this means:

Opening (tell them what you will tell them):- Hook the audience with a surprising fact, a question, or a brief story- State your main point or argument clearly- Give a brief roadmap: “Today I’m going to cover three things…”

Body (tell them):- Present your two to four key points, one at a time- Use signposting language to guide the audience through transitions- Support each point with a specific example, data, or story

Closing (tell them what you told them):- Summarise your key points briefly- Restate your main conclusion or message- End with a clear call to action or a final memorable thought

The structure serves a particularly important function for non-native English speakers: it reduces cognitive load at every stage. When you know exactly where you are in the presentation; which section you are in, what comes next; you need far fewer mental resources to navigate the content. Those freed resources can go toward your English, your audience awareness, and your emotional regulation.

Signposting Language — Your Presentation Toolkit.

Signposting is the practice of guiding your audience explicitly through your presentation; telling them where you have been, where you are now, and where you are going. It is one of the most underused tools in non-native speaker presentations, and one of the most effective.

Research on audience retention in presentations consistently identifies clear structure and explicit signposting as key factors in how much an audience understands and remembers. Signposting reduces the cognitive burden on the audience, and it simultaneously reduces the burden on you, because it makes the structure of your presentation audible and therefore easier to follow yourself.

Here is a practical toolkit of signposting phrases organised by purpose.

Opening:

“Today I’m going to talk to you about…”

“By the end of this presentation, you’ll understand…”

“I’d like to cover three main areas: first… second… and finally…”

Moving between sections:

“So, moving on to my second point…”

“That brings me to…”

“Now that we’ve looked at X, let’s turn to Y…”

”The next area I want to cover is…”

Emphasising a key point:

“The most important thing I want you to take away from this is…”

“This is the critical point here…”

“I want to pause here for a moment, because this matters…”

Referring to visuals:

“If you look at this slide…”

“As you can see here…”“This chart shows…”

Handling questions during the presentation:

“That’s a great question, I’m actually going to come to that in a moment…”

“I’ll take questions at the end, but the short answer is…”

Closing:

“So, to summarise…”

“The key takeaways from today are…”

“I’d like to leave you with one final thought…”

These phrases do something beyond their surface function. They give you a moment to breathe between ideas. They reset your English production system at natural intervals. And they signal to the audience, continuously, that you are organised, confident, and in control. Which, once you have them memorised, you will be.

Your Voice and Body — What Research Actually Says.

You may have encountered the famous 7–38–55 rule, attributed to psychologist Albert Mehrabian, which suggests that only 7% of communication is verbal, 38% is tone of voice, and 55% is body language. This statistic is widely cited in communication training. I want to be precise about it, because the research has been widely misrepresented.

Mehrabian’s original studies were conducted specifically in the context of communicating feelings and attitudes; particularly in situations of inconsistent communication, where words and tone contradicted each other. He himself has explicitly stated that the percentages cannot be generalised to communication as a whole.

That said, there is a broader and well-supported truth underlying the statistic: in a presentation, how you say something and how you hold yourself while saying it matters significantly; particularly for the impression you create in the first few seconds of standing up to speak.

What the research does clearly support is the following:

Eye contact builds trust and connection. In a room, make eye contact with different individuals for a few seconds at a time; not scanning the room nervously, but genuinely landing on people. On a video call, look at the camera, not the screen.

Pace is the element most commonly affected by anxiety. When we are nervous, we speed up. A slower pace signals confidence, gives the audience time to process, and, crucially, gives you time to find your words. Practise speaking more slowly than feels natural. It will still sound normal to your audience.

Pauses are not weaknesses. A brief silence between ideas gives the audience time to absorb what you have said, and gives you time to move calmly to what comes next. Many of the most powerful moments in a presentation are the pauses. Practise tolerating silence; it will feel much longer to you than it does to your audience.

Posture affects both how you are perceived and how you feel. Standing tall; shoulders back, feet grounded; signals authority and also, as we explored in an earlier article, has measurable effects on your own physiological state. Before you begin, take a moment to stand in this posture deliberately.

Despite the best preparation, it can happen. You lose the word. The sentence doesn’t come. You forget, momentarily, what comes next. Here is what to do.

Breathe. Not a theatrical breath, just one deliberate intake and exhale. This physiologically interrupts the panic response and buys you approximately three seconds, which is enough.

Then use a recovery phrase:

“Let me just take a moment to gather my thoughts…”

“Where was I. Yes, the key point is…”

“Actually, let me come back to that. What I want to say is…”

And then continue. Because here is the truth about freezing that most speakers do not know: the audience almost never notices it the way you do. What feels to you like an eternal silence lasting thirty seconds is, in reality, a pause of two or three seconds. Your heightened state amplifies your experience of time. The audience simply sees a speaker who pauses thoughtfully before continuing. The freeze is not the problem. The response to the freeze is what determines whether it derails the presentation or simply becomes part of it.

For Non-Native Speakers Specifically.

Everything above applies to every presenter. I want to close with three points that are specifically relevant to presenting in a second language.

Your accent is not the problem. Research on non-native English speakers in professional contexts consistently finds that intelligibility; being understood; matters far more than accent. And intelligibility is primarily a function of pace, clarity, and structure; all of which are controllable. Speak clearly. Speak slowly. Use short sentences. Your accent is part of who you are.

Short sentences are powerful sentences. In your first language, you might construct long, complex sentences with multiple clauses. In a second language under pressure, those sentences are high-risk; they are easier to lose track of, easier to construct incorrectly, and harder for an international audience to follow. Short, clear sentences are not a sign of limited English. They are a sign of clear thinking.

You prepared more than anyone in the room. Your audience has no idea how much you prepared. They do not see the hours of practice, the careful structure, the signposting phrases you memorised. They see someone standing up and speaking with confidence and clarity. Let them see that.

Your Preparation Checklist

Before any presentation:

Know your opening cold; practise it until it is completely automatic

Prepare a clear structure with two to four key points

Have specific examples ready for each point

Memorise your signposting phrases

Prepare for the three most likely questions

Practise out loud at least twice, and record yourself once

Do the physiological sigh twice before you begin

Remember: the audience is on your side

References

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