Shadowing Practice: How To Engage Audience In Presentation - Jason Hewlett - Learn English Speaking with Video

Hey, thanks for joining me.

We're going to talk about how to engage your audience in a presentation.

And I'm excited to talk to you about this because I have

so many cool ideas that I've used for so many years.

This is how I've become a Hall of Fame speaker.

And I'm excited for you to engage your audience in an even greater way.

You've probably seen some speakers that are awesome at this

and other speakers that absolutely fall flat because they don't engage their audience.

Well, unfortunately, too many people don't think about it.

And they just keep giving the same presentation over and over again

but I'm proud of you for finding me here and you're going to figure out how to engage your audience even better.

In fact, I have seven specific points and tips

that are going to help you and it's going to transform the way that you are engaging and interacting with the audience.

And in fact, number six to me might be the secret of them all.

And that's something I've been using to make millions of dollars as a speaker through the years.

So thanks for joining me.

I'm Jason Hewlett.

Let's dive in.

So tip number one, always start with a story.

Yeah I've made other videos about this where people have said you know what story do you start with?

Is it your best story?

What do you do?

And I like to say save the best story for last.

Maybe share your second or third best story at the beginning because you know it's going to be a great one.

And then obviously you can share any amount of stories you want throughout.

But starting with a story is a great way to interact with your audience.

In fact, this is one of the best things

that I've seen anybody do is when you stand up on stage and you just crank right into the story.

Now, I personally don't do that immediately.

I'll usually ask a question and then I'll frame that to lead into the story.

But I've seen people that stand up on stage and say, it was 1963 and I was standing on top of a mountain, you know, and they're into the story.

OK, so here we go.

And it actually makes the audience quite engaged right away.

One of the ways that I like to do this also is I might share a story

that I can either decide to tie up right then and there, or I can leave it open-ended for me to tie up later at the end.

So it's a nice way to be able to frame your speech so it keeps the audience engaged the entire time.

You leave them on a cliffhanger.

They're wondering what's going to happen in this story.

For example, I'll share the story of when I was 25 years old and just starting my career in Las Vegas.

I was sitting across the table from a hotel billionaire who wanted to make me the next superstar in Las Vegas.

As I mulled over that decision, I had to consider for myself, what are my promises to me?

And what is it that I should do for my career that I want to do something this significant already?

Or if I should wait, maybe I should hold back.

Maybe I should go for it.

What should I do?

And then I'll end the story right there.

But with a hook to say, maybe I'll tell you guys what I decided to do later.

Now they're listening the whole time waiting for me to tell the rest of the story.

Did he accept the Las Vegas contract?

Did he go for it?

Or what did he do?

The truth of it is because I'm not going to make you hang on that, but I decided to turn Las Vegas away.

And instead I went into the corporate market as a speaker and performer there.

And that was me keeping a promise to myself.

And so I can wrap that story up right

and then I can go into my speech

or I can leave it as a cliffhanger

and it actually is a nice way with the cliffhanger at

the very end people are like oh I wondered what he did

and that's a really great way so start with the story that's tip number one.

Tip number two is to use interactive questions so this is a tricky

and dicey one depends on the question I'll be candid with you I've seen speakers get on stage

and botch this in a bad way and it's just due to bad habits

and it's probably from someone who trained them how to do that.

I've seen a lot of speakers get on stage and they go, hey everybody, are you ready to have fun?

Yes or yes.

And then everyone's like, yes.

They go, yeah, we're going to make sure that you're sure that you're saying yes.

And so everybody, are you happy to be here?

Yes or yes.

And everyone's like, yes.

And actually it kind of turns the audience off a bit when it's the yes or yes guy.

And so I'd be careful with how you do it.

Maybe ask a real and genuine question rather than just the yes or yes guy.

You know, the reason they do that is because they're making the audience now say yes to everything.

And so by the end, they've now sold them on a product.

So by the end, the audience is like, yes, I'll buy whatever you sell because you trained me to say yes to everything.

I don't like that tactic.

That's an absolute sleazy deal.

But some people pull it off in a genuine way and it's not as gross.

But I can say I like to ask questions of things like why set a goal and you can make a promise.

And that's not to say that a goal is not important.

But if you've ever set a goal and you miss it, you just set another one.

Whereas if you make a promise and break it, that's a one and done.

So what are your promises and what are your sacred goals?

What are your non-negotiables?

That whole concept or question within the statement of that, that sets me up for a lot of success because the audience is thinking, what is the difference between a goal and a promise?

What are my promises compared to my goals?

And then I can lean into my speech from there.

So an interactive question is very important.

Tip number three is to incorporate multimedia.

I've seen a lot of speakers do this really well

and a lot of the time it's because they've accomplished something that you cannot actually talk about,

you know, in a way that would evoke the emotion that needs to come out with a video or with music.

For example, I saw a speaker named Aaron Ralston.

If you're familiar with his story, he's written the book Stuck Between a Rock and a Hard Place.

It was about when he was climbing in southern Utah

and a rock fell and it grabbed his arm or it fell on his arm.

He was stuck for 127 hours under the rock

100

and he realized he He had to leverage himself enough to break his own arm, cut his own arm off.

101

Yeah, gruesome, right?

102

Well, he can tell that story and he does.

103

But he instead, he had a movie made about him.

104

And that's where using multimedia is really effective.

105

You see, he just shares the trailer of the movie.

106

And everyone's like, even if they've heard the story, even though they know what happens at the end because he comes on stage without an arm.

107

I mean, they know what the ending is, and yet he makes it compelling because he's showing a video that's so awesome about this movie about his life.

108

So go check out 127 Hours.

109

It's a great movie.

110

And I've seen other people that have gone viral for something really important or done a great TED Talk.

111

Maybe they've had some accomplishment where they went viral because they made something funny or they, you know, like a Mr. Beast type of a video.

112

And so people will share a snippet of that it gives them credibility

113

and then they can talk for the rest of the time.

114

That's a great way to interact with your audiences through video.

115

Tip number four is to move around the stage.

116

Now be careful how you do this because you could look too spastic and running around and moving back and forth.

117

I would say pick your spots.

118

When you're telling a certain story you could stand in a certain spot

119

or when you're giving a certain data point you could stand another spot

120

but engaging the audience through movement unfortunately a lot of stages are huge

121

and a lot of audiences are sitting there thinking to themselves well why isn't he using

122

that whole stage they would be thrilled if somebody did and

123

when somebody does they see what's possible in terms of

124

that whole staging it's a nice thing and so

125

when I think about it for myself what is my body

126

movement how am I engaging am I able to talk to these people over here

127

and these people over here

128

and opening my body up in terms of the entirety of the audience

129

and so think about your body think about staging think about how you can utilize the entirety of the space.

130

Tip number five is to use visual aids use props those types of things because

131

if you want to really engage the audience in some fun

132

ways I saw a speaker recently her name is Christine Cashin she had some killer props

133

that were such great ideas in fact she's talking about being fully present being engaged

134

and at the same time making fun of the fact

135

that everybody's on their phone at all times

136

but you can't tell they're on their phone because they have a little thing in their ear so they're just talking randomly.

137

So she pulls out this old time telephone, just the phone with the long cord, and she pulls it out and the cord is really long.

138

And so she says, this is actually my Bluetooth.

139

And so she'll walk down the airport and it plugs in the end into her phone at the bottom.

140

So she's walking and twirling the cord and talking into this old time phone.

141

It's a great prop, but it drives the point home of being fully present

142

or communicating to people in a way that you, yeah, you know, I'm on my phone.

143

You can use any kind of prop on stage that makes things interesting.

144

You could use glasses, you could do a hat, you could even use like an iPad

145

or something on stage to drive a point home and to share props is a fun way.

146

Okay, I promised you the number six would be the secret weapon

147

that I've been using for my entire career and that would be engage with humor.

148

Humor for whatever reason is the elixir.

149

It's the highest level for a speaker to be able to have something that they can say that is funny.

150

The audience wants to laugh most of the time unless they're a certain type that just doesn't laugh out loud.

151

But for me, humor is my secret weapon.

152

And so I'm going to do anything I can to make it so that I can share something funny, whether it's something I came up with or something I've noticed about the event.

153

Now, this is where my secret weapon for interacting with the audience has come in.

154

And I mean, I've even done events where I've been the MC for days on end.

155

And it's hard to connect with the audience because I never have a long enough time on stage to really connect.

156

And so using humor allows that connection quicker.

157

In fact, this happened recently.

158

I was at an event and the CEO and president stood up on stage and he announced a couple of new products.

159

It was a fairly boring speech, if you will, quote unquote.

160

But then he said, and this is so interesting as I was listening, and I'm always taking notes just so you know as an emcee

161

or a speaker you want to be taking notes on what people are saying

162

because you could possibly use what I'm about to show you.

163

He said something to the effect of, we've now decided with the new products we're launching to get rid of Fusion.

164

And the crowd went, yeah, and they stood up and cheered and high-fived and everyone was laughing.

165

He goes, I know we all hate Fusion.

166

We're finally getting rid of it.

167

And I thought, I looked around and went, huh, I have no idea what Fusion is, but apparently this is resonating with this audience.

168

And so what did I do?

169

A smart speaker would integrate that into their speech, right?

170

And so all I did was after he was done speaking, is I stood up and I said, thank you to the president and CEO.

171

What a great speech.

172

And apparently, which I didn't know was going to be happening next, we're going to be having a memorial service in the other room for Fusion.

173

and the crowd went crazy over that line.

174

I don't even know what Fusion is.

175

It's not something we could have a memorial service for, but they loved it.

176

And so that became a callback that I used for the rest of the time.

177

I didn't use it every time I took the stage, but if something didn't land, it was almost like when somebody says, you know, our football school rules,

178

and then you just start to yell the name of the high school or something.

179

And so then I would come out and be like, hey, guys that speech was awesome.

180

We got a lot of points out of it and I can tell you we didn't have enough laughs unfortunately.

181

So fusion and then everyone would laugh.

182

That kind of a thing works really well.

183

So that's a secret weapon I would say you can use.

184

Add humor.

185

Now tip number seven is to facilitate interactive activities

186

and the best way to do this in my opinion is either to have everyone stand up

187

and do something

188

or to just engage with one another by saying hey share where you're from with the person next to you

189

and the reason that you're here at this conference then they'll turn and talk

190

or you can have music playing they can go around do

191

high fives there's all kinds of interactive audience participation things you

192

can do there's other things like mentimeter where you would have to do some preparation

193

and that's an online game that shows up on the screen

194

and you just say hey everybody use this qr code

195

or use this on your text and text in this certain name

196

and number and it's going to pop up so that you can answer some of these questions.

197

That's a really cool way to interact with the audience.

198

So what I'd like you to do

199

if you will is please put into the comments

200

which of these you're going to integrate in your next presentation

201

and I'm excited for you because you're now going to make this way more interactive than most speakers ever do.

202

I hope especially that you'll consider humor

203

and do it in an appropriate way in a way that brings everybody up and makes it fun.

204

I also want to tell you about something that's exciting that we've created.

205

It's a community of speakers that are working to get better at it whether it's interaction

206

or making their presentation better in terms of slides and other types of technicalities,

207

but it's a community of speakers from hall of famers to people just starting out.

208

It's a community called Lift Off Lab.

209

Lift off as in a plane lifting off, just like you as a speaker lifting off to being more interactive, engaging with your audience.

210

Go check out liftofflab.com.

211

I hope you'll join us there.

212

We have a lot of great conversations and amazing people.

213

So thank you so much for watching this video.

214

Thank you.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing Practice: How To Engage Audience In Presentation - Jason Hewlett - Learn English Speaking with Video

Context & Background

Top 5 Phrases for Daily Communication

Step-by-step Shadowing Guide

What is the Shadowing Technique?