Three simple words to help you when preparing English presentations or speeches.

I have a client who has to give a welcome speech to visitors from a different country and she asked me to help her prepare it. When she read me the first draft, it was very difficult to understand. Not because the English was bad. In fact there were very few mistakes. The problem was, the English was very complicated; Long sentences and extremely impressive sounding words. This meant it was hard for her to read and extremely hard for me to follow. And I am a native English speaker, her audience for the speech won't be.
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My feedback was straightforward: clarity before complexity.

So often when non-native speakers use English, especially for big occassions, they feel the need to speak the highest level of English possible. However, it is not necessary. In fact, it is often counter-productive as it can make it really hard for the people listening to be able to understand. 

I suggested to my client to reduce sentence length and simplify certain words. A quick tip on how to save time doing this (if the content is not confidential) is to put it through AI with the prompt 'edit this to make it understandable for listeners with B1/B2/C1 level English'.

When my client came back with the second draft, it was SO much better. She still sounded professional and knowledgable, but her speech flowed much better and I could follow it easily. 

So, the next time you have to prepare a speech or presentation in English, remember clarity before complexity. It will make it easier for you to prepare, and more importantly, make it land much better with your audience