WRITING A SPEECH
So you have to give a speech. Public speaking isn’t fatal, although it may
be uncomfortable for you. Many people
are nervous or even frightened about standing up in front of a group to
speak. Most often when people say they
hate public speaking, their reasons center around fear of looking dumb, making
mistakes in front of everyone, and generally making fools of themselves. No one wants to look bad in front of others;
it’s bad enough to look bad in private.
So what can we do to make it unlikely you’ll look bad?
One thing that makes a huge difference is being
well prepared. If you believe you have
something important to say and have carefully planned how you’re going to say
it, you are a great deal less likely to look silly, even if you do make a few
mistakes along the way. This lesson is
about how to plan just what you’re going to say.
Thinking
of a Topic
You know, out in the world, this problem doesn’t
come up very often. Most of the time on the job or when you’re involved in a community
organization and you’re asked to speak to a group, the topic is determined by
the speaking situation. For example, if
you’re part of the community effort to pass a bond issue for a new swimming
pool and you’re asked to talk to the local Kiwanis Club, then you don’t have to
think of a topic, only of an approach.
At work, if you’re asked to do an in-service on restraint use, then your
topic is already determined. If you gain
experience and a reputation as a speaker, then it might happen that you’re
asked to come and speak to a group on any topic you choose; but that’s probably
down the road a way for most of us. So
once you’re through school, choosing a topic gets a whole lot easier.
For now though, you’ll need to find something to
talk about. I find many students put
this off for so long that the night before the speech, they’re still trying to
think of a topic. This is a recipe for
disaster, since putting together a good speech takes time—certainly more than
one night! How can we make it easier to
take that first step?
First of all, it is generally not necessary to
choose a topic about which you know nothing.
Occasionally someone might ask you to find out all you can about a
specific topic and “report to the class” on it; but usually you have some
latitude to choose something you’re interested in and know something
about. So how do you think of topics,
and how do you choose? Try this method.
1.
On a sheet of paper, write the following
headings, leaving space between them for making lists:
§
PEOPLE
§
PLACES
§
OBJECTS
§
HOBBIES/LEISURE ACTIVITIES
§
NEWS EVENTS
§
JOBS/OCCUPATIONS
§
GOOD CAUSES
§
ANIMALS
2. Now
give yourself about 20 minutes and quickly write as many things under each
category heading as you can think of.
Don’t worry right now about how you’d turn each one into a speech; most
of them will never become speech topics for you anyway. The purpose here is to get a lot of ideas
fast. Don’t worry either about whether
something fits the category exactly; just write it down for now.
Under people you might
include President Bush, your grandmother, an interesting speaker you once
heard, 2-year olds, doctors, and people who yell at referees. So don’t restrict yourself to only famous
people or only people you’ve actually met or even specific
individuals at all—that’s how “doctors” and “2-year olds” got on this
list.
Objects might include
things like your new house, collectible stamps, vegetables, toys, motorboats,
hunting rifles, and a computer. Animals
might be your dog Fluffy, the mighty walrus, Winnie the Pooh, lab animals, and
crickets. Get the idea? Just write fast—whatever comes to mind.
3. Now
go through all these lists and think about each item as a potential speech
topic. Here’s where, supposing “weasel”
appeared on your animal list, you might choose the topic used in the examples
below. “George Bush” might turn into a
speech on why he should/shouldn’t be reelected, a speech about the war in
4. When
you have at least three potential speech topics identified, spend some time on
each one, thinking about how you could craft it into an actual speech. This will be easier once you’ve looked over
the material on structuring a speech which follows. You’re looking for something you can narrow
to fit the time limitations you have and focus so that the audience can stay
with you as you speak. Do not feel you
have to go to the library and do a bunch of research in order to give a speech
that informs us or persuades us. Choose
a topic you already feel comfortable with; you might end up checking out a fact
or two, but will probably already know most of what you need to know before you
sit down to plan. That’s OK; in fact, I
encourage it.
5. Now
that you have a topic selected, you’re ready to actually design the
speech. That’s the next step; read on.
The
Difference Between Speaking and Writing (besides
nerves)
Communicating well in writing is related to
communicating well orally. Generally
speaking, both depend on your ability to structure sentences and groups of
sentences to make your ideas clear to a reader or a listener. It helps to have a sufficient vocabulary so
that you have words readily available to explain the concepts you’re discussing,
and it helps if you have a sufficient command of the rules and structures of
English so that you can clearly communicate these concepts. But good writing and good speaking aren’t exactly the same thing. Over the years, more than once I’ve had
students ask if they can use a paper they wrote for some other class as a
speech in my class. I don’t have a
problem with the idea of double-dipping like this—it saves work; but I always
caution them that they can’t simply use the paper exactly as written. In fact, reading a paper, even a very good
one, is a sure way to give a bad speech.
Why? The issue here is not that
you’re reading; some very good speakers use a manuscript (that is, a full
written text) for speaking. It’s that
good writing and a good speech aren’t exactly the same
thing.
The biggest difference between good writing and
good speaking is that when a reader
gets confused or misses a point, she can just turn back and read again; but
when a listener becomes confused or
misses a point, it's already too late.
Writing is permanent, allowing leisurely perusal of the author's
thoughts, rereading of difficult or complicated passages, and time to stop and
think between ideas. Speech is
ephemeral: it happens, and then it's gone forever. For the listener, there are no second chances
or time to think. This places special
burdens on the speaker.
Good writing often contains long complex sentences
and may have an overall plan that is pretty complicated. This adds interest. Writing shouldn’t contain a lot of repetition
or any sentence fragments. Often it
should be fairly formal and appear to be highly planned in advance. Speaking shouldn’t look like that at all. It requires shorter, simpler sentences. Repetition is essential. Sentence fragments may be OK in places. Speech is less formal and should sound as if
you’re speaking in conversation—not disorganized, but extemporaneous.
It is your job as a speaker to help your audience
understand your ideas, not their job to figure them out. You have a responsibility to organize
carefully, plan meticulously, and explicitly show that organizational plan to
your audience, so that they can stay with you.
Whereas repetition makes writing boring, repetition makes speaking
understandable. Restating key points gives
the listener another opportunity to hear them and fit them into the overall
plan.
For these reasons, oral presentations require
attention to design and an organizational structure that you make evident to
your audience throughout your talk. As
you learn public speaking, I suggest a simple design philosophy that affords
your audience a good opportunity to stay with you. Here it is:
T3OC
T3OC is shorthand for a method of
speech planning. Each part of this
method addresses an important element in structuring a speech. The elements are as follows:
T
stands for THESIS
statement. A speech needs one major
thesis. I think of the thesis as a
one-sentence summary of the entire speech.
Look at it like this: if one of your listeners is asked, "So what
did the speaker talk about anyway?" there should be a one-sentence answer
for the question that says more than just, "Oh, she talked about
weasels." “Weasels” is not a
thesis; it’s a topic. Now you need a
topic, so you might start out with the idea to talk about weasels from your
animal list, but then you must put together a sentence that tells what it is
you have to say about weasels in this particular speech. The sentence I'm looking for would be more
like this: "She wanted us to understand the reasons weasels make such good
pets for small children." The
thesis statement shouldn't be a single word or phrase like "weasels"
or “decorating on a budget.” It should be
a complete sentence like "Weasels make great pets for small children for
these three reasons: they're small enough to carry easily; they're soft and
cuddly; and they're very social."
(By the way, I made this up. I
have no idea whether weasels would actually make good pets, although I suspect
not; so don't run out to find one for your two-year old.) And that brings us to the next element.
3
stands for the number of main points you need in your presentation. Now three isn't absolutely the only number of
main points you can use, but it's a very good number. For a very short speech, say less than a
minute, you really need only one. But
for anything longer than that, three points is ideal. The reason for this is that the human brain
remembers things in threes very well. We
tend to feel there's a balance and a rightness about
things in threes. This means audiences
are comfortable with things in threes, and anything that makes my audience feel
comfortable is something I want to consider doing. If it also means my audience is more likely
to remember what I’ve said, I’ll do it for sure.
Besides all of this stuff about how the brain
remembers best, there are other reasons to use just three points. If you have fewer than three points, it means
you probably haven't done a very thorough job of looking at a topic from more
than one perspective. If you use more
than three points, your audience will find them very difficult to remember—too
much is just too much. And this rule
holds even for longer presentations—even very
long ones. If you're doing a half-day
workshop, I still recommend three main points.
An audience that leaves an all-day session with a list of fifteen points
to remember . . . won’t remember. For a
long session, each of your three points can have three subpoints
under it, and the subpoints can be further
subdivided; but I really do prefer things in threes. More important, so does your audience.
Now you'll note that in the weasel thesis example
above there were indeed three points AND these were part of the thesis
statement. I think that's a good
idea. When you first write your thesis,
you'll have just the idea, "Weasels make great pets for young
children." Then as you move on to
develop your three main points, add them to the thesis statement. If they don't comfortably add on to the
thesis statement, then they're not relevant enough to your thesis; and either
the point or the thesis needs revision.
Let’s start over and look at this situation again:
Say your initial writing of the thesis statement
resulted in the same short sentence: Weasels make great pets for young children.
Now let’s say that as you worked on the
details you came up with the following point:
Weasels are small enough to carry
easily. Now when you add this to the
original thesis statement, it fits: Weasels make great pets for young children
because they are small enough to carry easily. Your point helps to make the case that
weasels are good pets for young children—being small is an advantage.
Now let’s say you’ve also come up with a lot of
information about how weasels once lived in most of
What do you think?
Does it fit? Not really, does
it? That’s because, while the
information may be interesting and useful, it doesn’t really help to make the
case for getting your child a weasel, does it?
So you shouldn’t use it. All of
that beautiful information has to be discarded.
You need something different in this speech. Writing the thesis to include your main
points will help you to spot this sort of misfit so your audience won’t while
you’re speaking.
A speech that can't be summarized like this with a
thesis statement that incorporates the three main points is a speech in serious
need of revision. Your best chance to
really reach your audience is to be absolutely clear with them about what
you’re trying to accomplish in your speech; the thesis statement gives you your
best shot at doing so. The thesis
statement also helps you to focus so that you stay on target as you design the
speech. And the thesis statement forms
the structure for the entire middle part—or body—of your speech.
O
stands for opening or introduction. Note
that I'm suggesting you write it only after
planning the body of your speech. Most
people try to write the opening first, and this causes problems. How can you introduce something when you
don't know yet what that something is?
Many of us develop sort of a writer's block by trying to begin at the
beginning because we can't seem to find a way to get started. And then, once the introduction is finally
written, we spend a lot of time and effort trying to write a speech that goes
with the introduction. Bad plan. My best
advice is that you should never begin at the beginning. Always begin with the middle, then write the beginning.
It’s easy to introduce something once you have the something in front of
you. You'll be surprised at how much
easier this makes writing almost anything—not just a speech.
Now the introduction of a speech has important
work to do. It makes a first impression;
hardly anywhere in the world are first impressions as important as they are in
speaking. The introduction gets the
audience's attention. You need to find a
way to draw our interest to what you are saying. This can be done in a variety of ways; you
might tell a story (true or fictional), describe a situation or person, make a
dramatic or surprising statement, ask a question, show us an interesting object
(as long as it's truly big enough to see) . . . . The possibilities are endless! But whatever you do, you want to project
energy and enthusiasm for your topic; if you're not interested, I'm fairly sure
the rest of the world won't care either.
The introduction also introduces your topic. It is important to tell us specifically just
what it is that you’ll be talking about; however, I don't like to hear,
"My topic is . . . " or "I’m going to talk to you today about .
. . . " Surely there's a more
creative way to do this. Think carefully
about how you’ll let us know what your topic is, and don’t forget to do this
very important task. I've heard many
speeches where, even after listening for a full minute, I'm not all that sure
just what the subject is. You don't want
to give one of those speeches. So
somewhere in the first few sentences of your opening, remember to tell us what
you're talking about.
The introduction also previews the rest of your
speech. You should explicitly list the
three points you've planned. This will
help the audience to follow along as you go through the three points,
discussing each one in the body of your speech.
It helps us to know when you're moving on to a new point. It makes you look organized; sometimes you'll
appear to be more organized than you actually are. I consider this a critical part of the
introduction and always listen carefully for this preview. A speech without a preview is one that gives
up before it gets going. Audiences need
a framework to use as they follow you through your presentation; remember, they can't go back and reread to pick up missed
points; they get only one shot at your ideas.
Give them all the help you can.
So, how would we introduce our speech on weasels
as pets? Remember that we need to do the
following:
Ø get
the audience’s attention right at the beginning
Ø let
the audience know just what the topic is
Ø preview
the rest of the speech
And, of course, anything we can do to add energy
and enthusiasm right from the start is also a great idea. Here’s a possible introduction for the weasel
speech:
It
occurs to me that weasels have gotten a bad name over the years. People say things like, “I tried to weasel
out of giving this speech,” and you immediately think of sly, sneaky little
critters, don’t you? In fact, weasels
don’t deserve this reputation at all:
they’re not sly and sneaky; instead they’re adaptable and sociable. The whole idea of “weaseling” out of or into
things comes from the fact that weasels are small and flexible enough to fit
through small spaces. This is actually a
wonderful quality, especially when you consider having a weasel for a child’s
pet. In fact, weasels make great pets
for small children because they're small enough to carry easily; they're soft
and cuddly; and they're very social. And
so today I’d like to explore with you all the advantages weasels have as pets for
children.
How
often do you see a small child knocked over by a great big exuberant dog? . . .
. And you’re off into your first point—about weasels
being small enough for small children to carry around with them.
See how it’s done?
Just what is in this introduction?
We’ve fulfilled our three requirements:
Ø Starting
out by saying weasels have gotten a bad name will grab your audience’s interest
long enough for you to get to the actual substance of your speech. It’s a statement that will capture attention,
and that is your goal.
Ø The
topic is expressly stated in the thesis statement and in the following
sentence, “ . . . today I’d like to explore with you
all the advantages weasels have as pets for children.” Your intention is crystal clear from this.
Ø The
preview is in the thesis statement. From
this we all know that three points will follow in the body of the speech:
·
Weasels are small enough to carry easily.
·
Weasels are soft and cuddly.
·
Weasels are very social.
The words (and, of course, your tone of voice)
will convey your enthusiasm for this wonderful pet. And your lively, good-humored approach tells
the audience that, while you have real information to impart, your take on the
topic will be a little light-hearted.
Our few introductory sentences are doing a great deal of work, aren’t they?
C
stands for the conclusion.
Finally we’re doing things in order:
we’re writing the conclusion last.
That’s a good idea because it’s easiest to conclude once we know just
what we’re concluding. A conclusion has
important work to do too; in fact, it’s the second most important part of a
speech after the introduction. If first
impressions matter, so do last impressions.
You want the last words you leave with your audience to be memorable and
to make you look good. The conclusion,
like the introduction, has the potential to make you look better than you
really are: if you do this well, your
audience might well go away more impressed with you than they have any reason
to be based on the bulk of your speech.
That’s OK with me.
An important job of the conclusion is to summarize
your speech. This means you will once
again explicitly state your thesis, including the three main points. Remember when I said that repetition in a
speech is a good thing? The old rule for
speech-writers is Tell them what you’re
going to tell them, then tell them, then tell them what you told them. That means you’re stating your three points
three times—there is magic in the number 3.
You’ll tell them what you’re going
to tell them in the introduction as you preview the speech; you’ll tell them in the body of the speech; and
then you’ll tell them what you told them
in the conclusion. Lots
of chances for your audience to get your three main points and for you to look
super-organized.
The other work that falls to the conclusion is to
make you look good just before you sit down.
Remember that the last thing the audience will hear you say is in the
conclusion of your speech. Take a couple
of sentences here to tie things up with a nice neat bow, just like a
beautifully wrapped gift. Use something
that will stick in their minds. When
possible, tie the conclusion back into something from the introduction; for
example, if you use a story in the introduction, refer back to it in your
concluding sentences. This strengthens the appearance of your speech as a
carefully integrated whole.
How would we do this for our speech on weasels as
pets? Here’s one possibility:
So
now you can see what great pets weasels make for young
children. They’re small enough to carry
easily; they’re soft and cuddly; and they’re highly social. Just what every child needs. If you bring a weasel into your family,
before you know it he will weasel his way right into your heart.
And now you have the structural outline of a great
speech.
Finishing
the Speech
From here you can go on to flesh out the body of
the speech as needed to incorporate all the information you want to share with
your audience. There are a few things to
remember as you do this. These are as
follows:
Ø Include
only information that is relevant to your thesis statement. Topics you might
include in each of the points may be the following:
·
Point 1:
Size—the actual length and weight of a typical weasel;
differences in size between males and females; how much you might expect a baby
weasel to grow during its lifetime; how easily small hands can pick up the long
skinny body of a weasel; the relatively small living quarters they need in your
home; the small amount of food a weasel will consume; their extreme flexibility
as it relates to them curling up on your lap for a snooze or riding on your
shoulder around the house
·
Point 2:
Soft and cuddly—the length of fur (and its typical color,
along with color changes with the seasons); how much they shed—or don’t—on
carpets, beds, furniture, etc.; softness
of the fur (and ease of bathing to keep it soft); their behavioral tendency to
prefer sitting on a human over sitting on the floor or behind the sofa and to
prefer sleeping with you to sleeping in the cage
·
Point 3:
Social—the fact that weasels like humans and enjoy
playing with them; information about their behavioral tendency to come toward
humans in a room; their preference for being petted and held; the games they’ll
play with an old pillow or blanket left on the floor; their cute habit of
crawling inside your sleeve or pants leg or empty shoes (And yes, I made most of this up too.)
There really is nowhere
in this speech for your fascinating information on weasel habitat and human
pressures on it. Likewise, this is not a
good time to bring up the fact that weasels are related to minks or whatever
other cousins you’ve discovered. Stick
to your three points and ruthlessly prune out anything that doesn’t relate to
them.
Ø Cover
your three points in the same order as you originally presented them in your
introduction. Changing their order at
this point will only muddy the waters.
Ø Move
smoothly from one point to the next.
You’ll need to think about and plan transition statements that enable
you to do this. You can see an example
of one way to accomplish this transition in the sample introduction above. The last sentence written is really the first
sentence of the body of the speech. Note
how it moves on to the first point without exactly announcing the move; yet
we’re all clear that the move has taken place.
In each transition of your speech, you need to clearly signal that
you’re leaving one point and moving on to the next point; but you don’t want to
do this abruptly. For example, this is
not a good transition:
. . . . And so, weasels really are so lightweight and small
that even the youngest child is quite capable of picking one up and carrying it
anywhere in the house.
Now for my second point, weasels are soft
and cuddly . . . .
Clumsy, isn’t it? You need a little smoother change from one
topic to the next. This one’s much
better:
. . . . And so, weasels really are so lightweight and small
that even the youngest child is quite capable of picking one up and carrying it
anywhere in the house.
Now that we see how easy
weasels are to carry and hold, let’s explore why you’d want to bother. Just one touch of a weasel’s soft coat . . .
.
Much better, don’t you
think? It’s important to really think
these transitions through. They smooth
the parts of the speech into a coherent single piece that hangs together from
start to finish.
Ø Stick
with your plan. If you’re on Point 3 and
suddenly remember some interesting fact you intended to include in Point 1, go
back and work it into Point 1. Don’t
just drop it in the middle of Point 3.
If this happens during your
speech—that is, while you’re delivering it, you’ll have to let the interesting
fact go; do not put it into the speech where it doesn’t fit. A speech shouldn’t wander; it should have a
clear sense of direction and move in that direction from start to finish. Think of a big fat black arrow that runs
through your speech from your opening words to your final ones. Everything in the speech should contribute to
moving that arrow along. Anything that
wanders away from the arrow or slows its movement must be eliminated or
redesigned.
Ø Allow
yourself enough time. The hardest part
of giving a speech isn’t actually giving it at all; it’s preparing it in the
first place. With experience, you can do
this more quickly; but if you’re pretty new to this, I recommend allowing at
least several days to put things together after
you’ve thought of a topic.
Do
I write the whole thing out?
This is a decision you’ll make for yourself. When it comes to delivery—a topic for another
day—you’ll find that there are basically three methods available to you. You can write the whole speech out and then
memorize it; you can write the whole speech out and then deliver it while
holding the manuscript; or you can produce an outline of key items of
information and talk your way through it, making up and filling in the
sentences as you speak. All three of
these are legitimate and acceptable.
Which you choose will depend on your individual preference. There are some cautions I can provide.
The most dangerous of the methods listed is
memorization. There is always a chance,
especially when you’re nervous, that you’ll go blank while speaking and be
unable to remember what comes next. This
is a painful experience. In addition,
there’s a tendency when delivering memorized material to recite it rather than
deliver it in a conversational tone.
This sounds memorized and is boring.
Some people will talk much too fast or in spurts—I call this machine-gun
delivery: you take a deep breath and
then, as fast as you can, say everything you can until you run out of air. Then a big gulp of fresh
breath and another burst of fire.
And so on, until you finish or pass out.
This is not good.
When I was a college freshman taking speech class
in the spring semester, I had a classmate I’ll never forget. Understand that public speaking—a whole
course in it, not just a couple of speeches—was required for graduation for
every student at my university. This
classmate was a senior engineering student who was due to graduate in May. When we were talking before class on the very
first day of the semester, he confided that this was his eighth time in speech class.
Yes, he had started the course every semester he was in college, got
scared of the speaking, and withdrew every time. Now he was up against it; he was graduating
and had to finish the course. He was
terrified. Pretty much everyone in the
class knew his situation and was rooting for him; he was a nice guy.
His first speech was at least as painful for all
of us as it was for him. In this speech
we were supposed to introduce ourselves to the class—a pretty standard topic
for first speeches the world over because it’s generally considered to be a nonthreatening subject.
Here’s what happened: he got up
in front of the class with no notes; he had memorized his speech. He took a deep breath and gave us his first
burst—really, really fast! Took another
breath and did it again. Took another
breath and just stood there like a deer in the headlights; he’d forgotten what
came next. After he stood there for what
seemed like weeks, he said, “Excuse me—just a minute,” raced back to his desk,
opened his notebook and flipped through the pages. He found what he was looking for, read a
minute, and then went back up to the front of the room. Gave us a couple of bursts and went blank
again. So he went back to his notebook
again. This happened at least half a
dozen times in a two-minute speech.
Agony! Memorizing is dangerous.
If you choose to speak from memory, spend some
time getting your outline firmly in your mind.
This will enable you to carry on, even if you
forget the precise words and sentences you had planned to say. A great deal of practice is also in order to
get you comfortable enough with your material that you’re less likely to go
blank. And practice
moderating your pace so that you don’t get off to the races as you deliver
your speech.
Your second choice is to speak from a
manuscript. This is a good choice for
eliminating the fear that you’ll forget what you had planned to say and look
foolish; the whole thing is right there in front of you! If you plan to try using a manuscript, be
sure you print the speech in a large font size.
The last thing you want to do if you need to look at the paper is to
spend time squinting at tiny print, trying to figure out where you left
off. It will also help if you view the
manuscript as a tool, rather than a nice clean paper. Write on it!
If there’s a spot you’re always forgetting, put a big red star on it so
that it will be easy to find in a hurry.
If there’s another spot where the exact wording is important, mark that
too, so that you can spot it quickly.
Experienced speakers who use manuscripts scribble all over them, marking
places where they want to speed up and other places where it’s important to
slow down. They’ll underline words that
need emphasis and otherwise mark it up.
The manuscript becomes sort of like a sheet of music which contains what
are called dynamic markings that tell you where to play loudly and softly,
where to speed up and slow down, what to emphasize, etc. The biggest potential drawback of using a
manuscript is that people tend to think of them as replacing practice; after
all, all you have to do is read the speech.
Problem is that a speech should never sound like it’s
being read; it has to sound like conversation—very natural. It takes a great deal of practice and some
skill to read without sounding like you are reading; in fact, you’re not really
supposed to be reading at all. The
manuscript should be there more as support, not as a script to be read. Another issue with manuscripts is that you’ll
have pieces of paper in your hands; the potential to rattle and wave them
around is great. Rattling and waving
distracts the audience a lot. One more problem
that can develop is that people often speak much too fast when using a
manuscript. If you want to try a
manuscript, I encourage you to do so; but watch out for these pitfalls.
The third choice is notes. Here you’re probably using index cards with a
few things jotted on them. This is your
best bet for getting a more natural kind of delivery. The speech sounds conversational and
off-the-cuff because you are to some degree making it up as you go. Of course, if you’ve practiced a lot, you’ve
already worked out what you want to say and how you want to say it; when you
put the sentences together as you go, they come off much more naturally. What can go wrong? You can forget where you were going with
something before you’ve gotten there.
Practice reduces the chance of that by a lot, but the possibility always
exists. Sometimes, when speaking
extemporaneously, you don’t get the cleanest sentences and the smoothest
transitions because there isn’t time to carefully plan each turn of
phrase. If you plan to use notes, I
recommend writing out the entire introduction and conclusion on the note cards
exactly as you want to deliver them and then practicing these until you have
all the kinks worked out. These are important
enough to plan every sentence. I also
suggest you write large enough to easily read from the usual eye-to-lectern
distance and very neatly so that you’re not squinting at the cards, trying to
make out what is on them. Only write on
one side of each card; flipping them over involves waving them around and will
be distracting to the audience.
One more piece of advice if you’re carrying
written material to the lectern with you:
number the pages (or cards). More
than once I've seen a speaker drop these on the way up there to speak. If they’re not numbered, this can create a
problem you just don’t need right before you speak. When they’re numbered, it takes only a few
seconds to quickly shuffle them back into the proper sequence.
Decide which of these delivery methods appeals to
you the most and try it in your first speech.
Then you can decide, based on the results, what to do in your second
speech. If you have to speak on other
occasions in the future, you’ll figure out which method works best for you.
Conclusion
Most of the really scary things about public
speaking can be reduced a great deal by careful preparation. This begins with choosing a topic that is
comfortable for you and carefully designing your speech so that your audience
is interested and able to stay with you throughout your presentation. When you’ve finished this preparation and
chosen a method of delivery, the last step in preparation is to practice,
practice, practice.
How many times should you practice a speech before you’ve practiced
enough? This will depend a great deal on
your skills, your level of fear, and your familiarity with your topic; but a
dozen times through your speech is generally only a good start. If you leave yourself sufficient time to do a
lot of practicing before speech day, you’ll find that the fears are manageable
and the speech is survivable. Good luck!
