I hope this is one of the first posts you read when you come to my blog. I am going to give you all types of guidance, knowledge, tips, and tricks that will help you grow your confidence but believe with all my heart that if you start out by thinking along the right lines you will hit the ground running.
In my experience, which includes teaching speech to hundreds of adult learners, the idea most people have is that speaking involves writing out a presentation word-for-word, memorizing it, and then delivering it almost verbatim. If this is what you think you need to do you may be anxious as well. What I want to do here is outline a different approach. My goal is to lift a lot of that burden right off your shoulders.
The first notion you should let go of is the goal of giving a word-perfect delivery of some written out message. The longest part of you speech should be a conversational delivery of your main points. If you plan on conveying meaning rather than memorized text you will be more relaxed, sound more relaxed, and connect more fully with your audience. You will also be able to practice your speech in more ways.
For a minute let’s pretend that you have a great plan in place for your introduction and conclusion. All you need to do is make sure you are ready to present your main points. You will need to practice the entire body of you speech, but you can get extra practice in by reviewing your main points quickly when you are not tied to a specific wording.
One of the problems of memorizing a speech and delivering it exactly as written is the fact that often if you lose your place you will have a hard time picking up again. You will listen to yourself, counting on each sentence to remind you of the next. This is not a good way to calm your nerves. If you rely on a few sentences to carry a meaning you can build around then you simply have to track “I’m on my second point”. Let’s look at how simple this approach can make your plan. Imagine that you will be giving a talk to persuade your listeners to avoid smoking. You might gather statistics, definitions of health conditions, anecdotes of people who have enjoyed quitting, and other support. But you could boil down your message to three sentences as main points:
You should quit smoking for your health.
You should quit smoking for the health of those you love.
You should quit smoking to save money.
That’s a pretty easy bit to memorize. These points should be enough to get you going. Obviously if you have gathered facts about the health risks of smoking you will know to mention them with the first point, and statistics on the costs of smoking would go with the third. You see how a strong simple structure like this can hold things together in your mind.
I’m not done simplifying yet. Notice that all three of those points have similar wording. You could just say “You should quit smoking to save your health, family, and budget,” making the three points into keywords. The secret to making this work is to know something about your subject, so that anyone of these sentences reminds you of the things you know.
Do you see what freedom this brings you? Imagine that you are disagreeing with a friend about which restaurant to buy lunch at. You would make the point “I don’t want to eat at Bleccho’s, the last time I got sick.” If your friend persists you could and “And besides, they’re too expensive.” All stuff you already knew, brought to mind as needed by the situation. There is really just a short leap from this little argument to a short persuasive speech. A third friend comes along and wants to know that you are discussing. Now you do give a short speech. It goes like this:
“We are trying to decide where to eat. She wants to go to Bleccho’s but I don’t. I got sick there last time and couldn’t eat anything else for three days. And it costs way too much. I spent fifteen dollar there last time for a sandwich with some chips. I think we should go to Fumigan’s.”
You are already fully capable of giving speeches about things you really understand and care about. Keep this in mind as you prepare. Hold yourself to some good standards as you prepare, just make sure they are the right standards.
