Easier to Say is Easier to Remember

I'd like to help you step away from a tendency that is common among beginning speakers.  This is the tendency to go too far.  When you say too much you make it hard for listeners to rememmber.

I have a lot of chances to visit the classrooms of new college instructors.  They've got large textbooks and short quarters.  They often feel pressured to talk about everything in the textbook during a lecture to make sure they've "covered" everything.  This would be an admirable goal if it weren't based on a fallacy.
  

The underlying assumption of a long lecture is that if the teacher has said a thing the students know it.  I doubt that more than one percent of us could repeat a 20-minute lecture word-for-word 10 minutes after we have heard it.  So we clearly don't fully know what was said, let alone how to understand or apply it.

The solution makes life easier for you as the presenter and for the listener.  You take big ideas you want to communicate and explore them, leaving out some details or related ideas that are lower priority.  Spend more of your presentation time building meaning for your listeners.  You do this by helping them to apply the concept they have just learned through questions and examples.

Let's use Maslow's hierarchy as an example.  You could show a Powerpoint slide with all the levels of Maslow's hierarchy and their definitions, reading each to your listeners, then explaining further, helping them catch up on some much-needed sleep.  Or, you could ask, "How many of you ever gave up trying to make dinner because you were so tired, and didn't eat anything until breakfast the next day?  Some needs outweigh others and must be satisfied first.  Abraham Maslow described types of needs and which order they must be satisfied in."   You could then ask them to contribute to a list of needs and rank them.  Once they've got the general idea they will easily understand Maslow's work and can assimilate the details.

To apply my own principle here:  Just remember to give the big ideas in a simple way.  This makes them easy to remember.  Details come in time.

A Speech in Three Words?

In this post and the next I will provide you with one method for starting a speech from scratch.  This method is designed to do two things for you.  First, it will require a fraction of the effort required to start writing out a speech word for word and stop when you’ve got everything recorded.  Second, it will take you a long way toward memorizing your speech without the grueling hours of rote memorization.  So what do you have to give up in exchange for these advantages?  You must let go of the idea that your delivery must be word-perfect.  You are not planning to write out and repeat every idea to your audience verbatim.  What you will do to get started is answer two questions.  

The first is “What is my point?”  You should be able to state in a single sentence the thesis of your speech.  It will probably read something like “I want to persuade my listeners to vote for me” or “I need to explain the company’s new vacation policy”.

The second question is “What information do my listeners need?”  Create several short sentences that will answer a question like “How do you do that?” or “How can you prove that?” and arrange them in the order you will present them.  Read all the notes over several times, and pick out one or two keywords from each point.  You might find that you can actually sum up the points of your speech with one sentence for your main point and a pair of words for each of your subpoints.  

When you have broken your work down into these bare-bones elements you will see how easy it is to memorize the form of your speech compared to memorizing a five-minute speech word for word.  Even if you weren’t able to shorten your subpoints to keywords you won’t have much trouble remembering the thrust of four or five sentences.  Once you are able to rattle these off in order without a lot of fumbling you are ready for the next steps, which will be described in my next post.

For now, get started on this stage, and you will lose a lot of your fear of speaking.

Make it Easy to Remember

One of the factors that contributes to the fear of public speaking is the daunting task of trying to remember everything you want to say. You may have memories of finishing a presentation only to say “I forgot to tell them…”, or worse yet, you may be afraid you are going to blank out and forget your whole speech.  This may even have happened already.

First, let’s adjust your mindset a bit; then we’ll be able to lighten the load a lot.  There are two things you should keep in mind as you prepare your speech that will make preparation a joy rather than a burden.  Once we learn to base our planning on these we will take a very different path from the method of writing out every word then delivering every sentence from memory exactly as it is written down.  So here’s the big “secret”:  The audience doesn’t know what you’re going to say.  They don’t care if you use the exact words you practice with, as long as they get your meaning.  Therefore, there is no point in planning every word of the speech precisely.  Yes, punchlines, legal formulas, definitions, and quotes better be right, but other than that you just need to be sure you get across your meaning.  I have had students use this plan to learn a speech.  When they spoke they would sometimes substitute one word for another but then backtrack to correct themselves.  It might go something like this:  “If you’re going to start a business it might be wise to consult a lawyer, I mean an attorney”, which sounds awkward.  It also lets the audience know that you are focused on the words rather than their meaning.  This can be a signal that you are merely repeating phrases you don’t understand.  So let’s get you into something bit more comfortable, and practical.

Alright, you say, my old method may have been hard, but at least it was a method.  Now you tell me not to use it.  What have you got?  So glad you asked.  I use the preparation period as the time I memorize my speech.  And here’s another secret:  I DON’T memorize my speech.  I memorize parts of it.  Here’s how it works.

First, I come up with one sentence that is the main point of my talk, my thesis, you could say.  I do this before any other prep because if I don’t know what my point is I can hardly decide what to use during planning, can I?  This should be something that can be stated in one sentence.  This is the guiding idea of our presentation so it should make a nice summary.  There is the first thing I memorize – my point.  One sentence.  You can do that.  Try it now with some topic you’d like to speak on, and write it down.  Now.  Before you forget or start making excuses.

Next, as you gather your thoughts and your materials you will begin to decide what your main points will be.  Maybe they need to go in a specific order, but that’s a different blog post.  Right now we just know that we’ve come up with three or four supporting points or arguments that will make up your talk.  Each of those points should have a couple of key words in them.  Find those keywords.  They are your next assignment.  Once you have picked them out of the lineup, so to speak,  You will have an quick time keeping them in mind.

Here’s a real-life example.  I once gave a talk to several hundred young people.  I was told the topic was to be friendship.  The main idea of the talk was that there were some specific ways to chose friends.  The three points I made were there are people you it is good to be friends with, people it is not wise to be friends with, and people who need you to be their friend.  I boiled these sentences down to the keywords should, shouldn’t, and need.  If you are counting with me you know I have memorized one sentence and three keywords.  If I really know the meaning of my message this should take me very far.  I wrote these keywords on a 3x5” note card with a Sharpie in letters so large I could read them three feet away with my glasses off, which I ended up doing because I move around when I speak.  But I didn’t really need the card, because it was easy to remember my thoughts.  I simply wrapped up my keywords in similar sentences like “there are people you should be friends with”,  and “there are the ones you shouldn’t be friends with.”

So there you have a great start on learning your material.  Get a clear message first, know the ideas behind it.  If the topic already has meaning for you the keywords should be enough to bring out your message as it does mine.
This is a good stopping point for this blog.  Obviously there is more to building a speech, but remember, this blog is about memorizing one.  We are attacking the biggest source of fears first.  

And besides, you haven’t done you homework, have you?  I want you to pick two or three topics, sum up a message in one sentence, then write several other sentences to support that message.  Once that’s all written down for one topic, see how quickly you can recall your topic sentence  and you keywords. Turn your paper over and try to say them out loud.  
 If you put complete sentences together from your recall of the keywords you will have given a short speech!

Let me know in the comments of any questions or snags that come up as you work through this method this week.

Just Listen toYourself

Want to get better at speaking in a hurry?  Do it as often as you can.  Feel like you're not ready?  Don't worry, that feeling is partly wrong.  You will always feel a bit of it.  More on that later.  For now, just get started.

How?  Ask for volunteers from your group of family and friends.  Put a bunch of stuffed animals on a couch if you have to.  But gather an audience.  The point is to speak out loud.  Do it from only a small set of notes (if you must use notes at all).  

Why does it have to be out loud?  You are checking yourself out, and there are some things you have to hear.  How strong is your voice?  Are you delivering in a monotone?  Can you pronounce all the words in your material?  Are you saying "um" a lot?  Find out now, before these all become bad habits.

Release Your Mind from Unrealistic Goals

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.