What type of delivery did the speaker use

Could they hear you? Was your voice well modulated? Did you mispronounce any words? How was your posture? Were your gestures effective?

Did you have any mannerisms that you should learn to avoid? Because peers are sometimes reluctant to say things that could sound critical, direct questions are often a useful way to help them speak up. If you learn from these practice sessions that your voice tends to drop at the ends of sentences, make a conscious effort to support your voice as you conclude each main point.

If your practice observers mention that you tend to hide your hands in the sleeves of your shirt or jacket, next time wear short sleeves or roll your sleeves up before beginning your speech. If you learn through practice that you tend to sway or rock while you speak, you can consciously practice and build the habit of not swaying.

When it is your turn to give feedback to others in your group, assume that they are as interested in doing well as you are. Give feedback in the spirit of helping their speeches be as good as possible. Technology has made it easier than ever to record yourself and others using the proliferation of electronic devices people are likely to own. Video, of course, allows you the advantage of being able to see yourself as others see you, while audio allows you to concentrate on the audible aspects of your delivery.

As we mentioned earlier in the chapter, if neither video nor audio is available, you can always observe yourself by practicing your delivery in front of a mirror. After you have recorded yourself, it may seem obvious that you should watch and listen to the recording.

This can be intimidating, as you may fear that your performance anxiety will be so obvious that everyone will notice it in the recording. A recording can also be a very effective diagnostic device. Sometimes students believe they are making strong contact with their audiences, but their cards contain so many notes that they succumb to the temptation of reading. It is most likely that in viewing your recording, you will benefit from discovering your strengths and finding weak areas you can strengthen.

Luckily, public speaking is an activity that, when done conscientiously, strengthens with practice. It is advisable to practice out loud in front of other people several times, spreading your rehearsals out over several days. To do this kind of practice, of course, you need to have your speech be finalized well ahead of the date when you are going to give it. During these practice sessions, you can time your speech to make sure it lasts the appropriate length of time.

Your practice sessions will also enable you to make adjustments to your notecards to make them more effective in supporting your contact with your audience.

This kind of practice is not just a strategy for beginners; it is practiced by many highly placed public figures with extensive experience in public speaking. Your public speaking course is one of the best opportunities you will have to manage your performance anxiety, build your confidence in speaking extemporaneously, develop your vocal skills, and become adept at self-presentation. The habits you can develop through targeted practice are to build continuously on your strengths and to challenge yourself to find new areas for improving your delivery.

By taking advantage of these opportunities, you will gain the ability to present a speech effectively whenever you may be called upon to speak publicly. Why should you use presentation aids? While it is true that impressive presentation aids will not rescue a poor speech, it is also important to recognize that a good speech can often be made even better by the strategic use of presentation aids.

Presentational aids are items other than the words of a speech that are used to support the intent of the speaker. In particular, they can be visual aids, audio aids or other supporting technology.

Human communication is a complex process that often leads to misunderstandings. If you are like most people, you can easily remember incidents when you misunderstood a message or when someone else misunderstood what you said to them. Misunderstandings happen in public speaking just as they do in everyday conversations. One reason for misunderstandings is the fact that perception and interpretation are highly complex individual processes.

Most of us have seen the image in which, depending on your perception, you see either the outline of a vase or the facial profiles of two people facing each other. This shows how interpretations can differ, and it means that your presentations must be based on careful thought and preparation to maximize the likelihood that your listeners will understand your presentations as you intend them to.

As a speaker, one of your basic goals is to help your audience understand your message. To reduce misunderstanding, presentation aids can be used to clarify or to emphasize. Clarification is important in a speech because if some of the information you convey is unclear, your listeners will come away puzzled or possibly even misled. Presentation aids can help clarify a message if the information is complex or if the point being made is a visual one. If your speech is about the impact of the Coriolis effect on tropical storms, for instance, you will have great difficulty clarifying it without a diagram because the process is a complex one.

The diagram in Figure The diagram allows the audience to process the information in two ways: through your verbal explanation and through the visual elements of the diagram.

Figure In this image, you clearly have a speaker and an audience albeit slightly abstract , with the labels of a source, channel, message, receivers, and feedback to illustrate the interactional model of human communication. When you use a presentation aid for emphasis, you impress your listeners with the importance of an idea. In a speech on water conservation, you might try to show the environmental proportions of the resource.

When you use a conceptual drawing you show that if the world water supply were equal to ten gallons, only ten drops would be available and potable for human or household consumption. This drawing is effective because it emphasizes the scarcity of useful water and thus draws attention to this important information in your speech.

A article by the US Department of Labor summarized research on how people learn and remember. When your graphic images deliver information effectively and when your listeners understand them clearly, audience members are likely to remember your message long after your speech is over. Moreover, people often are able to remember information that is presented in sequential steps more easily than if that information is presented in an unorganized pattern.

When you use a presentation aid to display the organization of your speech, you will help your listeners to observe, follow, and remember the sequence of information you conveyed to them. This is why some instructors display a lecture outline for their students to follow during class.

An added plus of using presentation aids is that they can boost your memory while you are speaking. Using your presentation aids while you rehearse your speech will familiarize you with the association between a given place in your speech and the presentation aid that accompanies that material.

For example, if you are giving an informative speech about diamonds, you might plan to display a sequence of slides illustrating the most popular diamond shapes: brilliant, marquise, emerald, and so on. As you finish describing one shape and advance to the next slide, seeing the next diamond shape will help you remember the information about it that you are going to deliver. The third function of presentation aids is simply to make your speech more interesting.

While it is true that a good speech and a well-rehearsed delivery will already include variety in several aspects of the presentation, in many cases, a speech can be made even more interesting by the use of well-chosen presentation aids. For example, you may have prepared a very good speech to inform a group of gardeners about several new varieties of roses suitable for growing in your local area.

You can imagine that your audience would be even more enthralled if you had the ability to display an actual flower of each variety in a bud vase. Similarly, if you were speaking to a group of gourmet cooks about Indian spices, you might want to provide tiny samples of spices that they could smell and taste during your speech.

Presentation aids alone will not be enough to create a professional image. As we mentioned earlier, impressive presentation aids will not rescue a poor speech. However, even if you give a good speech, you run the risk of appearing unprofessional if your presentation aids are poorly executed.

This means that in addition to containing important information, your presentation aids must be clear, clean, uncluttered, organized, and large enough for the audience to see and interpret correctly. Misspellings and poorly designed presentation aids can damage your credibility as a speaker. The speaker thereby establishes closer intimacy with the audience.

Under certain rare circumstances, it might also be appropriate for the speaker to join the audience. Such use of space works well when an audience is scattered around a room. But there is usually too much movement in such an action and the audience will find itself wondering where the speaker will next move rather than listening to his or her words.

Standing is always better than sitting. Sitting, implying a more informal mode of discussion, is appropriate for a variety of circumstances. But speech-making is a formal activity. Standing, however, isolates an speaker and contributes to anxiety about public speaking. The section on anxiety suggests ways of coping. A speaker needs to project authority over the subject matter, not over the audience.

In a perfect world, such authority would be determined merely by the integrity of the speaker's argument. We do not, however, live in a perfect world and it is a mistake to delude oneself that only one's ideas matter, particularly when one is speaking to a audience of strangers. Strangers have very little to go on initially in determining whether to pay attention to a speaker. There are some basic rules of presence, most of which our parents told us about. First, wear your favorite formal clothes.

Never wear anything with which you feel less than comfortable, and wear something that suggests care and attention. Do not wear anything that will divert the audience's attention or set you apart further from the audience. Second, always stand up straight.

One should not be stiff, but slouching suggests a laziness that could possibly affect the audience's recpetion of your argument. The podium is not a posture prop; the podium's purpose is symbolic. Third, smile before you say your first word. Even if your subject matter is deadly serious and horrific, a smile will establish a rapport with your audience that can be built upon. Today the manuscript style is common, but the paper is gone. Who reads the speech to the audience?

Answer: Newscasters and television personalities. In the old days, the manuscript was hand-lettered on cue cards, which were held next to the camera lens. Then paper scrolls, like printed piano rolls were used, especially in Soap Operas.

Today, a special teleprompter working like a periscope is attached to the camera so the newscaster is looking at the lens while reading. Why is the manuscript important and in use? In the news- reporting industry, every fraction of a second counts because broadcast time is costly. Also, the facts and names must be exact and accurate so there is no room for error. Errors in reporting decrease the credibility of the news organization and the newscaster. The most regular use of the teleprompter for manuscript delivery is by the U.

They reflect the text from a monitor on the floor like a periscope. The glass on both sides has the same text, and the speaker looks alternately from one glass to the other as though looking at the audience through the glass. The audience cannot see the projected text.

The speeches a President gives will often reflect national policy, define international relationships, and the press will scrutinize every syllable. It has to be more than brilliantly accurate; it has to be impeccably phased.

Professional writers and policy experts compose the speech; and the President delivers it as though he not only wrote it, but made it up on the spot. That is the skill of a good politician, actor, or speaker. To download a. The easiest approach to speech delivery is not always the best. You already know how to read, and you already know how to talk. But public speaking is neither reading nor talking.

Speaking in public has more formality than talking. During a speech, you should present yourself professionally.

It also means being prepared to use language correctly and appropriately for the audience and the topic, to make eye contact with your audience, and to look like you know your topic very well.

While speaking has more formality than talking, it has less formality than reading. Speaking allows for meaningful pauses, eye contact, small changes in word order, and vocal emphasis. Reading is a more or less exact replication of words on paper without the use of any nonverbal interpretation. Speaking, as you will realize if you think about excellent speakers you have seen and heard, provides a more animated message.

The next sections introduce four methods of delivery that can help you balance between too much and too little formality when giving a public speech. Impromptu speaking The presentation of a short message without advance preparation. You have probably done impromptu speaking many times in informal, conversational settings.

The disadvantage is that the speaker is given little or no time to contemplate the central theme of his or her message. As a result, the message may be disorganized and difficult for listeners to follow. Here is a step-by-step guide that may be useful if you are called upon to give an impromptu speech in public.

As you can see, impromptu speeches are generally most successful when they are brief and focus on a single point. Extemporaneous speaking The presentation of a carefully planned and rehearsed speech using brief notes, spoken in a conversational manner.

By using notes rather than a full manuscript, the extemporaneous speaker can establish and maintain eye contact with the audience and assess how well they are understanding the speech as it progresses. The opportunity to assess is also an opportunity to restate more clearly any idea or concept that the audience seems to have trouble grasping.