From the old school advice of picture everyone in the room without clothes. To the look at everyone directly in the eye when you are speaking. Advices come and go, but there are a few strategies that remain, and these are the ones proven successful when addressing a group of people. Practice your speech a few weeks ahead of the big day. Use this time to master each word that comes out of your mouth.
Record yourself and see how fast or slow you are speaking, watch your body language and how you are using your hands to address the audience. Know the subject of your speech well, confidence is crucial when addressing an audience and it will show on stage how confident you are. One of the best ways to practice your speech is to practice it under conditions that will resemble the day of your speech.
You should deliver your big idea or proposition during the first few minutes of your speech. Stand up straight when entering the stage and speaking to your audience, it will show your authority and confidence. If you walk into the stage slouching and not standing straight the audience will possibly get bored really quickly because you are.
Use the stage to your advantage, walk, run, jump or skip by doing this you will keep your audience eyes on you and keep them engaged continuously by moving around. Standing behind the podium or the microphone during your whole speech and not moving will turn your captive audience into a sleepy audience.
By stating the order of your talking points, you will provide an overview of what the presentation will be like and what it will cover. You will tell the audience what your goals for that day, and during your speech you will dive in depth into each talking point and finalize by summarizing each of them.
Know exactly the type of audience that will be attending your speech. You can use this information to tailor your speech around the type of people that will be attending.
Knowing more about your audience will help reduce stress levels regarding your speech. When GW opened its doors in as The Columbian College in the District of Columbia, it boasted three faculty members, one tutor, and 30 students. In , the name of the institution was changed to The George Washington University.
The debt of the University to George Washington is intangible, but clear. To help cover its cost, Washington left a bequest of 50 shares of stock in the Potomac Company, a canal building enterprise. Unfortunately, the Potomac Company passed out of existence before the bequest could be realized. The effort was carried forward, however, by the Reverend Luther Rice and three friends.
A tireless individual, Rice traveled from Tennessee to New England soliciting support for his idea. President James Monroe himself contributed to the cause, along with 32 members of Congress. In , the institution was given its current name, and in , it began the move to its present location in Foggy Bottom, the area George Washington had envisioned for his national university.
Virgin Islands, including distance education and correspondence education programs offered at those institutions. Skip to main content. Key 4 — Focus on Good Structure A great speech needs a good structure, which means your speech should have a beginning, a middle, and an ending.
Key 5 — Capture People with a Story People react to stories. Key 6 — Practice and Revise Spend plenty of time practicing your speech and revising as necessary. Knowing how to carefully select your topic is an important first step in preparing for a successful speech.
Start by thinking about your venue. Where will you be giving your speech? To whom will you be speaking? One of the best ways to help solidify your speech topic is to brainstorm. You can brainstorm by yourself, or you might want to bring in a few friends, colleagues or classmates to help you come up with ideas in a group setting. You can brainstorm using a number of different exercises. Start with a broad topic idea.
What words, topics, or other subjects do you associate with that first topic? Now what words, topics, or other subjects do you associate with the following word? Continue this chain of word association to give you a broad spectrum of ideas. Also known as mind-mapping, clustering gives your word association a visual form. Start with your main idea and draw a circle around it, thinking of it like the hub of a wheel. Now, begin to write other associated ideas, topics, or subcategories related to that main topic around the hub, and connect them as separate spokes.
From each spoke, begin to jot down other associated ideas and thoughts. As your cluster begins to grow, you might want to connect smaller spokes to one another and create new links between subjects. This is probably the simplest brainstorm method of all. Set a timer and begin writing whatever thoughts or ideas come to mind about your particular subject.
You might find it easier to type your freewriting instead of writing it by hand, so you can keep up with your thoughts faster. Another way of freewriting is to record yourself talking for a set period of time and then transcribing your key points to go back to and clarify later. Once your time is up, go back and highlight or circle relevant points or topics that stick out for you. Look for themes, patterns, and commonalities when going through your brainstorming notes.
Use these themes to help guide you toward a singular topic. Do a quick scan to see what others have said or written about your topic. This might give you even more ideas of how to refine and distill your topic, or more appropriately adapt it to your audience or venue.
Knowing and understanding your audience is one of the most important parts of developing an effective speech. Knowing the Audience : A speaker should consider the audience in order to craft an effective and successful speech. Next to identifying your topic, understanding your audience is one of the most important things you can do in preparing for your speech. Think about your audience: what do they look like? What might they have in common?
What might you have in common with them? These are important things to consider as you begin to get a sense of just who will be sitting in front of you when you deliver your speech. Consider the gender of your audience: male, female, or a mix? Are they older, younger? Would you consider them your peers? Have you met any of them before? Think about all the possible demographics of your audience including gender, age, national origin, ethnicity, culture, and occupation.
Also think about the knowledge that your audience brings to your presentation. They might be extremely well-versed in or they might not have the faintest idea about your topic. The more you can tailor your speech to your audience, the more effective and persuasive your speech will be. You should know that in any situation, you bring with you your own unique world-view and set of biases. You should especially be aware of your unique world-view and biases in your speech because they may negatively impact people of different cultures, ages, genders, etc.
The same goes for the use of gestures or mannerisms. Some everyday gestures may actually be offensive to other cultures. For example, at any Disney theme park, all the workers, when giving directions to tourists and visitors, always point with two fingers instead of one. Pointing a single finger in some cultures is considered extremely rude. Some idioms and expressions that may seem natural and make sense to you may actually be quite confusing to people of different cultures or languages.
Try to take a step back and consider the ethnocentric view you may be bringing to your audience and consider ways to minimize or temper those unique perspectives so as not to alienate your audience. In order to fully substantiate any claims you make in your speech, you must fully research those claims and provide supporting evidence. Research : Make sure you research and gather enough evidence and supporting materials in order to talk about the topic competently.
The first instinct for many people preparing a speech is to go out and find every piece of information they can, often via search engines online. Typically, hard, irrefutable facts make for a credible source.
Fact: the Earth is anywhere from 36 to 63 million miles away from Mars, depending on orbital locations of either planet. Academic journals and publications particularly if they have been peer-reviewed make for excellent scholarly sources. In the latter instance, this is considered a primary source of information and can sometimes help point you in the right direction to find other credible sources of information.
When in doubt, ask your friendly librarian. They can often point you to online journal collections or academic search engines where you can find reliable, credible sources.
You might want to create a binder to keep all of your papers and notes together, or dedicate a multi-sectioned notebook to your research. You might take notes on notecards, organizing them by color or heading. If you take your notes online, you can use cloud computing to store your research remotely to access them anywhere on the go. Other software exists to keep your notes files and organized electronically on your computer. Always keep records of where you got your information. Additionally, you should never copy any information word for word and claim it as your own.
Plagiarism will only damage your reputation and the credibility and ethics of your speech in addition to potentially causing you to fail a class, lose your job, or worse.
However you organize your notes, just make sure you have them organized and handy. You never know when you might run into a primary source! Thesis : A painting depicting a lecture in a knight academy in the s. In some circumstances, you will most likely be arguing some kind of point or message in your speech. The main argument of your speech — the main point you want your audience to understand — is the thesis of your speech.
In any opinion piece, written or spoken, the main argument — the thesis statement — comes at the beginning. You want your audience to know right away the point you are trying to make. It is important to remember that your thesis statement only addresses one main issue; the ways in which you choose to support your thesis add complexity and depth to your speech.
As you begin to answer these questions, start thinking about ways you want to support your thesis with compelling, persuasive examples. By considering all sides of your argument, you will bolster your case by preparing for all possible objections and rebuttals to the claims you intend to make in your speech. Use a variety of ways to support the ideas and claims that you make with your thesis statement to give your speech depth and dynamics.
Once you have solidified your position in your thesis statement, you want to back up your thesis with a variety of supporting ideas and examples. To do this, there are several ways you can support your claims while adding variety and interest to the overall story of your speech. Using exposition is a great way to get your audience all on the same playing field. As you notice commonalties between audience members, the audience and your topic, and you and your audience, appeal to those commonalities to not only establish rapport but also to more easily persuade them to your thesis and claims.
Your audience is more likely to trust and believe you if they feel they share something in common with you and your topic. Your audience may already feel a certain way about your topic. One of the best ways to back up your claims—besides cold, hard, facts and data—is to share a personal story or anecdote. This shows your audience that you really connect to your subject, making you more believable and personable.
Using anecdotes are a perfect opportunity to lighten the mood and add some humor as appropriate to your speech. You might have a particularly complex subject or thesis.
By breaking your information down into bite-sized chunks, your audience may have an easier time of following your train of thought or logic. Arrange your speech — your thesis, additional points, and supporting evidence — in a way that will make sense to your audience.
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