Art Of Great Speaking

People have grown up listening, reading and watching stories – at bedtime as a child, on TV, in books, on film and now the internet. People like stories.A person that can speak with confidence when telling a story will quickly win over their audience’s interest and maintain it. If they do it right.

But stories can sometimes fall flat. Here are some great tips to avoid that:-

1. Be relevant – to truly hold the audience attention it needs to support or illustrate a point that is being made, otherwise it may leave them confused.

2. The best story-starters implant anticipation, participa­tion, curiosity, or an “I’ll let you in on the dirt” feeling.

3. Don’t drag out your story; reduce your words to bare essentials.

4. Put interesting, picture-making details into his stories. He uses specific, concrete words that create vivid images rather than a blur of mental fog e.g. Listeners can see a fat man waddle or wobble easier than they can see him go to the front door of his cabin.

5. The primary source of your material is your own experience. Observe what is going on around you find plenty of material for your speech. A person who takes a keen interest in life can find more and better material than the jaded bored world traveler who takes no interest in what is happening around them.

6.  Keep a pen and notebook handy to note down the  happenings, don’t rely on your memory. In this way you will soon have a storehouse of stories that you can call on to use in your speeches and presenter.

A person who can speak with confidence takes the time to find interesting stories and ensures they are relevant to their speech. It doestake more time to include interesting stories into a speech but the results are worth it.

Before preparing your speech, bear in mind the organ­ization and the type of audience to be addressed. There are many different types of audiences within every com­munity. A group of girl scouts will probably not be interested in the same things as a sales conference. Without completing your speech preliminaries you may undermine your ability to speak with confidence because of your lack of research and preparation.

A popular speaker addresses highly intelligent gather­ings of professional people, literary groups, etc., one day; the next, a football banquet, Scout Rally, or a convention of salesmen. In each instance the audience must be taken into consideration both in the speech to be delivered and the manner in which it is to be presented.

It is important to decide whether your remarks should be light or heavy, moderately serious or hilariously funny. Ask yourself: Why did they invite me? What do they want to hear from me? What do I know of their organization? Which anecdotes will please them most?

If this is a return engagement—did something interest­ing occur at the earlier meeting? Would some personal experience especially appeal to this gathering? Did they suggest a topic? And what is their particular interest in it?

Find out who is to introduce you and what would serve best as an “ad lib” opener. Well in advance, send publicity material to the organization concerning you and your speech.

In this way you will know what your audience in interested in and you can craft a speech that will be worthwhile to them. And the audience will be properly primed as to who you are. This provides you with a good reason to speak with confidence to your audience.

To influence, a speaker must speak with confidence, fluently and with courage. When anxiety or fear becomes evident, an audience loses confidence in a speaker’s knowledge of their subject. Of course, if they do not have confidence in themselves how can they hope to convince others?

Often the cause for stage fright is the fact that a speaker who feels it simply has not spoken to audiences often enough. New situations may be frightening. Remember the first time you asked for a date, or when you were asked for one? Were you nervous or unduly tense about the situation?

Notice the concern of a new driver. Although they want to drive and like it, they breathe easier when the traffic is not so heavy or when they get out of the car. That first time, or maybe the first few times you rode in a plane, you would have liked to have dragged your big toe on the ground a bit longer before taking off. But after several flights getting into an airplane is as easy as walking into the kitchen.

Emerson’s statement, “Do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain,” is true. Appearing before an audience once or twice may not enable a speaker to overcome fear. But if they will con­tinue speaking on various occasions they cannot fail to defeat stage fright. George Bernard Shaw, for instance, was afraid to face audiences but over a period of several years he forced himself to speak at every opportunity. He conquered fear. But his method was haphazard.

Making many short speeches is far more helpful in; overcoming fear than delivering only a few long ones. Much oral work is needed. A person can no more learn to face au­diences without actually appearing before them often than he can learn to swim without getting into water.

So, to speak with confidence, speak often even though you may have to kick yourself a few times to keep at it.

For more tips and advice on how to speak with confidence visit http://www.SelfConfidentSpeaking.com to claim a free preview of The Art Of Great Conversation

If a person is not interested in their topic or are not convinced themselves that it is important they will find it difficult to speak with confidence and make it interesting for the audience.  They will not be able to command the respect of their audience if they do not take it seriously.

For a topic to be interesting and gain the audience’s attention it does not have to be experienced by only a few people.

A person does not have to be struck by lightning (not many can speak on this with any intimate knowledge) or be swallowed by a whale (only 2 recorded instances – Jonah and James Bartly- can speak with knowledge) in order to have a suitable theme for a speech. By taking inventory of his experiences almost any¬one can find at least a few subjects upon which he has earned the right to speak. Hobbies, special interests, likes, dislikes, pet peeves, ambitions, fascinating places, or admirable people often suggest suitable topics.

Although a speaker need not know everything about his subject he should know as much as possible. At least he should know more than the average person in his audience will know about it. Knowing his subject well, let him then give his entire self to expressing it with conviction and feeling.

William Jennings Bryan frequently told his daughter to think what she was going to say, then to “say it with feeling!” -Quintilian, a master teacher of speaking said, “It is the heart and energy of soul which makes speakers eloquent.” Effective •speaking is not a namby-pamby, mumble-jumble, lukewarm af¬fair. It is a sincere sharing of a portion of life with other think¬ing and feeling people.

To have this earnest attitude toward sharing ideas a speaker must truly feel that everything he says is really worth sharing. “”Impress yourself with the truth and importance of what you expect to say,” said William Norwood Brigance, a moden author¬ity on public speaking.

Realizing that when people listen to a speech they are con¬tributing a portion of their lives should motivate a speaker to say something really worthwhile.

One student speaker said, “When I step onto a platform to make a speech I imagine I am a fighter in the ring and that I must make every second count.” Another serious student said, “I speak as though I had only one minute to live.”

When a speaker sincerely feels he has serious, but pleasant and congenial business with an audience, his manner commands respect and attention from that audience. As he continues eager¬ly sharing his entire self, this respect and attention becomes deep¬er. Audiences are strongly inclined to think and feel with him. Persuasion is at work.

By choosing a subject that a speaker is interested it is easier for them to speak with confidence and he gains the audience attention because of their knowledge and interest in the subject.

For more information on how to speak with confidence, visit http://www.SelfConfidentSpeaking.com to claim a free preview of The Art Of Great Conversatio

When you have been speaking in public for awhile and you are beginning to speak with confidence you will notice that your audience’s attention may wander.An audience rarely pays attention automatically, their interest must be sparked and maintained by the speaker.

Many factors may cause an audience to become inattentive. One offender is monotony. When the listeners’ interest is obviously lagging, audience attention may be restored by attention arrestors.

Rhetorical Questions:

These are rhetorical questions the speaker puts out. He may ask, dramatically, “What are you going to do about it?” While he intends to answer that question himself, his technique arouses curiosity.

The speaker should of course be prepared for an un¬expected answer from the audience, and if the answer is right, he should express his thanks. If it’s wrong, he should use that as an excuse to repeat the high points of his argument.
Take a Pause
The oratorical pause has a place in your delivery. In private conversation we frequently ask “Do you see what I mean?” or “Do you get the point?” During the oratorical pause, the speaker in effect is asking the audience, “Do you get what I say?”

Good speakers employ punch lines but sometimes the listeners are unprepared for them. The oratorical pause permits the audience to digest one point before you go on to the next.

The audience neither likes to lose out on a chance to laugh, nor to laugh and lose out on a good line. This is the place to pause.
His mastery of the oratorical pause makes Bob Hope’s appearances hilarious. He makes his point, then waits for it to sink in. If the praise is plentiful, he starts in again but adds another pause and so creates the impression that his comment was far funnier than he expected the audience to think it was. These might be called pluperfect pauses. There is no objection to a speaker using long pauses during delivery providing they mean something; but if the pause is a cover-up for a memory lapse that’s as bad as rattling through lines that are word-perfect but are delivered without change of pace or emotion. (The mind is a wonderful thing. It starts working the minute you are born and never stops until you stand up to speak!)

To be able to speak with confidence you need to be prepared so that you can use the “pause” to hold attention and not because you have forgotten the words. Also the rhetorical question is great to gain the audience’s attention and get feedback from the audience to modify your speech if necessary.