Art Of Great Speaking

To persuade, a speaker must talk fluently with courage and confidence. When public speaking anxiety or fear becomes evident, an audience loses confidence in a speaker’s ability to persuade. Obviously, if he cannot control himself how can he hope to persuade others?

Frequently 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 apprehension of a new driver. Although he wants to drive and likes it, he breathes easier when the traffic is not so heavy or when he gets 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 control fear. But if he will continue speaking on various occasions he 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 his public speaking anxiety. But his method was haphazard. One good speech course should enable a person not only to control their fear, but also to enjoy speaking. During the course they should make numerous opportunities to deliver-short speeches and to participate in many speech drills. Making many short speeches is far more helpful in overcoming fear than delivering only a few long ones. Much oral work is needed.

For a person to learn to face audiences they must appear before them often in the same way we learn to swim by getting into the water. So speak often even though you may have to kick yourself a few times to keep at it and you soon will be over public speaking anxiety.

The preparation of your material not only must be thorough, but also must be personal, because to discuss a subject effectively at a management meeting or to present it to a group convincingly and speak with confidence it is important to project your own self into your talk.

Nobody likes to listen to a ghost-written address read with the zest of a secretary reviewing last month’s minutes; such an impersonal speaker wastes his listeners’ as well as his own time.

Ghost-writing is practiced by public characters that either have little or nothing to say—or who do not know how to express their own ideas. These people simply hire better informed or more articulate characters to provide them with language and also ideas.

When a ghost-written composition appears in print or is passed off as oratory, the public is deceived into believing that it is an authentic discourse which originated in the mind of its putative author who, in fact, is nothing more than a literary microphone or megaphone.

Many individuals are full of good words—so they become ghost-writers—but a good speech requires not only superb language but also a thorough knowledge of the subject. The subject may be foreign to the ghost-writer, and to cover any deficiency he may resort to pious platitudes, but fancy phrases are no substitute for lack of knowledge of the sub¬ject. That knowledge a speaker must possess personally in order to present his ideas interestingly and convincingly.

An audience wants a speaker to speak with confidence, conviction and sincerity.  Perfect English is not required for effective public speaking or presentations. The audience want the presenters to know their topic and deliver a speech that is worth while to them.

Ghost-written speeches do have their place, but to enable the presenter to speak with confidence they must have input into the writing so that it reflects their knowledge and personality. In this way they will develop into a confident public speaker.

Being able to speak with confidence is a highly respected skill, but it is usually the opposite to this that people focus on when they asked to speak – they look for what could go wrong, not how to make it go right. Outlined here is a method that can help all speaker to speak with confidence and deliver a more effective speech.
When a person agrees to give a speech, his first problem is to determine how to go about preparing and delivering the speech. Although each speech situation is different in many respects from every other speech situation, the over-all task is the same: to give a speech that is worth while in purpose, acceptable to the audience, and to some degree skillful. The way in which a speaker goes about accomplishing this task, like the task itself, is nearly the same in all speech situations. This way of going about one’s task is best described as method. Intelligence, it is said, is knowing what can be done in a given situation. Wisdom is knowing how to go about it. Wisdom is the prac¬tical aspect of knowledge. In this respect, the practical aspect of speech training is the method used to prepare and deliver a speech.
If a person is faced with a problem which he does not know how to solve and if leaving this problem unsolved leads to dire consequences, the person will usually have a sinking feeling and become panicky. This is exactly what may happen to us when we are asked to give a speech. If we do not know how to go about preparing or delivering an acceptable speech, we anticipate embarrassment and loss of prestige. In another situation, in which we know how to go about solving our problem, our fear subsides and we lose ourselves in the process of solving the problem. The more sure we are that our solution will work, the less we are afraid. So when we are asked to give a speech, if we are sure we know how to go about preparing and delivering one, our fear will subside and we can lose ourselves in the preparation of our remarks. Good preparation will allow us to   speak with confidence and often with pleasure.

Public speaking is like private conversation with more people present. Private conversation can be used to help develop the ability to speak with confidence in public speaking. It will also help with conversation skills.

Two areas that will benefit are the ability to speak expressively and being more enthusiastic. Conversation is usually “safer” than public speaking and will give you the opportunity to be more confident in these skills before trying them out in public.

Vivid Speech

Each day there are  numerous opportunities to engage in public speaking because every conversation is, in a way, a speech. Why not make your everyday conversations vital, vivid, and realistic? When you speak with one person or to groups of people color your words and ideas so they will appeal to hearers’ natural senses. Make your word pictures so vivid an audience can feel, hear, and see them as clearly as a talking picture on the wall and you’ll be an interesting, persuasive speaker.

Enthusiasm

When you speak show enthusiasm for it is highly contagious and if you enjoy your subject and your audience, the audience will reflect the same feeling toward you and your subject. So in daily conversations,  or in any human relationship, give yourself completely, and you will find that the enthusiasm you give to others will be reflected back to you many fold.

The emotion of enthusiam will help any speaker be more convincing. Developing a more expressive way of speaking both in the words and how you use your voice will help you to be a more interesting speaker. Practicing during private conversation gives a more “secure” environment to develop the ability to speak with confidence and persuasiveness by trying out new things to expand the”comfort zone.”

Being able to speak with confidence is a problem for many people.  Confident public speaking  is something that is in the reach of most people.

One of the keys to confident speaking is to talk or present on a topic that you are interested and are knowledgeable about. By mastering your topic you can master your audience.

Proficient public speaking requires a thorough knowledge of your subject matter. Your perfectly pitched voice may be pleasing to the ear; you may be a master of delivery and have a fine command of the English language. Despite all these attributes your performance still might be a flop if you are not thoroughly conversant with your subject.

This lack of thorough subject knowledge is the rock that wrecks more public speakers’ ambitions than any other. Veterans of the hard roll and fruit cup circuit frequently pop up with a talk at the sight of a breadcrumb, but often their urge to be heard is hardly worthwhile because they don’t know what they’re talking about.

Audiences are quick to sense it when your knowledge of your subject is superficial and your speech goes over like a lead balloon. Contrariwise, a person may not be considered a first-rate speaker and yet be much in popular demand because he is a recognized leader in his field and knows his subject thoroughly.

By knowing about your topic it is easier to speak with confidence. The knowledge you have on the topic gives you a rational reason to be confident. And in many cases you are merely expanding the private conversations you have had on the subject. Knowledge is power and it is that power that makes it easier to confidently speak.