Chapter 4: Giving a speech in pubic

What is a good speech?

A considerable part of meetings consists of speeches in which participants explain their point of view (or that of their superiors) or make other statements related to the items of the agenda. These speeches are often improvised and confusing. The point made is sometimes lost on the other participants.

Assuming a confident speaker and reasonably clear and accurate speech, there are still rules to follow that will greatly improve the audience's understanding of the speech.

Task 7

As a group, discuss what should be golden rules for a good speech. Use your imagination freely and only select the best proposals when the group runs out of ideas.
List your rules in the space below.

1.________________________________________________________________________
2. ________________________________________________________________________
3 .________________________________________________________________________
4 _________________________________________________________________________
5 _________________________________________________________________________

(The instructor will discuss the answers before proceeding.)
Apart from respecting the rules for a good speech, the speaker has to master some techniques to make the speech sound attractive and to deliver it smoothly:

Preparation

Write down in simple words what it is the audience has to know. Avoid stating the topic in vague terms that can not be fully understood by the audience.

Make notes of the key points of your speech. Avoid w rising out the entire speech, because then you will read it from the paper and the audience will be bored. Instead, use notes from which you can make up sentences spontaneously.

Test your notes by delivering the speech once or twice to an imaginary audience in your room.

Delivery

Use audio-visual aids if appropriate. Make sure they are set up or put in place before the speech starts.

When speaking, use language that corresponds with the level of education of the audience.

Avoid using jargon which can only be under stood by the people in your own profession.

If you speak to people who are more educated than you, do not try to impress them by using difficult words or by imitating their way of speaking.

Make an interesting start to the speech (an 'entry line') that will catch the audience's attention. It can be a little joke or anecdote related to the topic. A dull start i s a sure way of losing the listeners' attention.

Example: Instead of saying: 'Today I want to talk to you about the quality of copy-typists in our department', say 'I will talk to you about girls' (assuming that you audience likes that type of joke).

Use signals (sometimes called 'signposts') to mark key points of your speech and to introduce the next part of it.

Common signposts are:

- 'I'd like to make four main points ...........'
- 'There is another point to consider.........'
- 'Let us now look at ...........................'
- 'Now, what do we mean by this?'
- 'How do we actually do this?'
- 'And so that illustrates ........................'
- 'This is why .......................................'
- 'To conclude......................................'

Make an interesting last sentence to your speech (an 'exit line'). It should summarize the speech, and, if possible, amuse the audience at the same time.

Finally, show enthusiasm for your topic and courtesy to your audience. If you are scruffylooking and yawn all the time, your speech will most probably fail.

EXERCISE TWO

GIVING A SPEECH

Duration:

Depending on the number of groups and whether video is used for feedback.(Between 3 and 4.5 hours).

Instructions

1. On the day before the exercise, the trainer assigns a topic to each participant, or allows participants to select topics according to their own interest. In order to make the topics realistic, they should relate to a problem that needs to be solved.

2. Participants prepare a 5 - 10 minute speech for which they can do library work and make other preparations over night.

3. The next day, the trainer gives each participant time to deliver his speech to the whole group. If the group is large, several listening groups are formed and use separate rooms simultaneously. For this, additional trainers/resource persons will be required.

4. The instructor distributes as many copies of the rating sheet to each participant as there are speakers to be rated. The audience is requested to listen like an average group of people not familiar with the topic under discussion.

5. The participants comment on the performance of each speaker and suggest way s to improve it. This is done on the basis of the rules for a good speech. The instructor has to make sure that the participants filling out the rating sheets are not too forgiving to the performance of their colleagues. If the instructor feels that speakers are being 'protected' by their colleagues, he should do the scoring him self.

6. In a plenary session, participants summarize what they have learnt from the exercise. If the scores of the speakers are not satisfactory, the instructor may decide to repeat the exercise until all students have at least an average score.

Best results are obtained when the speeches of each participant are recorded on video and highlights are played back for evaluation at the end.

EXERCISE TWO

RATING SHEET

Instructions

On each of the following scales, give a score for the performance of the speaker.

NAME OF THE SPEAKER: ..................................................................

1. How would you rate the speaker with regard to clear explanation of the topic?

Explain briefly in the space below why you gave this mark to the speaker:
______________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

(tick one)

2. How would you rate the speaker with regard to attractive delivery of the speech?

Explain briefly why you gave this mark to the speaker:
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

(tick one)

3. Now give

2 points for each 'Good' mark,
1 point for each 'Average' mark,
and 0 points for each 'Poor' mark.

The overall rating for this speaker will be found by adding all the points and dividing them by the number of persons giving a score.

Total of points from all sheets: - - - =

Number of persons scoring: