DELIVERING YOUR SPEECH

In delivering your speech, there are a few major concerns that we will look at:

• Method of delivery
• Non-verbal communication
• Pronunciation and articulation
• Voice projection
• Movement
• Personal Appearance


METHOD OF DELIVERY

• Manuscript Reading

 A speech that is written out word for word and read to the audience.
 Absolute accuracy is essential.
 Requires great skill:
 Must adhere to timing.
- Don’t read too quickly or too slowly.
- Don’t pause in the wrong places.
- Don’t speak in a monotone.
- Don’t falter over your words.
- Don’t forget to glance at your audience.
- Practice makes perfect.


• Reciting from Memory

 Presenting speeches that have been thoroughly memorized.
 At the same time, you must be able to concentrate on communicating with your audience.
 Don’t gaze at the ceiling or stare out the window to recall.


• Speaking Impromptu

 A speech delivered with little or no immediate preparation.
 You decide what you are going to say just before you say it.
 Organize your main points in you head and try as best as you can to stay on track.
 Advantages:
- can maintain continuous eye contact with the audience.
- can choose to include or exclude materials depending upon the feedback from the audience.


• Speaking Extemporaneously

 A carefully prepared and rehearsed speech that is presented from a brief set of notes.
 Advantages:
- Gives more precise control over thought and language than impromptu speaking.
- Offers greater spontaneity and directness than speaking from memory or manuscript.
- Adaptable to a wide range of situations.
- Encourages the conversational quality audiences look for (spontaneous).



NON-VERBAL COMMUNICATION

 Communication that occurs as a result of appearance, posture, gesture, eye contact, facial expressions and other non-linguistic factors.


• Facial expression

 Vary greatly in different cultures.
 In Japan, speakers rarely vary facial expressions.
 Italian speakers tend to gesture more than other cultural groups.
 A laugh during a presentation in Japan might convey confusion, but in America it might express humor.
 If you smile before you speak, you give your listeners that you are confident and ready.


• Eye contact

 The eyes are the windows to your soul.
 Good eye contact shows that you are open and honest.
 Encourages listeners to listen to you.
 Indicates that you are confident.
 Allows you to “read” your listeners faces.
 Allows you to see feedback from your listeners.
 A good way to start a speech is by doing the smile-pause-nod combination.
 A lack of eye contact suggests that you don’t care about your audience or are afraid of them.


• Gestures

 Motions of a speaker’s hands or arms during a speech.
 Gestures also vary according to different cultures.
 Avoid distracting gestures:
 Twirling hair with your fingers.
 Fiddling with your necklace.
 Constantly push slipping eyeglasses up your nose.
 Where should you put your hands when delivering a speech?
 Don’t hide them in your pockets.
 Keep your hands at your sides, but don’t stand “frozen” in one place.
 Don’t clasp your fingers together behind you.


PRONUNCIATION, ARTICULATION AND ENUNCIATION

• People tend to judge speakers based on their ability to pronounce words correctly and clearly.
• Pronunciation involves saying words correctly.

E.g. How do you pronounce these words?

February library
secretary athlete
get development
picture colleague


• Articulation refers to the way you produce individual speech sounds.

E.g. Malaysians have trouble making certain sounds like th – substituted with d, like in words like

that this
thermometer thank
three through

Severe articulation problems can interfere with effective communication.


• Enunciation refers to the way you pronounce words in context.
• In casual conversation, it is not unusual for people to slur, but not in speeches.

E.g.
“gimme” for “give me”

“swatuh thought”

“harya?”

“howjado?”

This is what we call lazy enunciation.


VOICE PROJECTION

Voice

• The loudness or softness of a voice.
• Adjust the volume of your voice according to:
 the size of the audience.
 the acoustics of the room.
 the level of background noise.
• Remember that your own voice always sounds louder to you than to a listener!

Pitch

• The highness or lowness of a voice.
• The pitch affects the meaning of words or sounds.
• Changes in the pitch is known as inflection.
• People who do not speak with inflection are said to speak in a monotone.

Rate

• The speed at which a person speaks.
• A fast rate helps to create feelings of happiness, fear, anger, and surprise.
• A slow rate is better for expressing sadness, disgust or peacefulness.
• Research suggests that in most situations, listeners find that a speaker who has a faster rate is more competent than one who speaks slower.


Pause

• A momentary break in the vocal delivery of a speech.
• Knowing when to pause requires experience.
• A pause can function to
 signal the end of an idea.
 give an idea time to sink in.
 lend a dramatic impact to a statement.
• If you pause (because you forgot your idea), do not use vocalized pause.
• A vocalized pause is a pause that occurs when a speaker fills the silence between words with vocalizations such as
 “uh”
 “er”
 “um”


MOVEMENT

• A speaker should not be static.
• Never turn your back on the audience while you are speaking.
• If you move about on the stage, make your movements purposeful.
• Be aware (or beware) of all potential obstacles on the stage (and off if you leave it). An embarrassing fall or trip will kill your concentration (or you).
• Your gestures and movements should grow out of your response to your messages.
• They must appear natural and spontaneous.
• Make sure the gestures that you use are appropriate to the setting and cultural background of your audience.


PERSONAL APPEARANCE

• Your clothing and grooming affect how you are perceived.
• Listeners always see you before they hear you.
• How we dress can influence how we see ourselves and how we behave.
• Dress in a way that makes you feel good about yourself.
• Think of your speech as a professional situation, and dress formally.
• Your purpose is to create a good first impression to your audience.

THE PERSUASIVE SPEECH

A persuasive speech has three purposes:

• to convince people to take action that you want them to take
• to change radically their attitudes and beliefs
• to strengthen or weaken their current attitudes or beliefs

Before you can persuade listeners, you must analyze your audience.

Analyzing Your Audience

You need to ask yourself certain questions:

• What is your specific purpose in speaking?
• How does your audience feel towards your purpose?
• What emotional or psychological appeals will move them?
• Are they willing to accept new ideas?
• Why should they listen to you?
• Do you know anyone who has had previous experience with this audience?

There are two types of audiences that you need to consider:

• Supportive – friendly, they like you and what you have to say
• Uncommitted – completely neutral, waiting to be convinced, unbiased
- Indifferent - apathetic, openly bored, could be a captive audience
- Captive - is often being forced to attend, may not believe what you say is
relevant to them
- Opposed - hostile to you or what you are persuading, feel no warmth towards
the speaker, feel no sympathy towards speaker's feelings or cause



How Listeners Process Persuasive Messages


• They actively assess the speaker’s credibility, delivery, supporting materials, language, reasoning and emotional appeals.
• They may respond positively at one point, negatively at another.
• At times, they may argue (inside their own minds) with the speaker.
• This is what we call the mental give-and-take.
• It may be highly vigorous when listeners are involved with the topic and believe it has a direct bearing on their lives.


Methods of Persuasion

There are five principal methods of changing people’s attitudes or actuating people to do what you want:

• Persuading through evidence
• Persuading through reasoning
• Persuading through emotional appeal


Persuading through Evidence

• Evidence consists of facts, expert opinions and supporting materials – examples, statistics, testimony.
• It is used prove or disprove something.
• You need to justify your claims by using evidence.
• Evidence is particularly important in classroom speeches because few students are recognized as experts on their speech topics.
• Evidence is also crucial whenever your target audience opposes your points of view

Persuading through Reasoning

• Reasoning is the process of drawing a conclusion on the basis of evidence.
• You must use reasoning carefully because reasoning are often faulty and misunderstood.
• Reasoning is an important component of critical thinking.
• As a public speaker, you have two major concerns with respect to reasoning:
 Make sure your own reasoning is sound and foolproof
 Try to get listeners to agree with your reasoning.

Four Basic Methods of Reasoning

 Reasoning from Specific Instances
-You progress from a number of particular facts to a general conclusion
 Reasoning from Principle
- Reasoning that moves from a general principle to a specific conclusion.
 Causal Reasoning
- Reasoning that seeks to establish the relationship between causes and effects
 Analogical Reasoning
- Reasoning in which a speaker compares two similar cases and infers that both are true.

Persuading by Appealing to Emotions

Emotional Appeals

• Also referred to as pathos by Aristotle
• Intended to make listeners feel happy, sad, angry, guilty, afraid, proud, sympathetic, etc.
• These are often appropriate reactions when the question is one of value and policy.
• Below is a list of some of the emotions evoked most often by public speakers:
 Fear – of serious illness, natural disasters, sexual assault, economic hardship, etc.
 Compassion – for the physically disabled, battered women, neglected animals, starving children in Africa
 Pride – in one’s country, in one’s family, in one’s ethnic heritage
 Anger – at the actions of terrorists, at landlords who exploit student tenants, at vandals and thieves
 Guilt – about not helping people less fortunate, about not considering the rights of others

Generating Emotional Appeal

 Use emotional language
 Develop vivid examples
 Speak with sincerity and conviction
o It is the strongest source of emotional power.
o You have to feel the emotion yourself.