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• quynshyn - 12:30:22 03/07/2020

They heard her make an interesting speech -> She______________________________. Giúp em câu này với nha

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They heard her make an interesting speech. -> She was heard to make an interesting speech.

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She was heard to make an interesting speech.

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A Guide To Making Your Speech Interesting

Hrideep barot.

• Speech Writing

Everyone knows how to talk, but only a few know how to  speak . 

The words, however clichéd they might sound, are true. 

As is the fact that, even if you know how to  speak , no one’s really going to recognize it unless you manage to spark enough interest to make them actually  listen to  your speech. 

Listen to. Not  hear . 

Just like the words ‘talking’ and ‘speaking’, there’s a subtle but important difference between  listening to  something and merely  hearing  it. 

Delivering a speech that’s both powerful and persuasive is a tricky job. Add  interesting  to the mix and to most people (especially if you’re an introvert by nature) the task begins to sound downright torturous. 

But, worry not! 

The secret to both, delivering an interesting speech and cooking a lip-smacking dish is the same: it’s not a single ingredient, rather an amalgamation of them that makes it magnificent.

An interesting speech needs not only to pique your readers’ interest but also to sustain it. There are a variety of factors that go into its making, ranging from the length and phrasing of your speech to your skill with storytelling techniques and using props.

Still confused? Stick till the end of this article and I guarantee you’ll be out of your quandary. 

What Makes A Speech Boring?

Before we delve into how to deliver a speech that’s going to leave your audience speechless, let’s skim over the other side of the equation: what makes a speech boring?

Continuing with the lip-smacking dish metaphor, a boring speech isn’t the consequence of a single but multiple elements that go into the making of it. A few of them are:

You’ve messed up the beginning

The beginning of the speech is one of its most important components. It’s also where most people tend to mess up.

While introducing yourself is important, you don’t want to spend a quarter of your allotted time providing information about yourself or telling your life story. Try to get to the point as quickly as possible.

Many inexperienced speakers tend to start off their speech by thanking someone. While showcasing your gratitude as a speaker is important, save your thanks for the end of your speech instead of its beginning.

It’s Too Complex

Another factor that makes a speech boring is making it too long or too complex or worse: both. Try to keep your speech to the time limit or slightly under it. Whatever you do, don’t exceed the time limit.

You haven’t structured it properly

Another common ingredient in boring speeches is the structure. Or rather, a lack of structure. A lot of speakers tend to throw points around without tying them together.

Or they might end the speech abruptly, perhaps after realizing that they’ve run out of time, pilfering the audience of a satisfactory conclusion. Just like beginnings, endings matter too, and this is another area where most speakers tend to make mistakes–or downright ignore it.

There’s nothing unique about it

If there’s nothing in your speech that stands out or makes it unique, then the odds are in the favor of your viewers forgetting about the speech the moment you finish delivering it. You can practice your speech a hundred times, but if there’s nothing distinctive about it, then your efforts are for nothing as nobody’s going to be actually hearing it.

So, next time you’re practicing your speech in front of the mirror, ask yourself: what’s different about my speech than the hundreds of other speeches that are delivered everyday?

No Storytelling

Churning out information without giving it some form of a narrative structure is another factor that guarantees for a boring speech. If you’re simply mentioning facts and figures, you’re going to lose your reader’s interest before it’s even piqued. If you wish to captivate your audience’s attention, then one of the best ways to do it is delivering your speech like you’re telling a story.

After all, who doesn’t like a good story?

Steps To Make Your Speech Interesting

If you’ve ever daydreamed through a drab speech delivered by insert-the-name-of-a-random-authoritative-figure in your school days, you know exactly how long a thirty (or if it’s your lucky day,  sixty)  minute talk can be. 

I’ve been there. You’ve been there. We’ve all been there. 

And I’m certain that none of us want to be there again. 

Especially  not if  we’re  the ones delivering the speech. 

To make sure you land on the sweet spot named ‘the-most-interesting-speech-I’ve-ever-heard’ and keep you from stumbling into the deep, deep pit of ‘a lecture’, I’ve listed out some points for you below. 

1. Keep It Short & Sweet

Studies have shown that the optimal attention span for an audience (that is, the attention span that can be retained by an interested human listening to a speaker) is about twenty minutes. 

This doesn’t mean that people will be unerringly focused on your speech for twenty minutes and then promptly lose interest the moment the time is up. What it means is that you need to structure your speech in such a way that you can optimize your audience’s attention span.

Look, I know that most speeches are going to last longer than twenty minutes. However, you don’t have to necessarily speak for twenty minutes non-stop. To get around the 20 minute barrier, you can break your talk into different components, with each constituent lasting for around twenty minutes. 

Make a smooth transition between the different components by giving your audience enough time to relax and then begin to refocus their attention on what you’re saying. 

This way, not only will you be able to hold their interest for longer, but you will also increase the chances of them remembering important bits of your speech long after you’ve finished speaking. 

2. Choose your words wisely 

“ Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” 

These words by Martin Luther King Jr. are a great example of how a sentence doesn’t necessarily have to be long and employ eloquent language to be powerful. 

On the contrary, concise sentences where no word is redundant but rather every character is handpicked so that it adds to the overall meaning have a far greater impact as well as reach.

I’m not asking you to cut down on important points or to use banal words in order to fit the above description. 

Rather, I’m asking you to ask yourself while you’re writing the speech: is there anything that I’ve said in fifty words that could be better said in ten or five words?

Go through your speech multiple times to make sure that no word or sentence is redundant. If you find a paragraph or sentence that you feel doesn’t really add anything impactful to your speech, cut it out. It may actually be taking something away from your speech, and after deleting the extra part, you might find that your speech sounds better. 

You can also take the use of Thesaurus or other online dictionaries to discover new words or phrases that might help you express your ideas more concisely. 

3. Grab Their Attention In The Beginning 

I’ve got a question for you: how do you decide whether you want to buy a particular book? 

Most people (many more than who care to admit it, anyway) either choose the much-denounced path of judging-a-book-by-it’s-cover or they read the synopsis at the back of the cover or skim through the first couple of pages to glean an idea of whether it’s worthwhile to spend their precious time or money on a particular title. 

Because authors/agents are smart, they know that if they can’t hook you in the beginning, you’re going to drift away. This is why the first line in a book is always an attention-grabber. 

The same rule can be transcribed to a public speech: grab their attention in the beginning or stand to lose it before you even reach the end of the beginning. 

Make the opening lines of your speech one of the most—if not the most—intriguing parts of it. There are many ways to do this. 

You could start with an anecdote, for one. Or you could ask your audience a question. You could even go with a joke or a fun-fact. 

What matters is the shock-value. You want to give the audience a taste of what the rest of your speech is going to be like. You want them to feel like the time and/or money that they’ve invested is going to be worthwhile. 

4. Make Them Laugh 

A day without laughter is a day wasted. 

While I certainly agree with Charlie Chaplin’s famous words, I have altered them into my personal motto: a speech without laughter is an opportunity wasted. 

Now, I’m not saying that you want your audience to be rolling on their stomach throughout your speech (unless you’re doing a stand-up comedy). I understand that might be counter-productive. I also understand that sometimes cracking a joke during a speech might not even be encouraged or even appropriate. 

However, if there is nothing to stop you from adding a dose of humor to your speech but uncertainty about your own comic timing, then my friend, you have wasted a glorious opportunity. 

Some of the best speeches in the world, which have been viewed by millions of people all around the globe besides standing the test of time, have humor in them. A majority of the most successful public speakers in the world have natural charisma, charm, and a good sense of humor. 

Take Barack Obama, for instance. Many of his speeches are punctuated with comic jabs and funny anecdotes, and that is a key factor that makes his speeches so interesting to hear, besides making him more relatable—more human, like them—to the audience. 

5. Tell Them Stories  

Who doesn’t love a good story? 

Stories not only help make your speech more interesting, but they might also strike a personal chord with your audience, thus making you more relatable and increasing the chances of cementing your speech in their minds. 

Anecdotes, when used as examples, can also make it easier for your audience to understand a complex message or point. 

Besides, you can use stories as a transition when you’re moving from one important or critical component of your speech to another. This will give your audience a break from the more serious bits of your speech and allow them to return to the next part in a fresher state of mind. 

Stories make you more human in your audience’s mind. Especially if they resonate with the audience’s own experiences, they might make the onlookers think of you as one of  them. 

However, make sure that your transition into storytelling territory is smooth. Don’t randomly add a story to any part of your speech. This will not only make your speech sound awkward but might also throw off your audience and confuse them. 

A good place to add an anecdote is at the beginning of your speech or the end of it (the middle also works, but as I mentioned before, provided that your transition is smooth). If you add a story to the beginning of your speech, it can act as an attention-grabber

If you add it in the end, try to choose something that will resonate with your audience and make your speech linger in their minds long after you’ve finished speaking. 

6. Express Yourself Expressively 

If there’s one thing that’s worse than a sixty-minute uninterrupted speech, it’s a sixty-minute uninterrupted speech with a speaker that is as expressive as a rock. 

Speaking  isn’t the only component of a good speech. 

How  you speak is just as important as  what  you speak. 

Facial gestures, hand movements, body language, the pitch and timbre of your voice…all these are as crucial to the delivering of an interesting speech as the speech itself. 

No matter how intriguing the contents of your speech, if you deliver them monotonously and in an unanimated way, then you can kiss capturing your audience’s attention goodbye. 

To understand, try remembering a speech that really moved you. Now recall the most boring speech you’ve ever heard in your entire life. 

Ask yourself: what makes these two speeches so different? 

Chances are, one of the key points that made the first speech especially interesting and memorable and the second speech especially uninteresting and drab was the manner in which the speaker delivered the talk. 

7. Use Concrete Evidence & Simple Language

An important thing to keep in mind is using concrete evidence. This includes things like numbers, statistics, real-life incidents, facts, photographs, etc. If you don’t ground your story in real life, then it might be too abstract for your audience to connect with. 

While using grandiose language might make you sound impressive, using complex grammar or words plucked from some random page off of a thick dictionary is going to make it difficult—if not impossible—for the general public to connect with you. If they cannot understand what you’re saying, how will they remember it?

Thus, it is always wise to be cognizant of your audience’s intellectual capacity or their familiarity with the particular language you’re going to be delivering your speech in. If your audience is not native to the language, try to keep your word-choice as humble as possible. And even if they are, it’s best not to flaunt your verbosity.

8. Know & Understand Your Audience

What’s your audience going to consist of? Is it going to be mainly comprised of college-going adults or school-going kids? Do a majority of them belong to a minority community or do they share some common privileges?

By doing prior research on your audience, you can structure your speech in such a way as to incorporate things that they are familiar with and will be able to relate to. This will help them formulate a connection with you, the speaker, and thus increase chances of them remembering you in the future.

9. Interact With The Audience

The more involved your audience is in your speech, the greater the chances that they will remember it. People like being made to feel like their opinions—and they—matter. Try to ask questions to your audience, and also to encourage them to ask questions to you. You can do this by adding a question-answer round at the end of your speech.

Tell funny stories and ask them to share their own experiences with you. As mentioned before, cracking jokes is another good way of connecting with your audience. 

10. The Ending Matters Too

The ending of your speech is just as important as the beginning. While the beginning helps set the tone for your speech and give the audience an idea of what to expect from their speaker, the ending is the big takeaway after you’ve finished speaking.

The note that you end your speech at is going to determine whether your audience thinks and discusses about your speech long after you’ve finished speaking or if they mumble a few words and forget about it a couple of moments after it finishes.

Like disappointing book or movie endings, a substandard end to a speech can leave a bitter taste in your mouth—to make matters worse, a bad ending might also ruin everything that came before it. On the contrary, a good ending can have the exact opposite effect and make your story resonate in your audience’s mind long, long after you’ve finished speaking. 

Need some inspiration for a resonant ending? Check out our article on 15 Powerful Speech Ending Lines (And Tips to Create Your Own) for some inspiration!

7 secret ingredients to spice up your speech

“Memory is a strange thing. It doesn’t work as I thought it did.”

These lines, enunciated by the amazing Louise Banks in the movie Arrival, perfectly capture the elusive nature of human memory. We remember things we’re supposed to forget. We forget things we’re supposed to remember (like where you kept those goddamned car keys). The human brain works in mysterious ways, period.

Since we’re not yet smart enough to out-smart our own brain (if that makes any sense), how do we side-step the obstacle of the ever-changing nature of memory and cement your awesome speech in your audience’s mind for years to come?

Well, for starters, the above-listed points are a good means to not only make your speech interesting but also interesting enough to be memorable. But there are a few additional things that you can do to increase the chances of immortalizing (or getting as close to it as possible, anyway) your speech in your audience’s mind.

A few other things you can do to make your speech memorable are:

1. Using Props

The apt use of a well-suited propped can add that extra kick that can catapult your presentation from good to awesome. For example, if you’re giving a speech on environmental degradation, you can take the model of a forest with you to physically demonstrate the effects of the degradation of forests.

However, while using props, you need to keep a few things in mind. Make sure that the prop that you use is relevant to the message. Also, don’t use too many of them. Another thing to keep in mind is that your prop is appropriate for and clearly visible to your audience.

2. Playing a game

Adding a short game round in the middle of your speech is another great way of making yourself stand out, besides giving the audience a chance to promote themselves from mere spectators to active members of the event.

However, just like while using props, make sure that the game you choose is appropriate and relevant to the topic. Another thing to keep in mind is to not make the game too long or complicated. Remember that you want whatever game you chose to add to your speech and not distract your audience from it.

3. How about a video?

While you can certainly include an interesting video or clip that you found on YouTube or from the internet, one way to make your speech stand out is to record something beforehand and include it in during your speech.

The video can comprise anything, from a factual documentary to a short movie to a speech that you’ve given in the past to a personal attempt at stand-up comedy! Not only will it give your audience a break from listening, but it will also allow you a chance to breathe and grab a quick sip of water or just a moment to yourself before you dive into the next part of your speech.

4. Using Different Storytelling Approaches

As mentioned before, telling stories are a great way of engaging your audience. You can also take this advice a step further by specifically incorporating various storytelling techniques in your presentation.

For example, the Rags to Riches Approach is focused on portraying a certain character (generally the protagonist) rise from poverty to achieving, not without a good deal of struggle, wealth, and status.

By inculcating this technique in your speech or presentation, you increase the chances of connecting with your audience, as life struggles are something that most people can resonate with. For more similar techniques, check out our article on 9 Storytelling Approaches For Your Next Speech Or Presentation.

5. Adding Impromptu Activities

An impromptu game is exactly what it sounds like: it’s a spontaneously chosen game that hasn’t been predetermined by you, the speaker. Instead, any time during course of your speech, ask your audience members to pitch in with any game suggestions that come to their mind.

If there are many suggestions, then go with the one that gets the most number of votes. Let the audience be the decision makers for once!  

6. Use Audience Polls

This is another great way to increase increase the audience’s involvement even further! Not only this, but an audience poll can also help you glean an insight into your audience’s mind! You can use the poll to ask a variety of questions. For eg. if you’re delivering a speech about facing racism at workplace, you could ask the audience if any one of them has faced racism in their own workplace before. 

7. Get People To Join You On The Stage

You can do this in two ways. First, you could invite other experts of or people related to your topic.

For instance, if you’re launching a beauty product, you could invite on the stage people who’ve used your product in the past and can vouch for it. Another way to do this is to invite members of the audience to join you on stage!

This will take your audience’s involvement to another level, as you are inviting them to be a part of the space that’s been traditionally reserved for speakers. You could ask them for their feedback, or ask if they’ve got any questions for you, or even if they want to pitch in with a short speech on the topic themselves! 

Examples of Interesting Speeches

I’ve linked below videos to some of the most popular speeches in world history. As you watch them, focus on how the speaker is delivering the speech. Note their body language and facial expressions, their hand-gestures, and intonations. Study the videos and try to inculcate what you learn from them into your own speech. 

1. T he Speech That Made Obama President :

Without a doubt, Barack Obama is one of the most gifted orators of our time. This is one of the best speeches that he delivered.

As you watch it, notice how he interacts with his audience, keeping them engaged throughout the speech and making them feel involved in it.

Use what you learned from your observation of the former president to understand how you can keep your audience involved in your speeches and make it a better experience for them overall.

2. Martin Luther King Jr.: I Have A Dream :

This remains one of the most-watched and admired speeches throughout history. And for good reason! The speech employed flawless rhetoric. Not a word used in this speech was redundant. Although it lasted merely sixteen minutes, it got across more information in that time than speeches that last twice as long. Listen to the words used in the speech very carefully.

For a more in-depth analysis of the language, you can also lookup the transcript of the speech online.

Use the information gleaned from this analysis to learn how to use language more effectively as well as efficiently in your speech.

Check out our article on Drawing Public Speaking Lessons From ‘ I Have A Dream ‘ for a more detailed analysis of the speech.

3. Michelle Obama Final First Lady Speech :

This is one of the best speeches that I’ve heard.

As you watch it, keep an eye on Michelle’s body language and facial expressions throughout the speech. For example, the way she uses hand gestures to emphasize a point, or how her expression changes when she’s talking about something serious versus when the topic is something lighter.

You can use this as a guideline to understand how to effectively employ body-language during your speech to increase it’s impact.

4. Inside The Mind Of A Master Procrastinator :

This is one of the most interactive Ted Talks I’ve come across.

Especially notice how the speaker makes use of comic caricatures and other attractive visual imagery on the screen behind him to make his presentation more engaging.

Also, notice how he keeps involving his audience in his speech, making frequent references to them and mentioning things that are easily relatable, to make it a more lively experience. You, too, can make use of visuals that your audience can easily relate to in order to make it easier for them to connect to what you’re saying.

To sum it up, an interesting speech is a result of a successful combination of factors. These include having a powerful opening as well as ending, the effective employment of language, humor and storytelling techniques, respecting the time limit as well as your audience, and adding sprinkle of uniqueness to make it truly memorable.

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What this handout is about

This handout will help you create an effective speech by establishing the purpose of your speech and making it easily understandable. It will also help you to analyze your audience and keep the audience interested.

What’s different about a speech?

Writing for public speaking isn’t so different from other types of writing. You want to engage your audience’s attention, convey your ideas in a logical manner and use reliable evidence to support your point. But the conditions for public speaking favor some writing qualities over others. When you write a speech, your audience is made up of listeners. They have only one chance to comprehend the information as you read it, so your speech must be well-organized and easily understood. In addition, the content of the speech and your delivery must fit the audience.

What’s your purpose?

People have gathered to hear you speak on a specific issue, and they expect to get something out of it immediately. And you, the speaker, hope to have an immediate effect on your audience. The purpose of your speech is to get the response you want. Most speeches invite audiences to react in one of three ways: feeling, thinking, or acting. For example, eulogies encourage emotional response from the audience; college lectures stimulate listeners to think about a topic from a different perspective; protest speeches in the Pit recommend actions the audience can take.

As you establish your purpose, ask yourself these questions:

• What do you want the audience to learn or do?
• If you are making an argument, why do you want them to agree with you?
• If they already agree with you, why are you giving the speech?
• How can your audience benefit from what you have to say?

Audience analysis

If your purpose is to get a certain response from your audience, you must consider who they are (or who you’re pretending they are). If you can identify ways to connect with your listeners, you can make your speech interesting and useful.

As you think of ways to appeal to your audience, ask yourself:

• What do they have in common? Age? Interests? Ethnicity? Gender?
• Do they know as much about your topic as you, or will you be introducing them to new ideas?
• Why are these people listening to you? What are they looking for?
• What level of detail will be effective for them?
• What tone will be most effective in conveying your message?
• What might offend or alienate them?

For more help, see our handout on audience .

Creating an effective introduction

Get their attention, otherwise known as “the hook”.

Think about how you can relate to these listeners and get them to relate to you or your topic. Appealing to your audience on a personal level captures their attention and concern, increasing the chances of a successful speech. Speakers often begin with anecdotes to hook their audience’s attention. Other methods include presenting shocking statistics, asking direct questions of the audience, or enlisting audience participation.

Establish context and/or motive

Explain why your topic is important. Consider your purpose and how you came to speak to this audience. You may also want to connect the material to related or larger issues as well, especially those that may be important to your audience.

Get to the point

Tell your listeners your thesis right away and explain how you will support it. Don’t spend as much time developing your introductory paragraph and leading up to the thesis statement as you would in a research paper for a course. Moving from the intro into the body of the speech quickly will help keep your audience interested. You may be tempted to create suspense by keeping the audience guessing about your thesis until the end, then springing the implications of your discussion on them. But if you do so, they will most likely become bored or confused.

For more help, see our handout on introductions .

Making your speech easy to understand

Repeat crucial points and buzzwords.

Especially in longer speeches, it’s a good idea to keep reminding your audience of the main points you’ve made. For example, you could link an earlier main point or key term as you transition into or wrap up a new point. You could also address the relationship between earlier points and new points through discussion within a body paragraph. Using buzzwords or key terms throughout your paper is also a good idea. If your thesis says you’re going to expose unethical behavior of medical insurance companies, make sure the use of “ethics” recurs instead of switching to “immoral” or simply “wrong.” Repetition of key terms makes it easier for your audience to take in and connect information.

Incorporate previews and summaries into the speech

For example:

“I’m here today to talk to you about three issues that threaten our educational system: First, … Second, … Third,”

“I’ve talked to you today about such and such.”

These kinds of verbal cues permit the people in the audience to put together the pieces of your speech without thinking too hard, so they can spend more time paying attention to its content.

Use especially strong transitions

This will help your listeners see how new information relates to what they’ve heard so far. If you set up a counterargument in one paragraph so you can demolish it in the next, begin the demolition by saying something like,

“But this argument makes no sense when you consider that . . . .”

If you’re providing additional information to support your main point, you could say,

“Another fact that supports my main point is . . . .”

Helping your audience listen

Rely on shorter, simpler sentence structures.

Don’t get too complicated when you’re asking an audience to remember everything you say. Avoid using too many subordinate clauses, and place subjects and verbs close together.

Too complicated:

The product, which was invented in 1908 by Orville Z. McGillicuddy in Des Moines, Iowa, and which was on store shelves approximately one year later, still sells well.

Easier to understand:

Orville Z. McGillicuddy invented the product in 1908 and introduced it into stores shortly afterward. Almost a century later, the product still sells well.

Limit pronoun use

Listeners may have a hard time remembering or figuring out what “it,” “they,” or “this” refers to. Be specific by using a key noun instead of unclear pronouns.

Pronoun problem:

The U.S. government has failed to protect us from the scourge of so-called reality television, which exploits sex, violence, and petty conflict, and calls it human nature. This cannot continue.

Why the last sentence is unclear: “This” what? The government’s failure? Reality TV? Human nature?

More specific:

The U.S. government has failed to protect us from the scourge of so-called reality television, which exploits sex, violence, and petty conflict, and calls it human nature. This failure cannot continue.

Keeping audience interest

Incorporate the rhetorical strategies of ethos, pathos, and logos.

When arguing a point, using ethos, pathos, and logos can help convince your audience to believe you and make your argument stronger. Ethos refers to an appeal to your audience by establishing your authenticity and trustworthiness as a speaker. If you employ pathos, you appeal to your audience’s emotions. Using logos includes the support of hard facts, statistics, and logical argumentation. The most effective speeches usually present a combination these rhetorical strategies.

Use statistics and quotations sparingly

Include only the most striking factual material to support your perspective, things that would likely stick in the listeners’ minds long after you’ve finished speaking. Otherwise, you run the risk of overwhelming your listeners with too much information.

Watch your tone

Be careful not to talk over the heads of your audience. On the other hand, don’t be condescending either. And as for grabbing their attention, yelling, cursing, using inappropriate humor, or brandishing a potentially offensive prop (say, autopsy photos) will only make the audience tune you out.

Creating an effective conclusion

Restate your main points, but don’t repeat them.

“I asked earlier why we should care about the rain forest. Now I hope it’s clear that . . .” “Remember how Mrs. Smith couldn’t afford her prescriptions? Under our plan, . . .”

Call to action

Speeches often close with an appeal to the audience to take action based on their new knowledge or understanding. If you do this, be sure the action you recommend is specific and realistic. For example, although your audience may not be able to affect foreign policy directly, they can vote or work for candidates whose foreign policy views they support. Relating the purpose of your speech to their lives not only creates a connection with your audience, but also reiterates the importance of your topic to them in particular or “the bigger picture.”

Practicing for effective presentation

Once you’ve completed a draft, read your speech to a friend or in front of a mirror. When you’ve finished reading, ask the following questions:

• Which pieces of information are clearest?
• Where did I connect with the audience?
• Where might listeners lose the thread of my argument or description?
• Where might listeners become bored?
• Where did I have trouble speaking clearly and/or emphatically?
• Did I stay within my time limit?

Other resources

• Toastmasters International is a nonprofit group that provides communication and leadership training.
• Allyn & Bacon Publishing’s Essence of Public Speaking Series is an extensive treatment of speech writing and delivery, including books on using humor, motivating your audience, word choice and presentation.

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial . We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Boone, Louis E., David L. Kurtz, and Judy R. Block. 1997. Contemporary Business Communication . Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Ehrlich, Henry. 1994. Writing Effective Speeches . New York: Marlowe.

Lamb, Sandra E. 1998. How to Write It: A Complete Guide to Everything You’ll Ever Write . Berkeley: Ten Speed Press.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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Make Your Speech All about the Audience

What's the key to a winning speech? It's all about connection.

Steven D. Cohen

The key to delivering a successful speech is showing your audience members that you care about them. You don’t want listeners to view you as a salesperson pitching a product. You want them to see you as a leader who has their best interests at heart.

The good news is that you don’t need to be a mind reader to build a strong connection with the audience. Instead, you can focus on analyzing the audience, using inclusive pronouns, referencing the present, and highlighting the benefits.

Analyze the Audience

Before you can lead your audience, you must know your audience. You must figure out what your audience members care about and why they should listen to you. The best way to gather this information is to conduct an audience analysis.

To begin this process, consider asking the event organizer about the people who will be in attendance. What do they hope to learn? How can you help them achieve their goals? You also can search the Web for recent news stories or social media posts to learn more about the group’s interests and priorities. Once you understand what your listeners care about, you can tailor your message to their specific needs.

Every semester, I challenge my students to conduct an audience analysis to make their speeches resonate with their peers. One student described his classmates as a small global gathering that includes young and old, female and male, undergraduate and graduate students. “To say we are united by public speaking is too broad; the class includes both those who fear [public speaking] and those who relish it,” wrote the student. “We are united specifically by our belief that it is important.”

This analysis is effective because the student is able to connect his own beliefs with the audience’s beliefs. The student acknowledges the tremendous diversity of the audience, but doesn’t dwell on it. Instead, he focuses on what unites everyone in the room — the belief that public speaking is important.

Remember to conduct a thorough audience analysis — even when you’re pressed for time. The information you gather will help you determine how to get and keep your audience’s attention.

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Use Inclusive Pronouns

One of the easiest ways to bond with your audience is to use inclusive pronouns like we , our , and us instead of you and your . As Shel Leanne points out in the book,  Say It Like Obama: The Power of Speaking with Purpose and Vision , these words help to “send the message that the speaker and those listening are on the same team, in the same boat, facing the same fate.”

I often use inclusive language when telling my students about upcoming speech assignments. When students express concern about delivering a speech, I say: “I know speaking in public can be nerve-racking, but we’re all in this together. We’ve prepared for this moment for the past few weeks, so I know we have what it takes to deliver amazing speeches.” Although I personally may not deliver a speech, I want my students to know that I am on their side. Using inclusive language helps me demonstrate that I care about my students and understand what they are facing.

There is a big difference between saying, “ You  must solve this problem” and “ We  must solve this problem.” The first statement makes the audience responsible for solving the problem; the second implies that the speaker will work  with  the audience to solve the problem. Don’t tell your listeners what they should do. Instead, use inclusive language to explain what you all can accomplish together.

Reference the Present

Another way to connect with your audience is to reference the present. Although listeners may think about the past and future during your speech, they will spend most of their “thinking time” trying to link your ideas to their current needs and challenges. Think about the issues your audience currently faces and find ways to address those issues during your speech.

Let’s say you are invited to give career advice to a group of college seniors preparing for end-of-semester exams. What could you say to make the students listen to you? Here is one possibility:

I know you’re looking forward to finishing your finals so you can hang out with your friends and enjoy the summer. I was a college student not too long ago. I know how it is. But I hope we can talk for just a few minutes about one simple question: “What’s next?” Today, I want to offer some suggestions to help you use what you’re studying to land a great job.

This introduction is compelling because it connects the topic of your speech to the students’ current, primary concern—studying for finals. Initially, the students may not want to think about their postcollege plans, but they will be more apt to listen once you demonstrate that you “know how it is” and you’re willing to help.

Highlight the Benefits

A final technique is to highlight the benefits of supporting a particular idea. According to Nick Morgan, author of  Before You Open Your Mouth: The Keys to Great Public Speaking , speakers must keep their audience members’ needs top of mind:

Audiences begin speeches asking “why” — why should I care, why is this important … If the speaker is successful—and it’s a million to one shot against — the audience will end up asking “how” — how do I implement this idea, how do I make this my own … That’s the speaker’s job: take the audience from “why” to “how.”

Let’s say you are speaking to a group of colleagues about volunteering at a local homeless shelter. Everyone knows that helping the homeless is important. Nevertheless, you are more likely to make your message resonate if you emphasize the specific benefits of volunteering. You could say:

I invite you to join me at our local shelter to prepare lunch for some of the homeless people in our community. This is a perfect opportunity for us to get to know one another and do something to make us feel good about ourselves. I’m pretty sure we’ll laugh a lot as we figure out how to run the kitchen!

In this example, the speaker highlights the benefits of participating, rather than emphasizing that volunteering at the shelter is the “right thing to do.” Who wouldn’t want to have a great time while serving the community?

Your listeners will pay attention if you make your speech all about them — so be sure to keep the audience at the forefront of your mind. If you maintain an audience-centered approach, your listeners will reward you with appreciation and applause.

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About the Author

Steven D. Cohen is an internationally known expert on leadership communication, executive presence, and persuasive speaking. He is an accomplished scholar and dynamic trainer who has brought research-based insights to companies in a wide range of industries. Cohen is well known for helping leaders communicate with confidence, influence, and authority.

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Fast Results through Powerful Communication

Public Speaking Success: Three Ways to Make a Speech More Interesting

The good news is that there are a few ways to make a speech more interesting and they simply require a little extra planning up front. So let’s look at three things we can do to make a speech more interesting.

1. Research your audience:

You’ve probably heard it a million times, but spending a little bit of time trying to get to know your audience will help you tremendously when you give your speech. Just like in conversation, when you know more about the people you’re talking to, you can speak to their needs more easily. And when you speak to your audience’s needs, you engage them better.

As part of your speech preparation , ask the following questions about your audience:

• Why are they gathered together?
• What are they hoping to gain by listening to the speech?
• What common interests do they have?
• What are some recent events that the audience is interested in?

If you’re unable to answer these questions, try asking the person who invited you to speak. You can also get some good information by working the room prior to your talk, but keep in mind that you’ll have limited time to work with what you learn. What you’re looking for are things to relate the key points from your speech to. Just like you want to state your qualifications during a job interview in a manner that interests the company, you want your points and examples to resonate with your audience. If you’re speaking to a corporate audience, try to relate your topic to that company’s culture, products or industry. If you’re speaking to an organization, tie your points into the organization’s events and activities.

2. Paint a picture:

Many speakers make the mistake of presenting raw data such as statistics in a manner that the audience can’t relate to. They say things like “you’ll increase sales by 50%” or “600,000 people are suffering from this ailment.” Numbers are especially difficult for people to conceptualize so here are some examples of ways to describe numbers:

• Saying that taking a particular action will increase sales by 8.5% is less effective than saying that it’s like giving you an extra month’s worth of revenue each year.
• Instead of saying 400,000 people die from a certain disease each year, say that it’s like two 747 jets full of people crashing every day.

Along the same lines, be descriptive about the things you’re talking about. Don’t describe just what you want the audience to imagine visually, touch upon all five senses. Talk about the sounds, the tastes and the smells. Include how you feel, both inside and out. Maybe you’re describing your first visit to a big city so you talk about the sounds of cars scrambling through traffic, the smell from a nearby hotdog vendor or the feeling of the hot sun on your neck. The big caveat is to not overdo it and get into every detail on something that is only a small part of your talk.

3. Tell a story:

It’s great to give people useful information during your talk, but if you’re simply reciting advice, it’s likely that the audience will tune out. Instead, try to tell a story or a series of stories to illustrate each point. Each story should be relevant to the point you’re trying to make and should not be overly elaborate. The basic formula is that your story should show the audience that taking the action you suggest will provide them with a result that they want. In other words, you’re illustrating your point.

For example, a commencement speaker might want to explain that toughing it out in the early part of your career will lead to success later on. The speaker can simply say “it worked for me” and then move on to the next point, but that’s not exciting. Instead, he or she can talk about the long hours, the financial struggles and the tight schedules that he or she experienced. Perhaps there’s a story about falling asleep at his/her desk one night and not waking up until the next morning. Or maybe there’s a story about ducking the landlord to get another few days to pay the rent. These stories drive the point home since the audience can visualize the speaker asleep at a desk or hiding behind a curtain to avoid the landlord.

The level of detail depends on the situation. Major points can be backed up by more elaborate or multiple stories where smaller points can be backed up in a sentence or two. Leave out parts of the story that are irrelevant to your point and if you can use a short story to make one of your important points, go for it.

All in all, making a speech interesting really just takes a little creativity and some work. You may need to experiment with different techniques to figure out what works best for you. Some people are naturally good at stories while others are quick to make connections between their talks and the audience’s situation. Lastly, keep in mind that there is such a thing as a dull audience and audiences that have just consumed food, alcohol or have already endured several hours of talks may have a difficult time being interested in any talk.

James Feudo owns the Boston Web Design Agency JVF Solutions and loves blogging about personal development and communication in his spare time.

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6 thoughts on “ Public Speaking Success: Three Ways to Make a Speech More Interesting ”

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Great blog on how to make speeches interesting to audiences. I like the suggestions. I’d add one point, inspired by the story: pay close attention to the time of day. Audiences have shorter and shorter attention spans as the day wears on, so vary your speech accordingly. If you are the after-dinner speaker, follow Ronald Reagan’s rule: 12 minutes max, less if the audiences has had alcohol.

Nick Morgan

Thanks for the comment. I agree completely – after dinner talks when alcohol is severed are the most challenging.

Great advice from President Reagan. He was a fantastic speaker – I watch his speeches frequently as he really knew how to connect with an audience.

Thanks again,

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• Delivery Techniques →

How to Give a Speech: 10 Tips for Powerful Public Speaking

When we start preparing to give a speech, it can be a nerve-wracking experience. It’s completely normal—most of us feel a combination of excitement and nerves when we’re about to take the stage.

However, with some strategic planning and practical advice, you can make sure your speech is powerful and effective. In this blog post, we’ll explore how to give a speech that will leave your audience engaged and inspired.

We’ll examine 10 tips to help you build a powerful speech, from outlining your points methodically to crafting captivating introductions . Whether you’re a beginner or experienced public speaker, these nuggets of wisdom will help you take your next speech to the next level. Let’s get started!

Quick Review of Key Points

Preparing ahead of time is the key to giving an effective speech. Make sure to structure your speaking points, rehearse your delivery, and be aware of the needs of your audience for maximum impact.

How to Prepare for a Speech

Preparing for a speech is an essential step to public speaking success. It can help to build your confidence, create content that reaches the audience, and reduce performance anxiety.

Although it can be time-consuming in the beginning, preparation will ensure less stress and more comfort during delivery. Here are some tips to consider when preparing for a speech:

Practice : Before delivering a speech, practice it out loud several times. This will allow you to gain experience in speaking without an audience and increase your confidence when you do have one.

Practicing also helps to identify awkward moments in the speech or any difficult phrases which then can be changed or removed altogether. Additionally, it helps you determine where to pause for effect. Research : Depending on the topic of the speech , research should be done beforehand to gather information that is relevant and interesting for the audience. It is important to get acquainted with the language typically used by audiences to ensure a clear understanding of what is being said.

Additionally, relevant statistics and stories concerning the topic are a great way to draw in listeners and make the presentation more engaging .

Know Your Audience : When preparing your speech, be sure to consider who will be listening. For instance, if giving a presentation at work, include industry jargon that members would understand and include relevant topics from publications that might be familiar to the employees.

On the other hand, if consulting business professionals in their field then technical language may be easier for them to comprehend than laypeople or students.

By gathering valuable information about the topic and getting comfortable with a speech’s content and delivery through practice, speakers will gain more assurance during their talk as well as respect from their audience.

Preparing beforehand not only gives insight into how to engage listeners but also encourages more meaningful conversations after the event. Now that we have discussed how to prepare for a speech let us move on to creating an outline which will provide structure during delivery.

Create an Outline

After determining the audience and purpose of your speech, the next step to effective public speaking is to create an outline .

An outline serves as a roadmap to ensure that your speech has a logical flow and contains all important points. It also can help keep you on track during the speech itself, allowing you to stay focused and organized.

When constructing an outline, consider drawing up both a main point and sub-points for each portion of the speech. Both should be relevant to the goal of the presentation and backed up by facts and research.

Brainstorming can help in this process; try grouping your ideas together in clusters to make sure you cover all possible angles.

Furthermore, writing out exact quotations or figures can prove beneficial in forming a cohesive argument. At this stage, it is also wise to decide where transitions, humor, stories, or other engaging techniques will be included.

While there are differing opinions as to whether outlines should be memorized or simply used as a reference while speaking, many agree that they should serve their purpose – not only articulate the main thoughts of the speech but also assist the speaker with maintaining focus and preventing distractions.

The debate between those who advocate for memorization versus casual consulting touches upon issues such as rehearsal time, risk of errors in delivery, ease of practice versus actual performance and more.

Each side has valid arguments that should be weighed prior to deciding what type of approach best suits your needs.

Having a firmly constructed outline acts as a valuable tool when it comes time to deliver a powerful public speech. By actively utilizing this tactic, speakers may not only enhance their clarity and coherence, but also add structure and vibrance to their presentations.

Now that we have explored what goes into crafting an effective outline, let’s dive deeper into how we can best collect resources and research our topics for maximum impact.

Collect Sources and Research

Collecting sources and research is a crucial step for any public speaking engagement. It ensures that you have the necessary information to make strong points and back up your statements.

Before writing your speech, take time to research your topic to gain familiarity with different perspectives, facts, and counterpoints. This will help you to craft an argument that can stand up to scrutiny while also adding a breadth of knowledge to your speech.

Interviews can be a powerful source of evidence and anecdotes, so try to include one or two relevant interviews in your research process. Relying solely on secondary sources such as books and articles can lead to a narrow scope of understanding.

Interviews provide an opportunity to hear directly from an expert and create an interesting dynamic in your speech by adding personal experiences as well as commentary from a professional.

In research it is important to stay objective. Gather a variety of perspectives and be open-minded about their merits. Don’t forget to consider both sides of the argument when researching for your speech.

Doing this allows you to understand the opposing perspective and enables you to anticipate potential counter arguments from your audience.

By acknowledging them beforehand, you may increase the persuasive power of your speech by showing confidence in the points you make.

Once you have collected all sources, review them carefully and separate the most pertinent information from the less useful material.

Synthesising this information into concise yet impactful points is a critical part in delivering powerful talks without overloading your audience with too much data or going off track during your speech delivery.

Organizing Your Speech

Before you start putting your words together, it’s important to consider how the different parts of a speech fit together. By taking the time to organize the ideas in your speech , you’ll be able to deliver a presentation that is well-constructed and easy to understand.

One way to help with organizing your speech is to write an outline . An outline is like a map or plan that will provide you with a framework for each section of your speech.

Start by writing out your main points and then include additional details underneath each one. This will help keep your speech focused and provide direction for where you are going next.

Another approach for organizing your speech is known as the “inverted pyramid” method. This structure starts with your conclusion at the beginning of the speech, and then works backward by providing more explanation and detail as it moves toward the introduction.

This method can be helpful when speaking about topics that are unfamiliar to the audience since it doesn’t require them to wait until near the end of the presentation to learn what you’ve been talking about.

No matter which organization approach you choose, make sure to practice it before giving your speech so that you are comfortable with its flow. Lastly, remember that it’s ok to adjust things while you speak if they don’t seem or feel quite right.

Now let’s take a look at how we can use these organizing techniques to actually put our speeches together – starting with structuring our speech.

Structure Your Speech

Creating a strong structure for your speech will ensure that the audience stays engaged and understands your main points. As you are developing an outline, map out how you want to begin and end your speech.

Break up the information into smaller sections with either verbal or visual cues so that your audience can clearly see how you are transitioning between topics . Consider adding humor judiciously throughout your presentation as this could help engage the audience and lighten any tension.

The length of your presentation is also important. You will want to make sure that you include all of the necessary information without going over time.

Oftentimes less is more; if you can say it in five minutes why use ten? Make sure that you practice timed rehearsals so that you can gauge how long you’re actually speaking.

In contrast, avoid trying to pack too much content into one presentation as this could overwhelm both you and the audience. If needed, offer supplemental reading materials for those who may be interested in delving further into the subject matter.

Paragraphs can also be helpful when organizing large amounts of content within the body of your presentation. Utilizing paragraph breaks gives your audience a break and helps to highlight key ideas or summaries before moving onto a new topic area.

Finally, it is crucial to remember what your desired outcome is from the presentation; plan accordingly by ensuring that the beginning, middle, and end serve their respective purposes and adhere to that goal.

With careful deliberations, structuring a successful presentation can be achieved with relative ease.

Having established a solid structure for your speech, it’s important to focus on another key element: rehearsal. The next section will discuss the benefits of practicing before delivering a powerful public speaking performance.

Rehearse Your Speech

Rehearsing is integral to giving a successful speech. When you rehearse your presentation, you give your mind an opportunity to become familiar with the notes and concepts that you are presenting. It also increases your confidence and reduces anxiety or self-doubt.

In fact, studies have found that those who rehearsed their presentation had higher scores in public speaking performance and language proficiency evaluations.

When it comes to how much rehearsal is enough, opinions are divided. Some people believe that over-rehearsing can lead to a more robotic speech with less natural emotion and connection with the audience .

On the other hand, others argue that no matter how well-versed someone is on the topic, additional rehearsal time improves both the delivery of the speech and memorization of key points and facts.

Ultimately, it’s important to practice until you personally find the most comfortable level for yourself, as this will ultimately result in a more engaging delivery.

Finally, if at all possible, try to practice in front of a friend or colleague for honest feedback on any elements that need improvement before the big day. Rehearsal dedication may be tedious, but it results in big rewards on stage–enabling you to deliver your content with clarity, confidence, and poise.

With thoughtful preparation complete, it’s now time to step into the spotlight and give your speech!

Giving Your Speech

The key to success when giving a speech is to be well prepared and confident. Every individual’s preparation process will vary, but the basics should stay the same.

Start by studying your content, understanding the material and being able to repeat it in your own words. Clarify any potentially difficult points. Create visual aids like PowerPoint slides or handouts that supplement the key ideas in your speech.

Practice your public speaking skills with informal conversations with friends and family or rehearse it alone in front of a mirror. Use visualization; imagine yourself confidently delivering your speech. Consider addressing a practice audience if possible to become more accustomed to a live size group.

On the day of the event, arrive early and plan for any potential obstacles: What if my computer doesn’t work? What if I forget something? Allow sufficient time for setup and check-in.

When you are ready to give your speech, take some deep breaths, focus on the positives, and distract yourself from any anxious thoughts with positive affirmations. Remember you have prepared diligently for this moment, you are well prepared and you will succeed!

Start strong by engaging the audience immediately with an attention grabbing opening statement. Speak clearly and make sure that everyone can hear and understand your message.

Slow down and emphasize points as needed throughout your presentation. Be aware of pace, volume, and tone of voice: too fast/monotone can confuse/bore listeners while pauses add a dramatic effect that keeps their interest piqued.

Ultimately, giving a successful speech will depend on knowing your material well enough to speak confidently in front of your audience without hesitation or missteps.

When you do make a mistake (and they happen!) don’t panic – know that mistakes are inevitable but don’t be discouraged; get back on track as soon as possible and continue at the same energy level you had before the mistake occurred.

Having successfully given your speech, take a moment to reflect on what went well and what could be improved upon for next time before transitioning into the next step: mastering delivery.

Master Your Delivery

Mastering your delivery is the key to an effective speech. Without purposeful body language and careful emphasis on certain words , your speech may lack wow-factor and prevent listeners from tuning in. Following these simple tips can help you get started with delivering an engaging and memorable speech:

The most important part of delivery is practice. Rehearse and perfect your speech ahead of time – this allows for more natural flow and confidence during your presentation. It also helps to create pauses between sentences for clarity, emphasize key points, and not be too casual or stiff.

Practicing inflections and varying tones adds interest to your speech by keeping listeners’ attention.

Additionally, it’s important to project your voic e so everyone in the room can hear you; make sure you’re speaking loud enough but don’t feel pressure to shout or yell at any point unless that’s part of the atmosphere of the event.

It’s also crucial to maintain good posture while speaking – stand tall with both feet on the ground, keep your back straight, hold yourself up without gesturing too much or leaning against a podium if applicable.

To further engage listeners, use purposeful hand gestures as they help emphasize certain points and add visual interest – however, avoid overusing them as it can hinders communication.

Make meaningful eye contact with audience members throughout the presentation – otherwise you might come across as unenthusiastic or bored with what you’re saying which deters attention away from the content itself.

By mastering your delivery, you can boost the impact of your presentation considerably – providing a memorable experience for your audience that stands out from others’. As such, it’s worth investing time into practicing ahead of time until delivery feels comfortable and second nature.

Having said this, making use of visual aids such as PowerPoint slides can greatly improve the impact of a speech once delivery has been mastered – let’s look into that next.

Use Visual Aids

Using visual aids can help presenters express concepts more clearly and engage the audience.

Visuals are particularly useful when conveying complex information, such as data, trends, or statistics — they impart meaning at a glance. But some public speakers may wonder if visual aids can be distracting or unnecessary.

Even though visuals can attract attention away from a presenter’s verbal delivery, carefully designed visuals can actually support the speech and help provide clarity. If done well, visuals are effective for capturing an audience’s interest and helping them to better understand the content being presented.

For example, a graph or chart should relate to the points made in the speech and should be discussed in more detail during its appearance onscreen. The presentation can also include larger images that effectively reinforce the ideas conveyed in the speech.

Videos and sound clips are other powerful forms of multimedia that could be employed to make the speech more meaningful.

To ensure that visuals enhance the message of the presentation, key factors to consider include relevancy to topic, good graphic design or aesthetics, accurate size to prevent distortion or blurriness, and seamless integration into the keynote slides or printed handouts .

In this way, visuals offer an opportunity for presenters to demonstrate their creativity and keep their audiences interested in what is being said. Thus, used wisely and aptly, visuals can add tremendous value to speeches by presenting arguments more efficiently and driving home important points. Now let’s explore effective techniques for speech giving that will allow you to craft and deliver your speeches with confidence.

Effective Techniques for Speech Giving

There are a number of effective techniques for giving a speech that will help you deliver it with confidence and poise.

First, practice your delivery in advance. You should practice both in front of a mirror or recording device to check for any distracting habits such as talking too quickly or mispronouncing words.

Second, use simple, clear language and short, concise sentences. Avoid overly technical terms and jargon that may leave your audience confused.

Third, work to establish a connection with your audience by using appropriate facial expressions and hand gestures while speaking.

Fourth, utilize effective persuasive techniques such as presenting evidence, strong arguments supported by facts, personal anecdotes and vivid metaphors.

Finally, articulate an organized structure for your speech. Your speech should have an introduction, body and conclusion to clearly communicate the main point and provide the audience with the necessary context to understand it better.

While these techniques may sound intimidating at first, they can be learned over time with practice and will make all the difference in how successful your speech delivery is received by your audience.

To build on these skills further , the next section will provide tips on how to build confidence when giving a speech.

Building Confidence

Building confidence is key when giving a powerful speech, as it will enable you to deliver the speech in a more poised and credible manner.

To create this confidence , start by understanding that any hesitation or butterflies prior to your speech are completely normal and should not be feared. Instead, view them as natural states of anticipation for something exciting, knowing that you are about to give an amazing speech.

Next, understanding who your audience is and tailoring your speech to meet their expectations will help build your confidence.

Familiarizing yourself with their interests and knowledge on the subject matter ahead of time can equip you with the understanding needed to respond appropriately if questions arise or objections surface during the speech.

Further, practice is key when building confidence for a public speaking engagement . Rehearsing with friends or colleagues before hand will give you an opportunity to learn where problem areas are within the content of your speech, as well as help solidify your delivery by becoming more comfortable with each step.

Checking sound levels in the room you’re presenting in coupled with learning where exits/emergency locations are located within that space can also help alleviate stress levels and boost self-assurance while delivering the speech.

Finally, wearing comfortable clothing and dressing professionally adds an extra layer of confidence when speaking in public.

If possible, bring an additional outfit on hand during the presentation in case of spills or accidents that would require a quick change between sections of the talk. Having this back-up plan in place can aid in keeping peace of mind at ease throughout the speech.

In conclusion, building confidence prior to a public speaking event can mean the difference between a good and great delivery of your message.

By taking into account each of these tips you can ensure that this part of your preparation runs smoothly and sets you up for success when delivering powerful speeches.

With a well-crafted note card of talking points and strong sense of self-assurance, it’s time to start speaking with passion!

Speaking with Passion

As a public speaker, your audience expects you to engage not only with your words but also with your emotions. To share the most impactful message, it is important to speak passionately about your subject.

Doing so will make your speech more memorable and thereby more effective in convincing your audience of its legitimacy.

The power of speaking authentically with emotion lies in its relatability and connection. Showing feelings allows people to connect with you as a person rather than just a speaker. It opens the door to understanding through empathy and active listening .

Examples might include adding personal stories , telling jokes, or displaying your feelings openly during the delivery of your message.

However, not all topics lend themselves easily to expressing emotion. If the subject matter is overly complex or technical there may be less opportunity for emotional expression—but this doesn’t mean those conversations can’t incorporate emotion.

Even if faced with a difficult situation such as death or financial turmoil, emotions can still be conveyed in a respectful way that keeps audiences engaged.

Remember that how much emotion you show depends on the type of audience you’re sharing it with—using sensitivity when delivering passionate speeches helps avoid awkwardness or embarrassment for any attendees who may find opinionated language uncomfortable for whatever reason.

Striking the right balance between being straightforward and showing compassion takes practice, so take the time to develop a style that works best for you and improves upon each performance.

Finally, incorporating passion into a speech gives it life and makes it relatable and engaging—which are essential elements to speaking effectively.

Having passion means giving ourselves permission to take ownership over our stories, making them deeply personal in order to reach our goals and touch people’s hearts in meaningful ways. With that said, let’s move on to discussing how we should tackle dealing with challenges while giving a speech.

Dealing with Challenges

The process of delivering a speech can be challenging, but it is also rewarding. Difficulties can arise during the process that may threaten to derail your success. To ensure you are adequately prepared for these possible pitfalls it is important to consider strategies for proactively mitigating the risk of encountering these challenges. 1. Public Speaking Anxiety: Many people experience some form of anxiety when asked to speak in public. There are a number of techniques available to combat this fear and increase confidence, such as deep breathing exercises, mental rehearsal, positive self-talk and visualization of success.

Learning about the audience, creating an engaging presentation and using props or visual aids can also help reduce anxiety levels and create a better overall experience for both the speaker and the audience. 2. Unfamiliar Topics or Audiences: When presenting on unfamiliar topics or to an unknown audience it can be difficult to prepare effectively.

In this situation it is important to conduct research on the topic and familiarize yourself with the needs of your audience so that the content is tailored accordingly. It is also helpful to use humor or stories related to the topic in order to engage your audience and make them more receptive to your message. 3. Lack of Support: If you lack support from family, friends, colleagues or mentors, it can be difficult to push through difficult conversations or speeches without any additional motivation.

To overcome this challenge, seek out peer mentorship opportunities or find compatible online communities where people discuss similar topics or objectives. Here you can share ideas, provide feedback and learn from others who have experienced similar issues. 4. Time Constraints: One of the biggest challenges when giving a speech is managing your time effectively in order to deliver an effective message without going over allotted timeslots and boring your audience .

To successfully address this challenge try setting manageable goals for each section of your speech and practice regularly. Replicating real-time conditions as closely as possible will help you stay within time constraints when delivering your speech on the day itself. In conclusion, there are many potential challenges you may face when giving a speech or taking part in a public speaking event – but with proper preparation and practice they are easily managed if approached correctly.

With knowledge of techniques for dealing with such scenarios comes increased confidence when stepping up to the podium – further improving your chances of delivering an effective speech that resonates with your audience members.

Responses to Frequently Asked Questions

How should i end my speech to leave a lasting impression.

The best way to end your speech is by reinforcing your main point and summarizing the key takeaways. You should also encourage the audience to take action, whether it be to sign up for a newsletter, make a donation, or visit your website for more information. This final call to action will not only leave a lasting impression on the audience but will also help you achieve any goals you might have had when making your speech in the first place.

What techniques can I use to keep my audience engaged during my speech?

One of the best techniques for keeping an audience engaged during a speech is to keep it interactive . Ask questions throughout the presentation, as well as allowing for audience input and discussion. This can help to keep people’s attention and create a more engaging experience.

Another great tip is to use humor. Even if you don’t consider yourself a natural comedian, sprinkling in a few jokes here and there can break up the monotony of long speeches and keep people interested. Humor can also help to make points stick in people’s minds, making them easier to remember.

Finally, try to be enthusiastic about the content of your speech. If you show too much indifference or lethargic behavior, it will discourage your audience from paying attention and taking your message seriously.

Instead, be passionate about what you are saying so that the energy of your words carries into the room and engages your audience with excitement.

How can I use storytelling to make my speech more interesting?

Storytelling is a powerful tool that can be used to make any speech more interesting. Telling stories in your speech will help engage the audience and make your message stick. Here are some tips for using storytelling in your speech:

1. Choose stories that are relevant to your message and audience. Think about stories that will best illustrate the point you are trying to convey, or evoke emotions in your listeners. 2. Use vivid descriptions and visuals when telling your story. Be sure to include details such as setting, character descriptions, dialogue and plot points. This will help to bring the story to life for your audience. 3. Make sure the story you are telling has a strong conclusion or moral at the end. This will help add emphasis to your message and make it memorable. 4. Practice telling stories out loud before delivering a speech with them. Rehearsing will help you deliver your story more effectively and with more confidence in front of an audience. By using these tips, storytelling can be an effective tool to make any speech more interesting, engaging, and persuasive!

How can I prepare for my speech effectively?

Preparing for a speech effectively is essential to delivering an impactful and memorable presentation. Here are some tips: 1. Have a clear goal in mind. Before starting to prepare, ask yourself what the purpose of giving the speech is: what message do you want to convey? Defining this will help to structure your content and focus your research. 2. Research thoroughly. Make sure you understand the subject matter well, so that your delivery sounds confident and inspiring. Using facts and data will strengthen your arguments and make your talk more convincing. 3. Outline your speech. Make a rough outline of how you want it to go – from beginning to end – well in advance of the actual presentation. This will give you a strong foundation upon which you can craft an engaging talk with an effective narrative arc that keeps audiences interested and engaged. 4. Practice regularly. Rehearsing your speech out loud several times is key to ensuring that you know it well enough to feel comfortable when delivering it live in front of an audience.

5. Time yourself. Record how long it takes for you to go through your entire speech, so that you can adjust the length as needed before delivering it live – remember that most speeches should last no more than 10-15 minutes. 6. Identify potential questions from the audience and prepare answers before hand. Knowing ahead of time what kind of questions people may ask can help reduce the anxiety of not knowing what comes next, enabling you to stay confident when speaking in public. 7. Work on building up confidence levels before delivering a speech. Visualize yourself succeeding in delivering a great presentation; practice relaxation techniques such as deep breathing or positive self-talk; or use props during practice sessions such as water bottles or stress balls if needed to remain calm during the real thing!

What strategies can I use to reduce my anxiety when giving a speech?

1. Plan Ahead: Create an outline of your speech beforehand and practice it multiple times to become familiar with the content. Doing a trial run with the audience can also help you get used to speaking in front of people.

2. Visualize Success: Positive visualization is a great way to reduce anxiety before giving a speech. Imagine yourself confidently delivering the speech while feeling relaxed and composed.

3. Get Organized: Make sure you have all the materials necessary for your presentation, including notes, slides, etc., to reduce any additional stress that may come from not having what you need when you speak.

4. Take Deep Breaths: Before and during the speech, take a few deep breaths as this will help calm nerves and make sure your breathing is regulated throughout the duration of your presentation.

5. Speak Slowly: It is common to feel anxious while giving a speech and try to rush through it too quickly. Speaking slowly helps maintain composure while delivering your message effectively and clearly.

6. Pay Attention to Your Body: Your posture, stance, movements , facial expressions can all influence how confident you appear to your audience and how nervous you may be feeling inside. Check in with yourself frequently throughout the presentation and correct any tense body language or physical actions if needed.

7. Focus on the Audience: If you notice that your anxiety levels are growing as you present, shift your focus onto the audience instead of yourself as this will help refocus your attention away from negative thoughts that may arise from fear or insecurity.

8. Make Eye Contact: Establishing eye contact with your audience is a key confidence-builder for public speakers—it shows that you’re strong, engaged with them, and receptive to feedback or questions they might have regarding your speech topic .

9. Practice Positive Affirmations: Positive thoughts will boost your self-confidence as well as your mood which can help increase performance quality significantly during speeches or presentations in general—so don’t forget to tell yourself “you can do it!” several times throughout the day leading up to the event!

10. Seek Support of Friends & Family: Many experienced public speakers suggest seeking support of close friends & family members prior and during their speeches—not only does it allow helpful critique regarding content but it also creates a more comfortable atmosphere while speaking which can reduce pre-speech jitters drastically.

Want to write an interesting speech?

It takes emotion, contrast, storytelling & sweat. 

People often ask, “How do I make my speech interesting ?”

For many speakers, it’s the uncertainty about just how interesting their speech is that sets their nerves jangling.

So if you can give your listeners something that’ll keep their attention piqued, you can dispel a few hundred butterflies worth of nerves into the bargain.

The usual advice

Whatever you’re promoting, selling or celebrating, here are some tried-and-trusted ways to keep your audience interested. I’m going to start with the obvious ones that you’ve probably heard a dozen times, then take you through some deeper ideas…

Tailor your speech to your audience

The more you know about your audience, the easier it is to write the sort of speech they’ll want to hear.

There are some obvious starting points. If it’s a wedding audience, you already know they’ll want to laugh good naturedly at the groom’s exploits and enjoy hearing some hitherto unheard stories about why this is going to be great marriage.

And if it’s a business speech, you know your audience will be invested in the product or service you’re talking to them about. Even if your subject might seem uninteresting to an outsider, a packed hall full of industry insiders will be interested in what you’ve got to say… provided you give them the sort of serious analysis or insight they’re looking for.

That makes your job easier. But you still need to do more…

Want to give an interesting speech? Then tell an interesting story

You might not think that every kind of speech will lend itself to being presented like a story.

But the ebb and flow of a good story, filled with surprises, hooks and dramatic pay-offs can make anything sound more interesting.

You don’t have to go OTT, just use a more illustrative approach…

Instead of talking about the struggles of the last year in an abstract way, tell a story that sums it up. Tell them about the junior colleague who came in early every day for a year and what he achieved. Or talk about the little extra things that individuals did that helped the company through tough times…

Write your speech with all the drama and surprise you can muster.

Interesting speeches address the full spectrum of human emotion

Funny speeches are good. So are emotional speeches. Combine the best of both and you’ve got the basis of a truly captivating speech.

But don’t stop there. There’s a whole range of emotional states for you to plunder.

Pile on the suspense, build some excitement, appeal to your audience’s sense of longing, and rouse their passion.

Make them care .

Interesting speeches are full of contrasts

Take a lesson from film and TV.

Film and programme makers like switching between different emotional states. Because they know the contrasts accentuate the drama. So, comedy heightens suspense, and pathos gives drama a harder edge.

You can do the same.

Give your audience the right emotional touch-points and they’ll stay fully engaged in the story you’re telling.

Think of your speech like a film script, full of contrasts.

Cutting quickly from something funny to something serious can seem jarring. But it is often amazingly effective.

For example, some of the best fundraising speeches take time to soften their audience up, before abruptly changing pace. This is why we’re here. This is why we need your help.

Pile on the pathos

Call it schmaltz. Call it emotional manipulation if you will. But filmmakers are very good at piling on the pathos. The lingering looks and last goodbyes; the slow-motion pullbacks and the soaring strings.

A little bit of pathos gives every story a bigger emotional impact. It works in speeches too. Often in the least likely places.

Think of a best man’s speech and you’ll think ‘funny’ first and foremost. But I assure you, the audience will laugh a whole lot harder when you butter them up with a bit of genuine emotion too.

First a big laugh. Then a quick-as-a-flash change of pace – and a bit of the heartfelt stuff.

Want to make your speech interesting? Learn how to make your audience sweat

There are lots of good ways to keep your audience on their toes. And lots of good reasons to do it…

Your job as orator is to keep your audience hanging on every word. Right to the end, if you possibly can. Sometimes that means you just have to pull out every trip in the speechwriter’s book.

Don’t make it too easy for your listeners.

Hint at your big takeaway points. Skirt around them. Build up to them. Use a little misdirection if it helps.

Use cliff-hangers between different parts of your speech.

Use dangling threads that you’ll return to later.

Do whatever it takes to keep your listeners actively engaged with your speech. The harder they focus, the more they’re going to really hear what you’ve got to say.

How to give facts more impact

On their own, facts can frequently bore an audience to tears. But, if you think carefully about what you say before weighing in with the facts, you’ll create a bigger appetite for the raw data.

A good way of doing that is to subvert your audience’s expectations…

For example, if you’re announcing a negligible increase in revenue, don’t just give them the numbers…

Prime your audience to expect the worst. Set the scene in bleak terms, suggest all the reasons you should have made a loss and then surprise them with the facts.

Suddenly they’ll sound a lot more interesting.

Interesting speeches are made of this…

Don’t miss an opportunity to surprise your audience.

If they’re used to PowerPoint presentations, talk to them instead.

If they’re expecting a litany of facts, get them emotionally invested in the context behind the facts first.

And above all, give them a speech they can feel . One that takes them on an interesting and unexpected journey to the facts.

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More From Forbes

12 public speaking tips to make your speech more impactful.

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There are few more impactful ways to grow and enhance your personal brand than a public speaking engagement. Whether it's a small seminar, conference panel or even a TED Talk, sharing your expertise with a live audience is a great way to establish yourself as a thought leader and expand your influence in your industry.

Newbie public speakers often feel nervous or under pressure before a big speech -- what if the audience gets bored or doesn't connect with your material? With the right strategies, you can ensure that your presentation is not only engaging and interesting but memorable for your listeners. We asked a panel of   Forbes Agency Council   members for their best public speaking advice. Their best answers are below.

Members of the Forbes Agency Council offer their best tips.

1. Offer A Tangible Take-Home Resource  

Often times, even the best information -- while amazing when you first hear it -- can be like a firehose, which makes the advice difficult to implement. Offer a resource guide that the audience can take with them that includes key takeaways and great examples of how they can implement it the very next day. -   Giovanni Sanguily ,   TRIdigital Marketing

2. Know Your Expertise And Be Specific  

It’s important to be very clear on your top three areas of expertise and interest. Keep it to three because it’s enough to be interesting and few enough to be memorable. The more specific, the better. Avoid clichés like “I’m a good collaborator.” Instead, highlight a personal value, like “I am a natural teacher and I love working with teams to teach them and help implement new concepts.” -   Jennifer Laible ,   Antenna

3 . Create Sticky Sentences With Adequate Pauses  

It's important to incorporate sticky sentences that are not only memorable but help point to your topic. People don't typically remember paragraphs but powerful sentences with adequate pauses. This allows for listeners to receive and reflect upon what was said. Share your sentence, pause, and then share it again. Share these multiple times throughout your presentation. - Bryan Citrin,   Chiropractic Advertising

4. Build In Audience Participation  

Encourage participation from your audience. Allowing time for   Q&As   gives you time to get to know your audience and what they are expecting to hear about. If you talk about what your audience wants to hear about, it will be more meaningful to them, and they will be more likely to remember what you said. -   Solomon Thimothy ,   OneIMS

5. Provide Your Contact Information  

Share contact information at the end of a talk. It's a very simple way to let the audience feel that they have a direct connection to you, even if they don't take you up on the outreach. You can't talk about personal brand without the word "personal." Giving out your contact info is such a simple way to get personal. -   Brett Farmiloe ,   Markitors

6. Incorporate Humor  

The audience needs to be ready to hear your message for the engagement to be successful. Humor humanizes the speaker, transcends all barriers and helps to grab the audience's attention so that they are open to receiving your message. -   Lisa Allocca ,   Red Javelin Communications

7. Don’t Bury The Lede  

The best thing you can be is useful to your audience and not make them work for it. They won’t remember all you say, but if they retain what’s most important, they’ll leave seeing you as a valuable resource and thought leader. That means clearly identifying takeaways, such as including key points at the end of each section or concluding with a checklist to help them activate a new approach. -   Howard Breindel ,   DeSantis Breindel

8. Limit Text And Make It Visual Instead  

Your audience is not sitting in a conference or seminar to read. They want to listen and be entertained. If you do use visual aids (PowerPoint or Keynote, for example), make sure to keep it visual. Limit the text to less than 10 words per page. Use a visual that will back up your story and help explain your concept. Keep it clean, easy to scan and meaningful to what you are saying. -   Korena Keys ,   KeyMedia Solutions

9. Do A Meet And Greet Before Your Presentation  

Before my talks, I get to know my audience. Not only do I conduct advance research to understand who will be attending, but prior to taking the stage I also meet and greet several people. Then, while presenting, I look for friendly faces and personalize the content based on the knowledge shared in advance. I encourage my fellow executives to give meet and greets a try. -   Dave Wendland ,   Hamacher Resource Group

10. Focus On Emotional Engagement  

When engaging in public speaking, remember that your audience is full of real people. Your job is not only to communicate unique ideas and educate the audience but to also entertain them and heighten their interest. Evoke an emotional response in your audience, move their hearts and engage their minds. It's through emotional engagement that you capture their attention and become memorable. -   Tom Shapiro ,   Stratabeat

11. Be Vulnerable And Share Your Fears And Failures  

Memorability is the name of the game in both personal branding and public speaking. There is nothing quite like being real -- open, transparent, vulnerable -- to capture the attention and hearts of an audience. "Corporate" speak and "rah-rah success" speak are expected. What's not expected yet extremely memorable are the fears, flounders and failures that every executive has to share. -   Beth Noymer Levine ,   SmartMouth Communications

12. Be Human

People are less likely to remember precisely what you tell them, and more likely to remember how you make them feel. Allow for candid moments. Provide the impression of being "off script." It's better. -  Rick Kupchella ,  The Informed Engagement Network (i.e. network)

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How to Write an Amazing Speech for Any Occasion

There’s nothing worse than staring at a blank screen and wondering how you’ll begin to write a speech. Oh wait, there is something worse: Staring at a blank screen and wondering how to start your speech—while your deadline is hanging over your head. Add some pressure to a confused mind and a dreaded task and, well, you’re likely to throw something together, throw up your hands, or throw in the towel.

But don’t get mad—get strategic. In my work coaching busy people (from powerful Hollywood movie moguls to nervous maids of honor) to make speeches , I have found that following these three simple steps can quickly take you from ideation to oration.

Step 1: Prepare

While it is deeply satisfying to start putting words on a page, it’s more important to spend a few minutes thinking about what you want this speech or presentation to accomplish. After all, as Yankee great Yogi Berra once remarked, “If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else.”

So, spend a few minutes reflecting on the following:

What kind of speech is this? Common types include informational (aimed at instructing or teaching), persuasive (targeted to change people’s beliefs and behaviors), and evocative (focused on generating an emotional response).

Who is your audience ? What do they already know about this topic? What do they believe that may or may not be true? What do they want? What do they hope for? What do they fear?

What do you want your audience to feel? What do you want them to do? What one to three things do you want them to know (based on what they already know or believe, hope for, want or fear, and what you want them to understand) that will drive them to do the thing you want them to do? Stick to three main points wherever possible. Two sets up an “either-or,” where four tends to overwhelm.

What’s your overarching point of view on the topic?** A neutral speech is a boring speech!

Step 2: Organize

Studies about consumer psychology show that when you offer people too many choices and too much information, they tune out and ultimately buy nothing . As you are asking your audience to buy (or at least buy into) what you’re talking about, you want to keep your ideas as simple and streamlined as possible. Here’s a simple outline to follow that will keep you and your audience focused:

An Attention-Getting Introduction: Use a quotation, a story, a question, or a statistic—something to get the audience paying attention to you as quickly as possible. “Hello, good morning, and thank you for having me” does not count as a captivating opening. Remember, this is your one opportunity to let your listeners know that you’re worth listening to.

A Preview: Let your listeners know what’s coming by saying “Today, we’re going to cover…” That old saying “Tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you told them” is absolutely right. (For a bonus, tell your listeners what benefits they’ll get from your presentation. It will inspire them to pay attention!)

Points 1 Through 3: Make your case. These main points should be based on what you prepared earlier (what you want your audience to know or understand). To make your points resonate, include stories, statistics, examples from the news and popular culture, expert citations, and personal experiences. But don’t use all of these for each point. Pick one or two ways to bring each point to life and then move on.

A Recap: Tell them what you just told them. (Seriously—our memories are short and our attention spans even shorter.)

A Q&A: You might think that you should leave the questions until the end. Think again. When you leave the questions until the end, you let the audience decide the topic and tone you end on. You’ve worked too hard for that! Hold Q&A before you wrap up so that you can deal with anything that comes up from your audience and still plan to conclude on your own terms.

The Closer: It’s almost over—but not quite. The law of recency tells us that the audience will remember most what they heard last. Wrap up any loose items, draw a final inspiring conclusion that will compel people to think and act differently, and then close with a stirring statement that’s memorable. For extra credit, have your closing mirror your opening so that your speech feels like a complete package.

Step 3: Present With Passion

Maya Angelou once remarked, “My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.” Let it be your mission not just to survive your speech, but to deliver it with some compassion, some humor, and some style.

Make eye contact to connect with your listeners, use your arms to generate energy, move around the room (OK, not too much), and have your voice and face come alive to show that you care about your topic and your audience.

Don’t just stand up there—do something. Shift your presentation from “Woe is me” to “Wow!” and from “I can’t believe I have to write a speech” to “I rocked it. Next!”

Photo of pen and paper courtesy of Shutterstock .

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How to structure your speech to make a mighty impression

by Kolarele Sonaike

It was Dale Carnegie (legendary author of the seminal guide ‘How to win friends and influence people’) that gave us this piece of public speaking wisdom about how to structure your speech:

‘Tell them what you’re going to tell them. Tell them. Then tell them what you told them”

Sounds great on paper, and middle managers the world over have followed this formula with decent enough results, so that it has become as ubiquitous as using PowerPoint in every presentation (don’t get me started on PowerPoint!).

But with all due respect to the great Carnegie, a man, who probably forgot more about public speaking than I’ll ever know, his advice is just wrong… or at the very least, outdated.

Winston Churchill did not galvanise a nation during WWII by saying “I’m going tell you about how we must fight them on the beaches… Now I’m telling you that we must fight them on the beaches … And now I remind you that we must fight them on the beaches”

Martin Luther King did not inspire a people with “I’m going to tell you about my dream’… Now here’s my  dream ‘… and finally, let me remind you about the dream I had the other day”.

Even in this modern era of soundbites and short attention spans, it never pays to hit your audience over the head with the same point over and over again. Public speaking research shows  that people retain only 10% of what you say shortly after you have said it – no matter how often you repeat yourself.

As the late great Maya Angelou reminded us:

people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

So, here is a much more effective structure for your next speech that will help you make a mighty impression on your audience. It works for keynote speeches, business presentations, elevator pitches , client meetings and more – and we’ll do it with the help of Olympic winning gymnast, Gabby Douglas (a personal hero of my budding gymnast daughter).

1) An Engaging Opening

How often have you heard a speaker begin with something like…

“Hello ladies & gentlemen, my name is John Smith, and I’m so happy to be here…” or the erstwhile favourite “I’m not really used to public speaking so please forgive me if I make some mistakes…”

The instinct to begin your speech with mild platitudes is often irresistible.

Still, you must resist because you really do not get another chance to make a first impression.

A speech opening, much like the start of a gymnast’s floor routine, must engage.

Don’t apologise or make excuses for yourself, however nervous you feel. You probably don’t even need to introduce yourself (people usually already know who you are if you’re up there speaking).

Just begin on the front foot.

Try a thought provoking question about your subject, a shocking statistic, a poignant quote, or an interesting anecdote.

Your aim is to capture their attention so they become receptive to your message, because before you can persuade, you must engage.

For example, Martin Luther King opened his speech with: “I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.”  With this simple yet grand pronouncement, the context for his dream was set.

2) A Good Introduction  

Once you have their attention, you want to lead your audience towards the main body of your speech.

Like the gymnast taking her run up before launching into the flips and rolls, your introduction is the set up before the substance. Here you can explore the issues, set the ground work, and frame the context for the rest of the speech.

In Churchill’s speech, he used his introduction to outline the perils and urgent dangers facing the nation at the time, before then detailing the resilience of the British soldiers.

3) Main Body

This is the heart of your speech, where you give the substance.

It is also the most dangerous part of your speech because this is where most speakers lose their audience with mind-numbing detail that serves little purpose other than to fill time.

Like our gymnast delivering her intricate turns and tumbles, this is the point at which you either score points or lose the game.

Keep in mind that the sole purpose of this main body is to support the overall message you want your audience to be left with and the conclusion that you are building up to.

For this main body, you must keep these three factors in mind.

1) Direction – be sure that you are actually heading somewhere with the points you make, and not just speaking for the sake of speaking.

2) Variety – don’t just say the same thing in the same way several times. Add some variation. Think laterally. Can you draw on different points and alternative factors to support your premise?

3) Momentum – keep things moving forward and your audience will stay with you for the whole journey. If it seems like you’re ambling around searching for a good point, they’ll be lost.

In his famous speech, this is actually the point at which Martin Luther King set out his dream. Read the transcript and you’ll notice how varied were the examples of that dream.

This applies even more with business presentations, which can quickly go stale without good momentum.

  4) Conclusion

And now for the grand finale.

This is the climax of your speech, where the overall message and theme of your speech should come sharply into focus.

This is where Churchill promised that ‘we shall fight on the beaches’, where Martin Luther King  declared ‘Let freedom ring’, and where Emmeline Pankhurst of the Suffragettes called for ‘Freedom or Death’.

Like the gymnast delivering her final and grandest set of somersaults, your conclusion will often be the highlight of your speech.

Be clear before you start your speech, on what one message you want your audience to remember, then deliver it here.

This is the very last thing you say to your audience.

Like your opening, it should be meaningful rather than bland.

Like the final affirmative pose of our gymnast, try to round off your speech in a way that feels satisfying to your audience.

If you can reflect your opening in some way (another quote, a different statistic, a concluding anecdote), this will give your speech balance, which will be psychologically appealing to your audience.

We saw how Martin Luther King started his speech (on the theme of freedom), so no surprise that he ended with that same theme: “Free at last, free at last, thank God, Almighty, we are free at last”.

This then is the modern day speech structure:

Opening – Engage

Introduction – Lead In

Main Body – Give Substance

Conclusion – Deliver Meaning

Close – Satisfy

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14.4 Practicing for Successful Speech Delivery

Learning objectives.

• Explain why having a strong conversational quality is important for effective public speaking.
• Explain the importance of eye contact in public speaking.
• Define vocalics and differentiate among the different factors of vocalics.
• Explain effective physical manipulation during a speech.
• Understand how to practice effectively for good speech delivery.

Christian Pierret – Speech – CC BY 2.0.

There is no foolproof recipe for good delivery. Each of us is unique, and we each embody different experiences and interests. This means each person has an approach, or a style, that is effective for her or him. This further means that anxiety can accompany even the most carefully researched and interesting message. Even when we know our messages are strong and well-articulated on paper, it is difficult to know for sure that our presentation will also be good.

We are still obligated to do our best out of respect for the audience and their needs. Fortunately, there are some tools that can be helpful to you even the very first time you present a speech. You will continue developing your skills each time you put them to use and can experiment to find out which combination of delivery elements is most effective for you.

What Is Good Delivery?

The more you care about your topic, the greater your motivation to present it well. Good delivery is a process of presenting a clear, coherent message in an interesting way. Communication scholar Stephen E. Lucas tells us:

Good delivery…conveys the speaker’s ideas clearly, interestingly, and without distracting the audience. Most audiences prefer delivery that combines a certain degree of formality with the best attributes of good conversation—directness, spontaneity, animation, vocal and facial expressiveness, and a lively sense of communication (Lucas, 2009).

Many writers on the nonverbal aspects of delivery have cited the findings of psychologist Albert Mehrabian, asserting that the bulk of an audience’s understanding of your message is based on nonverbal communication. Specifically, Mehrabian is often credited with finding that when audiences decoded a speaker’s meaning, the speaker’s face conveyed 55 percent of the information, the vocalics conveyed 38 percent, and the words conveyed just 7 percent (Mehrabian, 1972). Although numerous scholars, including Mehrabian himself, have stated that his findings are often misinterpreted (Mitchell), scholars and speech instructors do agree that nonverbal communication and speech delivery are extremely important to effective public speaking.

In this section of the chapter, we will explain six elements of good delivery: conversational style, conversational quality, eye contact, vocalics, physical manipulation, and variety. And since delivery is only as good as the practice that goes into it, we conclude with some tips for effective use of your practice time.

Conversational Style

Conversational style is a speaker’s ability to sound expressive and to be perceived by the audience as natural. It’s a style that approaches the way you normally express yourself in a much smaller group than your classroom audience. This means that you want to avoid having your presentation come across as didactic or overly exaggerated. You might not feel natural while you’re using a conversational style, but for the sake of audience preference and receptiveness, you should do your best to appear natural. It might be helpful to remember that the two most important elements of the speech are the message and the audience. You are the conduit with the important role of putting the two together in an effective way. Your audience should be thinking about the message, not the delivery.

Stephen E. Lucas defines conversational quality as the idea that “no matter how many times a speech has been rehearsed, it still sounds spontaneous” [emphasis in original] (Lucas, 2009). No one wants to hear a speech that is so well rehearsed that it sounds fake or robotic. One of the hardest parts of public speaking is rehearsing to the point where it can appear to your audience that the thoughts are magically coming to you while you’re speaking, but in reality you’ve spent a great deal of time thinking through each idea. When you can sound conversational, people pay attention.

Eye Contact

Eye contact is a speaker’s ability to have visual contact with everyone in the audience. Your audience should feel that you’re speaking to them, not simply uttering main and supporting points. If you are new to public speaking, you may find it intimidating to look audience members in the eye, but if you think about speakers you have seen who did not maintain eye contact, you’ll realize why this aspect of speech delivery is important. Without eye contact, the audience begins to feel invisible and unimportant, as if the speaker is just speaking to hear her or his own voice. Eye contact lets your audience feel that your attention is on them, not solely on the cards in front of you.

Sustained eye contact with your audience is one of the most important tools toward effective delivery. O’Hair, Stewart, and Rubenstein note that eye contact is mandatory for speakers to establish a good relationship with an audience (O’Hair, Stewart, & Rubenstein, 2001). Whether a speaker is speaking before a group of five or five hundred, the appearance of eye contact is an important way to bring an audience into your speech.

Eye contact can be a powerful tool. It is not simply a sign of sincerity, a sign of being well prepared and knowledgeable, or a sign of confidence; it also has the power to convey meanings. Arthur Koch tells us that all facial expressions “can communicate a wide range of emotions, including sadness, compassion, concern, anger, annoyance, fear, joy, and happiness” (Koch, 2010).

If you find the gaze of your audience too intimidating, you might feel tempted to resort to “faking” eye contact with them by looking at the wall just above their heads or by sweeping your gaze around the room instead of making actual eye contact with individuals in your audience until it becomes easier to provide real contact. The problem with fake eye contact is that it tends to look mechanical. Another problem with fake attention is that you lose the opportunity to assess the audience’s understanding of your message. Still, fake eye contact is somewhat better than gripping your cards and staring at them and only occasionally glancing quickly and shallowly at the audience.

This is not to say that you may never look at your notecards. On the contrary, one of the skills in extemporaneous speaking is the ability to alternate one’s gaze between the audience and one’s notes. Rehearsing your presentation in front of a few friends should help you develop the ability to maintain eye contact with your audience while referring to your notes. When you are giving a speech that is well prepared and well rehearsed, you will only need to look at your notes occasionally. This is an ability that will develop even further with practice. Your public speaking course is your best chance to get that practice.

Effective Use of Vocalics

Vocalics , also known as paralanguage, is the subfield of nonverbal communication that examines how we use our voices to communicate orally. This means that you speak loudly enough for all audience members (even those in the back of the room) to hear you clearly, and that you enunciate clearly enough to be understood by all audience members (even those who may have a hearing impairment or who may be English-language learners). If you tend to be soft-spoken, you will need to practice using a louder volume level that may feel unnatural to you at first. For all speakers, good vocalic technique is best achieved by facing the audience with your chin up and your eyes away from your notecards and by setting your voice at a moderate speed. Effective use of vocalics also means that you make use of appropriate pitch, pauses, vocal variety, and correct pronunciation.

If you are an English-language learner and feel apprehensive about giving a speech in English, there are two things to remember: first, you can meet with a reference librarian to learn the correct pronunciations of any English words you are unsure of; and second, the fact that you have an accent means you speak more languages than most Americans, which is an accomplishment to be proud of.

If you are one of the many people with a stutter or other speech challenge, you undoubtedly already know that there are numerous techniques for reducing stuttering and improving speech fluency and that there is no one agreed-upon “cure.” The Academy Award–winning movie The King’s Speech did much to increase public awareness of what a person with a stutter goes through when it comes to public speaking. It also prompted some well-known individuals who stutter, such as television news reporter John Stossel, to go public about their stuttering (Stossel, 2011). If you have decided to study public speaking in spite of a speech challenge, we commend you for your efforts and encourage you to work with your speech instructor to make whatever adaptations work best for you.

Volume refers to the loudness or softness of a speaker’s voice. As mentioned, public speakers need to speak loudly enough to be heard by everyone in the audience. In addition, volume is often needed to overcome ambient noise, such as the hum of an air conditioner or the dull roar of traffic passing by. In addition, you can use volume strategically to emphasize the most important points in your speech. Select these points carefully; if you emphasize everything, nothing will seem important. You also want to be sure to adjust your volume to the physical setting of the presentation. If you are in a large auditorium and your audience is several yards away, you will need to speak louder. If you are in a smaller space, with the audience a few feet away, you want to avoid overwhelming your audience with shouting or speaking too loudly.

Rate is the speed at which a person speaks. To keep your speech delivery interesting, your rate should vary. If you are speaking extemporaneously, your rate will naturally fluctuate. If you’re reading, your delivery is less likely to vary. Because rate is an important tool in enhancing the meanings in your speech, you do not want to give a monotone drone or a rapid “machine-gun” style delivery. Your rate should be appropriate for your topic and your points. A rapid, lively rate can communicate such meanings as enthusiasm, urgency, or humor. A slower, moderated rate can convey respect, seriousness, or careful reasoning. By varying rapid and slower rates within a single speech, you can emphasize your main points and keep your audience interested.

Pitch refers to the highness or lowness of a speaker’s voice. Some speakers have deep voices and others have high voices. As with one’s singing voice range, the pitch of one’s speaking voice is determined to a large extent by physiology (specifically, the length of one’s vocal folds, or cords, and the size of one’s vocal tract). We all have a normal speaking pitch where our voice is naturally settled, the pitch where we are most comfortable speaking, and most teachers advise speaking at the pitch that feels natural to you.

While our voices may be generally comfortable at a specific pitch level, we all have the ability to modulate, or move, our pitch up or down. In fact, we do this all the time. When we change the pitch of our voices, we are using inflections . Just as you can use volume strategically, you can also use pitch inflections to make your delivery more interesting and emphatic. If you ordinarily speak with a soprano voice, you may want to drop your voice to a slightly lower range to call attention to a particular point. How we use inflections can even change the entire meaning of what we are saying. For example, try saying the sentence “I love public speaking” with a higher pitch on one of the words—first raise the pitch on “I,” then say it again with the pitch raised on “love,” and so on. “ I love public speaking” conveys a different meaning from “I love public speaking,” doesn’t it?

There are some speakers who don’t change their pitch at all while speaking, which is called monotone . While very few people are completely monotone, some speakers slip into monotone patterns because of nerves. One way to ascertain whether you sound monotone is to record your voice and see how you sound. If you notice that your voice doesn’t fluctuate very much, you will need to be intentional in altering your pitch to ensure that the emphasis of your speech isn’t completely lost on your audience.

Finally, resist the habit of pitching your voice “up” at the ends of sentences. It makes them sound like questions instead of statements. This habit can be disorienting and distracting, interfering with the audience’s ability to focus entirely on the message. The speaker sounds uncertain or sounds as though he or she is seeking the understanding or approval of the listener. It hurts the speaker’s credibility and it needs to be avoided.

The effective use of pitch is one of the keys to an interesting delivery that will hold your audience’s attention.

Pauses are brief breaks in a speaker’s delivery that can show emphasis and enhance the clarity of a message. In terms of timing, the effective use of pauses is one of the most important skills to develop. Some speakers become uncomfortable very quickly with the “dead air” that the pause causes. And if the speaker is uncomfortable, the discomfort can transmit itself to the audience. That doesn’t mean you should avoid using pauses; your ability to use them confidently will increase with practice. Some of the best comedians use the well-timed pause to powerful and hilarious effect. Although your speech will not be a comedy routine, pauses are still useful for emphasis, especially when combined with a lowered pitch and rate to emphasize the important point you do not want your audience to miss.

Vocal Variety

Vocal variety has to do with changes in the vocalics we have just discussed: volume, pitch, rate, and pauses. No one wants to hear the same volume, pitch, rate, or use of pauses over and over again in a speech. Your audience should never be able to detect that you’re about to slow down or your voice is going to get deeper because you’re making an important point. When you think about how you sound in a normal conversation, your use of volume, pitch, rate, and pauses are all done spontaneously. If you try to overrehearse your vocalics, your speech will end up sounding artificial. Vocal variety should flow naturally from your wish to speak with expression. In that way, it will animate your speech and invite your listeners to understand your topic the way you do.

Pronunciation

The last major category related to vocalics is pronunciation , or the conventional patterns of speech used to form a word. Word pronunciation is important for two reasons: first, mispronouncing a word your audience is familiar with will harm your credibility as a speaker; and second, mispronouncing a word they are unfamiliar with can confuse and even misinform them. If there is any possibility at all that you don’t know the correct pronunciation of a word, find out. Many online dictionaries, such as the Wiktionary ( http://wiktionary.org ), provide free sound files illustrating the pronunciation of words.

Many have commented on the mispronunciation of words such as “nuclear” and “cavalry” by highly educated public speakers, including US presidents. There have been classroom examples as well. For instance, a student giving a speech on the Greek philosopher Socrates mispronounced his name at least eight times during her speech. This mispronunciation created a situation of great awkwardness and anxiety for the audience. Everyone felt embarrassed and the teacher, opting not to humiliate the student in front of the class, could not say anything out loud, instead providing a private written comment at the end of class.

One important aspect of pronunciation is articulation , or the ability to clearly pronounce each of a succession of syllables used to make up a word. Some people have difficulty articulating because of physiological problems that can be treated by trained speech therapists, but other people have articulation problems because they come from a cultural milieu where a dialect other than standard American English is the norm. Speech therapists, who generally guide their clients toward standard American English, use the acronym SODA when helping people learn how to more effectively articulate: substitutions , omissions , distortions , and additions .

• Substitutions occur when a speaker replaces one consonant or vowel with another consonant ( water becomes wudda ; ask becomes ax ; mouth becomes mouf ).
• Omissions occur when a speaker drops a consonant or vowel within a word ( Internet becomes Innet ; mesmerized becomes memerized ; probably becomes prolly ).
• Distortions occur when a speaker articulates a word with nasal or slurring sounds ( pencil sounds like mencil ; precipitation sounds like persination ; second sounds like slecond ).
• Additions occur when a speaker adds consonants or vowels to words that are not there ( anyway becomes anyways ; athletic becomes athaletic ; black becomes buhlack ; interpret becomes interpretate ).

Another aspect of pronunciation in public speaking is avoiding the use of verbal surrogates or “filler” words used as placeholders for actual words (like er , um , uh , etc.). You might be able to get away with saying “um” as many as two or three times in your speech before it becomes distracting, but the same cannot be said of “like.” We know of a student who trained herself to avoid saying “like.” As soon as the first speech was assigned, she began wearing a rubber band on her left wrist. Each time she caught herself saying “like,” she snapped herself with the rubber band. It hurt. Very quickly, she found that she could stop inflicting the snap on herself, and she had successfully confronted an unprofessional verbal habit.

Effective Physical Manipulation

In addition to using our voices effectively, a key to effective public speaking is physical manipulation , or the use of the body to emphasize meanings or convey meanings during a speech. While we will not attempt to give an entire discourse on nonverbal communication, we will discuss a few basic aspects of physical manipulation: posture, body movement, facial expressions, and dress. These aspects add up to the overall physical dimension of your speech, which we call self-presentation.

“Stand up tall!” I’m sure we’ve all heard this statement from a parent or a teacher at some point in our lives. The fact is, posture is actually quite important. When you stand up straight, you communicate to your audience, without saying a word, that you hold a position of power and take your position seriously. If however, you are slouching, hunched over, or leaning on something, you could be perceived as ill prepared, anxious, lacking in credibility, or not serious about your responsibilities as a speaker. While speakers often assume more casual posture as a presentation continues (especially if it is a long one, such as a ninety-minute class lecture), it is always wise to start by standing up straight and putting your best foot forward. Remember, you only get one shot at making a first impression, and your body’s orientation is one of the first pieces of information audiences use to make that impression.

Body Movement

Unless you are stuck behind a podium because of the need to use a nonmovable microphone, you should never stand in one place during a speech. However, movement during a speech should also not resemble pacing. One of our authors once saw a speaker who would walk around a small table where her speaking notes were located. She would walk around the table once, toss her chalk twice, and then repeat the process. Instead of listening to what the speaker was saying, everyone became transfixed by her walk-and-chalk-toss pattern. As speakers, we must be mindful of how we go about moving while speaking. One common method for easily integrating some movement into your speech is to take a few steps any time you transition from one idea to the next. By only moving at transition points, not only do you help focus your audience’s attention on the transition from one idea to the next, but you also are able to increase your nonverbal immediacy by getting closer to different segments of your audience.

Body movement also includes gestures. These should be neither overdramatic nor subdued. At one extreme, arm-waving and fist-pounding will distract from your message and reduce your credibility. At the other extreme, refraining from the use of gestures is the waste of an opportunity to suggest emphasis, enthusiasm, or other personal connection with your topic.

There are many ways to use gestures. The most obvious are hand gestures, which should be used in moderation at carefully selected times in the speech. If you overuse gestures, they lose meaning. Many late-night comedy parodies of political leaders include patterned, overused gestures or other delivery habits associated with a particular speaker. However, the well-placed use of simple, natural gestures to indicate emphasis, direction, size is usually effective. Normally, a gesture with one hand is enough. Rather than trying to have a gesture for every sentence, use just a few well-planned gestures. It is often more effective to make a gesture and hold it for a few moments than to begin waving your hands and arms around in a series of gestures.

Finally, just as you should avoid pacing, you will also want to avoid other distracting movements when you are speaking. Many speakers have unconscious mannerisms such as twirling their hair, putting their hands in and out of their pockets, jingling their keys, licking their lips, or clicking a pen while speaking. As with other aspects of speech delivery, practicing in front of others will help you become conscious of such distractions and plan ways to avoid doing them.

Facial Expressions

Faces are amazing things and convey so much information. As speakers, we must be acutely aware of what our face looks like while speaking. While many of us do not look forward to seeing ourselves on videotape, often the only way you can critically evaluate what your face is doing while you are speaking is to watch a recording of your speech. If video is not available, you can practice speaking in front of a mirror.

There are two extremes you want to avoid: no facial expression and overanimated facial expressions. First, you do not want to have a completely blank face while speaking. Some people just do not show much emotion with their faces naturally, but this blankness is often increased when the speaker is nervous. Audiences will react negatively to the message of such a speaker because they will sense that something is amiss. If a speaker is talking about the joys of Disney World and his face doesn’t show any excitement, the audience is going to be turned off to the speaker and his message. On the other extreme end is the speaker whose face looks like that of an exaggerated cartoon character. Instead, your goal is to show a variety of appropriate facial expressions while speaking.

Like vocalics and gestures, facial expression can be used strategically to enhance meaning. A smile or pleasant facial expression is generally appropriate at the beginning of a speech to indicate your wish for a good transaction with your audience. However, you should not smile throughout a speech on drug addiction, poverty, or the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. An inappropriate smile creates confusion about your meaning and may make your audience feel uncomfortable. On the other hand, a serious scowl might look hostile or threatening to audience members and become a distraction from the message. If you keep the meaning of your speech foremost in your mind, you will more readily find the balance in facial expression.

Another common problem some new speakers have is showing only one expression. One of our coauthors competed in speech in college. After one of his speeches (about how people die on amusement park rides), one of his judges pulled him aside and informed him that his speech was “creepy.” Apparently, while speaking about death, our coauthor smiled the entire time. The incongruity between the speech on death and dying and the coauthor’s smile just left the judge a little creeped out. If you are excited in a part of your speech, you should show excitement on your face. On the other hand, if you are at a serious part of your speech, your facial expressions should be serious.

While there are no clear-cut guidelines for how you should dress for every speech you’ll give, dress is still a very important part of how others will perceive you (again, it’s all about the first impression). If you want to be taken seriously, you must present yourself seriously. While we do not advocate dressing up in a suit every time you give a speech, there are definitely times when wearing a suit is appropriate.

One general rule you can use for determining dress is the “step-above rule,” which states that you should dress one step above your audience. If your audience is going to be dressed casually in shorts and jeans, then wear nice casual clothing such as a pair of neatly pressed slacks and a collared shirt or blouse. If, however, your audience is going to be wearing “business casual” attire, then you should probably wear a sport coat, a dress, or a suit. The goal of the step-above rule is to establish yourself as someone to be taken seriously. On the other hand, if you dress two steps above your audience, you may put too much distance between yourself and your audience, coming across as overly formal or even arrogant.

Another general rule for dressing is to avoid distractions in your appearance. Overly tight or revealing garments, over-the-top hairstyles or makeup, jangling jewelry, or a display of tattoos and piercings can serve to draw your audience’s attention away from your speech. Remembering that your message is the most important aspect of your speech, keep that message in mind when you choose your clothing and accessories.

Self-Presentation

When you present your speech, you are also presenting yourself. Self-presentation, sometimes also referred to as poise or stage presence, is determined by how you look, how you stand, how you walk to the lectern, and how you use your voice and gestures. Your self-presentation can either enhance your message or detract from it. Worse, a poor self-presentation can turn a good, well-prepared speech into a forgettable waste of time. You want your self-presentation to support your credibility and improve the likelihood that the audience will listen with interest.

Your personal appearance should reflect the careful preparation of your speech. Your personal appearance is the first thing your audience will see, and from it, they will make inferences about the speech you’re about to present.

One of the biggest mistakes novice public speakers make is to use the same gesture over and over again during a speech. While you don’t want your gestures to look fake, you should be careful to include a variety of different nonverbal components while speaking. You should make sure that your face, body, and words are all working in conjunction with each other to support your message.

Practice Effectively

You might get away with presenting a hastily practiced speech, but the speech will not be as good as it could be. In order to develop your best speech delivery, you need to practice—and use your practice time effectively. Practicing does not mean reading over your notes, mentally running through your speech, or even speaking your speech aloud over and over. Instead, you need to practice with the goal of identifying the weaknesses in your delivery, improving upon them, and building good speech delivery habits.

When you practice your speech, place both your feet in full, firm contact with the floor to keep your body from swaying side to side. Some new public speakers find that they don’t know what to do with their hands during the speech. Your practice sessions should help you get comfortable. When you’re not gesturing, you can rest your free hand lightly on a lectern or simply allow it to hang at your side. Since this is not a familiar posture for most people, it might feel awkward, but in your practice sessions, you can begin getting used to it.

Seek Input from Others

Because we can’t see ourselves as others see us, one of the best ways to improve your delivery is to seek constructive criticism from others. This, of course, is an aspect of your public speaking course, as you will receive evaluations from your instructor and possibly from your fellow students. However, by practicing in front of others before it is time to present your speech, you can anticipate and correct problems so that you can receive a better evaluation when you give the speech “for real.”

Ask your practice observers to be honest about the aspects of your delivery that could be better. Sometimes students create study groups just for this purpose. When you create a study group of classroom peers, everyone has an understanding of the entire creative process, and their feedback will thus be more useful to you than the feedback you might get from someone who has never taken the course or given a speech.

If your practice observers seem reluctant to offer useful criticisms, ask questions. How was your eye contact? Could they hear you? Was your voice well modulated? Did you mispronounce any words? How was your posture? Were your gestures effective? Did you have any mannerisms that you should learn to avoid? Because peers are sometimes reluctant to say things that could sound critical, direct questions are often a useful way to help them speak up.

If you learn from these practice sessions that your voice tends to drop at the ends of sentences, make a conscious effort to support your voice as you conclude each main point. If you learn that you have a habit of clicking a pen, make sure you don’t have a pen with you when you speak or that you keep it in your pocket. If your practice observers mention that you tend to hide your hands in the sleeves of your shirt or jacket, next time wear short sleeves or roll your sleeves up before beginning your speech. If you learn through practice that you tend to sway or rock while you speak, you can consciously practice and build the habit of not swaying.

When it is your turn to give feedback to others in your group, assume that they are as interested in doing well as you are. Give feedback in the spirit of helping their speeches be as good as possible.

Use Audio and/or Video to Record Yourself

Technology has made it easier than ever to record yourself and others using the proliferation of electronic devices people are likely to own. Video, of course, allows you the advantage of being able to see yourself as others see you, while audio allows you to concentrate on the audible aspects of your delivery. As we mentioned earlier in the chapter, if neither video nor audio is available, you can always observe yourself by practicing your delivery in front of a mirror.

After you have recorded yourself, it may seem obvious that you should watch and listen to the recording. This can be intimidating, as you may fear that your performance anxiety will be so obvious that everyone will notice it in the recording. But students are often pleasantly surprised when they watch and listen to their recordings, as even students with very high anxiety may find out that they “come across” in a speech much better than they expected.

A recording can also be a very effective diagnostic device. Sometimes students believe they are making strong contact with their audiences, but their cards contain so many notes that they succumb to the temptation of reading. By finding out from the video that you misjudged your eye contact, you can be motivated to rewrite your notecards in a way that doesn’t provide the opportunity to do so much reading.

It is most likely that in viewing your recording, you will benefit from discovering your strengths and finding weak areas you can strengthen.

Good Delivery Is a Habit

Luckily, public speaking is an activity that, when done conscientiously, strengthens with practice. As you become aware of the areas where your delivery has room for improvement, you will begin developing a keen sense of what “works” and what audiences respond to.

It is advisable to practice out loud in front of other people several times, spreading your rehearsals out over several days. To do this kind of practice, of course, you need to have your speech be finalized well ahead of the date when you are going to give it. During these practice sessions, you can time your speech to make sure it lasts the appropriate length of time. A friend of ours was the second student on the program in an event where each student’s presentation was to last thirty to forty-five minutes. After the first student had been speaking for seventy-five minutes, the professor in charge asked, “Can we speed this up?” The student said yes, and proceeded to continue speaking for another seventy-five minutes before finally concluding his portion of the program. Although we might fault the professor for not “pulling the plug,” clearly the student had not timed his speech in advance.

Your practice sessions will also enable you to make adjustments to your notecards to make them more effective in supporting your contact with your audience. This kind of practice is not just a strategy for beginners; it is practiced by many highly placed public figures with extensive experience in public speaking.

Your public speaking course is one of the best opportunities you will have to manage your performance anxiety, build your confidence in speaking extemporaneously, develop your vocal skills, and become adept at self-presentation. The habits you can develop through targeted practice are to build continuously on your strengths and to challenge yourself to find new areas for improving your delivery. By taking advantage of these opportunities, you will gain the ability to present a speech effectively whenever you may be called upon to speak publicly.

Key Takeaways

• Conversational style is a speaker’s ability to sound expressive while being perceived by the audience as natural. Conversational quality is a speaker’s ability to prepare a speech and rehearse a speech but still sound spontaneous when delivering it.
• Eye contact helps capture and maintain an audience’s interest while contributing to the speaker’s credibility.
• Vocalics are the nonverbal components of the verbal message. There are six important vocalic components for a speaker to be aware of: volume (loudness or softness), pitch (highness or lowness), rate (fastness or slowness), pauses (use of breaks to add emphasis), vocal variety (use of a range of vocalic strategies), and pronunciation (using conventional patterns of speech formation).
• Physical manipulation is the use of one’s body to add meaning and emphasis to a speech. As such, excessive or nonexistent physical manipulation can detract from a speaker’s speech.
• Good delivery is a habit that is built through effective practice.
• Find a speech online and examine the speaker’s overall presentation. How good was the speaker’s delivery? Make a list of the aspects of delivery in this chapter and evaluate the speaker according to the list. In what areas might the speaker improve?
• Record a practice session of your speech. Write a self-critique, answering the following questions: What surprised you the most? What is an area of strength upon which you can build? What is one area for improvement?

Koch, A. (2010). Speaking with a purpose (8th ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon, p. 233.

Lucas, S. E. (2009). The art of public speaking (9th ed.). Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill, p. 244.

Mehrabian, A. (1972). Nonverbal communication . Chicago, IL: Aldine-Atherton.

Mitchell, O. (n.d.). Mehrabian and nonverbal communication [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://www.speakingaboutpresenting.com/presentation-myths/mehrabian-nonverbal-communication-research

O’Hair, D., Stewart, R., & Rubenstein, H. (2001). A speaker’s guidebook: Text and reference. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s.

Stossel, J. (2011, March 2). An Academy Award–winning movie, stuttering and me [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=42081

Stand up, Speak out Copyright © 2016 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Interesting Conversation: IELTS Speaking Part 2 & 3 Sample Answers

Updated On Jan 10, 2024

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This article contains sample answers for the cue card topic –  Talk about an interesting conversation you had  as well as  Part 3  questions related to the topic – interesting conversation.

In the  Part 2  of the IELTS Speaking section, the most common question type is the cue card. The provided prompts will help you to formulate a response and speak on the given topic. You will have exactly one minute to prepare and speak on a specific topic. 

In this cue card, you have an opportunity to share about  an interesting conversation you had or an interesting speech or talk you heard recently . Also, the sample answers given below will guide you to learn how to communicate clearly and successfully.

Are you confused about how to complete your speech within only a minute?

Check the video provided below and learn from the expert himself!

In case you want a thorough reference material, check out the  latest Speaking ebook  that has some WOW features to help you achieve your desired band score!

Speaking Part 2

Talk about an interesting conversation you had/describe an interesting speech or talk you heard recently..

You should say:

• Who the speaker was
• When you heard him/her or talked with him/her
• What the speech/conversation was about
• Why it was interesting to you

Sample Answer 1

I consider myself very social and have a proclivity for talking to people. As a result, there are certain conversations that I have etched in my mind. This specific conversation I will talk about today happened roughly four to five months ago, and that too with a stranger.

I was travelling by bus to Lucknow for an exam. This person boarded the bus at the later stop. He sat next to me, and we casually started talking. The conversation began with everyday things like the increasing traffic jams and the sweltering summer heat. After a while, he started telling me about his profession. He communicated that he was in the merchant navy.

As soon as he told me about his vocation, I flooded him with my questions. He told me about the challenges and also about the fun part of being in that profession. Some things were exciting. He told me that he works for about eight months a year and the rest of the four months he spends with his family. He plays cricket, goes on vacations and does whatever he wants during those four months. I remember that he was a bit sad, though, as it was that year’s last day of those four months.

After this discussion, all I could think about was the merchant navy. Like other childhood fantasies, the passion disappeared as I was not prepared to sacrifice the time I spent with my family. Nevertheless, this conversation will always be a part of my memories.

Sample Answer 2

Sample audio.

Click on the audio to listen to the sample answer below. Pay attention to the intonation and pronunciation of the words.

This is my favorite topic. So when I was a student, I wasn’t very interested in any speech or talks. However, since I started my job as a teacher, I have enjoyed these talks a lot. I did hear a talk from a lecturer who comes from ABC University. He is a TESOL teacher, so the way he spoke really impressed me. Sitting in a big hall and listening to a talk isn’t actually boring. The lecture presented  different  methodologies in teaching high school students English. Then, the talk visualized a variety of games to motivate  students’ interests, such as snakes, battleships or puzzles. I have to  admit  that they are very  creative  and funny. Moreover, I did learn a lot from this talk, especially the games since I’ve never thought that games are really  effective  in class but they  proved  me wrong. The students like them a lot, which makes me believe in those new teaching methods. I think I will listen to these talks more when I have time.

Vocabulary for Cue Card

• Lecturer: someone who teaches at a college or university Eg: My grandmother was a physics lecturer in the University. 
• Impress: to cause someone to admire or respect you because of something that you have done or said Eg: His fluency in French impressed me highly. 
• Admit: to agree that something is true, especially unwillingly Eg: It was really hard for Rose to admit that her dog had died. 
• Present : to give, provide or make known Eg: My teacher presented me a watch. 
• Methodology: a system of ways of doing, teaching or studying something Eg: The faculty members adopt the methodology of case studies, projects, and assignments. 
• Motivate: to make someone want to do something well Eg: Rose was motivated by her parents to continue her passion. 
• Creative: producing or using original and unusual ideas Eg: From a very young age, John was a diligent and a creative student. 
• Effective: successful or achieving the results that you want Eg: The introduction of new schemes was effective
• Prove: to show that something is true Eg: The teacher told her to prove her innocence.

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Speaking Part 3

1 why do people feel nervous when they are giving a speech to others.

Public speaking has always been one of the utmost challenges for anyone, especially those lacking practices. Like any interpersonal skills, being able to deliver a thorough, yet captivating speech to a group of strangers requires certain factors. Reasons why most people fail, for me, fall into two main categories: the fear of audience’s reaction and the topic itself. People are judgmental creatures and can cast aspersions on almost everything; therefore, presenters may suffer from the pressure of perfecting every detail. In addition, if someone is going to talk about topic that is unfamiliar to him or too sophisticated for listeners, it is possibly not as well-received as the one he knows more about.

2 How can people improve their public speaking skills?

Thanks to the Internet, information is now disseminated worldwide and easily accessible that you can get help from anyone about anything, including public speaking. There are several means to acquire and harness such skill as long as people are willing to such as enrolling in an online course or participating in forum where people with the same goal gather and share their experience. This is quite effective, flexible and most importantly, free of charge. If you want something more official and academic, talk to some experts in public speaking at some conferences or workshops. They will provide you more insights and tips to begin. Last but not least, practice makes perfect .

3 Can you suggest any methods that would help reduce nervousness?

Each of us will surely experience at least once in our lifetime the feeling of anxiety. It can be before our job interview or big presentation, when meeting your family-in-law for the first time and so on. Nervousness could be a good sign since it shows that we care. However, to better perform at such life-changing events, you should control your feelings. Firstly, take a deep breath. You can’t be at your best without breathing easily. Second, don’t try convince yourself that you’re not anxious. Accept it just like any other feelings then you don’t have to keep reminding yourself to ignore it. Lastly, use positive self-talk. Encourage yourself and remember that you are in this place for a reason.

4 Is it good for people to visit schools and give a talk to children about different things?

As far as I’m concerned, it would be a valuable experience for children to hear real-life stories and personal insights from their predecessors who have been through ups and downs for useful lessons and advice. Nowadays, many schools have already invited some guests that could be their alumni or influential local figures to talk to students. A child’s life is like a piece of paper on which every person leaves a mark. Therefore, the sooner we sow a good seed and inspire them, the better they will grow.

5 What type of person is best suited to give a talk to a group of students?

Well, I see no special talents are needed to be able to deliver a highly motivating and inspiring speech to students as long as their experiences and messages are relevant and meaningful. Hence, people who could grab students’ attention and make them question their goals and purposes are those leading an eventful life. And by this, I mean someone who has related experiences and been through ups and downs during his career to reach success. This is because I believe that if one has never tasted failures and disappointments, he can’t realize his inner strength to overcome setbacks and truly appreciate his success, which is what students should think about when they’re still in school.

6 Is it hard to strike up a conversation with a stranger?

I don’t know about other people, but it is for me. Unless there’s a specific question I want to ask someone, I would hesitate for ages before going up and talking to them. I really should get over this fear of mine.

Vocabulary for Speaking Part 3

• Utmost (a): greatest; most extreme Eg: Global warming is a topic of utmost concern. 
• Captivating (a): taking all your attention; very attractive and interesting Eg: The diamond jewellery looked captivating. 
• Judgmental (a): judging people and criticizing them too quickly Eg: Rose is a judgemental woman. 
• Cast aspersions on: to criticize someone or someone’s character Eg: His opponents cast aspersions on his generosity. 
• Sophisticated (a): complicated Eg: The HR manager of the company was suave and sophisticated.
• Well-received (a): getting a good reaction from people Eg: The Minister was well-received by the villagers. 
• Disseminate (v): to spread information, knowledge, etc. so that it reaches many people Eg: The results of the experiments were disseminated through newspapers 
• Accessible (a): that can be reached, entered, used, seen, etc. Eg: The institute is easily accessible by this road. 
• Acquire (v): to gain something by your own efforts, ability or behaviour Eg: Children go to school to not only acquire knowledge, but also to learn good habits. 
• Harness (v): to control and use the force or strength of something to produce power or to achieve something Eg: We must harness the skill and creativity of our team. 
• Practice makes perfect: a way of encouraging people by telling them that if you do an activity regularly and try to improve your skill, you will become very good at it Eg: After years of practising, John can now play the piano perfectly. 
• Nervousness (n): the feeling of being anxious about something or afraid of something Eg: Rose smiled to cover her nervousness. 
• Life-changing (a): having an effect that is strong enough to change someone’s life Eg: It was a life-changing incident which I’ll never be able to forget. 
• Valuable (a): very useful or important Eg: These valuable earrings are gifted by my uncle. 
• Predecessor (n): a person who did a job before somebody else Eg: The new doctor is much younger than his predecessor. 
• Ups and downs: the mixture of good and bad things in life or in a particular situation or relationship Eg: Everyone goes through ups and downs in their life. 
• Alumni (n): the former male and female students of a school, college or university Eg: Our institute has a very good alumni network. 
• Influential (a): having a lot of influence on somebody/something Eg: As a public speaker, John was very influential. 
• Motivate (v): to be the reason why somebody does something or behaves in a particular way Eg: My mother motivated me to pursue my dreams. 
• Inspiring (a): exciting and encouraging you to do or feel something Eg: The story of Kalpana Chawla is very inspiring.
• Relevant (a): having ideas that are valuable and useful to people in their lives and work Eg: Although Meera is well-qualified, she did not have relevant work experience. 
• Setback (n): a difficulty or problem that delays or prevents something, or makes a situation worse Eg: There has been a temporary setback in our plans.
• Grab someone’s attention: to draw or attract someone’s attention Eg: The pastel colored gown in the boutique grabbed my attention. 

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Related Cue Cards:

• Describe An Interesting Animal you have ever seen
• Describe a piece of local news that people are interested in
• Describe a story or a novel that was particularly interesting to you
• Describe a Bicycle/Motorbike/Car Trip that is Interesting

Explore More Interesting Cue cards >>

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30 + Difficult IELTS Cue Card Topics with Answer pdf

Nafia Zuhana is an experienced content writer and IELTS Trainer. Currently, she is guiding students who are appearing for IELTS General and Academic exams through ieltsmaterial.com. With an 8.5 score herself, she trains and provides test takers with strategies, tips, and nuances on how to crack the IELTS Exam. She holds a degree in Master of Arts – Creative Writing, Oxford Brookes University, UK. She has worked with The Hindu for over a year as an English language trainer.

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Chapter 15: Speaking to Inform--- Public Speaking

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“I want pictures in my mind,” I tell my students. “Paint me pictures. Give me word pictures.” The more I can see, feel, taste, and smell what is happening in the speech, the more I am engaged. This chapter is about how to give your students a sensory experience when you speak. It is about using vivid and sensory words to engage the audience.  I want to “show” you what this looks like by giving you several quality speeches to experience for yourself.

The tongue can paint what the eyes can’t see. Chinese proverb.

Listen as Will Smith describes jumping out of an airplane. By describing the light colors and what is going on in his mind, we begin to feel his story.

Consider This

Which of these two sentences gets your attention? 

The glass shattered into tiny pieces or the glass broke

If you are like most people, the sentence that says the “glass shattered into tiny pieces” captured your attention and caused you to visualize the breaking glass. You might have even thought of the last time you broke a glass. It works because it used vivid language.

Listen as Matthew Dicks explains what it is like to be homeless and taken in by a family that has a pet goat that chews on his hair at night and then he continues to tell his story of being robbed at gunpoint. Notice how you can “see” his story in your mind’s eye.

 I n an experiment of investing in the market, researchers tested whether or not language would affect investor judgment. They tested vivid words versus pallid words.  In this study, a vivid phrase was “sales jumped. ..analysts viewed this as very impressive” and the pallid phrase was ” sales increased. .analysts view this performance as positive. ” The vivid phrase showed stronger results. In other words, how you tell people to invest can impact the outcome. This is just one of many studies that show the impact of vivid language on thoughts and behaviors.

In other research studies, v ivid messages created greater desirability for the product, caused people to have more favorable beliefs toward an idea and even influenced judgments.  Why do they work? Vivid messages work, in part, because they hold our attention. 

For vividness to be effective, it must do all the following:

(a) Emotionally interesting. (b) Vivid enough to produce sensations or visual images. (c) Relatable. It must be consistent with the audience’s experiences and knowledge. (d) Related to the central thesis.

At the center of it all, is the audience. The key to making vividness work is audience understanding. For example, A cenote is a pool of water made by a sinkhole that exposes groundwater. This water is usually very clear, very clean, and very cool. Unless you’ve been to a cenote, you may have no idea what a cenote is and therefore would have no idea when a speaker says the lake water was like the cool, clear, water of a cenote.  Instead of evoking images, it only produces confusion. Vividness works when the audience can relate, and they can call up the sensations or visual images.

It is also important that the vivid statements relate to the thesis. Researchers Guadagno, Rhoads, and Sagrins tested why sometimes vividness worked and other times it did not.  With testing,  they found that vivid words persuaded only when the message was strong and the vivid words regarded the central thesis.  When vivid information was introduced that did not relate to the main point, it became a distraction.  It seems that vividness enhances persuasion, but only when purposefully used, otherwise it is just a distraction that undermines persuasion. Oh yeah, no surprise here, but vividness can’t save a weak argument.

Angelina Jolie Speaks at World Refugee Day

Let’s look at a strong speech that uses vividness.

• Stripped of home and country, refugees are buffeted from every ill wind that blows across this planet.
• They guided me into a small dirt house with no roof to keep out the scorching heat, and they dusted off the two old mats that they ate, slept and prayed on. And we sat and we talked, and they were just the loveliest women. And then with a few twigs and a single tin cup of water, they made the last of their tea and insisted on me to enjoy it.
•  He had a dusty face, the brightest green eyes I have ever seen but such a sad look but she explained that he’s always asking for more food. And it hurts her to say that they have nothing. And she asked if we would consider taking him, would we take her sons so he could eat. And she said it with tears in her eyes with such desperation.
• He sat on the dusty floor; he’s been shot on the back and left paralyzed. And he crawled forward to shake my hand, he was no more than fifteen. He had big pretty eyes, big wide sparkling smile, and after all he’d been through, he’s full of laughter and love. Later that night I asked whether he’d not been taken to a hospital or at least given a wheelchair and I was told that the boy’s entire family had been killed so there was no one to look after him.

Angelina Jolie World Refugee Day transcript

After you read this chapter, revisit this speech. While looking at the transcript, try to make a list of all the vivid and sensory words. Categorize them based on the sense they activate.

Use Sensory Words

One type of vividness comes from sensory words.  Research demonstrates that we process those words faster than other words. By sensory words, I’m talking about words that have to do with seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, touching.  For just a moment, imagine you are in Paris and you look up to see the top of the Eiffel tower where the structure touches the sky. Chances are, as you thought about this, your eyes went up. You sensed with your body the words that were being spoken. When you hear or read sensory words that you can relate to, your brain lights up. Your brain lights up in the same area that the actual experience would occur–it is as if you are experiencing the word and not just hearing it.  When someone talks about the “sweet, gooey cookie pulled out of the oven, and the sweet aroma fills the air and you look down at the partially melted chocolate chips and are eager to take a bite. ” This sentence caused many of you to taste and see the cookie and your brain lights up as if you are eating one. Words that evoke a mental image are the most likely to evoke a sensory image. The more you create “word pictures” that we see in the movie of our minds, the more likely we are to experience it with other senses. 

What follows is a chart of the main senses and with examples of the words associated with that sense.

Notice how Brene Brown describes a situation–She has on white slacks and a pink sweater set and how she dropped her coffee on the tile floor, and it splashed on her. She goes on to say that she blamed her husband. She uses it to make a powerful point about blame and accountability and demonstrates for us the power of how vivid descriptions can draw us in and make us want to listen.

Considerations of Using Vividness

The easier that information is for me to think about, remember, and recall, the more that information influences my decisions. Your goal should be to give the information in such a way that people can process that information. The availability heuristic suggests that when making decisions we tend to base those decisions on things that come to our mind easily.  If information is recent, vivid, and fits into our thought patterns, it is more available and therefore is more likely to influence our decision-making.

We are likely to think crime is a threat if there has been a recent break-in in our neighborhood. We are more likely to feel afraid if we watch a lot of crime shows or if there has been a featured news story on assaults. Since that information is recent in our mind and the stories were told to us in a vivid manner, we are more likely to pay attention to that information and then bring it to mind when someone suggests taking a self-defense course.

This collection of motivational stories is powerful because they are real and because in each case, they are told with vividness.

In this next video, the founder of charity water, Scott Harrison tells how he got involved in charity water and what his organization does. Watch this documentary and speech video as he talks about drinking from “scummy swamps.”  And how he describes how the women are “breaking their backs to get it.” (You can stop watching at the statistics part –but I warn you it may be hard to stop). What is the point here? The point is for you to notice how he infuses speech, powerful visuals, and vivid words to persuade us to act and to help others to get clean water.

If you watched the video, you saw a worm in the water. Some of you likely had a visceral reaction. For many of you, it caused you to sympathize with the cause, for others, it may have gone too far, and you protected yourself by not watching or by making fun of the video.

If you try to take vividness too far, it can backfire on you.   Thoughts that are too uncomfortable, might cause people to suppress the information or deny it altogether. This is particularly true when creating messages that instill fear.

The Extended Parallel Process Model looks at how people respond to messages that create fear as a way to drive positive health outcomes. For example, to get someone to wear a condom, a speaker might activate fear and make them afraid that they will get a sexually transmitted disease. A speaker might share statistics, gruesome stories, and even show slides of infections (flashback to high school health class). The challenge is that people have different reactions to fear-invoking situations–they either minimize their fear–“That’s not going to happen to me, I could tell if my partner has an infection” or they minimize the danger and wear a condom. So what makes the difference?

A speaker who is trying to use research and analogies that produce fear has to find the “sweet spot” in order to get the audience to react in a way that produces a positive health outcome. If the danger feels like it is too much, the listener will just panic or deny the danger. Describing things in too vivid of detail can often backfire and cause people to worry but do nothing or deny that the situation is real.

The goal should be to use just enough vividness that it is memorable and to direct examples towards the specific audience, so they are relatable. Most importantly, fear messages work best when coupled with a specific plan of action. If people feel like there is a do-able way to get rid of the fear, and they are capable of doing it, they are more likely to react.

To recap. For an audience to be impacted, the message has to be relatable. It should be vivid enough to be memorable and activate the senses–but not so vivid that it overwhelms the main message.  Vivid descriptions should support the central message. If you are trying to persuade an audience and you use vividness to produce fear, you need to offer them specific, manageable ways to act. Vividness is one more tool in your public speaking toolbelt. Use it wisely!

Key Takeaways

Remember this!

• For vivid words to work they must be emotionally interesting, vivid enough to produce sensations or visual images, relatable to the audience, and related to the central thesis.
• Vivid messages are easier to remember and can be more persuasive.
• When using fear appeals, make sure you could the fear with an action that the audience is capable of performing.

Please share your feedback, suggestions, corrections, and ideas.

I want to hear from you. 

Do you have an activity to include? Did you notice a typo that I should correct? Are you planning to use this as a resource and do you want me to know about it? Do you want to tell me something that really helped you?

Click here to share your feedback. 

Brown, B. (2015). Brene Brown on blame. [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZWf2_2L2v8&t=31s Standard YouTube License.

Dicks, M. (2016). Live like you are 100 years old. [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnatyrn6DFE Standard YouTube License.

Duncan, K.J. (2021). 583 Sensory words to take your writing from bland to brilliant. https://smartblogger.com/sensory-words/

Goalcast. (2020). Top 5 legendary speeches: Motivation for when life gets hard. [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZ8cuBjoS-w Standard YouTube License.

Guadagno, R, & Rhoads, K. & Sagarin, B. (2011). Figural vividness and persuasion: Capturing the “elusive” vividness effect. Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin, 37,  626-38. doi: 10.1177/0146167211399585

Hales, J., Kuang, X. & Venkataraman, S. (2011) Who believes the hype? An experimental examination of how language affects investor judgments. Journal of Accounting Research, 49 (1), 223-255. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-679X.2010.00394.x

Harrison, S. (2020). The Spring-the charity: water story. [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdBG5V O01e0 Standard YouTube License.

Henneke. How to arouse the magic of sensory words (Even in Business Writing). Enchanting Marketing. https://www.enchantingmarketing.com/sensory-words/

Hey, J. Availability heuristic and bias. Image. Sketchplanations. https://sketchplanations.com/the-availability-heuristic-and-bias

Jolie, A. (2009). Angelia Jolie speak on World Refugee Day 2009. [Video]. YouTube.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtt1Vs9Lcp0 Standard YouTube License.

Juhasz, B.  & Yap, M. & Dicke, J. & Taylor, S. & Gullick, M. (2011). Tangible words are recognized faster: The grounding of meaning in sensory and perceptual systems . Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology,  64. 1683-91. doi:10.1080/17470218.2011.605150.

Lacey S, Stilla R, Sathian K. (2012). Metaphorically feeling: Comprehending textural metaphors activates somatosensory cortex. Brain Lang, 120(3), 416-21 DOI: 10.1016/j.bandl.2011.12.016

McGili, A. L., & Anand, P. (1989). The effect of vivid attributes on the evaluation of alternatives: The role of differential attention and cognitive elaboration. Journal of Consumer Research, 16( 2), 188-196. https://doi.org/10.1086/209207

Melcher, C. (1999).  Provocatively and evocatively vivid language: An extension of language expectancy theory  (Order No. 9934847). Available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. (304495279). Retrieved from https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/provocatively-evocatively-vivid-language/docview/304495279/se-2?accountid=8361

Nisbett, R., & Ross, L. (1980). Human inference: Strategies and shortcomings of social judgment. Prentice-Hall.

Ralston, S. M., & Thameling, C. A. (1988). Effect of vividness of language on information value of reference letters and job applicants’ recommendations.  Psychological Reports, 62 (3), 867–870.  https://doi.org/10.2466/pr0.1988.62.3.867

Shedler, J., & Manis, M. (1986). C an  the  availability   heuristic   explain   vividness  effects?  Journal  of  Personality  and  Social   Psychology , 51 (1), 26–36.  https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.51.1.26

Smith, W (2017). Will Smith on Skydiving. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hpd61o6TvXM Standard YouTube License.

Speakola (2009). Angelina Jolie: ‘I am here today to say that refugees are not numbers,’ World Refugee Day–2009. https://www. speakola.com/ideas/angelina-jolie-world-refugee-day-2009.

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Witte K,  & Allen M. A (2000).meta-analysis of fear appeals: implications for effective public health campaigns. Health Education Behavior. (5):591-615. doi: 10.1177/109019810002700506. 

Witte, K. (1992). Putting the fear back into fear appeals: The extended parallel process model.  Communication Monographs, 59 (4), 329–349.  https://doi.org/10.1080/03637759209376276

Witte, K. (1994). Fear control and danger control: A test of the extended parallel process model (EPPM).  Communication Monographs, 61 (2), 113–134.  https://doi.org/10.1080/03637759409376328

Public Speaking by Lynn Meade is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Module 5: Choosing and Researching a Topic

Finding support for your speech, learning objectives.

Identify the different locations to find support for your speech.

Gathering supporting materials for your speech requires creativity, thoroughness, and careful note-taking. There are many possible sources of evidence or support for your speech. Five of the most common sources are:

• Your Own Experiences
• Others’ Experiences

Academic Research

Internet research.

To these, we could add a sixth:

6. Thinking Outside the Box

Within these categories we can further differentiate between primary sources and secondary sources.

• Primary sources: information that is first-hand or straight from the source; information that is unfiltered by interpretation or editing.
• Secondary sources: information that is not directly from the source; information that has been compiled, filtered, edited, or interpreted in some way.

Personal Experience

If you’re planning to talk about the experiences of someone you know, make sure you have their consent to do so, or change the details of the story enough that the person’s identity cannot be guessed. Even if you’ve concealed the identity of the person involved, it can be problematic to tell others’ stories without their involvement; some stories are just not yours to tell. This question often comes up when artists or authors portray experiences that are not theirs, thus raising the possibility that they are exploiting the story, rather than inhabiting it with artistic empathy. [1] [2] If you want to tell a story to humanize a statistical or social reality, it’s often best to create a hypothetical example, or to use a publicly available source, to avoid any sense you might be exploiting a story to make your point.

To watch: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, “The Danger of a Single Story”

In this powerful and popular TED talk, writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie tells the story of how she found her authentic cultural voice—and warns that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding. Pay close attention from the 2:51 to the 4:05 mark as she uses a story from her childhood to make her point.

You can view the transcript for “The danger of a single story | Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie” here (opens in new window) .

Academic (or scholarly) research includes materials written by experts reviewed by other experts in their field (also known as peer-reviewed). This type of research typically includes background on a topic and details about a research study and its results. Academic research is published in scholarly journals, dissertations, and professional conference proceedings. You can find academic research and scholarly journals through databases in your college’s library, including Academic OneFile and JSTOR. Google Scholar is a free search engine where you can search for research on a wide range of topics.

Using the search term “resume for college students” in Google Scholar shows thousands of results. The following hit might be a useful article to read for the speech topic:

Be aware that academic research is often quite technical and difficult for a non-expert to understand. If that is the case, the “Abstract” at the beginning of an article or the “Findings” section near the end can provide a clearer summary of the research and findings. Not every speech will need academic research for support, but it can add credibility and depth to your speech.

Using the terms “college student resume” in a Google search shows the article “How to Write a College Student Resume” on the job listing site Indeed.com.

Note, however, the two paid ads above the images. Paid ads probably won’t be relevant to your search, and they will almost certainly try to get you to pay for something (or, at a minimum, sign up for something).

Not every article you read will seem relevant to your speech, but since your topic is probably evolving, keep a careful list of your notes and their sources.

Note : The internet can be a great research tool, but it is also chock-full of errors, misinformation, half-truths, time-sinks, scams, and things that are just plain unpleasant. When using the internet for research, it is  crucial to ask probing questions about the credibility of your source. The next page has in-depth recommendations about assessing whether online sources are credible.

Internet research can provide materials for your main ideas, supporting evidence and examples. Credible articles and websites will also include statements from experts on your topic, whom you can then quote or paraphrase in your speech. Pay attention to any stories, anecdotes, research, and examples you might integrate into your speech. Your internet research will be useful for exploring your topic more broadly and gathering supporting examples that will add depth and personality to your speech.

Students are often surprised at how they can add value to their speeches with interviews. An interview might be a formal situation where you contact an expert, a professor, etc., and schedule a time to ask them specific questions about your speech topic. Alternatively, you might email or text your questions. Contact the interviewee early in your research and be sure to ask questions that aren’t easy to find from other sources. For instance, if you interview a career advisor about resumes, it would be a waste of the advisor’s time to ask what a resume is. Instead, ask interesting questions like, “What are the most common mistakes you see students make on their resumes?” or “What’s one thing you wish more students knew about resumes?” or “How have resumes changed over the past couple years?” Be sure to take careful notes and always follow up with a gracious thank-you note.

Don’t overlook those in your personal network who might have valuable information on your topic. In your research about resumes, you might ask questions of your aunt who works in recruiting at a hospital. Or, you might ask your roommate questions about their recent resume experience applying for an internship.

Thinking Outside the Box

As you gather materials for your speech content, be open to creative ways to gather material that can add value and interest to your speech. Throughout your  research, look for video clips, photos, gifs, memes, etc., that will add energy and interest to your speech. For instance, as you’re researching resumes, you might remember a scene from the 2001 comedy Legally Blonde and tie it into your introduction as a humorous way to introduce common resume mistakes.

Depending on your topic, another type of supporting material might come from polls or questions to connections on social media. You might create a poll that asks about resume experience, or simply ask for stories about good or bad resume experiences. While the results of these polls or questions are not scientific, they can often provide some anecdotes, peer testimonials, or insights you might not have considered.

These outside-the-box materials might be used as a hook in your introduction or as more colorful or personalized support for your main points.

• Holmes, Anna, and James Parker. “Who Gets to Tell Other People's Stories?” The New York Times , The New York Times, 24 May 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/29/books/review/who-gets-to-tell-other-peoples-stories.html . ↵
• Loughrey, Clarisse. “Who Gets to Tell Other People's Stories? How Madeline's Madeline Explores Exploitation in Art.” The Independent , 13 May 2019, http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/madelines-madeline-jospheine-decker-exploitation-art-vox-lux-a8903951.html . ↵
• Car Mirror Image. Authored by : Dhinal Chheda. Located at : https://flic.kr/p/gVnLEz . License : CC BY: Attribution
• Computer. Located at : https://www.pikrepo.com/fcokz/woman-in-black-hijab-using-computer-in-office . License : CC0: No Rights Reserved
• Screen capture from Legally Blond. License : Other . License Terms : Fair Use
• The danger of a single story | Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Provided by : TED. Located at : https://youtu.be/D9Ihs241zeg . License : Other . License Terms : Standard YouTube License
• Finding Support for your Speech. Authored by : Susan Bagley-Koyle with Lumen Learning. License : CC BY: Attribution

IELTS Speaking, Topic card: a speech you heard; with model answer

Hello, everyone! Let’s have a look at IELTS speaking part 2 / cue card sample with a very nice answer. Here, we shall discuss a widely known topic and it is A speech that someone delivered and you heard . After having a look at the sample answer, you can change it and adjust it according to your choice.

Model answer:

Thanks a lot for this topic card. Here, I am told to talk about a speech which I heard.

Since my childhood, I have heard countless speeches, lectures, and commentaries on different subjects and issues throughout diverse stages of my life, and among those speeches, one was given by my favorite teacher on the new students’ reception day. I consider this speech as the most influential one and I can still remember it word for word. The name of the teacher was Mr. Stephen Wright and he was about fifty years old just then. As incoming graduate students, we were very enthusiastic about the whole program.

Mr. Stephen was instructed by the Principal of our college to deliver his speech focusing on our forthcoming challenges in student life and future career. He was already a respected teacher for his teaching style, good attitude, humor, and sincerity. I also heard a rumor that he was chosen to be the principal of the college but refused to take over because he thought it would hamper his teaching due to administrative work.

As Mr. Stephen came to the stage, there was pin-drop silence in the auditorium where the program took place. Everybody was looking at him eagerly. I was amazed to enjoy the beginning of the speech. He started abruptly by telling a short story about his first day of college life. Then he smiled at us and told us about the differences between his time and ours. Thus, he began and continued to tell us about our present responsibility to family, friends, and the community.

Mr. Stephen then slowly moved on to some issues which I bore in my mind. He instructed us with his speech about our duties towards mankind. Besides, he told us not to harm anyone intentionally and to be honest and sincere in life. He also advised us to respect each other. Most importantly, he told us not to lose hope. It was the most impressive speech I have ever heard because of the use of language, presentation style, and relevance to the current trend of life.

The topics and his way of presenting them shook all of us deeply. Every single time I remember the speech my heart starts pounding. Enthusiasm shakes me immensely. As a young person, I had no idea that a simple person like him could go on so much to think about every aspect of life. The speech inspired me before and it still inspires me very much. Eventually, he became my favorite teacher of all time.

That’s the end of this sample answer.

If you can talk about this topic, it is easy for you to cover some other similar task cards like:

• A speech you remember
• Your favorite speech
• An inspiring speech
• A speech that inspired you
• A memorable speech
• A speech delivered by someone you know etc.

If you find this topic card interesting, here are links to some other topic cards for you.

1. An important email/letter you received

2. An enjoyable place you visited

3. A problem that affects the environment in your area

4. A plant grown in your country

5. A difficult choice/decision you had to take

6. A hotel you have stayed in

7. A party you have attended

8. A stressful day at work/school/university

9. A building with architectural interest

10. An English lesson you enjoyed/took

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IELTS Speaking Part 1: General questions on Changes in life, Extra-curricular activities, Social issues; with model answers

This is the fourth set of general questions of IELTS Speaking Part 1 with example answers. If you wish to earn a good band score in the speaking module, you have to start with a great impression on the examiner’s mind and part 1 is the best place to do it. Practicing the general questions over […]

IELTS Speaking Part 2: Topic card; Describe a piece of information which you think is not correct; with discussion, model answer and Part 3 questions

In this post on IELTS Speaking Part 2, I’m going to discuss a topic card that has recently appeared in some IELTS tests around the world. Here we are going to describe a model answer for the topic ‘a piece of information which you think is not correct’. You will find a short discussion on […]

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Describe an interesting talk or speech you heard

ielts speaking part 2

IELTS Speaking Part 2

Describe an interesting talk or speech you heard You should say: • Who gave the talk/speech • Where and when you heard it • What it was about And explain why it was interesting?

Sample Recording

Today I am going to talk to you about a speech that I came across two months ago on TV called “the power of  vulnerability ”.

The speech was delivered by Brene Brown who is an American scholar , an author and a public speaker . She  has been involved in research on a range of topics, including vulnerability, courage, shame, and empathy.

I accidentally heard her speech when I was watching TV at home after a hard day at work. Her TED talk touched my spirit , evoked my sympathy and taught me many lessons. Firstly, I learnt that I cannot ignore all the  negative feelings I have. If I try to avoid them, I won’t be able to feel happy, grateful or joyful, and therefore, I  need to have the courage to face and solve all the problems I have in order to live happily.

Secondly, thanks to this talk, I was able to understand how powerful it is to show other people my  vulnerability, and that I should dare to take risks and do the things that I am not so sure about. For example, I  should be the one who says I love you first, even if I know I might be rejected.

Finally, I learnt how to love myself from the bottom of my heart and was able to give up irresponsible  behaviour such as skipping meals or getting wasted whenever I was sad. And in addition to this, once I’m able  to love myself, I won’t hurt other people who truly love me.

Vocabulary highlights:

1. came across – discovered

2. vulnerability – being open or exposed to being physically or mentally harmed

3. delivered by – spoken or presented by

4. scholar – academic expert or specialist

5. public speaker – someone who gives

6. touched my spirit – had a deep impression or influence on me

7. evoked my sympathy – made me feel emotional towards someone or an idea

8. have the courage to face – to be brave enough to do something

9. take risks – to do things even though you might fail

10. from the bottom of my heart – to feel deeply or strongly about something

11. skipping meals – to not eat a meal to try to lose weight

12. getting wasted – getting very drunk

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Describe an interesting talk or speech that you heard recently IELTS cue card

IELTS Speaking Part 2: IELTS Cue Card

Describe an interesting talk or speech that you heard recently. You should say Who was the speaker? Where you heard it? What the talk or speech was about? And explain why you think it was interesting?

Note:  You will have to talk about the topic for one to two minutes. You have one minute to think about what you are going to say. You can make some notes to help you if you wish.

Model Answers and follow up questions to describe an interesting talk or speech that you heard recently IELTS cue card:

Model Answer:

Introduction: Well, I have heard many motivational speeches and interesting lectures on different occasions.

Mr Singh got on the stage and he started his speech in a very interesting manner, he shared some interesting facts and figures to make people realize the gravity of this problem.

And explain why you think it was interesting? His presentation skills were really amazing, He kept the audience intact throughout the speech with his simple to follow language and interesting examples.

Conclusion: Overall, I can say Mr Singh’s simple language and effective style of presentation made this speech extremely impressive and interesting for the audience.

IELTS Speaking Part 3 : Follow up Questions

We will update it soon.

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IELTSFever Cue Card Example a Speech You Heard

IELTSFever cue card example A speech you heard or Describe an interesting talk or speech that you heard recently.

• Where you heard it?
• Who was the speaker?
• What the talk or speech was about?
• and explain why you think it was interesting?

I have heard many talks/speeches in my life; some were interesting, and some were not. However, I would like to talk about an interesting speech I heard at an environmental fair at my old school in my hometown 🏫🌳.

I was really surprised and engaged by the content, especially because the speaker was from my hometown and known for her excellent teaching 🗣️🍃.

Also, Read  IELTS Speaking Cue Cards 🎤: A Vital Component of the IELTS

She described the causes and effects of global warming in a way that was very interesting. She explained how pollution is growing day by day due to tree cutting 🌲, the proliferation of industries 🏭, etc., which are responsible for global warming.

She informed us about how we can control global warming, such as by not cutting down trees, planting more trees 🌱, using recycled materials ♻️, and saying no to plastic bags 🚫🛍️.

According to me, it was an enlightening speech. After listening to this speech, I was inspired to use recycled material and have grown many trees around my house 🏡🌳.

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I believe if every person makes an effort to protect our environment, then they should do it confidently. So, let’s keep our environment clean 🌍✨.

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