Article Surfing Archive

1. Confidence

You have to have a positive sensory orientation towards your speech, learn to have confidence. Unfortunately there is no secrets to this, you have to rehearse over and over again until your confident that you can make it.

Do remember that most people can easily distinguish between the certain speaker and the uncertain one, this is why you should never read your speech directly from a piece of paper. It gives an extremely bad impression.

2. Spice your speech

"Well-timed silence hath more eloquence than speech"

Make your performance remembered, make it tasty and try your outmost not to bore people. We all dislike hearing a boring professor speak, why commit the same mistake? A good way to spice your speech is by adding quotes to it, the more the merrier.

By the way, young folks are part of this culture where one uses some keywords over and over again which could make your whole presentation contaminated. Watch out for words such as; "like", "well", "you know" etc. A good way to counter this is by using alliterations, ie.

A sentence where all the initial letters in every word start by the same letter. For example: Cool! Crusty's car crushed Carl. The important things is; be innovative when it comes to speeches!

3. Your posture

Your "body language" could turn out to be more crucial than you think, some people even claim that it might be more important than the speech it self!

Make sure you have a firm control over your body and try your out most to diminish the use of unnecessary movements. This might distract the audience and your recital might even be viewed as void.

4. Eye contact

Be cautious concerning your eye movements. You should avoid starring at someone/thing provocative, you do not want to be angered, annoyed or aroused when speaking.

5. Water

I think that this one concerns the guys a bit more; we (male gender) have this thing, we speak louder and less calmer then women. God knows, you might even become thirsty or lose your voice in the middle of the presentation, bad idea!

If your equipped with a bottle of water, your problem is fixed, plus you get a few seconds to fetch your thoughts when drinking.

6. Cards

Ever watched one of those lousy talk shows they air all the time? I am sorry if I brought back bad memories from the days you use to watch this garbage, but in case you paid attention back then you've probably noticed how all the talk shows hosts use cards when speaking.

This is an excellent move, you should employ that as well for a number of reasons:

a) Looks professional. b) By using keywords and sentences, you can summarize a long speech. c) You avoid using normal (A4) paper, if your hands shiver when you speak in public, the paper might shiver and produce this awesome sound of embarrassment.

7. Tools

Do you know how to make a power point, flash (or the like) presentation? If the answers yes, then what is stopping you?

In case you do decide to use a sideshow, be sure to avoid weird animations or music, this might distract your audience. Keep it simple, it usually works the best.

8. Your clothing

People don't usually think of this, but be aware of the clothes you wear that day. You don't want to wear tight/revealing clothes.

The whole point of the speech is for people to listen to your words, not be aroused by your looks.

9. Speak well

This must be emphasized; speak in a gentle and respectful matter. You have to avoid using bad words or phrases, such as the notorious f word.

10. The ending

Try to make your ending summarize your whole speech, be innovative and make sure you don't neglect this part. A good ending compensates a bad introduction.