Guidelines for Successful Speaking

Step 1: Clarify Your Objective Begin by identifying the goals of your presentation. Do you want to persuade your listeners that your campus needs additional student parking, or inform your listeners about the student government? What do you want your listeners to know, believe, or do when you are finished?

Step 2: Understand Your Audience

• What do they already know about my topic?
• What do they want or need to know?
• Who are my listeners?
• What are their attitudes toward me, my ideas, and my topic?

Step 3: Organize Your Presentation Now comes the most critical part of the process: building your presentation by selecting and arranging blocks of information to guide your listeners through the ideas they already have to the new knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs that you would like them to have. You can use the suggestions from earlier in the chapter for creating a writing outline to create an outline for your speech.

Step 4: Choose Appropriate Visual Aids You might use presentation software, such as Prezi or PowerPoint, to prepare your presentations. When creating PowerPoint slides or Prezi templates, you can insert images and videos to support your ideas while making your presentations animated, engaging, and interactive. You might also prepare a chart, write on the board, or distribute handouts. As you select and use your visual aids, consider these guidelines:

• Make visuals easy to follow.
• Make sure that words are large enough to be read, and don’t overload your audience by including a lot of information on one slide.
• Use font colors to make your slides visually attractive. Use light colors for text on a dark background or dark colors on a light background.
• Explain each visual clearly.
• Allow your listeners enough time to process visuals.
• Proofread carefully. Misspelled words hurt your credibility as a speaker.
• Maintain eye contact with your listeners while you discuss the visuals. Don’t turn around and address the screen.

Step 5: Prepare Your Notes If you are like most speakers, having an entire written copy of your speech in front of you may tempt you to read much of your presentation, but a speech that is read word for word will often sound artificial. A better strategy is to memorize the introduction and conclusion, and then use a carefully prepared outline to guide you in between. You should practice in advance. Because you are speaking mainly from an outline, your choice of words will be slightly different each time you give your presentation, with the result that you will sound prepared but natural. Since you’re not reading, you will be able to maintain eye contact with your listeners. Try using note cards; number them in case you accidentally drop the stack on your way to the front of the room. After you become more experienced, your visuals can serve as notes. A handout or a slide listing key points can provide you with a basic outline.

Step 6: Practice Your Delivery Practice delivering your speech before an audience: a friend, your dog, even the mirror. As you rehearse, form a mental image of success rather than failure. Practice your presentation aloud several times to control your anxiety. Begin a few days before your speech date, and make sure you rehearse out loud, as thinking through your speech and talking through your speech have very different results. Consider making an audio or video recording of yourself to hear or see your mistakes and reinforce your strengths. If you ask a practice audience to give you feedback, you’ll have some idea of what changes you might make.

Step 7: Pay Attention to Word Choice and Pronunciation As you reread your presentation, make sure that you have used the right words to express your ideas. Get help ahead of time with words that you aren’t certain how to pronounce. Try your best to avoid like, um, uh, you know, and other fillers.

Step 8: Dress Appropriately and Give Your Presentation Now you’re almost ready to give your presentation, but don’t forget one last step: Dress appropriately. Leave the baseball cap, the T-shirt, and the tennis shoes at home. Don’t overdress, but do look professional. Experts suggest that your clothes should be a “little nicer” than what your audience is wearing. Some speakers find that when they dress professionally, they deliver a better presentation!

Step 9: Request Feedback from Someone in Your Audience After you have completed your speech, ask a friend or your instructor to give you some honest feedback. If you receive written evaluations from your audience, read them and pay attention to suggestions for ways you can improve.