Practice Delivering the Speech
Consider Presentation Aids
As you prepare your speech, consider whether using visual, audio, or a combination of different presentation aids will help the audience understand your points. A presentation aid can be as simple as writing the definition of a word on a whiteboard or as involved as a multimedia slide show. Presentation aids help to illustrate, demonstrate, and summarize information, and thereby help the audience to retain ideas and understand difficult concepts (see Chapter 20).
Practice Delivering the Speech
Preparation and practice are necessary for the success of even your first speech in class. You will want to feel and appear “natural” to your listeners, an effect best achieved by rehearsing both the verbal and nonverbal delivery of your speech (see Chapters 18 and 19). So practice your speech often. It has been suggested that a good speech is practiced at least six times. For a four- to six-minute speech, that’s only twenty to thirty minutes of actual practice time, figuring in re-starts and pauses.
RECORD THE SPEECH TO BOLSTER CONFIDENCE
Many public speaking experts agree that watching and listening to recordings of your own speeches can assist in pinpointing your strengths and weaknesses and building confidence in public speaking. Observing your speech helps make it real and, therefore, less scary.
If you own a cell phone, it probably includes an audio and/or video recorder; otherwise, libraries loan computers with recording capabilities. Use it as you practice so you can assess your verbal delivery:
Pay attention to how loudly or softly you are speaking.
- Note the rate at which you speak; avoid speaking too slow or too fast.
- Avoid speaking in monotone.
- Decide how you want to phrase your statements, then practice saying them.
- Pronounce words correctly and clearly.
Use a video recorder to consider your nonverbal delivery:
- Practice smiling and using facial expressions that feel natural to you. Audiences want to feel that you care about what you are saying, so avoid a deadpan, or blank, expression.
- Practice making eye contact with your listeners. Doing so will make audience members feel that you recognize and respect them.
- Practice gestures that feel natural to you, steering clear of stiff or exaggerated movements.
ESL SPEAKER’S NOTES
Identifying Linguistic Issues as You Practice Your Speech
As noted in the preceding checklist, most experts recommend that you prepare for delivering your speech by practicing with an audio or video recorder. Non-native speakers may wish to pay added attention to pronunciation and articulation as they listen. Pronunciation is the correct formation of word sounds. Articulation is the clarity or forcefulness with which the sounds are made, regardless of whether they are pronounced correctly. If possible, try to arrange an appointment with an instructor or another student to help you identify key linguistic issues in your speech practice tape or video.
Each of us will speak a non-native language a bit differently from native speakers. That is, we will have some sort of accent. This should not concern you in and of itself. What is important is identifying which specific features of your pronunciation, if any, seriously interfere with your ability to make yourself understandable. Once you have listened to your speech tape and identified which words you tend to mispronounce, you can work to correct the problem.
As you listen to your recording, watch as well for your articulation of words. ESL students whose first languages don’t differentiate between the /sh/ sound and its close cousin /ch/, for example, may say “share” when they mean “chair” or “shoes” when they mean “choose.”1 It is therefore important that you also check to make sure that you are using the correct meaning of the words you have selected for your speech.
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center