Practice Your Delivery
Posted in Communication
You’ve done all the preparation for giving your speech: you’ve researched, written and read. Are you ready to give the speech? Not even close. You need to practice, practice, practice. It takes much practice to be spontaneous. Good speeches are a matter of habit, and habits are formed through repetition.
- Learn to stand and move in front of your audience.
- Keep your weight evenly distributed between both feet to avoid awkward and distracting poses.
- Practice moving around and gesturing when you rehearse your speech.
- Moving closer to the audience gives an effect of greater intimacy.
- Experiment with different kinds of gestures.
- Practice eye contact by setting up a group of chairs, then look directly at each chair in turn.
- Learn to use your voice effectively.
- Don’t feel self-conscious about increasing your volume.
- Watch for pitch problems.
- Practice vocal emphasis for clarification of meaning.
- Adjust your rate of delivery.
- Consider transitions and diction.
- Incorporate transitional phrases in your wording.
- Practice vocal transitions in moving from one idea to the next.
- A drop in pitch usually signifies the end of a sentence or idea.
- Anticipate pitch changes far enough ahead to give yourself time to make them.
- Select your diction carefully.
- Consider the image you project to the audience.
- An audience’s perception of your sincerity will depend not on your actual convictions, but on the sincerity you project to them.
- An audience will usually accept or reject what you say on the basis of how well they like you.
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