1.1Introduction to Public Speaking
Public Speaking has become a common phenomenon in our present day social
life. In our various human endeavours, addressing the public has become inevitable. How we present ourselves in our public speaking will influence the kind of image we create about ourselves in the minds of our listeners. How far we can go in our political career and in our other human endeavours depend to a great extent on ‘the person’ we present ourselves to be in the minds of our listeners.
Public speaking has been defined as the process and act of speaking or giving a lecture to a group of people in a structured, deliberate manner intended to inform, influence, or entertain a listening audience. Public speaking is commonly understood as face-to-face oral conversation or speaking between individuals and an audience for the purpose of communication.
To succeed in our public speaking, like in every other human activities and programmes, our speaking in the public must be planned, prepared for and properly executed and we must get feedbacks from our listeners. This book presents sets of guides on how to succeed in our Public Speaking.
1.2 Preparation for Public Speaking
Making initial preparation for public speaking is essential for achieving success in our public speaking. Having good preparation before embarking on public speaking enables one to overcome the problem of nervousness that is usually associated with public speaking. As part of your preparation, you should consider the following:
(1)The Audience: Who are your audience? How many are they? What are their level of education and how will they compare with you educationally and intelligently? What do they know about the subject matter of your discussion? What will be their attitude towards you? There is the need for you to know your audience and then plan based on your knowledge about them.
Get information about who will be attending your presentation. Are all participants experts at the topic or will there be novice,s present? Is there a mixed group of people representing different backgrounds or is everyone on the same page regarding technic- alities? Depending on the audience, you will have to spend some time giving varying degrees of background on the material and explaining certain concepts.
(2)The Purpose: You should also consider the purpose of discussion. Are you there to put forward an idea or what your view is about on an issue? Do you intend to inform them or educate them about an issue? Do you want to convince them to buy into your own ideas or view point or are you there just to supply detailed information about something or to teach them a skill or to introduce new policy. You should have the purpose of your discussion at the back of your mind at every stage of your public speaking.
(3)Information gathering: As part of your preparation for the public speaking, you should gather as much materials and information as possible, possibly from your previous discussions with others, from your past experience or knowledge, from journals, documents, and other reference works produced by others in the past. After these materials have been assembled, you should embark on organizing them. In organizing the flow of your speaking, you should take cognizance of the beginning and the endings of your public talk. Your beginning must arouse interest of your listeners in your material or enlist sympathetic attention to your viewpoint.
Let us consider this extract from Julius Caesar of William Shakespeare of Anthonio’s response to Brutus oration at Caesar’s Funeral:
“Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him;
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar;
The noble Brutus had told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault.
And grievously hath Caesar answer’d it.
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest;
For Brutus is an honourable man;
Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral;
He was my friend, faithful and just to me;
But Brutus says, he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
He had brought many captives home to Rome,
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill
Did this in Caesar seen ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff;
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
You all did see that on the Lupercal,
I thrice presented him a Kingly Crown.
Which he did thrice refuse; was this ambitious?
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And sure, he is an honourable man.
I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke;
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause;
What cause withholds you then not to mourn for him?
O Judgment| thou art fled to Brutish beasts?
And men have lost their reason.
Bear with me; My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar;
And I must pause till it come back to me.”
This is an extract from Julius Caesar of William Shakespeare. For those who are familiar with the story of Julius Caesar of William Shakespeare, we all know the aftermath of Anthonio’s speech and how he was able to arouse the attention of his audience and enlisted their sympathetic attention to his view point and how they went on rampage after listening to him, to arrest Brutus and all those that were involved in the assassination of Julius Caesar. Just similar to what Anthonio did in the above extract, you should allow enthusiasm show even at the beginning of your public speech. You should properly think out about the ending of your public speaking. You should not prolong your speech to avoid unintended errors and mistakes. What you said during your conclusion will be enduring in the minds of your audience and it is this that will leave impression about you in the minds of your listeners. You can end your speech by summarizing the key-points of your discussions or what you want your audience to have at the back of their mind about your speech. Repetition is an essential part of good spoken words.
(4)Frame your story:
There’s no way you can give a good talk unless you have something worth talking about. Conceptualizing and framing what you want to say is the most vital part of preparation. We all know that stories are a powerful tool for communication and therefore, metaphors which abound the narrative structures work best to engage people. You can adopt the following approaching in framing your story and to make it interesting to listen to:
Approach 1:
Consider it as planning a journey where the biggest decisions are where to start and where to end. To find the right place to start, consider what people in the audience already know about your subject – and how much they care about it. If you assume they have more knowledge or interest than they in fact do, or if you start using jargon or get too technical, you’ll lose them. The most engaging speakers do a superb job of very quickly introducing the topic, explaining why they care so deeply about it, and convincing the audience members that they should, too.
Approach 2:
Have a narrative structure that loosely follows a detective story with which to introduce your speech. The speaker starts out by presenting a problem and then describes the search for a solution. There is an “aha” moment, and the audience’s perspective shifts in a meaningful way. As a general rule, people are not very interested in talks about organizations or institutions. Ideas and stories fascinate us; organizations bore us – they’re much harder to relate to.
(5)Summarize your message
What is the centre point of your message that you want your listeners to take home after listening to you? Focus on that message. Start out with this summary statement in mind and gradually build your presentation around it as your presentation progresses. Don’t lose concentration on this central message as your progress in your presentation.
(6)Plan your delivery
Before getting on with your speech delivery, there is the need for you to plan your delivery. There are three main ways to deliver a speech. You can read it directly off a script. You can develop a set of bullet points that map out what you’re going to say in each section rather than scripting the whole thing word for word. Or you can memorize your speech, which entails rehearsing it to the point where you internalize every word. Don't do number one as reading a speech is the most boring thing for everyone! For me bullet points proved to be the most reasonable system as remembering the entire speech by heart might prove too stressful or time-consuming. Don't write out the material word-by-word and don't plan on reading text even if you do have it all written down. Having the text written out and parts of it memorized will constrain you. Memorize the structure of the talk and the outline but not every word.
(7)Timing your Speech
There should be appropriate timing for your speech delivery. People rarely want to listen to someone for longer than the allotted time. Most people become bored after listening to the same story for a long time. Few people are such amazing speakers that an audience c an't get enough of them. Do not assume you are one of those few. Wrap up your talk on time. To achieve this goal, ask someone to give you time cues by indicating when you have five minutes left, two minutes and when youhave run out of time. Once you get the last notice, you should stop talking.
