The Art of Public Speaking

The words of William Jennings Bryan easily come to mind, "As long as there are human rights to be defended; as long as there are great interests to be guarded; as long as the welfare of nations is a matter for discussion; so long will public speaking have its place". There will always be a need for public speakers in the world and that truth is one that many people have come to realise and for good reason too. The process of public speaking requires two variables at least and they include the audience and the speaker. "In public speaking, we must appeal either to the prejudices of others, or to the love of truth and justice. If we think merely of displaying our own ability, we shall ruin every cause we undertake" - William Hazzlit.

Any message not tailored to meet the needs of the audience will most likely not be well received. Consider the case of a public speaker who is using graduate students’ vocabulary to address primary school children. You do not need a soothsayer to tell you how it will turn out, the same can be said of a speaker who uses high school vocabulary to address engineers at a technical conference. The minute you begin to think your message, as a speaker, is all about you then your sincerity of purpose is suspect. People want to listen to someone they can relate to and if you fail that test you stand a small chance of getting your message passed across effectively. The bottom line is that you must speak in such a manner as to make your audience participate in your message because it is all about them really. The reason we speak in public is so that the public will hear us and comply with the core of the message we have.  

If you are new to public speaking, there are ways to go about it if you need some guidance. If you are just starting out in business, it is most advisable to find a mentor you trust. This must be someone who is willing to guide you to achieve success in the shortest possible time. Public speaking is an art you must learn if you want to excel at it and with every skill; it can be improved on if you are careful to follow the useful tips that may exist. If you want to learn banking, you will most likely take up employment in the banking sector and make it a duty to learn from and with bankers. The same is applicable when it comes to public speaking, as there are many speakers’ clubs all over the world with a commitment to raising better public speakers. You can join a public speaking club close to you, as you will definitely learn from interacting with others who are more experienced than you are.

The purpose of public speaking might be to educate, inform, motivate, and entertain depending on what the occasion calls for. You can speak professionally and still keep your day job if that is what works best for you. Another option is to run a public speaking business and do it full time though this might require you getting a mentor who will show you the best way to go about it. The most important thing is to do what you are passionate about and what will bring you the fulfilment you require to make life what it is.

Essential Public Speaking Tips

Making a speech can be one of the most difficult things to do in this world and the fear of public speaking is one fear that ranks so high on the list of many people. Public speaking is speaking in a structured and deliberate manner in a bid to inform, educate, entertain, influence and inspire others. This means that there are two variables involved in this equation and they are the speaker and the audience. If the big day is approaching (of making a speech that is) and you sincerely, have no idea of how to go about it this piece will, give you general tips that will help to improve your performance.

One of the things that will help you is to develop a positive mindset about the task itself as if you can win in your mind the other parts will automatically fall in place barring any unforeseen circumstances. Here are some factors that you need to take into consideration for your speech to be the perfect presentation you want it to be.

Microphone - The essence of the microphone is to amplify sound in conjunction with other equipment but sometimes some speakers use microphones and are still barely audible. This is usually due to not knowing how to use a microphone properly. Depending on the type of microphone, you can amplify your voice to the maximum if you know how to position it. As a golden rule make sure you speak directly into the microphone and do not tap the head with your fingers or blow air into it, as you do not want to damage the diaphragm. If the previous speaker used a particular microphone and was audible all over the hall but people could not hear you when it was your turn, then probably you just violated the golden rule of using microphones, which is positioning it too far from your mouth. Also remember that it is not a chewing stick so do not put it in your mouth, as some speakers are prone to do. Having the next speaker wipe off spittle after you have finished using the microphone might just be an embarrassing situation you do not want him or her to experience.

Stage - Depending on the kind of event at which you are supposed to make a speech, there will always be some sort of platform, lectern or dais from which you are expected to deliver your speech. If it is a lectern, choosing whether to leave the lectern and move about is purely a personal decision but my take is that any movement during presentations should add value to the presentation and not take from it. Some speakers prefer to pace around the stage but they stand the risk of giving the audience an impression of being stalkers especially if the movements are not coordinated. On movements on stage, the golden rule is they must add to the presentation.

These are factors in public speaking that usually go unnoticed and the truth is that no matter how prepared you are if you do not utilise them well your presentation will be marred.

The will to live: Do you have it?

Just in case you are wondering what this article is all about, take a minute and think of that time in your life when you felt like throwing in the towel and just walking away from your dreams and everything you had ever hoped for. Permit me now to ask you a personal question, what was it that reassured you that everything was going to be all right? If you can put a finger on it, you have done well by being specific in your analysis but if you cannot, the most important thing is that you took the time to do some retrospection.

Sometimes the will to live is so overpowering that the average person will still shrug off any major disappointments, take a positive outlook on life and say that things can only get better. That folks is the will to live; according to a survey conducted some years ago, Nigerians were reputed to be the happiest people in the world. Without any doubt, it was obvious the compelling reason for that was the never-say-die attitude that many a Nigerian has. With the situation of things in this country, you would expect nearly everyone to be nearing the point of giving up and ending it all but that is not the case. All you need to do to be convinced of this is to look at the people close to you and see what they are going through as it relates to their general attitude to life.

The secret is not far-fetched and is definitely not rocket science. What we who have resolved to forge ahead despite the difficulties and the rough paths that lie ahead of us have in common is what I call the will to live. Everyone needs some perseverance in the equation of their lives as no one was promised a smooth ride in life. No wonder Tai Solarin of blessed memory said, 'May your days be rough'. The man was just being the realist that he really was. The question I pose to you today is what you will do when things do not turn out the way you hope and expect them to. We all will have those times in our lives when the natural and easy thing to do is throw in the towel and give up fighting. You must at this point learn to look inwards and draw from that inner reservoir of strength that is present in everyone irrespective of age, colour or language.

The battle of life is not yet lost so long as we are ready to keep trying. The battle is of course lost when we lose hope, allow the vicissitudes of life to box us in, and dictate to us. If there are people in the world today who moved from zero to hero then you really have no excuse! So what should stop you from revving up that will to live and firing on all cylinders?

Increase Your Articulation in Speech

One of the challenges that a good number of foreign speakers of the English language will usually face is the ability to excel when it comes to good pronunciation of words. This is so because of the fact that many do not know that it is not just enough to be able to identify correctly the sounds that exist in the words whether they are vowels or consonants, it is also very important to be able to match the correct stress pattern with the word in question. The bottom line is that you may be able to identify correctly the vowel and consonant sounds in a particular word but if you miss the correct stress pattern, you will still end up mispronouncing the word.

There are simple rules involved and if one understands the basics, one will be able to build on that and thus compare favourably with native speakers of the English language. The focus of this is to be able to communicate effectively with members of your audience whose origins you as a speaker may have no control over. There are essentially two major components of diction and they are sounds and stress patterns. If you can fully understand these two components, you would be better armed in the quest for articulate speech.

The sounds in the English Language comprise 49 vowels and consonants in all. There are 25 vowel sounds made up of 12 monothongs, 8 diphthongs and 5 triphthongs. A monothong has just one vowel sound in it while the diphthongs are a combination of two vowel sounds and the triphthongs are a combination of three vowel sounds. All the consonant sounds in the English language vocabulary are 24 in number.

A syllable is a unit of sound that contains one vowel and or at least one consonant. These units of sound are the components that are usually stressed or unstressed in speech. Stressed syllables usually have three major characteristics; they are longer in duration, louder in volume and higher in pitch. There are primary stresses, secondary stresses and tertiary stresses with the last two being most common in polysyllabic words i.e. words with more than three syllables or in some contexts, at least three syllables.

Apart from learning how to articulate sounds and identify correct stress patterns, you must also master the art of speaking clearly and deliberately because it is not just about being audible, you must be understandable for your message to be clear and for you to be able to carry your audience along. You do not want to finish talking for two hours and have someone in the audience ask another person what you just finished talking about, do you.

Using a good pronouncing dictionary might just do the trick and there are lots of them around with the most notable being the Daniel Jones English Pronouncing dictionary. If you can also transcribe words then you are well on your way to increasing how articulate you are from your audience's perception. As with all skills, being more articulate requires practice.