Public Speaking

1. Public Speaking

2. California Standards • Listening and Speaking 1.9 – • Analyze the occasion and the interests of the audience and choose effective verbal and nonverbal techniques (voice, gestures, eye contact) for presentations. • Listening and Speaking 1.8 – • Produce concise notes for extemporaneous delivery • Listening and Speaking 2.2 – • Deliver expository presentations • Listening and Speaking 2.4 • Deliver oral responses to literature • A. advance a judgment demonstrating a comprehensive grasp of the significant ideas of works or passages. • B. Support important ideas and viewpoints through accurate and detailed references to the text or to other works. • C. Demonstrate awareness of the author’s use of stylistic devices and an appreciation of the effects caused. • D. Identify and assess the impact of perceived ambiguities, nuances, and complexities within the text.

3. Impromptu Speaking • Conversation is a form of impromptu speaking – it is unrehearsed. • Impromptu speech is one given on the spur of the moment with little preparation. (It’s like a one-sided conversation) • Each impromptu speech should contain an attention-getter, main points, and a clincher. • Process • Choose a topic • Ask yourself what you know or why you hold this opinion? • Think of an attention getter • Decide on a clincher

4. Talking with the Body • Good talkers are animated. Animation brings clarity to our words – but be careful, movement can also distract from our message. • People with a more lively voice tend to have more movement, people with a more dull voice tend to be more inert. • The audience will mimic your movements, attitude, and mannerisms.

5. Talking with the Body • Good thinking depends on control of muscles. • You think not only with the brain, but with the whole body – brain, nerves, muscles, glands, and all. • If you are inert or sleepy, you cannot think well. • Likewise, if your muscles are tense, tied up by kinks and twists, you will be no prize winner at thinking!

6. Talking with the Body • Nervousness manifests itself as: • Fear • Spasmadic Breath • Shaky Knees • Twitchy Hands • Chattering Teeth • Experienced speakers are nervous too! They have just learned to control it!

7. Talking with the Body • Relax! Control your muscles by using them! Here are some tips: • Before going up to speak press the fingertips of one hand against those of the other. This will relieve part of the tension and will tend to give confidence in muscle control. • Just before beginning to speak, pause long enough to take a deep breath. This will relax tensed body muscles and help to restore confidence. • While speaking, continue to take deep breaths. This will keep the body muscles relaxed and help keep the nerves at ease. • Press the balls of the feet firmly against the floor. This will give a feeling of firmness to the posture and tend to eliminate shaking of the knees.

8. Talking with the Body • Posture: • The way you stand tells the audience whether you are fearful and unsure of yourself, conceited and arrogant, angry and defiant, or eager to tell them something. • You do not want to be stiff and awkward and don’t slouch! • Stand with one foot slightly in front of the other, and keep the weight chiefly on one foot at a time. • Keep the center of alertness in the chest. • The chest is the center of the speaker’s bodily energy.

9. Gestures • Head and Face • Nod • Shake • Set of the head • Smile • Frown • Twist of the mouth • Raising, lowering, or arching of eyebrows • Eyes are the windows of our inner feelings

10. Gestures • Hands • Parts of the body should not move alone. Everything works conjointly. • The hand supine: palm upward - It indicates in general an idea of which we approve. • “We ask for justice. Here is our proposition.” • The hand prone: palm downward – represents dislike, disapproval, opposition. • “No, never! We will not accept it!” • The hand adverse: palm outward, away from the body. It expresses a feeling stronger than mere dislike and suggests complete rejection or repulsion. • “Stand back! Leave my sight!” • The hand index: first finger as if pointing out an idea, a fact, a place, or a person. • “This is the point…” • The clenched fist: expressing great earnestness or intensity of feeling. • “We defy them! Let them come!”

11. NOTE: • Remember that gestures need to be timed appropriately with words and facial expressions!

12. Voice • Inflection • Rising inflection • The glide of a voice from a lower to a higher tone. It expresses doubt, uncertainty, incomplete thought, surprise, astonishment, wonder, amazement flattery. • Falling inflection • The glide of the voice from a higher tone to a lower one. It indicates certainty, completeness of thought, authority, determination, and indignation. • Circumflex inflection • A wave of the voice either upward or downward or reverse. A combination of rising and falling inflection.

13. Tongue Twisters • How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a wood chuck could chuck wood? • She sells seashells by the sea shore. • Peter Piper picked a pack of pickled peppers. • Betty Botter bought a bit of bitter butter and she put it in her batter and it made her batter bitter. Betty Botter bought a bit of better butter and she put it in her batter. Betty Botter has a batch of better biscuits. • Irish Wrist Watch.

14. Practice with intonation and inflection: • “One day I want to be king.” • “Is she really your one and only love?” • “I already told you, I don’t want to go to the movies tonight.” • “Are you and John coming over to my house tonight?”