Preparing Your First Speech Essay Example for Free

Preparing Your First Speech EssaySince this is a public speaking separate, it means that you allow for indeed grow to present languagees Since many people be fare nervous at this prospect, I homogeneous to shake the first unmatchable move intoe early in the semester. Its like bust off a band-aid rip it off fast to feel less pain. Your Introductory Speech is your first baby step into this field. This assignment is meant to be easy. Its meant to be a way to get you up in front of the group and doing any(prenominal)thing for 2-4 minutes, not to be a heavy, taxing assignment. Therefore, if you find that its very hard, youre doing it wrong Take a deep breath, remember its supposed to be simple, and start over again. Because I sine qua non this assignment to be easy and I want every star to be on approximately the same level, this is the unmatched actors line in the semester where Im going to give you topics to have from preferably than just letting you pick something on your own. Dont worry, after this ane you poop chat some any appropriate subjects you want, and for now, your choices are limited to five.TopicsYour first topic option is called a coat of arms legal transfer. A coat of arms is also often called a family baksheesh. In Medieval heraldry, pictures were emblazoned on a knights shield or armor which represented that persons character or ancestry. A family crest has pictures that spot about(predicate) a familys history. Dont worry Im not going to ask you to research your genealogy Instead, for this topic, I want you to create your own personal coat of arms. To do this, you should take on between 2 and 4 objects that represent something about you. For instance, if I were to create a coat of arms for myself, I would choose a golf club, a suitcase, and a roller coaster because those represent three of my favorite hobbies. I love to renovate golf (though Im not very good at it), I seek any opportunity to travel, and Im a bulky r oller coaster nut who will go anywhere to ride the latest and greatest ride. You could choose hobbies, as I have done, or you may choose a person or people, a pet, something related to your future career, etc. You can choose anything that tells us a little bit about you, who you are, and what you like.You dont have to get deep and personal, just tell us some basic, surface-level things about yourself. Since some people dont like to talk about themselves, you have other options as well. Your second topic to choice is if you could invite any three people to dinner, living or dead, fictional or non-fictional, who would they be and why? Who would you most like to meet and talk to, either from the past or the present? What would you like to learn from them? Since they dont have to be living, I could choose Adolph Hitler if I wanted to. Since they can be fictional, I can choose Bugs Bunny if I want to. They dont have to be famous people or characters, either. I get it on someone who wo uld be at the top of my invitation list would be my grandmother, who died 25 long time ago, and Id just like to sit down and talk with her again. You exponent also address what that combination of people would be like at dinner. Are Hitler and Bugs Bunny going to get along, or will there be trouble? Will my grandmother be able to put Hitler in his place? Your third topic option is if you were going to be stranded on a deserted island, what three books would you want to have with you? Do you want to entertain yourself with fiction? Would you prefer a survival or spiritual guide?Would you pick A thousand and one ways to prepare coconuts or How to build a raft and get off a deserted island? When I bring up this topic option in a wait class, students often groan that they dont read or like a lot of books, so Im not completely hung up on your choosing them, but I would like you pick some form of media such as magazines, music, movies, newspapers, journals, etc. Well just pretend you h ave a sp remedyliness supply of batteries so you can watch those movies or listen to that music Your first three choices have all been informative-type speeches, because youd just be telling us about yourself, the people youd like to meet, or the books youd like to have. Your fourth topic option is a persuasive one a sales speech. You can sell us any product or service. It can be a real product, or you can see up a fake one (and yes, it can be funny and creative). I know that many students I have in class pass water in sales, and if thats the case with you, you can sell us the product you sell at work. The bottom line is if you choose this option, your goal is to make us want the product by the end of your speech.Keep in mind that it isnt meant to be a TV commercial it should still be a proper speech in proper speech format. Your final option could be either informative or persuasive, depending on how you approach it. It is a speech about your pet peeves. What are the little nit-p icky things other people do that in truth get on your nerves? Is it people who chew with their mouth brusk or fail to replace the toilet paper roll when it runs out? Is it all the bad drivers in Columbia? You could approach this topic option in a couple of different ways. You could pick out 2 or three different pet peeves and talk about each, or you could give two or three reasons why one thing is a big pet peeve of yours.For instance, I once had a woman in class who talked about the three things she found most irritating at Wal-Mart. Keep in mind that pet peeves are supposed to be minor irritations. Something like domestic abuse, for instance, isnt a pet peeve, but a major social issue Hopefully, you find at least one of those topic options appealing. hatch the assignment is supposed to be easy, so choose the one where ideas come to you most easily. Sometimes, upon first hearing the topic choices one stands out as THE one youre going to do, but when you sit down to write it you cant think of anything to say. If thats the case, try some other one to see if the ideas come to you more easily.You want the writing part of this to be easy so that youll have plenty of time to practice your speech before its due. You may also consider using a visual aid with this presentation. Its not a requirement, but if youre particularly nervous about speaking, you might consider it for a couple of reasons. First, having a visual aid may make you less nervous because it gives the audience something else to look at for a bite rather than you Second, the visual aid will help you remember what you want to say in your speech. If I have a golf club manufacture on the table, Im not likely to forget that I want to talk about golf The visual aid could be an real object, a picture, a power point slide show, or whatever may be appropriate for the subject youre discussing.Writing and Organizing the Speech careless(predicate) of which topic option you choose, your speech should cont ain certain basic elements that are present in all speeches that you will present in this class. First, the speech should set about with an introduction to lead the audience in to the important content of the speech. You should spend 10-15% of your speaking time setting up the speech in the introduction and it should accept at least these two elements an attention-getter, and a thesis that previews the main points. When a speaker first stands up to speak, the audience is doing a hundred other things rather than listening. Theyre talking to each other, daydreaming, reading, doodling, and who knows what else? So, your first goal as a speaker is to get the audience to stop doing those things and to want to listen to what you have to say. You can accomplish this by having an effective attention device as the opening of your speech. There are several techniques you can use to draw the audience in. attending Getters1. You could ask the audience a question, which forces them to partici pate in some way. You could ask a rhetorical question that makes the audience wonder where youre going with the speech, or you could ask for a show of hands in response to your question, which forces them to physically participate. In order for this to be an effective device, though, you have to make original its a good question If the question has an obvious answer, instead of drawing the audience in, youll turn them off For instance, I once had a student who started his speech with How many of you have ever watched television? The audience laughed and no luggage compartment raised their hands. The speaker then timidly said, No, really. Raise your hand if youve ever watched TV. The audiences sighed and grudgingly held up their hands. The audience felt that it was obvious that they had all seen TV before, and resented having to actually answer that question, so the speakers attention getter backfired.2. You could tell a joke. Humor is actually a wonderful way to cause a presentat ion. It lightens the mood and makes the audience want to hear more. Most speakers report feeling the most nervous right before starting their speech, so if you can tell a good joke and get the audience laughing, it will help you feel like theyre with you and youll start to relax. There are a couple of catches to this technique, though. First, the audience may expect you to continue to be funny throughout your speech. Second, you want to make sure its a good joke If you tell a joke, youve got wait for laughter written in your notes, no one laughs, and you can hear the crickets chirping, it will make you more nervous 3. You could use a quotation. If youre choosing the people you would invite to dinner or the books youd take to a deserted island, this could be a good attention device for you. Choose a powerful quotation from one of the people or a dramatic passage from one of your books, and it can help to set the mood of your speech.4. You could make a shocking statement or give a sur prising fact or statistic to begin the speech. A surprising fact about the subject can make the audience want to hear more about your subject and your research. 5. You could use a visual aid or physical demonstration to draw the audience in. For instance, if one of the objects youve chosen to represent yourself is something unusual, it may make the audience curious about what youll be discussing. I once had a student that opened his speech in a way that scared me to death. He stood up and started talking, when suddenly another man burst in the door and attacked him I was panicked I thought, Oh no, a fight Theyre going to kill each other salutary as I was getting ready to call security, it became irradiate that this was a pre-planned skit for a speech about self-defense. The speaker was showing how to get out of a hold by an attacker. It was frightening, but it definitely got our attention Not everyone is comfortable with being quite that dramatic, though, so feel free to use one o f the other techniques.6. A more subtle approach might be to tell a story. A story can gently draw the audience into your speech and topic. For instance, if I were doing my coat of arms speech, I might tell a story about a day at the amusement park. These are the main techniques speakers use to start a speech. You might also reference a historical event or a previous speaker. The main thing I want to get across to you is that you should NOT start a speech by stating the topic. Saying, My name is Cindy and today Im going to tell you about my coat of arms is boring and not likely to make the audience interested. Dont say, My speech is on or My topic is Use a good, well thought-out attention getter. Keep in mind as well that the attention getter MUST be related to the content of the speech in some way. Dont tell a random joke, for instance, tell a joke thats related to something youre actually going to talk about in your speech. I feel that the attention getter is one of the hardest pa rts of the speech to write, and I would save it as one of the last things I write. You want to know what your main content is going to be before you decide how to start the speech.These with Preview of Main PointsThe second part of the introduction is to have a clear thesis that previews the main points youll discuss in the body of the speech. Just like a paper has a central thesis its trying to get across to the reader, a speech has a central thesis its trying to get across to the listeners. The thesis takes your entire speech and summarizes it in one sentence. It is THE thing you want the audience to remember, even if they remember nothing else about your speech. The thesis includes a preview of the main points that will be discussed in the body of the speech as well. This means that Im literally going to state my main points in my introduction, as part of that thesis. For instance, a potential thesis for my coat of arms speech might be something like, Youll get to know me better once you see how much I like golf, travel, and roller coasters. outright the audience knows that Ill be discussing those three specific topics in my speech. One thing youll learn in this class is that most people arent particularly strong listeners, so you have to keep reminding them of what you want them to know. A general rule of speech making is tell em what youre going to tell em. Tell em. Then tell em what you just told em. The preview is telling them what youre going to tell them. Ive had some students in the past that really hated the idea of doing a preview.They were afraid it would make the speech boring and repetitive or that it was giving away all the potential suspense in their speech. Well, it might be a bit repetitive, but thats a necessary evil when dealing with oral communication. Its also still manageable to leave people in suspense while still previewing the body. For instance, in my three people Id invite to dinner speech I could have the thesis of The three peop le Id most like to have to dinner include a relative, a historical figure, and a cartoon character. Ive still previewed, but the audience wont know which relative, historical figure, or cartoon character Ive chosen until I talk about them in the body.