Public Speaking Article # 3

Tuesday, August 04, 2009

20 new creative ideas you can do to make your speech different

Give a speech:

1. Doing exercise
2. About a snake holding a live snake in your hand
3. Having more than 10 props
4. Sitting down through out
5. Using a ‘live’ person
6. Using a power point to state a point throughout the speech
7. Walking around the whole room
8. Without knowing what you would speak about
9. Without moving from your place
10. About quiz speech
11. Involving the audience throughout
12. Where you ‘cook’ and show
13. While playing with a football
14. Moving only one hand
15. Speaking behind the lectern
16. Speaking with your back to the audience
17. About someone in the audience
18. About an incident you read in the newpaper – the very morning before the meeting
19. Reading from a paper (which is actually blank but the audience never knows)
20. When you are dressed at the worst
21. When you have pictures of something else moving around
22. Which is nothing but a total rubbish exaggerated story
23. Serving everyone with delicious snacks
24. About something totally abstract – like ‘Life of the number 7’
25. Which is totally opposite to your personality and beliefs.

Public Speaking Article # 2
Tuesday, August 04, 2009

Formats of how I have constructed speeches.

Please note that the percentage that I have mentioned here is based on the fact that the speech is 100%. Out of which how much is the Opening, Body and Conclusion is stated separately.

Format 1 (which I used in my starting days as a speaker in school)
 5% Opening - One line or few lines of Opening.
 90% Body - Major is the Body – which consisted of facts or opinions.
 5% Conclusion - One or two lines as the Conclusion.

Format 2 (which I used in my college days)
 15% for the Opening - Paragraphs consists of a shocking statement or facts
 60% for the Body – Divided into 3 sub paragraphs which support the same theme with examples each taking 20% each
 15% for the Conclusion – I sum up everything here.

Format 3 (which I used in my 2004 toastmaster competition)
 40% Opening – which is a suspense story. And may be after 2 minutes came the introduction.
 40% Body with opinions & facts
 20% Conclusion with a wrap up.

Format 4 (which I used in my 2008 toastmaster competition)
 5% Opening – which was just a statement (that I repeated throughout my speech)
 80%% Body with opinions & facts & single big story
 15% Conclusion with new examples, facts and then conclusion

Format 5 (which I used in my 2009 toastmaster competition)
 20% Opening with Example Number 1
 20% Body Example Number 2
 20% Body Example Number 3
 20% Body Example Number 4
 20% Conclusion with wrap up.

I gave a very good speech. But I didn’t get voted as the ‘best speaker’ – Why?

Public Speaking Article # 1 (for toastmasters club members)

Tuesday, August 04, 2009

I gave a very good speech. But I didn’t get voted as the ‘best speaker’ – Why?

Have you ever given the best over all speech but didn’t get voted as the ‘best speaker’?

Have you ever been to club and watched this happen?

Have you ever wondered WHY is it something this ever happened?

In my experience, these could be the 10 possible reasons:

1) The audience may not be experienced enough to know a good speech from a not so good speech.

2) Some of the audience members go with their ‘gut feeling’ when it may not be the ‘right’ thing to do

3) A popular crowd favorite speaker was competing against you.

4) The ‘Halo’ effect comes into play – the speaker you are competing against is known to be ‘good’. So whatever he does – even if it’s a bad speech, is considered good.

5) The audience has voted on something that was ‘different’ about the speaker which in no way was related to the speech (could be very good attire, good speaking skills, good vocabulary or even good looks)

6) Sympathy vote – Ever had a very young speaker or a handicapped person win a prize simply because of their condition or nervousness?

7) Audience having ‘pre-conceived notions’ about what constitutes a good speech or good speaker

8) Personal bias – I don’t like that guy or that woman

9) Having wrong standards of judging – Oh him! He has been speaking for 10 years and she has only 2 years speaking experience. So let me encourage her today.

10) Toss of coin – Both were good. So let me flip a coin and decide.