Listeners Laws to Public Speaking

Speech Organization in a Formal Speech Platform
1. Ho hum!
2. Why bring it up?
3. For instance!
4. So what?
Ho hum! – In the first section of your formal platform speech – START A FIRE!
Your speech is not well organized unless you kindle a quick flame of spontaneous interest in your first sentence.
Example : “It’s a God-dam hot day”, the clergyman began. (Later on in his speech, the clergyman clarified that an other person said it)
Why bring it up? – Build a bridge. Establish a connection between your opening fire statements and the rest of your speech. Explain briefly what relevance the topic has to the audience.
For instance – Get down to cases.
Listeners like speakers who serve their ‘for-instances’ as course dinners, not goulash!
So what? – Ask for action! – Some action response which it is within their power to give.
Example : Join! Contribute! Vote! Write! Telegraph! Buy! Boycott! Enlist! Investigate!
Chinese proverb of middle ages – To talk much and arrive nowhere is the same as climbing a tree to catch a fish.


Speech Organization in a Group Discussion
1. Decide on one specific reason why you are for or against the pending resolution.
2. Condense the specific reason selected for your conference comment into one unforgettable sentence.
3. Use your key-issue sentence as your opening sentence.
A proposal that is opened by a sentence which is clear, compact, and concrete – is usually worth-while.
4. Support your key-issue sentence with “for instances” that follow a straight line.
Stay on the “Main Street”
5. Repeat your key-issue sentence as your closing sentence.


Speech Organization in a Speech of Introduction
1. You must be brief.
2. You must avoid all stale or stilted phrases such as: “It is indeed a pleasure … a man who needs no introduction… we are gathered here tonight….”
3. You must avoid embarrassing the speaker by over-florid predictions of the treat that awaits the audience.
4. You must resist the temptation to exaggerate your speaker’s qualifications.
5. You must avoid giving your speaker false starts.
Example : “.. and so I take great pleasure … a man who is eminently qualified in many ways….” (makes the person tense!)
6. Above all, you must avoid the sin of spotlight stealing. Your purpose as an introducer is to help the speaker you are presenting to get off to a fast start – on the right foot.

The four questions to ask yourself before introducing somebody:
1. Why this subject?
2. Why this subject before this audience?
3. Why this subject before this audience at this time?
4. Why this subject before this audience at this time by this speaker?
SPEECH SUBSTANCE
1. Listeners like “for-instnaces” in story form.
2. Listeners like “for-instances” which involve famous people.
3. Listeners like “for-instances” which animate the pages of history.
4. Listeners like “for-instances” based on colorful analogies.
5. Listeners like “for-instances” which dramatize important statistics.
6. Listeners like “for instances” interwoven with visual aids.


SPEECH PHRASEOLOGY
Listeners like pleasing and sincere speeches.
1. Listeners like speech phraseology free from wax (they like sincere phrases)
Examples of wax : superlatives, trite expressions, groping expressions, repetitious expressions, “and so forth” expressions, weasel words.
2. Listeners like speech phraseology that is grammatically sure-footed.
Use plenty of periods.
3. Listeners like speech phraseology with good connective tissues instead of “and” all the time.
Use connectives like,
Notwithstanding….
Consequently….
In view of ….
Since….
After all….
Instead…
Gradually….
Despite….
Soon….
As a result…
Climaxing…

4. Listeners like speech phraseology that is conversational. Involve the audience as much as possible.
(a) Use grammatical contractions such as..
Wouldn’t you….
Doesn’t it seem to you….
Haven’t you ever….
(b) Freckly your phraseology with “you’s”!
5. Listeners like speech phraseology that is specific. Choose sentences and words which are specific.
Example : Say, “he passed between a shagbark hickory and a stunted blue spruce” instead of “he passed between 2 trees”
6. Listeners like speech phraseology that is picturesque.
Use metaphors and similies.
Nouns that bleed.
Verbs that sting and rattle.
7. Listeners like speech phraseology that is clear.
“Nine readers out of 10 take a lucid statement for a true one”.


SPEECH DELIVERY
The good speaker does not deliver with his voice alone.
Deliver with the full resources of your personality. Deliver both to your listeners’ ears – and to his eyes!
How to please you listener’s eyes:
1. Look at your listeners.
(Listeners like to feel they are influencing what you say)
2. Look at your listeners all the time.
Maintain eye contact.
3. Look at all your listeners.
Distribution of contact is as important as its maintenance.
4. Actually see your listeners.
Look at the listeners as individuals, rather than as a composite blur. Look at a given listener with friendly, alert focused eyes.
5. Maintain an alert body carriage.
Merely balance your weight alertly on both feet. Let you arms hang alertly at your sides, ready for instant action.
Carry your center of gravity alertly – slightly forward.
6. Make your body behave.
Use your nervousness to keep this vital electric charge from expressing itself in the form of distracting mechanisms.
Relax arms and fingers.
7. Gesture! – don’t gesticulate.
Use your hands to describe.
Use your hands to punctuate.
(a) Start your gestures from the shoulder.
(b) Lift your gestures well above sea-level.
(c) Start the upstroke of gesture well in advance of the word selected for emphasis.
(d) Make the downstroke of your gesture “click” cleanly on a selected syllable.
(e) As soon as your gesture “clicks”, drop your arm to your side – without an aftermath of flourish or handswinging.
Listeners like gestures which accomplish their purpose so simply that only the effect is noted – not the gestures themselves.
(f) Gesture with “live” fingers.
Hold an imaginary pineapple in your hand when you gesture. Not with limpy, weakly closed fingers.
(g) Gesture with discrimination.
How to please your listeners’ ears
1. Talk – don’t orate.
2. Talk animatedly -
(a) Change pitch
(b) Change volume
Emphasize important words with higher volume.
(c) Change rate between 90 to 160 words per minute depending on the relevance of the sentences.
3. Talk clearly! –
Talk with your accuracy of enunciation that the foreign guest will readily identify your words.
4. Talk with composure
Eliminate poor pauses.
Pause Principles:
i. Make sure that your pauses punctuate rather than mutilate.
ii. Avoid nervous pauses after prepositions and articles.
iii. When you pause, pause cleanly.
The worst foe of vocal composure is the pause whisker – the deadly “ER-R-R”!