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9 Delivering a Speech

Introduction

9.1 Managing Public Speaking Anxiety

Sources of speaking anxiety.

Aside from the self-reported data in national surveys that rank the fear of public speaking high for Americans, decades of research conducted by communication scholars shows that communication apprehension is common among college students (Priem & Solomon, 2009). Communication apprehension (CA) is fear or anxiety experienced by a person due to real or perceived communication with another person or persons. CA is a more general term that includes multiple forms of communication, not just public speaking. Seventy percent of college students experience some CA, which means that addressing communication anxiety in a class like the one you are taking now stands to benefit the majority of students (Priem & Solomon, 2009). Think about the jitters you get before a first date, a job interview, or the first day of school. The novelty or uncertainty of some situations is a common trigger for communication anxiety, and public speaking is a situation that is novel and uncertain for many.

Public speaking anxiety is a type of CA that produces physiological, cognitive, and behavioral reactions in people when faced with a real or imagined presentation (Bodie, 2010). Physiological responses to public speaking anxiety include increased heart rate, flushing of the skin or face, and sweaty palms, among other things. These reactions are the result of natural chemical processes in the human body. The fight or flight instinct helped early humans survive threatening situations. When faced with a ferocious saber-toothed tiger, for example, the body released adrenaline, cortisol, and other hormones that increased heart rate and blood pressure to get more energy to the brain, organs, and muscles in order to respond to the threat. We can be thankful for this evolutionary advantage, but our physiology has not caught up with our new ways of life. Our body does not distinguish between the causes of stressful situations, so facing down an audience releases the same hormones as facing down a wild beast.

Cognitive reactions to public speaking anxiety often include intrusive thoughts that can increase anxiety: “People are judging me,” “I’m not going to do well,” and “I’m going to forget what to say.” These thoughts are reactions to the physiological changes in the body but also bring in the social/public aspect of public speaking in which speakers fear being negatively judged or evaluated because of their anxiety. The physiological and cognitive responses to anxiety lead to behavioral changes. All these thoughts may lead someone to stop their speech and return to their seat or leave the classroom. Anticipating these reactions can also lead to avoidance behavior where people intentionally avoid situations where they will have to speak in public.

Addressing Public Speaking Anxiety

While we cannot stop the innate physiological reactions related to anxiety from occurring, we do have some control over how we cognitively process them and the behaviors that result. Research on public speaking anxiety has focused on three key ways to address this common issue: systematic desensitization, cognitive restructuring, and skills training (Bodie,2010).

Although systematic desensitization may sound like something done to you while strapped down in the basement of a scary hospital, it actually refers to the fact that we become less anxious about something when we are exposed to it more often (Bodie, 2010). As was mentioned earlier, the novelty and uncertainty of public speaking is a source for many people’s anxiety. So becoming more familiar with public speaking by speaking more often can logically reduce the novelty and uncertainty of it.

Systematic desensitization can result from imagined or real exposure to anxiety-inducing scenarios. In some cases, an instructor leads a person through a series of relaxation techniques. Once relaxed, the person is asked to imagine a series of scenarios including speech preparation and speech delivery. This is something you could also try to do on your own before giving a speech. Imagine yourself going through the process of preparing and practicing a speech, then delivering the speech, then returning to your seat, which concludes the scenario. Aside from this imagined exposure to speaking situations, taking a communication course like this one is a great way to engage directly in systematic desensitization. Almost all students report that they have less speaking anxiety at the end of a semester than when they started, which is at least partially due to the fact they engaged with speaking more than they would have done if they were not taking the class.

Cognitive Restructuring

Cognitive restructuring entails changing the way we think about something. A first step in restructuring how we deal with public speaking anxiety is to cognitively process through our fears to realize that many of the thoughts associated with public speaking anxiety are irrational (Allen, Hunter & Donohue, 2009). For example, people report a fear of public speaking over a fear of snakes, heights, financial ruin, or even death. It’s irrational to think that the consequences of giving a speech in public are more dire than getting bit by a rattlesnake, falling off a building, or dying. People also fear being embarrassed because they mess up. Well, you cannot literally die from embarrassment, and in reality, audiences are very forgiving and overlook or do not even notice many errors that we, as speakers, may dwell on. Once we realize that the potential negative consequences of giving a speech are not as dire as we think they are, we can move on to other cognitive restructuring strategies.

Communication-orientation modification therapy (COM therapy) is a type of cognitive restructuring that encourages people to think of public speaking as a conversation rather than a performance (Motley, 2009). Many people have a performance-based view of public speaking. This can easily be seen in the language that some students use to discuss public speaking. They say that they “rehearse” their speech, deal with “stage fright,” then “perform” their speech on a “stage.” There is no stage at the front of the classroom; it is a normal floor. To get away from a performance orientation, we can reword the previous statements to say that they “practice” their speech, deal with “public speaking anxiety,” then “deliver” their speech from the front of the room. Viewing public speaking as a conversation also helps with confidence. After all, you obviously have some conversation skills, or you would not have made it to college. We engage in conversations every day. We do not have to write everything we are going to say out on a note card, we do not usually get nervous or anxious in regular conversations, and we are usually successful when we try. Even though we do not engage in public speaking as much, we speak to others in public all the time. Thinking of public speaking as a type of conversation helps you realize that you already have accumulated experiences and skills that you can draw from, so you are not starting from scratch.

Last, positive visualization is another way to engage in cognitive restructuring. Speaking anxiety often leads people to view public speaking negatively. They are more likely to judge a speech they gave negatively, even if it was good. They are also likely to set up negative self-fulfilling prophecies that will hinder their performance in future speeches. To use positive visualization, it is best to engage first in some relaxation exercises such as deep breathing or stretching, and then play through vivid images in your mind of giving a successful speech. Do this a few times before giving the actual speech. Students sometimes question the power of positive visualization, thinking that it sounds corny. Ask an Olympic diver what his or her coach says to do before jumping off the diving board and the answer will probably be “Coach says to image completing a perfect 10 dive.” Likewise a Marine sharpshooter would likely say his commanding officer says to imagine hitting the target before pulling the trigger. In both instances, positive visualization is being used in high-stakes situations. If it is good enough for Olympic athletes and snipers, it is good enough for public speakers.

Skills training is a strategy for managing public speaking anxiety that focuses on learning skills that will improve specific speaking behaviors. These skills may relate to any part of the speech-making process, including topic selection, research and organization, delivery, and self-evaluation. Skills training, like systematic desensitization, makes the public speaking process more familiar for a speaker, which lessens uncertainty. In addition, targeting specific areas and then improving on them builds more confidence, which can in turn lead to more improvement. Feedback is important to initiate and maintain this positive cycle of improvement. You can use the constructive criticism that you get from your instructor and peers in this class to target specific areas of improvement.

Self-evaluation is also an important part of skills training. Make sure to evaluate yourself within the context of your assignment or job and the expectations for the speech. Do not get sidetracked by a small delivery error if the expectations for content far outweigh the expectations for delivery. Combine your self-evaluation with the feedback from your instructor, boss, and/or peers to set specific and measurable goals and then assess whether or not you meet them in subsequent speeches. Once you achieve a goal, mark it off your list and use it as a confidence booster. If you do not achieve a goal, figure out why and adjust your strategies to try to meet it in the future.

Physical Relaxation Exercises

Suggestions for managing speaking anxiety typically address its cognitive and behavioral components, while the physical components are left unattended. While we cannot block these natural and instinctual responses, we can engage in physical relaxation exercises to counteract the general physical signs of anxiety caused by cortisol and adrenaline release, which include increased heart rate, trembling, flushing, high blood pressure, and speech disfluency.

Some breathing and stretching exercises release endorphins, which are your body’s natural antidote to stress hormones. Deep breathing is a proven way to release endorphins. It also provides a general sense of relaxation and can be done discretely, even while waiting to speak. In order to get the benefits of deep breathing, you must breathe into your diaphragm. The diaphragm is the muscle below your lungs that helps you breathe and stand up straight, which makes it a good muscle for a speaker to exercise. To start, breathe in slowly through your nose, filling the bottom parts of your lungs up with air. While doing this, your belly should pooch out. Hold the breath for three to five full seconds and then let it out slowly through your mouth. After doing this only a few times, many students report that they can actually feel a flooding of endorphins, which creates a brief “light-headed” feeling. Once you practice and are comfortable with the technique, you can do this before you start your speech, and no one sitting around you will even notice. You might also want to try this technique during other stressful situations. Deep breathing before dealing with an angry customer or loved one, or before taking a test, can help you relax and focus.

Stretching is another way to release endorphins. Very old exercise traditions like yoga, tai chi, and Pilates teach the idea that stretching is a key component of having a healthy mind and spirit. Exercise in general is a good stress reliever, but many of us do not have the time or willpower to do it. However, we can take time to do some stretching. Obviously, it would be distracting for the surrounding audience if a speaker broke into some planking or Pilates just before his or her speech. Simple and discrete stretches can help get the body’s energy moving around, which can make a speaker feel more balanced and relaxed. Our blood and our energy/ stress have a tendency to pool in our legs, especially when we are sitting.

Vocal Warm-Up Exercises

Vocal warm-up exercises are a good way to warm up your face and mouth muscles, which can help prevent some of the fluency issues that occur when speaking. Newscasters, singers, and other professional speakers use vocal warm-ups. I lead my students in vocal exercises before speeches, which also helps lighten the mood. We all stand in a circle and look at each other while we go through our warm-up list. For the first warm-up, we all make a motorboat sound, which makes everybody laugh. The full list of warm-ups follows and contains specific words and exercises designed to warm up different muscles and different aspects of your voice. After going through just a few, you should be able to feel the blood circulating in your face muscles more. It is a surprisingly good workout!

Top Ten Ways to Reduce Speaking Anxiety

Many factors contribute to speaking anxiety. There are also many ways to address it. The following is a list of the top ten ways to reduce speaking anxiety that I developed with my colleagues, which helps review what we have learned.

• Remember, you are not alone. Public speaking anxiety is common, so do not ignore it—confront it.
• Remember, you cannot literally “die of embarrassment.” Audiences are forgiving and understanding.
• Remember, it always feels worse than it looks.
• Take deep breaths. It releases endorphins, which naturally fight the adrenaline that causes anxiety.
• Look the part. Dress professionally to enhance confidence.
• Channel your nervousness into positive energy and motivation.
• Start your outline and research early. Better information = higher confidence.
• Practice and get feedback from a trusted source. (Do not just practice for your cat.)
• Visualize success through positive thinking.
• Prepare, prepare, prepare! Practice is a speaker’s best friend.

9.2 Delivery Methods and Practice Sessions

There are many decisions to make during the speech-making process. Making informed decisions about delivery can help boost your confidence and manage speaking anxiety. In this section, we will learn about the strengths and weaknesses of various delivery methods. We will also learn how to make the most of your practice sessions.

Delivery Methods

Different speaking occasions call for different delivery methods. While it may be acceptable to speak from memory in some situations, lengthy notes may be required in others. The four most common delivery methods are impromptu, manuscript, memorized, and extemporaneous.

Impromptu Delivery

When using impromptu delivery , a speaker has little to no time to prepare for a speech (LibreTexts, 2021). This means there is little time for research, audience analysis, organizing, and practice. For this reason, impromptu speaking often evokes higher degrees of speaking anxiety than other delivery types. Although impromptu speaking arouses anxiety, it is also a good way to build public speaking skills. Using some of the exercises for managing speaking anxiety discussed earlier in this chapter can help a speaker manage the challenges of impromptu speaking (LibreTexts, 2021). Only skilled public speakers with much experience are usually able to “pull off” an impromptu delivery without looking unprepared. Otherwise, a speaker who is very familiar with the subject matter can sometimes be a competent impromptu speaker, because their expertise can compensate for the lack of research and organizing time.

When Mark Twain famously said, “It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech,” he was jokingly pointing out the difficulties of giving a good impromptu speech, essentially saying that there is no such thing as a good impromptu speech, as good speeches take time to prepare. We do not always have the luxury of preparation, though. So when speaking impromptu, be brief, stick to what you know, and avoid rambling. Quickly organize your thoughts into an introduction, body, and conclusion. Try to determine three key ideas that will serve as the basis of your main points.

When would impromptu speaking be used? Since we have already started thinking of the similarities between public speaking and conversations, we can clearly see that most of our day-to-day interactions involve impromptu speaking. When your roommate asks you what your plans for the weekend are, you do not pull a few note cards out of your back pocket to prompt your response. This type of conversational impromptu speaking is not anxiety inducing because we are talking about our lives, experiences, or something with which we are familiar. This is also usually the case when we are asked to speak publicly with little to no advance warning.

For example, if you are at a meeting for work and you are representing the public relations department, a colleague may ask you to say a few words about a recent news story involving a public relations misstep of a competing company. In this case, you are being asked to speak on the spot because of your expertise. A competent communicator should anticipate instances like this when they might be asked to speak. Of course, being caught completely off guard or being asked to comment on something unfamiliar to you creates more anxiety. In such cases, do not pretend to know something you do not, as that may come back to hurt you later. You can usually mention that you do not have the necessary background information at that time but will follow up later with your comments.

Manuscript Delivery

Speaking from a written or printed document that contains the entirety of a speech is known as manuscript delivery . Manuscript delivery can be the best choice when a speech has complicated information and/or the contents of the speech are going to be quoted or published (LibreTexts, 2021). Despite the fact that most novice speakers are not going to find themselves in that situation, many are drawn to this delivery method because of the security they feel with having everything they are going to say in front of them. Unfortunately, the security of having every word you want to say at your disposal translates to a poorly delivered and unengaging speech (LibreTexts, 2021). Even with every word written out, speakers can still have fluency hiccups and verbal fillers as they lose their place in the manuscript or trip over their words. The alternative, of course, is that a speaker reads the manuscript the whole time, effectively cutting himself or herself off from the audience. One way to make a manuscript delivery more engaging is to use a teleprompter. Almost all politicians who give televised addresses use them.

To make the delivery seem more natural, print the speech out in a larger-than-typical font, triple-space between lines so you can easily find your place, use heavier-than-normal paper so it is easy to pick up and turn the pages as needed, and use a portfolio so you can carry the manuscript securely.

Memorized Delivery

Completely memorizing a speech and delivering it without notes is known as memorized delivery (LibreTexts, 2021). Some students attempt to memorize their speech because they think it will make them feel more confident if they do not have to look at their notes; however, when their anxiety level spikes at the beginning of their speech and their mind goes blank for a minute, many admit they should have chosen a different delivery method. When using any of the other delivery methods, speakers still need to rely on their memory. An impromptu speaker must recall facts or experiences related to their topic, and speakers using a manuscript want to have some of their content memorized so they do not read their entire speech to their audience. The problem with memorized delivery overall is that it puts too much responsibility on our memory, which we all know from experience is fallible (LibreTexts, 2021).

Even with much practice, our memories can fail. If you do opt to use memorized delivery, make sure you have several “entry points” determined, so you can pick up at spots other than the very beginning of a speech if you lose your place and have to start again. Memorized delivery is very useful for speakers who are going to be moving around during a speech when carrying notes would be burdensome. I only recommend memorized delivery in cases where the speech is short (only one to two minutes), the speech is personal (like a brief toast), or the speech will be repeated numerous times (like a tour guide’s story), and even in these cases, it may be perfectly fine to have notes. Many students think that their anxiety and/or delivery challenges will vanish if they just memorize their speech only to find that they are more anxious and have more problems.

Extemporaneous Delivery

Extemporaneous delivery entails memorizing the overall structure and main points of a speech and then speaking from keyword/key-phrase notes (LibreTexts, 2021). This delivery mode brings together many of the strengths of the previous three methods. Since you only internalize and memorize the main structure of a speech, you do not have to worry as much about the content and delivery seeming stale. Extemporaneous delivery brings in some of the spontaneity of impromptu delivery but still allows a speaker to carefully plan the overall structure of a speech and incorporate supporting materials that include key facts, quotations, and paraphrased information (LibreTexts, 2021). You can also more freely adapt your speech to fit various audiences and occasions, since not every word and sentence is predetermined. This can be especially beneficial when you deliver a speech multiple times.

When preparing a speech that you will deliver extemporaneously, you will want to start practicing your speech early and then continue to practice as you revise your content. Investing quality time and effort into the speech-outlining process helps with extemporaneous delivery. As you put together your outline, you are already doing the work of internalizing the key structure of your speech. Read parts of your outline aloud as you draft them to help ensure they are written in a way that makes sense and is easy for you to deliver.

By the time you complete the formal, full-sentence outline, you should have already internalized much of the key information in your speech. Now, you can begin practicing with the full outline. As you become more comfortable with the content of your full outline, start to convert it into your speaking outline. Take out information that you know well and replace it with a keyword or key phrase that prompts your memory. You will probably want to leave key quotes, facts, and other paraphrased information, including your verbal source citation information, on your delivery outline so you make sure to include it in your speech. Once you’ve converted your full outline into your speaking outline, practice it a few more times, making sure to take some time between each practice session so you don’t inadvertently start to memorize the speech word for word. The final product should be a confident delivery of a well-organized and structured speech that is conversational and adaptable to various audiences and occasions.

Practicing Your Speech

Practicing a speech is essential, and practice sessions can be more or less useful depending on how you approach them (Dlugan, 2008). There are three primary phases to the practice process. In the first phase, you practice as you are working through your ideas and drafting your outline. In the second, you practice for someone and get feedback (Dlugan, 2008). In the third, you put the final changes on the speech.

Start practicing your speech early, as you are working through your ideas, by reading sections aloud as you draft them into your working outline. This will help ensure your speech is fluent and sounds good for the audience. Start to envision the audience while you practice and continue to think about them throughout the practicing process. This will help minimize anxiety when you actually have them sitting in front of you. Once you have completed your research and finished a draft of your outline, you will have already practiced your speech several times, as you were putting it together. Now, you can get feedback on the speech as a whole.

You begin to solicit feedback from a trusted source in the second phase of practicing your speech (Dlugan, 2008). This is the most important phase of practicing, and the one that most speakers do not complete. Beginning speakers may be nervous to practice in front of someone. That is normal. However, review the strategies for managing anxiety discussed earlier in this chapter and try to face that anxiety. After all, you will have to face a full audience when you deliver the speech, so getting used to speaking in front of someone can only help you at this point. Choose someone who will give you constructive feedback on your speech. Before you practice for them, explain the assignment or purpose of the speech. When practicing for a classroom speech, you may even want to give the person the assignment guidelines or a feedback sheet that has some key things for them to look for. Ask them for feedback on content and delivery. Almost anyone is good at evaluating delivery, but it is more difficult to evaluate content. In addition, in most cases, the content of your speech will be account for more of your grade. Also, begin to time your speech at this point, so you can determine if it meets any time limits that you have.

In addition to practicing for a trusted source for feedback, you may want to audio or video record your speech (Dlugan, 2008). This can be useful because it provides an objective record that you can then compare with the feedback you got from your friend and to your own evaluation of your speech. The most important part of this phase is incorporating the feedback you receive into your speech. If you practice for someone, get feedback, and then do not do anything with the feedback, then you have wasted your time and theirs. Use the feedback to assess whether or not you met your speaking goals. Was your thesis supported? Was your specific purpose met? Did your speech conform to any time limits that were set? Based on your answers to these questions, you may need to make some changes to your content or delivery, so do not put this part of practicing off to the last minute. Once the content has been revised as needed, draft your speaking outline and move on to the next phase of practice.

During the third and final phase of practice, you are putting the final changes on your speech. You should be familiar with the content based on your early practice sessions. You have also gotten feedback and incorporated that feedback into the speech. Your practice sessions at this point should pre-create, as much as possible, the conditions in which you will be giving your speech. You should have your speaking outline completed so you can practice with it. It is important to be familiar with the content on your note cards or speaking outline so you will not need to rely on it so much during the actual delivery. You may also want to practice in the type of clothing you will be wearing on speech day. This can be useful if you are wearing something you do not typically wear—a suit for example—so you can see how it might affect your posture, gestures, and overall comfort level.

If possible, at least one practice session in the place you will be giving the speech can be very helpful; especially if it is a room you are not familiar with. Make sure you are practicing with any visual aids or technology you will use so you can be familiar with it and it does not affect your speech fluency. (Dlugan, 2008).Continue to time each practice round. If you are too short or too long, you will need to go back and adjust your content some more. Always adjust your content to fit the time limit; do not try to adjust your delivery. Trying to speed talk or stretch things out to make a speech faster or longer is a mistake that will ultimately hurt your delivery, which will hurt your credibility. The overall purpose of this phase of practicing is to minimize surprises that might throw you off on speech day.

Vocal Delivery

Vocal delivery includes components of speech delivery that relate to your voice. These include rate, volume, pitch, articulation, pronunciation, and fluency. Our voice is important to consider when delivering our speech for two main reasons. First, vocal delivery can help us engage and interest the audience. Second, vocal delivery helps ensure we communicate our ideas clearly.

Speaking for Engagement

We have all had the displeasure of listening to an unengaging speaker. Even though the person may care about his or her topic, an unengaging delivery that does not communicate enthusiasm will translate into a lack of interest for most audience members (Davis, 2021). Although a speaker can be visually engaging by incorporating movement and gestures, a flat or monotone vocal delivery can be sedating or even annoying. Incorporating vocal variety in terms of rate, volume, and pitch is key to being a successful speaker.

Rate of speaking refers to how fast or slow you speak (Barnard, 2018). If you speak too fast, your audience will not be able to absorb the information you present. If you speak too slowly, the audience may lose interest. The key is to vary your rate of speaking in a middle range, staying away from either extreme, in order to keep your audience engaged. In general, a higher rate of speaking signals that a speaker is enthusiastic about his or her topic. Speaking slowly may lead the audience to infer that the speaker is uninterested, uninformed, or unprepared to present his or her own topic. These negative assumptions, whether they are true or not, are likely to hurt the credibility of the speaker (Barnard, 2018). The goal is to speak at a rate that will interest the audience and will effectively convey your information. Speaking at a slow rate throughout a speech would likely bore an audience, but that is not a common occurrence.

Volume refers to how loud or soft your voice is. As with speaking rate, you want to avoid the extremes of being too loud or too soft, but still vary your volume within an acceptable middle range (Packard, 2020). When speaking in a typically sized classroom or office setting that seats about twenty-five people, using a volume a few steps above a typical conversational volume is usually sufficient. When speaking in larger rooms, you will need to project your voice. You may want to look for nonverbal cues from people in the back rows or corners, like leaning forward or straining to hear, to see if you need to adjust your volume more. Obviously, in some settings, a microphone will be necessary so the entire audience can hear you. Like rate, audiences use volume to make a variety of judgments about a speaker. Sometimes, softer speakers are judged as meek (Packard, 2020). This may lead to lowered expectations for the speech or less perceived credibility. Loud speakers may be seen as overbearing or annoying, which can lead audience members to disengage from the speaker and message. Be aware of the volume of your voice and, when in doubt, increase your volume a notch, since beginning speakers are more likely to have an issue of speaking too softly rather than too loudly.

Pitch refers to how high or low a speaker’s voice is. As with other vocal qualities, there are natural variations among people’s vocal pitch. Unlike rate and volume, we have less control over pitch. For example, males generally have lower pitched voices than females. Despite these limitations, each person still has the capability to change their pitch across a range large enough to engage an audience. Changing pitch is a good way to communicate enthusiasm and indicate emphasis or closure (Scotti, 2015). In general, our pitch goes up when we are discussing something exciting. Our pitch goes down slightly when we emphasize a serious or important point. Lowering pitch is also an effective way to signal transitions between sections of your speech or the end of your speech, which cues your audience to applaud and avoids an awkward ending.

Of the vocal components of delivery discussed so far, pitch seems to give beginning speakers the most difficulty. It is as if giving a speech temporarily numbs their ability to vary their pitch. Record yourself practicing your speech to help determine if the amount of pitch variety and enthusiasm you think you convey while speaking actually comes through. Speakers often assume that their pitch is more varied and their delivery more enthusiastic than the audience actually perceives it to be (Scotti, 2015). Many students note this on the self-evaluations they write after viewing their recorded speech.

Vocal Variety

Overall, the lesson to take away from this section on vocal delivery is that variety is key. Vocal variety includes changes in your rate, volume, and pitch that can make you look more prepared, seem more credible, and be able to engage your audience better (Moore, 2015). Employing vocal variety is not something that takes natural ability or advanced skills training. It is something that beginning speakers can start working on immediately and everyone can accomplish. The key is to become aware of how you use your voice when you speak, and the best way to do this is to record yourself (Moore, 2015). We all use vocal variety naturally without thinking about it during our regular conversations, and many of us think that this tendency will translate over to our speaking voices. This is definitely not the case for most beginning speakers. Unlike in your regular conversations, it will take some awareness and practice to use vocal variety in speeches. I encourage students to make this a delivery priority early on. Since it is something anyone can do, improving in this area will add to your speaking confidence, which usually translates into better speeches and better grades further on.

Speaking for Clarity

In order to be an effective speaker, your audience should be able to understand your message and digest the information you present (Rampton, 2021). Audience members will make assumptions about our competence and credibility based on how we speak. As with other aspects of speech delivery, many people are not aware that they have habits of speech that interfere with their message clarity. Since most of our conversations are informal and take place with people we know, many people do not make a concerted effort to articulate every word clearly and pronounce every word correctly (Rampton, 2021). Most of the people we talk to either do not notice our errors or do not correct us if they do notice. Since public speaking is generally more formal than our conversations, we should be more concerned with the clarity of our speech.

Articulation

Articulation refers to the clarity of sounds and words we produce. If someone is articulate, they speak words clearly, and speakers should strive to speak clearly. Poor articulation results when speakers do not speak clearly (Ward, 2020). For example, a person may say dinnt instead of didn’t , gonna instead of going to , wanna instead of want to , or hunnerd instead of hundred . Unawareness and laziness are two common challenges to articulation. As with other aspects of our voice, many people are unaware that they regularly have errors in articulation. Recording yourself speak and then becoming a higher self-monitor are effective ways to improve your articulation. Laziness, on the other hand, requires a little more motivation to address. Some people just get in the habit of not articulating their words well. Both mumbling and slurring are examples of poor articulation. In informal settings, this type of speaking may be acceptable, but in formal settings, it will be evaluated negatively. It will hurt a speaker’s credibility. Perhaps the promise of being judged more favorably is enough to motivate a mumbler to speak more clearly.

When combined with a low volume, poor articulation becomes an even greater problem. Doing vocal warm-ups like the ones listed in Section 10.1 “Managing Public Speaking Anxiety” or tongue twisters can help prime your mouth, lips, and tongue to articulate words more clearly. When you notice that you have trouble articulating a particular word, you can either choose a different word to include in your speech or you can repeat it a few times in a row in the days leading up to your speech to get used to saying it.

Pronunciation

Unlike articulation, which focuses on the clarity of words, pronunciation refers to speaking words correctly, including the proper sounds of the letters and the proper emphasis (Shtern, 2017). Mispronouncing words can damage a speaker’s credibility, especially when the correct pronunciation of a word is commonly known. We all commonly run into words that we are unfamiliar with and therefore may not know how to pronounce. Here are three suggestions when faced with this problem. First, look the word up in an online dictionary. Many dictionaries have a speaker icon with their definitions, and when you click on it, you can hear the correct pronunciation of a word. Some words have more than one pronunciation—for example, Caribbean —so choosing either of the accepted pronunciations is fine. Just remember to use consistently that pronunciation to avoid confusing your audience. If a word does not include an audio pronunciation, you can usually find the phonetic spelling of a word, which is the word spelled out the way it sounds.

Second, there will occasionally be words that you cannot locate in a dictionary. These are typically proper nouns or foreign words. In this case, use the “phone-a-friend” strategy. Call up the people you know who have large vocabularies or are generally smart when it comes to words, and ask them if they know how to pronounce it. If they do, and you find them credible, you are probably safe to take their suggestion.

Third, “fake it ‘til you make it” should only be used as a last resort. If you cannot find the word in a dictionary and your smart friends do not know how to pronounce it, it is likely that your audience will also be unfamiliar with the word. In that case, using your knowledge of how things are typically pronounced, decide on a pronunciation that makes sense and confidently use it during your speech. Most people will not question it. In the event that someone does correct you on your pronunciation, thank him or her for correcting you and adjust your pronunciation.

Fluency refers to the flow of your speaking. To speak with fluency means that your speech flows well and that there are not many interruptions to that flow. Two main disfluencies or problems affect the flow of a speech. Fluency hiccups are unintended pauses in a speech that usually result from forgetting what you were saying, being distracted, or losing your place in your speaking notes. Fluency hiccups are not the same as intended pauses, which are useful for adding emphasis or transitioning between parts of a speech. While speakers should try to minimize fluency hiccups, even experienced speakers need to take an unintended pause sometimes to get their bearings or to recover from an unexpected distraction. Fluency hiccups become a problem when they happen regularly enough to detract from the speaker’s message.

Verbal fillers are words that speakers use to fill in a gap between what they were saying and what they are saying next (Hennessy, 2019). Common verbal fillers include um , uh , ah , er , you know , and like . The best way to minimize verbal fillers is to become a higher self-monitor and realize that you use them. Many students are surprised when they watch the video of their first speech and realize they said “um” thirty times in three minutes. Gaining that awareness is the first step in eliminating verbal fillers, and students make noticeable progress with this between their first and second speeches (Hennessy, 2019). If you do lose your train of thought, having a brief fluency hiccup is better than injecting a verbal filler, because the audience may not even notice the pause or may think it was intentional.

9.3 Physical Delivery

Physical delivery.

Many speakers are more nervous about physical delivery than vocal delivery. Putting our bodies on the line in front of an audience often makes us feel more vulnerable than putting our voice out there. Yet most audiences are not as fixated on our physical delivery as we think they are. Knowing this can help relieve some anxiety, but it does not give us a free pass when it comes to physical delivery. We should still practice for physical delivery that enhances our verbal message. Physical delivery of a speech involves nonverbal communication through the face and eyes, gestures, and body movements.

Physical Delivery and the Face

We tend to look at a person’s face when we are listening to them (Hoffler, 2016). Again, this often makes people feel uncomfortable and contributes to their overall speaking anxiety. Many speakers do not like the feeling of having “all eyes” on them, even though having a room full of people avoiding making eye contact with you would be much more awkward. Remember, it is a good thing for audience members to look at you, because it means they are paying attention and interested. Audiences look toward the face of the speaker for cues about the tone and content of the speech.

Facial Expressions

Facial expressions can help bring a speech to life when used by a speaker to communicate emotions and demonstrate enthusiasm for the speech (Hoffler, 2016). As with vocal variety, we tend to use facial expressions naturally and without conscious effort when engaging in day-to-day conversations. Yet many speakers’ expressive faces turn “deadpan” when they stand in front of an audience. Some people naturally have more expressive faces than others do have—think about the actor Jim Carey’s ability to contort his face as an example. However, we can also consciously control and improve on our facial expressions to be speakers that are more effective. As with other components of speech delivery, becoming a higher self-monitor and increasing your awareness of your typical delivery habits can help you understand, control, and improve your delivery. Although you should not only practice your speech in front of a mirror, doing so can help you get an idea of how expressive or unexpressive your face is while delivering your speech.

Facial expressions help set the emotional tone for a speech, and it is important that your facial expressions stay consistent with your message (Hoffler, 2016). In order to set a positive tone before you start speaking, briefly look at the audience and smile. A smile is a simple but powerful facial expression that can communicate friendliness, openness, and confidence. Facial expressions communicate a range of emotions and are associated with various moods or personality traits.

For example, combinations of facial expressions can communicate that a speaker is tired, excited, angry, confused, frustrated, sad, confident, smug, shy, or bored, among other things. Even if you are not bored, for example, a slack face with little animation may lead an audience to think that you are bored with your own speech, which is not likely to motivate them to be interested. So make sure your facial expressions are communicating an emotion, mood, or personality trait that you think your audience will view favorably. Also, make sure your facial expressions match with the content of your speech. When delivering something lighthearted or humorous, a smile, bright eyes, and slightly raised eyebrows will nonverbally enhance your verbal message. When delivering something serious or somber, a furrowed brow, a tighter mouth, and even a slight head nod can enhance that message. If your facial expressions and speech content are not consistent, your audience could become confused by the conflicting messages, which could lead them to question your honesty and credibility.

Eye Contact

Eye contact is an important element of nonverbal communication in all communication settings. Eye contact can also be used to establish credibility and hold your audience’s attention (Barnard, 2017). We often interpret a lack of eye contact to mean that someone is not credible or not competent, and as a public speaker, you do not want your audience thinking either of those things. Eye contact holds attention because an audience member who knows the speaker is making regular eye contact will want to reciprocate that eye contact to show that they are paying attention. This will also help your audience remember the content of your speech better, because acting as if we are paying attention actually leads us to pay attention and better retain information.

Norms for eye contact vary among cultures (Barnard, 2017). Therefore, it may be difficult for speakers from countries that have higher power distances or are more collectivistic to get used to the idea of making direct and sustained eye contact during a speech. In these cases, it is important for the speaker to challenge himself or herself to integrate some of the host culture’s expectations and for the audience to be accommodating and understanding of the cultural differences.

Physical Delivery and the Body

Have you ever gotten dizzy as an audience member because the speaker paced back and forth? Anxiety can lead us to do some strange things with our bodies, like pacing, that we do not normally do, so it is important to consider the important role that your body plays during your speech. We call extra movements caused by anxiety nonverbal adaptors . Most of them manifest as distracting movements or gestures. These nonverbal adaptors, like tapping a foot, wringing hands, playing with a paper clip, twirling hair, jingling change in a pocket, scratching, and many more, can definitely detract from a speaker’s message and credibility. Conversely, a confident posture and purposeful gestures and movement can enhance both.

Posture is the position we assume with our bodies, either intentionally or out of habit. Although people, especially young women, used to be trained in posture, often by having them walk around with books stacked on their heads, you should use a posture that is appropriate for the occasion while still positioning yourself in a way that feels natural. In a formal speaking situation, it is important to have an erect posture that communicates professionalism and credibility (Clayton, 2018). However, a military posture of standing at attention may feel and look unnatural in a typical school or business speech. In informal settings, it may be appropriate to lean on a table or lectern, or even sit among your audience members (Clayton, 2018). Head position is also part of posture. In most speaking situations, it is best to keep your head up, facing your audience. A droopy head does not communicate confidence. Consider the occasion important, as an inappropriate posture can hurt your credibility.

Gestures include arm and hand movements. We all go through a process of internalizing our native culture from childhood. An obvious part of this process is becoming fluent in a language. Perhaps less obvious is the fact that we also become fluent in nonverbal communication, gestures in particular. We all use hand gestures while we speak, but we didn’t ever take a class in matching verbal communication with the appropriate gestures; we just internalized these norms over time based on observation and put them into practice. By this point in your life, you have a whole vocabulary of hand movements and gestures that spontaneously come out while you are speaking. Some of these gestures are emphatic and some are descriptive (Koch, 2007).

Emphatic gestures are the most common hand gestures we use, and they function to emphasize our verbal communication and often relate to the emotions we verbally communicate (Toastmasters International, 2011). Pointing with one finger or all the fingers straight out is an emphatic gesture. We can even bounce that gesture up and down to provide more emphasis. Moving the hand in a circular motion in front of our chest with the fingers spread apart is a common emphatic gesture that shows excitement and often accompanies an increased rate of verbal speaking. We make this gesture more emphatic by using both hands. Descriptive gestures function to illustrate or refer to objects rather than emotions (Toastmasters International, 2011). We use descriptive gestures to indicate the number of something by counting with our fingers or the size, shape, or speed of something. Our hands and arms are often the most reliable and easy-to-use visual aids a speaker can have.

While the best beginning strategy is to gesture naturally, you also want to remain a high self-monitor and take note of your typical patterns of gesturing. If you notice that you naturally gravitate toward one particular gesture, make an effort to vary your gestures more. You also want your gestures to be purposeful, not limp or lifeless.

Sometimes movement of the whole body, instead of just gesturing with hands, is appropriate in a speech. When students are given the freedom to move around, it often ends up becoming floating or pacing, which are both movements that comfort a speaker by expending nervous energy but only serve to distract the audience (Toastmasters International, 2011). Floating refers to speakers who wander aimlessly around, and pacing refers to speakers who walk back and forth in the same path. To prevent floating or pacing, make sure that your movements are purposeful. Many speakers employ the triangle method of body movement where they start in the middle, take a couple steps forward and to the right, then take a couple steps to the left, then return to the center. Obviously, you do not need to do this multiple times in a five- to ten-minute speech, as doing so, just like floating or pacing, tends to make an audience dizzy.

To make your movements appear more natural, time them to coincide with a key point you want to emphasize or a transition between key points. Minimize other movements from the waist down when you are not purposefully moving for emphasis. Speakers sometimes tap or shuffle their feet, rock, or shift their weight back and forth from one leg to the other. Keeping both feet flat on the floor, and still, will help avoid these distracting movements (Toastmasters International, 2011).

Credibility and Physical Delivery

Audience members primarily take in information through visual and auditory channels. Just as the information you present verbally in your speech can add to or subtract from your credibility, nonverbal communication that accompanies your verbal messages affects your credibility.

Professional Dress and Appearance

No matter what professional field you go into, you will need to consider the importance of personal appearance (Caffrey, 2020). Although it may seem petty or shallow to put so much emphasis on dress and appearance, impressions matter, and people make judgments about our personality, competence, and credibility based on how we look. In some cases, you may work somewhere with a clearly laid out policy for personal dress and appearance. In many cases, the suggestion is to follow guidelines for “business casual.”

Despite the increasing popularity of this notion over the past twenty years, people’s understanding of what business casual means is not consistent (Caffrey, 2020). The formal dress codes of the mid-1900s, which required employees to wear suits and dresses, gave way to the trend of business casual dress, which seeks to allow employees to work comfortably while still appearing professional. While most people still dress more formally for job interviews or high-stakes presentations, the day-to-day dress of working professionals varies.

Visual Aids and Delivery

Visual aids play an important role in conveying supporting material to your audience. They also tie to delivery, since using visual aids during a speech usually requires some physical movements. It is important not to let your use of visual aids detract from your credibility (Beqiri, 2018). Many good speeches are derailed by posters that fall over, videos with no sound, and uncooperative PowerPoint presentations.

Figure 9.1: Systematic desensitization can include giving more public speeches, taking communication courses, or imagining public speaking scenarios. William Moreland. 2019. Unsplash license . https://unsplash.com/photos/GkWP64truqg

Figure 9.2: Vocal warm-up exercises. Andrea Piacquadio. 2020. Pexels license . https://www.pexels.com/photo/man-in-red-polo-shirt-3779453/

Figure 9.3: Primary phases to the practice process. Kindred Grey. 2022. CC BY 4.0 .

Figure 9.4: Three facets of speaking for clarity. Kindred Grey. 2022. CC BY 4.0 .

Figure 9.5: Facial expressions set the tone for a speech, and should be consistent with your message. Afif Kusuma. 2021. Unsplash license . https://unsplash.com/photos/F3dFVKj6q8I

Figure 9.6: To make your movements appear natural, time them to coincide with a key point. Product School. 2019. Unsplash license . https://unsplash.com/photos/S3hhrqLrgYM

Section 9.1

Allen, M., Hunter, J. E., & Donohue, W. A. (1989). Meta-analysis of self-report data on the effectiveness of public speaking anxiety treatment techniques. Communication Education, 38 (1), 54–76. https://doi.org/10.1080/03634528909378740

Bodie, G. D. (2010). A racing heart, rattling knees, and ruminative thoughts: Defining, explaining, and treating public speaking anxiety. Communication Education, 59 (1), 70–105. https://doi.org/10.1080/03634520903443849

Motley, M. T. (2009). COM therapy. In J. A. Daly, J. C. McCroskey, J. Ayres, T. Hopf, and D. M. Ayers Sonandré (Eds.), Avoiding communication: Shyness, reticence, and communication apprehension (pp. 379-400) (3rd ed.). Hampton Press.

Priem, J. S., & Haunani Solomon, D. (2009). Comforting apprehensive communicators: The effects of reappraisal and distraction on cortisol levels among students in a public speaking class. Communication Quarterly, 57 (3), 259-281.

Section 9.2

Barnard, D. (2018, January 20). Average speaking rate and words per minute . https://virtualspeech.com/blog/average-speaking-rate-words-per-minute

Davis, B. (2021, June 1). Why is audience engagement important? https://www.mvorganizing.org/why-is-audience-engagement-important/

Hennessy, C. (2019, March 27). Verbal filler: How to slow the flow . https://www.throughlinegroup.com/2019/03/27/verbal-filler-how-to-slow-the-flow/

LibreTexts. (2021, February 20). Methods of speech delivery . https://socialsci.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Communication/Public_Speaking/Exploring_Public_Speaking_(Barton_and_Tucker)/11%3A_Delivery/11.02%3A_Methods_of_Speech_Delivery

Moore, K. (2015, January 13). Public speaking tips: Use vocal variety like a pro! https://coachkiomi.com/best-public-speaking-tips-use-vocal-variety/

Packard, D. (2020, July 13). Speaking up: How to increase the volume of your voice . https://packardcommunications.com/speaking-up-how-to-increase-the-volume-of-your-voice/

Rampton, J. (2021, July 27). Learning to speak with clarity . https://www.calendar.com/blog/learning-to-speak-with-clarity/

Scotti, S. (2015, December 1). Vocal delivery: Take command of your voice . https://professionallyspeaking.net/vocal-delivery-take-command-of-your-voice-part-one/

Shtern, A. (2017, April 17). The importance of good pronunciation . https://shaneschools.com/en/the-importance-of-good-pronunciation/

Section 9.3

Barnard, D. (2017, October 24). The importance of eye contact during a presentation . https://virtualspeech.com/blog/importance-of-eye-contact-during-a-presentation

Beqiri, G. (2018, June 21). Using visual aids during a presentation or training session . https://virtualspeech.com/blog/visual-aids-presentation

Caffrey, A. (2020, February 25). The importance of personal appearance . http://www.publicspeakingexpert.co.uk/importanceofpersonalappearance.html

Clayton, D. (2018, October 31). The importance of good posture in public speaking . https://simplyamazingtraining.co.uk/blog/good-posture-public-speaking

Hoffler, A. (2016, June 7). Why facial expressions are important in public speaking . https://www.millswyck.com/2016/06/07/the-importance-of-facial-expression/

Koch, A. (2007). Speaking with a purpose (7th ed.). Pearson, 2007.

Toastmasters International. (2011). Gestures: Your body speaks . https://web.mst.edu/~toast/docs/Gestures.pdf

Fear or anxiety experience by a person due to real or perceived communication with another person or persons. This is a fear or anxiety that involves several types of communication not limited to public speaking.

Type of communication apprehension that produces physiological, cognitive, and behavioral reactions in people when faced with a real or imagined presentation

A type of cognitive restructuring that encourages people to think of public speaking as conversation rather than a performance

When a speaker has little or no time to prepare a speech

Speaking from a well written or printed document that contains the entirety of a speech

Completely memorizing a speech and delivering it without notes

Memorizing the overall structure and main points of a speech and then speaking from keyword/key-phrase notes

Refers to how fast or slow you speak

Refers to how loud or soft you speak

Refers to how high or low a speaker’s voice is

Changes in your rate, volume, and pitch that make you sound more prepared and credible

Refers to the clarity of sounds and words you pronounce

Whether you say the words correctly

Refers to the flow of your speaking

Unintended pauses in a speech that usually result from forgetting what you were saying, being distracted, or losing your place in speaking

The umms, uhhs, and other linguistic pauses of conversation

The feelings expressed on a person’s face

The act of looking directly into one another’s eyes

Extra movements caused by anxiety (i.e., tapping your foot, wringing your hands, playing with a paperclip, twirling hair, or scratching)

The position in which someone holds their body when standing or sitting

A movement of part of the body, especially a hand or the head, to express an idea or meaning

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Learning Objectives

• Identify the four methods of speech delivery.
• Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of each delivery method.
• Discuss strategies for making speech practice sessions more effective.

There are many decisions that must be made during the speech-making process. Making informed decisions about delivery can help boost your confidence and manage speaking anxiety. In this section, we will learn some strengths and weaknesses of various delivery methods and how to make the most of your practice sessions.

Delivery Methods

Different speaking occasions call for different delivery methods. While it may be acceptable to speak from memory in some situations, lengthy notes may be required in others. The four most common delivery methods are impromptu, manuscript, memorized, and extemporaneous.

Impromptu Delivery

When using impromptu delivery , a speaker has little to no time to prepare for a speech. This means there is little time for research, audience analysis, organizing, and practice. For this reason, impromptu speaking often evokes higher degrees of speaking anxiety than other delivery types. Although impromptu speaking arouses anxiety, it is also a good way to build public speaking skills. Using some of the exercises for managing speaking anxiety that were discussed earlier in this chapter can help a speaker better manage the challenges of impromptu speaking. Only skilled public speakers with much experience are usually able to “pull off” an impromptu delivery without looking unprepared. Otherwise, a speaker who is very familiar with the subject matter can sometimes be a competent impromptu speaker, because their expertise can compensate for the lack of research and organizing time.

When Mark Twain famously said, “It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech,” he was jokingly pointing out the difficulties of giving a good impromptu speech, essentially saying that there is no such thing as a good impromptu speech, as good speeches take time to prepare. We don’t always have the luxury of preparation, though. So when speaking impromptu, be brief, stick to what you know, and avoid rambling. Quickly organize your thoughts into an introduction, body, and conclusion. Try to determine three key ideas that will serve as the basis of your main points.

In what situations would impromptu speaking be used? Since we’ve already started thinking of the similarities between public speaking and conversations, we can clearly see that most of our day-to-day interactions involve impromptu speaking. When your roommate asks you what your plans for the weekend are, you don’t pull a few note cards out of your back pocket to prompt your response. This type of conversational impromptu speaking isn’t anxiety inducing because we’re talking about our lives, experiences, or something we’re familiar with. This is also usually the case when we are asked to speak publicly with little to no advance warning. For example, if you are at a meeting for work and you are representing the public relations department, a colleague may ask you to say a few words about a recent news story involving a public relations misstep of a competing company. In this case, you are being asked to speak on the spot because of your expertise. A competent communicator should anticipate instances like this when they might be called on to speak, so they won’t be so surprised. Of course, being caught completely off guard or being asked to comment on something unfamiliar to you creates more anxiety. In such cases, do not pretend to know something you don’t, as that may come back to hurt you later. You can usually mention that you do not have the necessary background information at that time but will follow up later with your comments.

Salespeople on home-shopping television shows are masters of impromptu speaking. They obviously have sales training and have built up a repertoire of adjectives and sayings that entice an audience to buy. But they are often speaking impromptu when interacting with a guest on the show or the customers who call in. Their ability to remain animated and fluent in their delivery with little time to prepare comes from much experience. Politicians, lawyers, teachers, journalists, and spokespeople engage in impromptu speaking regularly.

Strengths of Impromptu Delivery

• Content and delivery are spontaneous, which can make the speech more engaging (if a speaker’s anxiety is under control).
• It enhances public speaking skills because speakers have to “think on their feet.”

Weaknesses of Impromptu Delivery

• It is typically the most anxiety-inducing delivery method, since speakers do not have time to prepare or practice the speech.
• Speakers may get off topic or ramble if they did not set up some structure to guide them.
• Speakers may be tempted to overstate or mislead an audience about the extent of their knowledge or expertise if asked to speak about something they aren’t familiar with.

Manuscript Delivery

Speaking from a written or printed document that contains the entirety of a speech is known as manuscript delivery . Manuscript delivery can be the best choice when a speech has complicated information and/or the contents of the speech are going to be quoted or published. Despite the fact that most novice speakers are not going to find themselves in that situation, many are drawn to this delivery method because of the security they feel with having everything they’re going to say in front of them. Unfortunately, the security of having every word you want to say at your disposal translates to a poorly delivered and unengaging speech. Even with every word written out, speakers can still have fluency hiccups and verbal fillers as they lose their place in the manuscript or get tripped up over their words. The alternative, of course, is that a speaker reads the manuscript the whole time, effectively cutting himself or herself off from the audience. One way to make a manuscript delivery more engaging is through the use of a teleprompter. Almost all politicians who give televised addresses use teleprompters. In Figure 10.1 “President Obama’s Teleprompter System” , you can see President Obama’s teleprompter system.

Figure 10.1 President Obama’s Teleprompter System

Newscasters and politicians frequently use teleprompters so they can use manuscript delivery but still engage with the audience.

Wikimedia Commons – CC BY-SA 2.0.

You may not even notice them, as the technology has improved to give the illusion that a speaker is engaged with the audience and delivering a speech from memory. The Plexiglas sheets on poles that surround the president during the inauguration and State of the Union addresses are cleverly hidden teleprompters. Even these useful devices can fail. A quick search for “teleprompter fail” on YouTube will yield many examples of politicians and newscasters who probably wish they had a paper backup of their speech. Since most of us will likely not have opportunities to speak using a teleprompter, great care should be taken to ensure that the delivery is effective. To make the delivery seem more natural, print the speech out in a larger-than-typical font, triple-space between lines so you can easily find your place, use heavier-than-normal paper so it’s easy to pick up and turn the pages as needed, and use a portfolio so you can carry the manuscript securely.

Strengths of Manuscript Delivery

• The speaker can include precise or complex information such as statistics or quotes.
• The entire content of the speech is available for reference during the delivery.
• The speech will be consistent in terms of content and time length, which is beneficial if a speech will be delivered multiple times.

Weaknesses of Manuscript Delivery

• Engagement with the audience is challenging, because the speaker must constantly reference the manuscript (unless a teleprompter is used).
• Speakers are unable to adapt information to audience reactions, since they are confined to the content of the manuscript.
• Speakers may be tempted to read the entire speech because they didn’t practice enough or because they get nervous.
• Speakers who are able to make eye contact with the audience may still sound like they are reading the speech unless they employ proper vocal variety, pacing, and pauses.

Memorized Delivery

Completely memorizing a speech and delivering it without notes is known as memorized delivery . Some students attempt to memorize their speech because they think it will make them feel more confident to not have to look at their notes; however, when their anxiety level spikes at the beginning of their speech and their mind goes blank for a minute, many admit they should have chosen a different delivery method. When using any of the other delivery methods, speakers still need to rely on their memory. An impromptu speaker must recall facts or experiences related to their topic, and speakers using a manuscript want to have some of their content memorized so they do not read their entire speech to their audience. The problem with memorized delivery overall is that it puts too much responsibility on our memory, which we all know from experience is fallible.

When memorizing, most people use rote memorization techniques, which entail reading and then reciting something over and over until it is committed to memory. One major downfall of this technique is its effect on speaking rate. When we memorize this way, we end up going over the early parts of a speech many more times than the later parts. As you memorize one sentence, you add on another, and so on. By the time you’re adding on later parts of your speech, you are likely speed talking through the earlier parts because you know them by heart at that point. As we’ll discuss more later, to prevent bad habits from practice from hurting our speech delivery, speakers should practice a speech the exact way they want to deliver it to their audience. Fast-paced speaking during practice will likely make its way into the actual delivery of the speech. Delivery also suffers when speaking from memory if the speaker sounds like he or she is reciting the speech. Rote memorization tasks that many of us had to do in school have left their mark on our memorized delivery. Being made to recite the pledge of allegiance, the preamble to the Constitution, and so on didn’t enhance our speaking abilities. I’ve observed many students whose speeches remind me of the sound of school children flatly going through the motions of reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. It’s the “going through the motions” impression that speakers should want to avoid.

Memorized delivery is a good option for people like tour guides, who need to move while speaking and be interactive with an audience.

John Lambert Pearson – ”listening” to adam – CC BY 2.0.

Even with much practice, our memories can fail. If you do opt to use memorized delivery, make sure you have several “entry points” determined, so you can pick up at spots other than the very beginning of a speech if you lose your place and have to start again. Memorized delivery is very useful for speakers who are going to be moving around during a speech when carrying notes would be burdensome. Think of the tour guide who showed you around your college campus. As someone who used to give college tours, I can attest to the fact that we all had speeches memorized, which was a good thing. It’s already difficult enough to walk backward while facing a group of people and lead them across roads and up stairs. Think about how dangerous it would be if the tour guide were trying to hold onto and reference a stack of note cards at the same time! In summary, I only recommend memorized delivery in cases where the speech is short (only one to two minutes), the speech is personal (like a brief toast), or the speech will be repeated numerous times (like a tour guide’s spiel), and even in these cases, it may be perfectly fine to have notes. Many students think that their anxiety and/or delivery challenges will be fixed if they just memorize their speech only to find that they are more anxious and have more problems.

Strengths of Memorized Delivery

• Speakers can include precise or complex information such as statistics or quotes (if they have put the time into memorization).
• Speakers can directly engage with the audience without worrying about referencing notes.
• The speech will be consistent in terms of content and time-length, which is beneficial if a speech will be delivered multiple times.

Weaknesses of Memorized Delivery

• It is the most time-consuming delivery method.
• Speakers are unable to adapt information to audience reactions, since they are confined to the content they memorized.
• If speakers lose their place in the speech, they will likely have to start over.
• Since everything is preplanned, it is difficult to make the speech content and delivery seem genuine (i.e., humor may seem “canned” or corny).
• The speech can sound like a recitation if the proper vocal variety and pacing are not used.

Extemporaneous Delivery

Extemporaneous delivery entails memorizing the overall structure and main points of a speech and then speaking from keyword/key-phrase notes. This delivery mode brings together many of the strengths of the previous three methods. Since you only internalize and memorize the main structure of a speech, you don’t have to worry as much about the content and delivery seeming stale. Extemporaneous delivery brings in some of the spontaneity of impromptu delivery but still allows a speaker to carefully plan the overall structure of a speech and incorporate supporting materials that include key facts, quotations, and paraphrased information. You can also more freely adapt your speech to fit various audiences and occasions, since every word and sentence isn’t predetermined. This can be especially beneficial when a speech will be delivered multiple times. The minilectures I give in my classes, for example, are good examples of extemporaneous delivery. Even though I’ve presented the basic content of this chapter dozens of times over the years, each presentation has been different, because I can vary the examples and amount of elaboration that I add to the core content that I’ve memorized. For example, I may spend more time discussing speaking anxiety with a class that has expressed more apprehension about public speaking. I also change the example videos I show to connect to ever-changing current events or popular culture.

When preparing a speech that you will deliver extemporaneously, you will want to start practicing your speech early and then continue to practice as you revise your content. Investing quality time and effort into the speech-outlining process helps with extemporaneous delivery. As you put together your outline, you are already doing the work of internalizing the key structure of your speech. Read parts of your outline aloud as you draft them to help ensure they are written in a way that makes sense and is easy for you to deliver. By the time you complete the formal, full-sentence outline, you should have already internalized much of the key information in your speech. Now, you can begin practicing with the full outline. As you become more comfortable with the content of your full outline, start to convert it into your speaking outline. Take out information that you know well and replace it with a keyword or key phrase that prompts your memory. You’ll probably want to leave key quotes, facts, and other paraphrased information, including your verbal source citation information, on your delivery outline so you make sure to include it in your speech. Once you’ve converted your full outline into your speaking outline, practice it a few more times, making sure to take some time between each practice session so you don’t inadvertently start to memorize the speech word for word. The final product should be a confident delivery of a well-organized and structured speech that is conversational and adaptable to various audiences and occasions.

Strengths of Extemporaneous Delivery

• Speech content and delivery appear more spontaneous and natural, making it more conversational, since the speaker is using a keyword/key-phrase outline.
• Speakers can include quotes or complex information on their speaking outline for easy reference.
• Speakers can adapt information and delivery to specific audiences, occasions, and audience reactions, since they are not confined to the content of a manuscript or what they memorized.

Weaknesses of Extemporaneous Delivery

• Since the speech is so adaptable, it can be difficult to ensure the speech will be the exact same length each time.
• It is perhaps not the best option when exact wording is expected.
• Speakers must find a balance between having too much content on their speaking outline, which may cause them to read, and too little content, which may lead to fluency hiccups.

Practicing Your Speech

Practicing a speech is essential, and practice sessions can be more or less useful depending on how you approach them. There are three primary phases to the practice process. In the first phase, you practice as you’re working through your ideas and drafting your outline. In the second, you practice for someone and get feedback. In the third, you put the finishing touches on the speech.

Start practicing your speech early, as you are working through your ideas, by reading sections aloud as you draft them into your working outline. This will help ensure your speech is fluent and sounds good for the audience. Start to envision the audience while you practice and continue to think about them throughout the practicing process. This will help minimize anxiety when you actually have them sitting in front of you. Once you have completed your research and finished a draft of your outline, you will have already practiced your speech several times as you were putting it together. Now, you can get feedback on the speech as a whole.

You begin to solicit feedback from a trusted source in the second phase of practicing your speech. This is the most important phase of practicing, and the one that most speakers do not complete. Beginning speakers may be nervous to practice in front of someone, which is to be expected. But review the strategies for managing anxiety discussed earlier in this chapter and try to face that anxiety. After all, you will have to face a full audience when you deliver the speech, so getting used to speaking in front of someone can only help you at this point. Choose someone who will give you constructive feedback on your speech, not just unconditional praise or criticism. Before you practice for them, explain the assignment or purpose of the speech. When practicing for a classroom speech, you may even want to give the person the assignment guidelines or a feedback sheet that has some key things for them to look for. Ask them for feedback on content and delivery. Almost anyone is good at evaluating delivery, but it’s more difficult to evaluate content. And, in most cases, the content of your speech will be account for more of your grade or what you will be evaluated on for work than the delivery. Also begin to time your speech at this point, so you can determine if it meets any time limits that you have.

In addition to practicing for a trusted source for feedback, you may want to audio or video record your speech. This can be useful because it provides an objective record that you can then compare with the feedback you got from your friend and to your own evaluation of your speech. The most important part of this phase is incorporating the feedback you receive into your speech. If you practice for someone, get feedback, and then don’t do anything with the feedback, then you have wasted your time and their time. Use the feedback to assess whether or not you met your speaking goals. Was your thesis supported? Was your specific purpose met? Did your speech conform to any time limits that were set? Based on your answers to these questions, you may need to make some changes to your content or delivery, so do not put this part of practicing off to the last minute. Once the content has been revised as needed, draft your speaking outline and move on to the next phase of practice.

You can practice your speech in front of a mirror to gauge your use of facial expressions and gestures. In addition, practice in front of a couple people for feedback.

Tschlunder – Mirror – CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

During the third and final phase of practice, you are putting the finishing touches on your speech. You should be familiar with the content based on your early practice sessions. You have also gotten feedback and incorporated that feedback into the speech. Your practice sessions at this point should precreate, as much as possible, the conditions in which you will be giving your speech. You should have your speaking outline completed so you can practice with it. It’s important to be familiar with the content on your note cards or speaking outline so you will not need to rely on it so much during the actual delivery. You may also want to practice in the type of clothing you will be wearing on speech day. This can be useful if you are wearing something you don’t typically wear—a suit for example—so you can see how it might affect your posture, gestures, and overall comfort level. If possible, at least one practice session in the place you will be giving the speech can be very helpful, especially if it’s a room you are not familiar with. Make sure you’re practicing with any visual aids or technology you will use so you can be familiar with it and it doesn’t affect your speech fluency. Continue to time each practice round. If you are too short or too long, you will need to go back and adjust your content some more. Always adjust your content to fit the time limit; do not try to adjust your delivery. Trying to speed talk or stretch things out to make a speech faster or longer is a mistake that will ultimately hurt your delivery, which will hurt your credibility. The overall purpose of this phase of practicing is to minimize surprises that might throw you off on speech day.

Some “Dos” and “Don’ts” for Effective Speech Practice Sessions

• Do start practicing sections of your speech early, as you draft your outline.
• Do practice for someone for feedback.
• Do time yourself once a draft of the speech is completed and adjust the speech as needed to conform to time limits.
• Do deliver the speech the way you want it to be when you deliver it for your audience (use the rate, volume, vocal variety, pauses, and emphasis you plan to use on speech day).
• Don’t only practice in front of a mirror (practicing once in front of a mirror can help you gauge your facial expressions and other aspects of delivery, but that shouldn’t be the only way you practice).
• Don’t only practice in your head (we have a tendency to go too fast when we practice in our head, and you need to get practice saying the words of your speech to help lessen fluency hiccups).
• Don’t practice too much. It’s best to practice a few times in the days leading up to the speech, making sure to leave several hours between practice sessions. Practicing too much can lead you to become bored with your content, which could lead to delivery that sounds like a recitation.

Key Takeaways

• The four methods of delivering a speech are impromptu, manuscript, memorized, and extemporaneous delivery.
• Impromptu delivery evokes higher levels of speaking anxiety because a speaker has little to no time to prepare the speech; however, this method can increase public speaking skills for people who enjoy thinking on their feet.
• Manuscript delivery entails speaking from a manuscript that contains a word-for-word transcript of your speech. This delivery method can be good for speeches that contain complex information that will be published or quoted but can be challenging because speakers may read their speech, which lessens engagement with the audience.
• Memorized delivery entails speaking from memory. Speakers with a reliable memory will be able to include specific information and engage the audience freely. This method is the most time-consuming delivery option and may come across as a recitation instead of an engaging speech.
• Extemporaneous delivery entails memorizing the general structure of a speech, not every word, and then delivering the speech from a keyword outline. Having the keyword outline allows a speaker to include specific information and references while remaining adaptable to the occasion and audience since every word isn’t planned out.
• Practicing your speech should occur in three phases. First, practice as you are drafting the outline to help you process through your speech ideas. Second, practice for someone and get feedback and record your speech for self-evaluation. Use this feedback to make appropriate changes to your speech. Third, put the finishing touches on the speech: make needed adjustments to the content to meet time limits, become familiar with your speaking outline, and precreate the conditions of speech day for your final few practice sessions.
• Which delivery methods have you used before? Which did you like the best and why? Which delivery method would you most prefer a speaker to use if you were an audience member and why?
• Have you ever had any “surprises” come up during a speech that you could have prevented with more effective practice sessions? If so, explain. If not, list some surprises that good practice sessions could help prevent.
• Using the suggestions in the chapter, make a timeline for practicing your next speech. Include specific dates and make a list of things you plan to do during each of the three phases of practice.

Public Speaking Copyright © 2023 by University of Nebraska at Omaha is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Week 10: Rhetorical Communications

Delivering the speech.

How we deliver a speech is just as important, if not more so, than the basic message we are trying to convey to an audience. But if you have worked hard on preparing the verbal part of your speech, you may feel that delivery is just an “extra” that should not require much time or effort. After all, your speech is carefully planned, researched, and polished. It is committed safely to paper and hard drive. It’s a carefully constructed, logically crafted, ethical message. The words alone should engage your audience’s attention and interest—right?

After all the work of building such a message, you might wish that you could simply read it to the audience. However, this is the case in only a few kinds of circumstances: when the message is highly technical, complex, and extremely important (as in a new medical discovery); when international protocols and etiquette are crucially important and the world is listening; or when the speaker is representing a high-ranking person, such as a president or a king, who is unable to be present. For the purposes of your public speaking class, you will not be encouraged to read your speech. Instead, you will be asked to give an extemporaneous presentation. We will examine what that means.

The nonverbal part of your speech is a presentation of yourself as well as your message. Through the use of eye contact, vocal expression, body posture, gestures, and facial display, you enhance your message and invite your audience to give their serious attention to it, and to you. Your credibility, your sincerity, and your knowledge of your speech become apparent through your nonverbal behaviors.

The interplay between the verbal and nonverbal components of your speech can either bring the message vividly to life or confuse or bore the audience. Therefore, it is best that you neither overdramatize your speech delivery behaviors nor downplay them. This is a balance achieved through rehearsal, trial and error, and experience.

In this chapter, we are going to examine effective strategies for delivering a speech. To help you enhance your delivery, we will begin by exploring the four basic methods of speech delivery. Second, we will discuss how to prepare your delivery for different environments. Third, we will talk about how to effectively use notes to enhance your delivery. Finally, we will examine characteristics of good delivery and give some strategies for practicing effectively for the day when you will deliver your speech.

• Public Speaking: Practice and Ethics. Authored by : Anonymous. Provided by : Anonymous. Located at : http://2012books.lardbucket.org/books/public-speaking-practice-and-ethics/ . License : CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike

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Chapter Thirteen – Speech Delivery

Maryland GovPics –  House of Ruth Luncheon  – CC BY 2.0.

The easiest approach to speech delivery is not always the best. Substantial work goes into the careful preparation of an interesting and ethical message, so it is understandable that students may have the impulse to avoid “messing it up” by simply reading it word for word. But students who do this miss out on one of the major reasons for studying public speaking: to learn ways to “connect” with one’s audience and to increase one’s confidence in doing so. You already know how to read, and you already know how to talk. But public speaking is neither reading nor talking.

Speaking in public has more formality than talking. During a speech, you should present yourself professionally. This doesn’t mean you must wear a suit or “dress up” (unless your instructor asks you to), but it does mean making yourself presentable by being well groomed and wearing clean, appropriate clothes. It also means being prepared to use language correctly and appropriately for the audience and the topic, to make eye contact with your audience, and to look like you know your topic very well.

While speaking has more formality than talking, it has less formality than reading. Speaking allows for meaningful pauses, eye contact, small changes in word order, and vocal emphasis. Reading is a more or less exact replication of words on paper without the use of any nonverbal interpretation. Speaking, as you will realize if you think about excellent speakers you have seen and heard, provides a more animated message.

The next sections introduce four methods of delivery that can help you balance between too much and too little formality when giving a public speech.

Types of Delivery

Impromptu Speaking

Impromptu speaking is the presentation of a short message without advance preparation. You have probably done impromptu speaking many times in informal, conversational settings. Self-introductions in group settings are examples of impromptu speaking: “Hi, my name is Steve, and I’m a volunteer with the Homes for the Brave program.” Another example of impromptu speaking occurs when you answer a question such as, “What did you think of the movie?” Your response has not been preplanned, and you are constructing your arguments and points as you speak. Even worse, you might find yourself going into a meeting and your boss says, “I want you to talk about the last stage of the project. . .” and you have no warning.

The advantage of this kind of speaking is that it’s spontaneous and responsive in an animated group context. The disadvantage is that the speaker is given little or no time to contemplate the central theme of their message. As a result, the message may be disorganized and difficult for listeners to follow.

Here is a step-by-step guide that may be useful if you are called upon to give an impromptu speech in public:

• Take a moment to collect your thoughts and plan the main point that you want to make (like a mini thesis statement).
• Thank the person for inviting you to speak. Do not make comments about being unprepared, called upon at the last moment, on the spot, or uneasy. In other words, try to avoid being self-deprecating!
• Deliver your message, making your main point as briefly as you can while still covering it adequately and at a pace your listeners can follow.
• If you can use a structure, use numbers if possible: “Two main reasons. . .” or “Three parts of our plan. . .” or “Two side effects of this drug. . .” Past, present, and future or East Coast, Midwest, and West Coast are prefab structures.
• Thank the person again for the opportunity to speak.
• Stop talking (it is easy to “ramble on” when you don’t have something prepared). If in front of an audience, don’t keep talking as you move back to your seat.

Impromptu speeches are generally most successful when they are brief and focus on a single point.

We recommend practicing your impromptu speaking regularly and every day. Do you want to work on reducing your vocalized pauses in a formal setting? Cool! You can begin that process by being conscious of your vocalized fillers during informal conversations and settings.

Extemporaneous

Extemporaneous speaking  is the presentation of a carefully planned and rehearsed speech, spoken in a conversational manner using brief notes.

Speaking extemporaneously has some advantages. It promotes the likelihood that you, the speaker, will be perceived as knowledgeable and credible since you know the speech well enough that you don’t need to read it. In addition, your audience is likely to pay better attention to the message because it is engaging both verbally and nonverbally. By using notes rather than a full manuscript (or everything that you’re going to say), the extemporaneous speaker can establish and maintain eye contact with the audience and assess how well they are understanding the speech as it progresses. It also allows flexibility; you are working from the strong foundation of an outline, but if you need to delete, add, or rephrase something at the last minute or to adapt to your audience, you can do so. The outline also helps you be aware of main ideas vs. subordinate ones.

Because extemporaneous speaking is the style used in the great majority of public speaking situations, most of the information in the subsequent sections of this chapter is targeted toward this kind of speaking.

Manuscript  speaking is the word-for-word iteration of a written message. In a manuscript speech, the speaker maintains their attention on the printed page except when using presentation aids.

The advantage to reading from a manuscript is the exact repetition of original words. This can be extremely important in some circumstances. For example, reading a statement about your organization’s legal responsibilities to customers may require that the original words be exact. In reading one word at a time, in order, the only errors would typically be mispronunciation of a word or stumbling over complex sentence structure. A manuscript speech may also be appropriate at a more formal affair (like a funeral), when your speech must be said exactly as written in order to convey the proper emotion or decorum the situation deserves.

However, there are costs involved in manuscript speaking. First, it’s typically an uninteresting way to present. Unless the speaker has rehearsed the reading as a complete performance animated with vocal expression and gestures (well-known authors often do this for book readings), the presentation tends to be dull. Keeping one’s eyes glued to the script prevents eye contact with the audience. For this kind of “straight” manuscript speech to hold audience attention, the audience must be already interested in the message and speaker before the delivery begins. Finally, because the full notes are required, speakers often require a lectern to place their notes, restricting movement and the ability to engage with the audience. Without something to place the notes on, speakers have to manage full-page speaking notes, and that can be distracting.

It is worth noting that professional speakers, actors, news reporters, and politicians often read from an autocue device, such as a teleprompter, especially when appearing on television, where eye contact with the camera is crucial. With practice, a speaker can achieve a conversational tone and give the impression of speaking extemporaneously and maintaining eye contact while using an autocue device. However, success in this medium depends on two factors: (1) the speaker is already an accomplished public speaker who has learned to use a conversational tone while delivering a prepared script, and (2) the speech is written in a style that sounds conversational.

Memorized speaking is reciting a written message that the speaker has committed to memory. Actors, of course, recite from memory whenever they perform from a script in a stage play, television program, or movie. When it comes to speeches, memorization can be useful when the message needs to be exact, and the speaker doesn’t want to be confined by notes.

The advantage to memorization is that it enables the speaker to maintain eye contact with the audience throughout the speech. Being free of notes means that you can move freely around the stage and use your hands to make gestures. If your speech uses presentation aids, this freedom is even more of an advantage.

Memorization, however, can be tricky. First, if you lose your place and start trying to ad lib, the contrast in your style of delivery will alert your audience that something is wrong. If you go completely blank during the presentation, it will be extremely difficult to find your place and keep going. Obviously, memorizing a typical seven-minute classroom speech takes a great deal of time and effort, and if you aren’t used to memorizing, it is very difficult to pull off.

We recommend playing with all 4 types of delivery (though extemporaneous is most common in public speaking). Once you identify what type of delivery style you’ll use in a speech, it’s time to rehearse. We will discuss best practices for rehearsing in Chapter 20. Let us focus now on elements of effective speech delivery.

Vocal Aspects of Delivery

Though we speak frequently during the course of a day, a formal speech requires extra attention to detail in preparation of a more formal speech presentation. What can one do in advance to prepare for a speech? The challenge is partly determined by the speaker’s experience, background and sometimes cultural influence and existing habits of speaking. Articulation, Pronunciation, Dialect, Tone, Pitch, and Projection each depends on long-term practice for success. These aspects are like signatures and should be developed and used by each speaker according to his own persona.

Voice, or vocal sound, is made when controlled air being exhaled from the lungs, passes over the vocal cords causing a controlled vibration. The vibrating air resonates in the body, chest cavity, mouth, and nasal passages. The vibrating air causes a chain reaction with the air in the room. The room’s air, set in motion by the voice, is captured by the listener’s ear. The vibration of the air against the eardrum is transferred to electrical impulses that are interpreted by the listener’s brain. Thus, the sounds we can make are predicated on the breaths that we take.

“Crying baby”  by Brazzouk.  CC-BY-SA .

TRY THIS! BREATHING

Talk without breathing. It cannot be done. So, if you are screaming (like a baby), you are also breathing!

The first word of advice on speaking to an audience: BREATHE!

Articulation

We are often judged by how well we speak in general. A measure of perceived intellect or education is how well we  articulate . That is: how well and correctly we form our vowels and consonants using our lips, jaw, tongue, and palate to form the sounds that are identified as speech.  Diction  and  enunciation  are other terms that refer to the same idea. For instance, saying “going to” instead of “gonna” or “did not” instead of “dint” are examples of good versus poor articulation. Consonant and vowels are spoken with standard accepted precision, and serious students and speakers will strive to practice the clarity of their sounds. Proper diction is as integral to the English language as proper spelling, but it takes practice.

Pronunciation

Proper  articulation  applied to a given word is that word’s  pronunciation . The pronunciation includes how the vowels and consonants are produced as well as which syllable is emphasized. For generations, speakers depended on “markings (such as the International Phonetics Alphabet or similar Dictionary Symbols) to discover or decide how words were officially pronounced. With online dictionaries now readily available, one needs only to “look up” a word and select “play” to hear an audible recording of the official and precise way a word should be pronounced. Now there is no excuse for mispronouncing a word in a speech. A mispronounced word will obliterate a speaker’s credibility, and the audience’s attention will be focused on the fault rather than the message.

TRY THIS! PRONUNCIATION

1. Flip through a book, article or scholarly work until you come to a word that is unfamiliar and you can only guess its pronunciation.

2. Go to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary website and look up the word.

3. When the definition appears, click the icon of the loudspeaker. The word is audibly pronounced for you.

The online dictionary is useful in both articulation as well as pronunciation.

Accent, Dialect, and Regionalisms

“Iraqi speaker”  by Office of United States Rep. Ellen Tauscher. Public domain.

Subtleties in the way we pronounce words and phrase our speech within a given language are evident in  accents ,  regionalisms , and  dialects . An accent refers to the degree of prominence of the way syllables are spoken in words, as when someone from Australia says “undah” whereas we say “under.” A  regionalism  is a type of expression, as when someone says “The dog wants walked,” instead of “the dog wants to go for a walk.” Dialect is a variety of language where one is distinguished from others by grammar and vocabulary. In Pennsylvania you might hear people say that they are going to “red up the room,” which means “to clean the room.”

Those who depend on speaking for a career (broadcasters, politicians, and entertainers) will often strive for unaccented General or Standard English. Listen to most major network newscasters for examples of  regionalism-free  speech. A given audience may be prejudiced towards or against a speaker with an identifiable accent or dialect. Though we would wish prejudice were not the case, the way we speak implies so much about our education, cultural background, and economic status, that prejudice is inevitable. Any speaker should be aware of how accent,  dialect , and regionalisms can be perceived by a given audience. If you speak in a way that the audience might find difficult to understand, make an extra effort to pay attention to the accent and phrasing of your speech. Ask a sympathetic and objective listener to help you when you practice.

We often refuse to accept an idea merely because the tone of voice in which it has been expressed is unsympathetic to us. – Friedrich Nietzsche

Vocal Quality

The quality of the voice, its  timbre (distinctive sound) and texture, affects audibility and can affect the articulation. Our voices are unique to each of us. It is a result of our physical vocal instrument, including diaphragm, vocal cords, lungs and body mass. Some examples of vocal quality include warm, clear, soft, scratchy, mellow and breathy. Each speaker should practice at maximizing the vocal effect of their instrument, which can be developed with vocal exercises. There are numerous books, recordings and trainers available to develop one’s vocal quality when needed. The quality of one’s voice is related to its range of pitch.

TRY THIS! INFLECTION

Your voice goes UP, and then your voice goes d o w n.

Pitch and Inflection

Identical to musical parlance, the  pitch is the “highness” or “lowness” of the voice. Each of us has a range of  tone . Vocal sounds are actually vibrations sent out from the vocal cords resonating through chambers in the body. The vibrations can literally be measured in terms of audio frequency in the same way music is measured. When the  pitch  is altered to convey a meaning (like raising the pitch at the end of a sentence that is a question), it is the inflection.  Inflections  are variations, turns and slides in pitch to achieve the meaning.

In his writing “Poetics,” Aristotle lists “Music” as an element of the Drama. Some scholars interpret that to include the musicalization of the spoken word with  dramatic inflection . The meaning and effectiveness of a spoken line is greatly dependent on the “melody” of its inflection.

Though archaic, the study of  elocution formalizes the conventions of inflection. In some contemporary cultures, inflection has been minimized because it sounds too “melodramatic” for the taste of the demographic group. It would be sensible to be aware of and avoid both extremes. With effective animated inflection, a speaker is more interesting, and the inflection conveys energy and “aliveness” that compels the audience to listen.

“Ice-T”  by Tino Jacobs.  CC-BY .

When public speaking was known as elocution, sentences were “scored” like music, and spoken using formal rules. Sentences ending as a question went UP at the end. Sentences ending in a period, ended with a base note. And everyone had fun with exclamation points!

For most of music in history, including Opera, Broadway, and early Rock and Roll, songs were written so that the melody (raising and lowering the pitch) was consistent with what would be spoken. Many of today’s songs, notably Rap songs, depend solely on rhythm. There is little if any inflection (melody) to enhance a lyric’s meaning. Certain languages differ in their dependence on inflection. Japanese and German seem monotonic compared to Italian and French, which offer great variety of inflection.

The human voice is the most beautiful instrument of all, but it is the most difficult to play. – Richard Strauss  

Even someone one who is not a singer can be expressive with inflection and pitch. Like the “Think System” of Professor Harold Hill in the musical The Music Man. If you THINK varied pitch, you can SPEAK varied pitch. Think of pitch inflections as seasoning spices that can make the speech more interesting. Sing “Happy Birthday.” You do not have to concentrate or analyze how to create the melody in your voice. Your memory and instinct take over. Notice how the pitch also provides an audible version of punctuation, letting the audience know if your sentence has ended, if it is a question, and so on. The melody lets the audience know that there is more to come (a comma) and when the phrase is ended (a period). Remember that in a speech, the audience does not have the written punctuation to follow, so you have to provide the punctuation with your inflection.

TRY THIS! VOCAL VARIATION 

Find a listening partner. Using only the sounds of “la” ha,” and “oh,” convey the meaning of the following:

1. It’s the biggest thing I’ve ever seen!

2. I’ve fallen and can’t get up!

3. That soup is disgusting and spoiled.

4. I got an “A” in my Speech Final!

If you cannot relay the meaning with just sounds, try a second time (each) with gestures and facial expressions until the listener understands. Then say the lines with the expressive inflections you have developed using only the sounds.

Those who do not use inflection, or use a range of pitch, are speaking in monotone . And, as the word implies, it can be monotonous, boring, and dull. A balance between melodramatic and monotonous would be preferred. The inflection should have a meaningful and interesting variety. Be careful not to turn a pattern of inflection into a repetitious sound. Think through each phrase and its musicalization separately.

Many speakers have developed the habit of ending each sentence as though it is a question. It may be becoming increasingly common. In the wake of the Valley Girl syndrome of the 1980’s, a bad inflection habit has entered the speech pattern: Some speakers end a declarative sentence with the inflection of a question.

Do you know what I mean?

A word of caution: Inflection and varied pitch must be “organic,” that is to say, natural for the speaker. You cannot fake it, or it sounds artificial and disingenuous. It is a skill that needs to develop over a period of time.

Rate of Speaking

In order to retain clarity of the speech with articulation and inflection, the speaker must be aware that there is a range of appropriate  tempo for speaking. If the tempo is too slow, the speech might resemble a monotonous peal. If it is too fast, the articulation could suffer if consonants or vowels are dropped or rushed to keep up the speed. An audience could become frustrated with either extreme. The tempo needs to be appropriate to the speaker’s style, but neither paced like a Gilbertian Lyric (as in “Gilbert and Sullivan”) patter nor a funereal dirge. A comfortable and clear pace is the best. An ideal speaking rate will allow you to comfortably increase your pace to create a sense of excitement, or slow down to emphasize the seriousness of a topic.

It is simple nonsense to speak of the fixed tempo of any particular vocal phrase. Each voice has its peculiarities. – Anton Seidl

Pauses Versus Vocalized Pauses

A text that is read has punctuation that the reader can see…miniature landmarks to define the text. When spoken, similar punctuation is needed for comprehension, and the speaker’s responsibility is to offer the text with pauses. Space between phrases, properly planted, gives the audience the opportunity to understand the structure of the speaker’s sentences and paragraphs. It also gives time for the audience to “digest” crucial phrases.

Generally, spoken sentences and paragraphs need to be simpler and shorter than what can be comprehended by reading. Pauses can help increase comprehension.

However, pauses that are filled with “uh’s, “um’s,” etc., are called  vocalized pauses , or  fillers , and should be avoided. They can be distracting, annoying, and give the impression of a lack of preparation if used excessively. Even worse is the use of vernacular phrases like, “y’know” (a contraction of “Do You Know”) which gives the impression of lack of education or lack of concern for the audience. The use of vocalized pauses may be the result of a habit that deserves an effort to be overcome. Avoid using phrases such as “Uh,” “OK?”, “y’know”, “like…, I mean,” “right?”

Vocal Projection

The volume produced by the vocal instrument is  projection . Supporting the voice volume with good breathing and energy can be practiced, and helping a speaker develop the correct volume is a main task of a vocal trainer, teacher or coach. Good vocal support with good posture, breathing, and energy should be practiced regularly, long before a speech is delivered. There are numerous exercises devoted to developing projection capabilities.

While there is no need to shout, a speaker should project to be easily heard from the furthest part of the audience. Even if the speech is amplified with a microphone/sound system, one must speak with projection and energy. As with your rate of speech, you should speak at a volume that comfortably allows you to increase the volume of your voice without seeming to shout or decrease the volume of your voice and still be heard by all audience members.

Do not expect to walk up to the podium and have a full voice. Actors spend about a half-hour doing vocal warm-ups, and singers warm up much more. You might not have an opportunity to warm up immediately before your speech, but when you can, warm up with humming, yawning (loudly) or singing scales: all while breathing deeply and efficiently. It will loosen your voice, prevent irritation, and fire up your vocal energy.

TRY THIS! PROJECTION

Go to the room in which you are to speak. Have a friend sit as far away from the podium is possible. Rehearse your speech, talking loudly enough so your friend can hear you comfortably. That is the projection you will need. When you mentally focus on the distant listener, you will tend to project better.

One final note: If public speaking is or will be an important part of your career, it would be sensible to have an evaluation of your voice, articulation and projection done by an objective professional so you can take any remedial action that might be recommended. There are courses of study, private lessons, and professional voice coaches to work with your voice projection, tone, and pitch.

Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with deeper meaning. – Maya Angelou

While vocal aspects of delivery are certainly important, they do not paint the entire picture.  Nonverbal aspects of delivery are discussed next; these include your appearance, posture, gestures, eye contact, and facial expressions.

Nonverbal Aspects of Delivery

Women in Business Leadership Conf.  by UCLA Anderson.  CC-BY-NC-SA .

Personal Appearance

Here is the golden rule: Dress appropriately for the situation. You don’t need to sport a power tie (the predictable red tie politicians wore in the 1980s), but you should be comfortable and confident knowing that you look good.

With the exception of wearing formal black-tie tuxedo to a hockey game, it is good practice to dress a bit more formal than less. Err on the side of formal. Most class speeches would be best in business casual (which can vary from place to place and in time). The culture or standards of the audience should be considered.

There are exceptions depending on the speech. A student once arrived in pajamas to deliver his 9 a.m. speech. At first, I thought he got up too late to dress for class. However, his speech was on Sleep Deprivation, and his costume was deliberate. What he wore contributed to his speech.

If you have long hair, be sure it is out of the way so it won’t cover your face. Flipping hair out of your face is very distracting, so it is wise to secure it with clips, gel, or some other method. Be sure you can be seen, especially your eyes and your mouth, even as you glance down to the podium.

Think of it as an interview…just like in an interview, you will want to make a good first impression. The corporate culture of the business will determine the dress. Always dress at the level of the person conducting the interview. For example, a construction supervisor (or project manager) will conduct an interview to hire you as a carpenter. Do not dress like a carpenter, dress like the project manager.

Actors know when they audition, the role is won by the time they step into the room. A speaker can launch success by stepping confidently to the podium.

Be tidy and clean. If you appear as though you took time to prepare because your speech is important, then your audience will recognize and respect what you have to say.

Movement and Gestures

Overall movement and specific gestures are integral to a speech. Body stance, gestures and facial expressions can be generally categorized as  body language . Movement should be relaxed and natural, and not excessive. How you move takes practice. Actors usually have the advantage of directors helping to make decisions about movement, but a good objective listener or a rehearsal in front of a large mirror can yield productive observations.

“Barack Obama at Las Vegas Presidential Forum”  by Center for American Progress Action Fund.  CC-BY-SA .

Moving around the performance space can be a very powerful component of a speech; however, it should be rehearsed as part of the presentation. Too much movement can be distracting. This is particularly true if the movement appears to be a result of nervousness. Avoid fidgeting, stroking your hair, and any other nervousness-related movement.

Among the traditional common fears of novice speakers is not knowing what to do with one’s hands. Sometimes the speaker relies on clutching to the podium or keeping hands in pockets. Neither is a good pose. From my own observation, hand gestures are very common in Italy. We Italians can be seen in conversation from across the street, and an observer can often tell what is being said. There is no need to imitate an Italian in delivering a speech, but hand movement and the energy that the movement represents, can help hold attention as well as help express the message.

An actor practices using the entire body for expression, and regularly practices physical exercises to keep the body and hands and arms relaxed and in motion. An actor’s hand gestures are developed in rehearsal. A speaker’s gestures should also be considered during practice.

During the period when elocution was taught, hand gestures were regimented like a sign language. This is nonsense. Like inflections, gestures and movement should be organic and spontaneous, not contrived. If there is a hint of artificiality in your presentation, you will sacrifice your credibility.

TRY THIS! GESTURES

Using only your hands, convey the following:

• “I give up.”
• “I caught a fish, and it was THIS big!”
• “We will be victorious.”

Facial Expressions

Most readers are very familiar with emoticons like these:

🙂   🙁   :p  😀  😉  :/

Emoticons were not casual inventions, but graphic depictions of facial expressions that convey various meanings of emotions. They are based on a nearly universal language of expression that we begin learning soon after birth. We smile, we frown, we roll our eyes, and we wink. We open eyes wide with astonishment. We raise our eyebrows…occasionally one at a time, in suspicion; both, in astonishment. Sometimes we pucker our lips, either to offer a kiss or express disapproval, disappointment, or grave concern.

“Castefest 2011, Gothic”  by Qsimple.  CC-BY-NC-SA .

Since facial expression is a valid form of communication, it is integral to delivering a speech. The face supports the text, and the speaker’s commitment to the material is validated. The press scrutinizes a politician for every twitch of insincerity. Detectives have created a science of facial communication for interviewing suspects. Like inflections, gestures and movement: facial expressions should be organic and spontaneous, not contrived. If there is a hint of artificiality in your expression, you will sacrifice your credibility.

TRY THIS! FACIAL EXPRESSIONS

While looking in a mirror, try to express these thoughts without words:

• “I am thrilled that I am getting a raise.”
• “I am worried about tomorrow.”
• “Lemons are too sour for me.”
• “I am suspicious about what he did.”

After you have determined a facial expression for each, say the phrase. And see how well the verbal expression goes with the nonverbal expression.

Eye Contact

Next to clearly speaking an organized text, eye contact is another very important element of speaking. An audience must feel interested in the speaker and know the speaker cares about them. Whether addressing an audience of 1000 or speaking across a “deuce” (table for two), eye contact solidifies the relationship between the speaker and audience. Good eye contact takes practice. The best practice is to scan the audience, making contact with each member of the audience.

However, there are some eye contact failures.

Head Bobber

People who bob their head looking down on the notes and up to the audience in an almost rhythmic pattern.

Balcony Gazer

People who look over the heads of their audience to avoid looking at any individual.

The Obsessor

A person who looks at one or two audience members or who only looks in one direction.

Developing Good Eye Contact

The best way to develop good eye contact is to have an objective listener watch and comment on the eye contact.

The eyes are called the windows to the soul, and the importance of eye contact in communication cannot be overemphasized. Ideally, a speaker should include 80% to 90% of the delivery time with eye contact.

Eye contact is so important that modern teleprompters are designed to allow the speaker to look at the audience while actually reading the speech. The Presidential Teleprompter (two angled pieces of glass functioning like a periscope) is used so the politician can “connect” to the audience without missing a single syllable. Audience members will be much more attentive and responsive if they believe the speech is directed to them.

With good eye contact, the speaker can also observe and gauge the attention and response of the audience. This is actually part of the feedback process of communication. The ideal is that the audience is not overly aware of the speaker using notes.

How do you develop good eye contact? First, practice the speech with a generous amount of eye contact. Second, know the speech well enough to only periodically (and quickly) glance at your notes. Third, prepare your notes so they can be easily read and followed without hesitation.

There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure . – Colin Powell

LICENSES AND ATTRIBUTIONS CC LICENSED CONTENT, SHARED PREVIOUSLY

• Types of delivery adapted from Speak out, Call In. Speak Out, Call In: Public Speaking as Advocacy  by Meggie Mapes is licensed under a  Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.
• Chapter 12 Vocal Aspects of Delivery. Authored by : Victor Capecce, M.F.A..  Provided by : Millersville University, Millersville, PA.  Located at :  http://publicspeakingproject.org/psvirtualtext.html .  Project : The Public Speaking Project.  License :  CC BY-NC-ND: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives
• Crying baby.  Authored by : Brazzouk.  Provided by : MorgueFile.  Located at :  https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Crying_baby.jpg .  License :  CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• Ice-T.  Authored by : Tino Jacobs.  Located at :  http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ice-T_(2).jpg .  License :  CC BY: Attribution
• Chapter 12 Nonverbal Aspects of Delivery.  Authored by : Victor Capecce, M.F.A..  Provided by : Millersville University, Millersville, PA.  Located at :  http://publicspeakingproject.org/psvirtualtext.html .  Project : The Public Speaking Project.  License :  CC BY-NC-ND: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives
• Barack Obama at Las Vegas Presidential Forum.  Provided by : Center for American Progress Action Fund.  Located at :  http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Barack_Obama_at_Las_Vegas_Presidential_Forum.jpg .  License :  CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• Women in Business Leadership Conf..  Authored by : UCLA Anderson.  Located at :  https://flic.kr/p/kvxbXN .  License :  CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike

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• Iraqi Speaker.  Authored by : Office of United States Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D – California).  Located at :  http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Iraqi_Speaker.jpg .  License :  Public Domain: No Known Copyright Castlefest 2011, Gothic.  Authored by : Qsimple, Memories For The Future Photography.  Located at :  https://www.flickr.com/photos/qsimple/6029566567/ .  License :  CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike Media Attributions

Principles of Public Speaking Copyright © 2022 by Katie Gruber is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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12 Delivery: A Recipe for Great Speaking

Megan orcholski, university of wisconsin-milwaukee, learning objectives.

• Understand the importance of delivery and its impact on public speaking.
• Learn what tools create delivery and have a basic understanding of how to use them.
• Be better prepared to deliver a speech!

Imagine you go to a restaurant and order a dish that sounds delicious.  When they bring you the food, it is cooked without care, unseasoned, and slopped onto your plate. It doesn’t look or taste very good. You’re hungry, so you eat it. It still has nutritional value, but you don’t enjoy it. You probably won’t remember this meal, and if you do, you will probably only remember how bad it was. When food is cooked, there is a lot of thought that goes into how the person eating the food (the audience) will feel when they eat it. Delivery is similar, as it is the vehicle for how an audience consumes a speech. The audience will get the speech whether it’s perfectly seasoned or thrown together without care. You have the opportunity as a speaker to make your content and performance appetizing to your audience!

Delivery can be thought of as the “icing on the cake,” but let’s break that down. Can you eat cake without icing? Sure. But icing is intended to complement the cake, make it look pretty, and taste better. Similarly, bad delivery can call attention to itself or make the cake worse. As a good friend of mine says, excellent delivery can enhance the content and make it taste sweeter.

Delivery is not always valued as an essential part of presentations by speakers. For example, have you ever had a teacher who was incredibly boring, didn’t look at you, or stumbled through their lectures? You, as the audience, probably wished they had practiced their delivery. To an audience, delivery is important. It can be the difference between an audience tolerating what you are saying and an audience really understanding, enjoying, and remembering your content.

Often, speakers in my class treat delivery like a magical talent that some people are lucky enough to have and others don’t. However, delivery skills can be learned by practice. Imagine speaking to someone who says, “I’m bad at downhill skiing.” You may reply, “Do you ski a lot?” or “Have you taken any lessons?” If someone does not practice and learn basic skills, they cannot expect to do well at a skill like skiing. Speaking is also a skill. It is something which you can practice, train, and improve. Yes, there are certainly some individuals for whom strong delivery seems to come naturally, but anyone can be an effective presenter if they are willing to practice. You do not have to like public speaking to be good at it. So get ready to get great at gifting your messages to audiences!

How to Effectively Use Your Voice

Vocalics also known as paralanguage, refers to the pieces of oral communication which convey meaning beyond the words. Have you heard the proverb, “It’s not what you say, but how you say it?” Vocalics is referring to the “how.” There are five distinct vocalics: volume, pitch, rate, articulation, and pronunciation. The first three (volume, pitch, and rate)  are nonverbal components that are present in both oral and verbal communication. Oral, referring to the mouth, can be any sound or noise. Let’s say your blowing air out of your lips, making a loud sigh or humming, you are still using volume, pitch, and rate even though you aren’t saying words. Volume, pitch, and rate work nonverbally or in connection with the words to create meaning. The final two vocalics, articulation and pronunciation, are only present in verbal communication, as they address how words are formed and emphasized.

Vocalics , also known as paralanguage, refers to the pieces of oral communication which convey meaning beyond the words.

Think of vocalics as the basic ingredients of delivery. By learning how to utilize them, you can make unlimited types of delivery dishes. Having an understanding of how vocalics work and the main things they communicate will allow you to have more control over how you are communicating with your audience.

Volume has to do with how loud, or soft, something is. This is probably a pretty familiar concept, but you may not have thought deeply about how volume functions as a communication tool. Volume is associated with power and control. When a person gets louder, it is often because they want to be heard. Imagine a child who is trying to get the attention of busy adults or a customer trying to get the attention of a server at a crowded restaurant. Increasing volume is a way for a speaker to direct focus to themselves. However, the relationship between volume and power is more complicated. Being louder does not necessarily translate to more power. Instead, volume can work in complex ways to create meaning. Sure, getting louder or yelling can communicate importance or control, but so too can a drop in volume. For example, when parents are trying to get children to do something, the indication of it getting serious is often when they go from yelling to talking in a soft, controlled, serious manner. I knew as a child that it was when my parents got very quiet was when I was actually in big trouble!

Try It: Talk to Grandma

For a lot of people, an appropriate volume is a huge problem. Even when they think they are loud enough, it can still be a struggle to hear them well enough to easily understand what they are saying. If you have seen the movie Sister Act , think about the scene where Whoopi Goldberg’s character uses visualization to get the young singer to be loud enough and find her voice. Visualization may work for you too. Start by visualizing an older relative or friend who doesn’t hear very well. Imagine they are coming to see you speak. They will want to be able to hear you. In your head, place them behind the last row of the audience. If you are always making sure they can hear you from behind the last person, your volume should be adequate for the size of the audience and space.

When using volume as a tool of communication, speakers must consider projection. When you are speaking for an audience, you want to be loud enough to be heard. This volume often requires speakers to adjust how they project sound and focus their sound towards a target. [i] If you have had any music or theater training, you probably already understand the basics of focusing and directing your sound. You will want to have strong breath support to properly project. This breath support can be achieved by making sure you are not breathing shallowly with your shoulders, but rather pulling air all the way down to your diaphragm or about two inches below your belly button.

To get louder, people often use the throat and increase how hard the vocal cords are working, but this can strain the voice and also produce a stressed sound. A better way to achieve increased projection is to pull in a lot of air using your diaphragm so that more air can flow over your vocal cords. Your breath support will help you be able to control your volume.

Finally, you will want to focus your projection or have motivation in your volume. We do this all the time, like when we are at a sporting event and cheering your favorite player or when you are at a loud party and want to have a conversation with one person. [ii] You will adjust your volume to match your speaking situation. In these cases, the direction of your projection helps aid your volume in communicating intention and meaning. Use changes in volume meaningfully and deliberately to focus communication, emphasize ideas, or make yourself heard.

Try It: Using your Diaphragm

Breath support is crucial for projecting your voice without straining your vocal cords.  To make sure you are breathing deeply enough, place your hand below your belly button.  When you fill yourself with air, your hand should rise.  To start, try laying down.  This technique can help you to breathe deeply and relax.  You can also see your hand move!  If you find that your shoulders or chest are moving, you are probably not breathing deeply enough.  To help, visualize that you are pulling from your toes.  Your toes are not part of the breathing process, but thinking about drawing from your whole body can help deepen your breath.

Pitch deals with where your voice is resonating on the musical scale. If you start humming, a musician would be able to match the tone of your hum on their musical instrument. All of us have a pitch we naturally tend to. Our pitch is based on both the make-up of our body, specifically the length of one’s vocal folds and size of the vocal tract, and our socialization. Pitch is determined by how much your vocal folds are vibrating.  Vibrating fast at a high cycle produces a higher pitch, whereas fewer vibrations create a lower pitch. [i]  While our biology determines our abilities and range, a person may also vary or control their pitch based on cultural and social roles.   Pitch is often used to communicate gender, as the physiological makeup is connected to sex. Female voices are, on average, about an octave higher than male voices. This claim is a generalization and can vary based on the individual. But this idea was demonstrated on a daily basis before everyone had a cell phone and the main phone used was a house phone. If a person unfamiliar with the house called, they had to rely solely on a person’s pitch to determine gender and age. Many of us, who grew up with a house phone, have a story of being mistaken for someone else in the household or being labeled with a gender we don’t identify with. Though our bodies may limit our pitch, we do have the ability to utilize pitch variation to give meaning to our words.

As with the other vocalics, pitch gets more interesting when it changes. Intonation  refers to how your pitch rises and falls, creating vocal variety. When pitch rises, the voice communicates uncertainty or indecisiveness. This can be seen when we ask questions. However, some people tend to go up at the end of their sentences even when it is not a question. [ii] For example, imagine saying the phrase “I like your shirt” to a friend. Try it right now with your tone going up at the end. Now say it with your tone staying the same or coming down. Your intonation drastically changes the meaning.

Intonation refers to how your pitch rises and falls, creating vocal variety.

As a speaker, you want to be careful you are not communicating hesitancy or uncertainty when you intend to communicate confidence. Similarly, the dropping of pitch communicates certainty or finality. An example of this is in the Wizard of Oz when the Winkie guards are marching outside of the Wicked Witch’s castle. You can hear them sing, “O-Ee-Yah! Eoh-Ah!” [iii] Not only can you hear them change their intonation throughout the song, but their pitch lowers at the end of the phrase, creating finality to what may otherwise be meaningless sounds.

Try It: Play Around

Speakers do not tend to use as much vocal variety as they are capable of because they are not aware of how much variation they could have. One way to explore pitch is to specifically practice trying different tonal changes when you are speaking. First, to warm up, make noise all the way up and down the tonal scale. Start by making a high pitch and then falling to as low as you can comfortably go. Then go back up. (If you have a piano, you can plunk out notes or do scales). Once you’ve established your range, then pick a line or two in your speech, use the Pledge of Allegiance, or anything else you know very well. Try to speak those sentences in at least ten different ways. Each time, change your tone to play with how you could say the line or phrase. Pay attention to how your tone will impact the audience’s understanding of what you are saying. Focusing on your impact can be especially important on the last line of an argument or the end of the speech. Working to bring your pitch up in the middle of the sentence and dropping it at the end for finality can help you finish strong.

At its most basic, rate deals with speed, specifically how quickly or how slowly the words are spoken. This speed not only deals with the sounds within a word, but also the spaces between words. The speed at which words are spoken is connected to perceptions of emotional control. A fast rate is associated with uncontrolled or extreme emotion, whereas a slow rate is associated with controlled emotion. Think of an excited child trying to tell you a story. Their quick pace may sound frantic or frenzied. Now contrast that with how President Obama spoke during his public speeches. He typically has a very deliberate pace that communicated his command of the situation. You will want to pay attention to your rate in general, but you are also able to vary your rate to communicate meaning. For example, when you have something that is very important, slowing down the rate can help the point come across as important to the audience.

Speaking too quickly is a common problem, but you can train yourself to speak slower. Unfortunately, trying to “be slower!” doesn’t usually help. One tip is to think of putting little tiny spacers between your words. This way, it is easier to be understood, even at a fast pace. It’s like a friendship bracelet–if you put all of the beautiful, glamorous beads together, it looks gaudy. So, you separate them by clear or white spacer beads, making the beauty easier to look at and more fluid. By giving your words tiny spaces around them, your articulation will be stronger, and your words will be easier to understand. Some students also benefit from simply writing “pause” or “breath” on their note cards. These words can remind you to slow your rate, even if you are nervous during your speech.

Pacing can be an effective way of creating meaning and allowing your audience to absorb those meanings. A well-placed pause or giving more time to an explanation can help your audience understand and retain the information you are telling them. Your speaking rate is especially important because your audience is trying to mentally digest what you are saying. They cannot control the speed with which they receive the information, but you can help your audience have time to absorb and process information by being conscious of your rate.

Speakers often throw out information without much thought to the speed or pacing. Think about spoon-feeding a baby. Baby’s don’t have much control over how fast they receive their food. If you feed them too fast, they will cough and choke, and baby food will potentially come out their nose! When you feed a baby, you adjust your speech based on how long it takes the baby to taste, swallow, and enjoy the food. You want to do the same thing with your audience. Pay attention to how they are reacting and how they are absorbing the information. Observation is especially important during transitions of points or topics. Have you ever fed a baby a bite of peas and then a bite of bananas? It’s hilarious. The baby makes weird funny faces because their expectations were violated—they were expecting peas and got bananas instead. When you switch food, you often take a pause, maybe give the baby a sip of water. You want them to know you are moving to a different food. Similarly, a speaker should utilize their delivery to lead the audience from one point to the next. By paying attention to your pacing, your audience will be able to retain and remember more of your information.

Try It: Object Toss

One way to help you with your pacing is to picture your words as tangible objects going toward your audience. To practice this, get a bowl of cotton balls, pennies, scarves, or other lightweight objects. While you are practicing your speech, toss the objects toward a pretend audience (a blanket works great for this). However, you have to toss and speak at the same pace! This action shows a speaker very quickly how fast they are going. Now, one potential risk of this exercise is that you may start to find a rhythm with your tossing that may lull you into an unnatural speaking rhythm. You want your rate to sound natural and conversational, so once you get the pace under control, stop physically tossing and work to speak at that comfortable pace.

Articulation and Pronunciation

Articulation deals with how the words come out of your mouth, specifically how the words are shaped. Pronunciation is articulation combined with cultural influences to create ways of saying words that are identifiable to specific regions or groups of people. While two separate concepts, they often work in tandem when we are dealing with language. As a speaker, you want to make sure the audience can understand you. Paying attention to how you form your words can help you avoid mumbling or slurring your words together.

Pronunciation is grounded in culture and expectations can vary depending on your audience and specific speaking context. A dialect, which refers to how a person or group specifically forms their words and arranges their grammar, may impact how you are communicating with your audience. You may want to be aware if the audience has a similar or different dialect than you. For example, if you grew up in the Midwest, you may refer to Pepsi as “pop” with the o sounding more like an a. Whereas, those in the south would refer to it as a “coke” with a long o sound. And then there is the rest of the nation who say “soda.”  People often forget they have a dialect and will sometimes view other dialects as inferior. But everyone has a dialect that delineates from ethnic heritage as well as regional locations. Being aware of dialect is important in public speaking because parts of your dialect may not be familiar to a group who uses a different one. You may end up using a term common to you, but unfamiliar to your audience. You may also pronounce a word in a way that the audience wouldn’t understand. By being aware of these issues, you can address them in your presentation if necessary.

Try It: All it Takes is a Pencil

If you are struggling with articulation or worried you are mumbling, a pencil can help your mouth realize how it’s forming words. Put the pencil in your mouth horizontally, and bite down on it. Say your speech with the pencil in your mouth until your words can be completely understood. Once you are understandable, pull the pencil out of your mouth WHILE YOU ARE TALKING. You should be able to feel the difference. This exercise can help train the muscles how to properly enunciate.

Vocal Variety

While there are different vocalics, they function together to create meaning and vocal variety . Be aware of how volume, pitch, rate, articulation, and pronunciation are working together in your speech to communicate to the audience. What does it do to a sentence when you get quieter, slow down, and drop your pitch all at the same time? How about getting louder, speeding up, and raising your pitch all while over articulating? These tools are excellent for helping to craft meaning beyond your words. Being aware of how they interact with each other can increase your ability to utilize them for making meaning when you are speaking.

Types of Vocalics

Volume has to do with how loud, or soft, something is.

Pitch deals  with where your voice is resonating on the musical scale.

Rate deals with speed, specifically how quickly or how slowly the words are spoken.

Articulation deals with how the words come out of your mouth, specifically how the words are shaped.

Pronunciation is grounded in culture and expectations can vary depending on your audience and specific speaking context.

Vocal variety is when there are different vocalics being used, and they function together to create meaning.

How to Effectively Use your Body

To develop strong delivery skills, speakers need to realize the extent of the body’s power. Your body is an incredibly complex tool that is continuously making meaning. To start to understand this, do some people watching. What can you determine about a person based on the way they stand or how they move? Do you know how they are feeling based on their facial expressions? Beginning speakers are often quick to take their body for granted and not consciously employ choices of movement or expression. To better understand the tools of physical delivery, we will discuss kinesics and the multiple parts of nonverbal communication. Then, we will discuss proxemics or your body in relation to other objects, before ending with a discussion of appearance.

Similar to the vocalics, your body movements add to the words you are saying.  Kinesics refers to how the body is interpreted as nonverbal communication and how physical movements are able to communicate on their own. Think about how often you move your body and what those movements signal to those around you. From popping your hip and crossing your arms to communicate impatience to a late friend, waving at a neighbor as you pass by, or even initiating a hug to a loved one, the movement of our bodies transmits meaning to those observing us. The significance of kinesics is heightened in a public speaking context because of the specific nature and focus of the presentation.

Kinesics refers to how the body is interpreted as nonverbal communication and how physical movements are able to communicate on their own.

Most of us have a basic understanding of posture , even if just from being told to “stand up straight” as a kid. However, posture is more than just standing up straight. It deals with the arrangement of your bones and muscles so that each area is allowed to do its job to its best ability. Good posture allows your body to support and control its structure without unnecessary tension in your frame or strain in the muscles. [i]

To think about your posture as a speaker, it’s helpful to think of the ranges in which your body could arrange itself. The first range is contraction to expansion. How broad are you letting your shoulders expand? How much space are you allowing your arms to take up? The amount of space you take up communicates to the audience. The next range is withdrawal and approach.  Are you leaning forward or sinking back as you speak? When you move in your speech, is it toward or away from the audience? While this happens while walking, withdrawal and approach can also be communicated while standing. Think of how a lean forward communicates advancement whereas leaning back tends to communicate moving away.

Finally, general body orientation, or where all of your parts are in relationship to each other, is important. A neutral body posture is when both feet are flat on the floor, weight is balanced, arms hang gently, and muscles are relaxed. A neutral body posture is not the way most people tend to stand. Many people pop their hip or cross their legs. These stances do not provide a strong foundation to pull breath and initiate movement. As with all of the other components of delivery, there is not an ultimate right or wrong way to stand. Rather, thinking about your stance in relation to your message and audience is the most important consideration.

Try It: Roll it Up and Pull the String

Walk around a mall for a bit and you will be amazed by the popped hips, crossed legs, leaning, and general disregard for a balanced and strong posture. However, when you’re giving a speech, you want your body to look powerful and confident. Instead of forcing your body into an unnatural position, help your body find perfect posture on its own. Stand up straight and find balance with your weight equally distributed between both legs. Picture your spine as building blocks and, starting at your head, roll your spine down block by block until you are comfortably doubled over (do not stretch beyond your capabilities). Here, breathe deeply a few times. As you breathe, feel your back rise and fall with the inhale and exhale. Then slowly, block by block, roll back up until your head is gently floating on tip of your neck. Picture a string connected to your spine that comes out of the top of your head. By gently “pulling” that string at the end, your body should naturally lift into the correct posture. You don’t want to be tense. It may help to think “Bones up, Muscles down.”

While all of the pieces of our body are important for communicating, our arms and hands are arguably the most moveable and versatile. They can help enhance the emotional impact of your verbal message. Gestures are when our arms and hands use their different types of movements to create emphasis, meaning, and symbols. Two of the most well-known categories are emblems and illustrators. Understanding emblems and illustrators can help you know more about how your gestures are communicating. An emblem happens when the body creates something which can be interpreted as a verbal word or phrase. For example, holding your index finger and your middle finger into a “V” with the other fingers closed can be interpreted as the peace sign or the number 2. To be an emblem, Steven R. Brydon and Michael D. Scott argue a gesture must do three things: [i]

• It must have specific meaning for the audience members.
• It must be used intentionally by the speaker to purposely generate meaning.
• It must be easily translated into a few words.

Emblems are very specific to the context. For example, signaling to a train or truck driver by making a fist with a bent elbow and pumping it up and down means “honk your horn.” But that same gesture after scoring a goal in a soccer game can mean “YES!”

Emblems are also very connected to culture. Because of this, you will want to be aware of what meaning you are communicating with your emblem. For example, most of us know that connecting your thumb and index finger into a circle with your other fingers flared up means okay in the United States. However, if you did the same gesture in Japan it means “money” and in France, it means “zero” or “worthless.”

Illustrators are similar to emblems, but instead of being directly translated, they aid the verbal messages and are more generalized meanings. For example, you can describe how big or small an object is, but it is even more effective to also show with your hands. The visualization is aided because of how your motions connect to what you are saying. To demonstrate the importance of illustrators, attempt to give directions or describe something specific without using your hands. It’s very difficult to do!

Types of Gestures

An emblem happens when  the body creates something which can be interpreted as a verbal word or phrase.

Illustrators are similar to emblems, but instead of being directly translated, they aid the verbal messages and are more generalized meanings.

Facial Expressions

Faces are fantastic places for expression and communication.  Facial expressions are when a speaker uses their face to communicate. The face is often completely forgotten as a communicative space. Speakers should be very aware of their face to both increase their communication and prevent sending unintentional messages to the audience. When thinking about facial expressions, it’s important to avoid a blank or unexpressive face. You also don’t want to rely on one facial expression the whole time. Like your vocal tone, your face helps convey meaning. You want it to match your topic and change with the specific information in your speech.  Smiling, for example, is incredibly underused. Many speakers get nervous about speaking and forget the elemental power of a smile. Obviously, there are times and topics for which a smile would not be the appropriate facial expression. But just as we do in conversations with our friends, do not be afraid to use your face to help communicate.

Eye Contact

Eye contact is important for establishing a connection and communicating with the audience.  Eye contact is when the speaker meaningfully connects to the audience with their eyes. The first step to utilizing eye contact is to know your information well enough to be able to speak while making eye contact. This step may seem like common sense, but it can be incredibly difficult to do. Most beginning speakers rely very heavily on their notes or manuscript. I have often told students that I’m jealous of the podium or notecard because it gets all their attention! It may seem scary to look up at the audience, but sustained eye contact has the power to make you feel both physically and emotionally closer to each other. [i] In Western culture, eye contact works to establish a connection, communicate confidence, and affirm credibility.

Once you’re able to look up at the audience, it is important to practice looking directly in the eyes of the audience members. You cannot fake eye contact! If you can see your audience, they will know whether you are actually looking at them or if you are looking over the top of their heads. [ii]  Direct eye contact is especially important if it is a smaller audience. If it is a larger audience or if you are on a lighted stage and can’t see the individuals in the audience, you will still want to direct your energy at specific spots to make it feel personal.  There is no set time for how long to hold eye contact, as it is another variable which changes with the situation and circumstances.  However, most speakers think they are holding their eye contact for longer than they are.  Audiences gain a tremendous amount of energy and connection through eye contact, so making sure you are holding your eye contact for a significant amount of time is important.

Try It: Holding Eye Contact

One of my favorite mentors from college does this activity in class to show how really effective eye contact should make you feel. He will look at someone and say “Hi! You are my favorite. You are the only person I care about in this room. All these other people don’t mean anything to me. I have to look over there for a minute, but I’ll be right back…don’t forget you’re my favorite!” Then he looks to the next person and says, “Hi! You’re my favorite. You’re the only person I care about in this room…” After three or four people you understand how eye contact can make you feel like you are important and being spoken to at the individual level.[1]  To practice eye contact, rehearse in front of objects with eyes. Obviously, a practice audience is the best. But if you don’t have one, you can use stuffed animals, pictures, posters, or anything that has eyes you can connect with. Set a few up around the room and practice playing connect the dots with your eyes while you speak. This will help you practice moving your attention from person to person instead of glancing at the wall, the clock, the floor on your way from one individual to another.

Make your Movement Matter

To make choices about your movement, you first need to be conscious of your body while speaking. I once watched a student twirl the lanyard from the keys in his pocket for most of his speech. When he saw the video, he was shocked because he had no memory of what his hands were doing during the speech. The brain is complicated and tricky. You need to train your brain to recognize and control what your body is doing while you speak. This training is comparable to a basketball player doing layups over and over or a baseball player practicing their swing. You want to know the movements so well that your muscle memory takes over while you are speaking. Many people will either not move at all or move for no particular reason.

Remember, movement helps aid in the communication process. In the same way, you are carefully selecting your words, you also want to choose your movements. If you don’t have a justified reason to move, you do not need to move. Save your energy for when the movement aids your message. One visualization that helps me is picturing my body as full of energy. That energy has to be used for certain things, such as making a sound to say the words, thinking about what comes next, and moving my head to have good eye contact. Sometimes the body does things that waste energy. Many people have ineffective habits, such as crossing legs, leaning on the podium, or pacing. Personally, I sway. If left to my own devices, I would sway the entire time I teach a course. Which would be incredibly distracting and unnecessary, not to mention tiring. So, I employ body consciousness to focus that energy into my words instead of wasting it swaying. This consciousness can take a lot of practice and mental energy. However, by employing body control and making conscious movements, you can increase your audience connection and enhance your topic.

Parts of Kinesics 

Posture is the arrangement of your bones and muscles so that each area of the body is allowed to do its job to its best ability.

Gestures are when our arms and hands use their different types of movements to create emphasis, meaning, and symbols.

Facial expressions are when a speaker uses their face to communicate.

Eye contact is when the speaker meaningfully connects to the audience with their eyes.

Proxemics deals with space and location, specifically with how close humans are to each other. There is certainly a physical aspect to how bodies move together in spaces.  There is also a cultural connection to proxemics. Think about how you are around certain people. You probably have a specific comfortable distance you usually stand away from people, and that distance most likely varies based on who the other person is. You may also have that one friend who has no personal space and will talk very close to you.

Proxemics deals with space and location, specifically with how close humans are to each other.

Proxemics is important in public speaking. If a podium or table is in the room, you will need to make a choice whether to stand behind, in front, or move the object out of the way. You do not want to be too far away from our audience, as a connection with the audience is important. However, you also don’t want to be too close, potentially making your audience uncomfortable or cutting off eye contact to parts of your audience. If you choose to move during your speech, pay attention when you are moving away and when you are moving toward them. Increasing or decreasing your distance during specific parts of your speech can enhance your message.

How you look matters, but I often find my students oversimplify this idea. There isn’t one way to look or appear. My students frequently ask if they have to “dress up” for their speeches. I point out that appearance doesn’t appear anywhere in my grading rubric, but appearance impacts a speaker’s ethos. It is more important that you are thinking critically about your speaking appearance than relying on one way to always look.

When you have to speak in public, consider the details of the situation. Is there anything specific you should wear to the occasion? How will your clothing communicate? Will it interact with your meaning? In an advanced public speaking course I taught, an experienced public speaker who showed up to every speech day in a full suit and pantyhose. This student was a self-proclaimed nerd and a huge Trekkie, so for a humorous speech assignment, she chose the topic of Star Trek. In the feedback session, a classmate said, “it’s too bad you don’t have a Star Trek uniform. That would have really added to your speech.” The student’s face fell—of course she owned a uniform! But, it had never occurred to her to wear it because she was so used to dressing up for speeches. For her final speech, she wore her Star Trek uniform and noted how it was the first public speech she’d ever given in anything other than a suit, citing that as part of her growth. As long as you are critically thinking about your appearance during a speech, you will be able to make conscious choices about what to wear.

Types of Preparation and Delivery

There are four styles of delivery that tend to be most useful for public speaking: manuscript, memory, impromptu, and extemporaneous.

Speaking from a Manuscript

In my experience, speaking from a manuscript is the type of delivery people tend to want to try. I have had students say it makes them feel more safe and comfortable to have every word planned out. That is an advantage of speaking from a manuscript. Manuscript speaking should be used in cases where getting the exact words correct are very important. In cases of intense or emotional speaking, a manuscript can also be the best delivery method. I had the opportunity to give my father’s eulogy when I was 21. This was an instance when I choose to use a manuscript in order to have a very well-constructed speech in an emotional time. There may be formal contexts where a manuscript would be preferred or follows the norms of the occasion. Former President Obama is an excellent example of someone who employs manuscript speaking in emotional times like after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. A manuscript allowed the president to be comforting even in the face of tragedy.

If you plan to speak from a manuscript, you need to be aware of the challenges this type of speaking creates.  Effectively speaking from a manuscript is harder than most people anticipate. Remember, the words are only part of the issue. As we have seen in this chapter, there are so many other components that go into delivery. Reading from a manuscript often causes speakers to talk very fast and not look up enough to connect with the audience. Because of this, manuscript speaking often leads to an uninteresting or disconnected performance. But, this does not mean manuscript delivery can’t be done well. Delivery from a manuscript can be effective with a significant amount of time and practice.

Speaking from Memory

There are some instances that may benefit from a memorized speech . For example, you may find yourself in a situation where memorization is required, such a speaking contest. You may find times you don’t want to use notes, such as at a wedding giving a toast. Memorization can be very beneficial, especially if the speech is short or the material is very familiar to you.  First, memorization is the method that allows for the most audience connection. Since you don’t notes or a script to look at, you can engage your body, face, and eyes with the audience the entire time. Practicing your material thoroughly can put the speaker at ease.

But, like manuscript speaking, people greatly underestimate how much work it takes to speak from memory effectively. Different people have varying abilities when it comes to memorizing, but it almost always takes longer to memorize than people anticipate. You can’t just memorize the words, but rather you must know the material deeply in order to confidently speak from memory. Additionally, while the payoff can be great, so is the risk. Even with a lot of practice, speaking from memory may increase nerves and there is always a chance of a forgetting the material.  Even if a speaker is well rehearsed, blanking in the moment is possible. You will want to practice blanking and know how to handle it if it happens. Finally, you will need to work hard to speak in the moment. While this method does allow you the most freedom with your voice and body in the moment, it is common to sound over-rehearsed or on autopilot. Make sure you are staying in the moment by really talking to your audience instead of at them.

Try It: Tips for Memorizing

• The more you can do to help your brain remember, the easier it will be to learn your speech. One way to help is to color-code your script by point. If your intro is one color, your first point is a different color and so on, it will help your brain remember the pieces of your speech. Another way to help is to stand in the places you plan to give each point. If you plan to move, placing your color-coded part in that place to help you associate the words with the space can be very effective. This process mimics how Greek orators memorized long stories and passages. They would walk, associating the ideas with where they were.
• Combine content memorization with word for word memorization. Use your outline to memorize the flow of ideas, the main points and where they go. Then, if you mess up or forget the individual words in a spot, you will be able to default to talking about the main ideas or jumping to the next part you remember.
• Practice in multiple contexts. Moving contexts will help your brain recall in many different circumstances. If you only ever practice in the car, your body will not be used to standing to deliver. Practicing in multiple spaces and for actual people can help increase the trustworthiness of the memory recall.

Impromptu Speaking

Impromptu speaking happens when a person has little or no time to prepare for the speaking situation. You may be thinking that this mode of delivery sounds terrifying, but you actually already practice impromptu speaking quite often. Anytime someone asks you for a short introduction about yourself, you speak to a group about yourself for a few minutes; or, when someone asks what you thought of the movie you just saw and you give a detailed answer, you are employing impromptu speaking. This method is not one that should be chosen for a speech you have time to or are required to prepare. Instead, think of this more as a skill or a recognition of circumstance to improve your speaking in these moments.

One key to impromptu speaking is to practice active listening. If you are in a meeting or a class where you know you may be called on to share your thoughts, intensely listening to what is happening and mentally engaging in the ideas will help you formulate your answer if someone asks you to talk. Anticipating impromptu opportunities can always be helpful in mentally preparing. I have been to several funerals and memorials where they open up the floor for people to share memories or say a few words. In these cases, I start thinking about what I want to say in advance by going over the order of my brief message in my head. In some cases, you may even want to jot down a few quick notes to help you stay focused.

Extemporaneous Speaking

The definition of extemporaneous speaking is to speak from limited notes. Extemporaneous speaking often gets confused with impromptu or off-the-cuff speaking, with people assuming you don’t have to prepare much before the speech. But, extemporaneous speaking is actually an engaged process that forces you to do a lot of research, organizing, and writing before you actively practice your delivery. There are several advantages of extemporaneous speaking. First, you are prepared but flexible in the moment. This level of preparation can prevent you from sounding robotic and encourage you to react to your specific audience in the speaking moment. Second, this type of speaking allows you opportunities to connect with the audience while not having to rely on your memory recall to know every word. Finally, you can adapt to your audience and the situation. If the audience laughs or reacts really well to something, you can mention it or add a reaction. If you are running out of time, you can make adjustments quickly to make sure you get out the most important information with the remaining speaking time.

The main disadvantage of extemporaneous speaking is that most people are not familiar with this process and it takes some getting used to. Beginning speakers, even if they are attempting extemporaneous speaking, will often make outlines with too many details and not practice enough which usually turns into reading a script. The process for practicing a strong extemporaneous speech can feel very different than other types of speaking methods. Instead of spending the majority of the time crafting each word, you need to practice talking. This practice can feel non-intuitive to writers or people who want their speech to sound perfect. Instead of writing every word, you want to craft a strong outline to use while you speak. Then, you want to stand up and practice it. I will say that again so you really believe me—stand up and try it!! Do not wait until you think you have everything perfect. You will run out of time, as it will never be perfect. And, practicing will help you make your outline stronger. Strengthening your outline with help you speak better in the moment. Go back and forth until you think you have a strong grasp on the concepts and can speak from your notes in the strong way you practiced.

This type of delivery is often the most effective and the one you will probably utilize the most beyond speaking classes. I highly encourage you to learn this skill and to practice it.  You want to have a grasp of all of the styles of delivery. If you are in a class, that is a great place to practice extemporaneous speaking and get better at it. That way you understand and can use the multiple methods of delivering speeches. Extemporaneous speaking is often the most employed style in prepared speeches. It is what you will likely use in your job or at events you’ve been asked to speak. Learning how to do it well will be incredibly useful.

Remember, the most important thing is to choose the method that fits you and the situation best. You may also want to consider your strengthens and weaknesses as a speaker. The more you are critically thinking about the speech and it’s circumstances, the better qualified you are to make choices about how to best get your message to the audience.

Delivery and Audience Connection

You are not a tv.

Many speakers suffer from what I have termed “the TV effect.” Have you ever noticed your TV doesn’t care about you? If you are watching it and you have to leave to get a snack, the TV just keeps on playing. It doesn’t wait, and it doesn’t pause. Or, you laugh out loud at something in a show. The TV doesn’t pause for your laughter or even recognize you have laughed. At times, speakers act this way. They are nervous and just want to get the speech done. So, they get up and go! However, the brilliance of performance is how we can adjust in the moment and react to what is happening in our current situation. Your speaking is enhanced by the audiences’ reactions, the space you are speaking in, and how you are performing in the moment. Keep working to utilize the tools in this chapter to enhance your delivery during live performances.

You are not a train

The fear of doing something “wrong” often prevents speakers from achieving an audience connection. They are afraid they will mess up. I’ve even seen speakers ask to “start over” as if I am in control of them. Speakers often act like they are a train on train tracks. When it’s time to go, they go! They are chugging along, not looking up, not pausing, not paying attention to the audience, because they are afraid they will mess up and fall off the tracks. If a train is disturbed in its route, it doesn’t have a lot of options. It can go forward, backward, or just fall over. You are not on train tracks. Rather, you are in a field on a fairly trampled path. You have crafted the way to go but may veer off for one reason or another. If that happens, pick some berries, and find a way back to the path. Your audience may think that’s part of the journey or might be pleasantly surprised by the detour.

You are a tour guide!

Remember, your speech is a new destination where your audience has never been, and you are their tour guide. If you throw them onto the bus, hit the gas at 100 miles an hour, and never point out the sights, they are not going to enjoy the tour. You have the power to make it enjoyable for them. Help them onto the bus. Make sure they are comfortable. Connect with them. Go at a decent pace for them, so they don’t feel like you’re going to “crash.” Remember, that pace might be different than you want to go as the driver. Have you ever ridden with someone who is driving just a little too fast? They know they are in control because they are driving. But, the passenger does not necessarily feel comfortable. Adjust your pace with the audience in mind. Point out the important parts of your speech using emphasis. Make sure they can hear you. By being a good tour guide, your audience will definitely enjoy the trip!

Being yourself

When learning how to speak, speakers often fall into a few delivery traps when they are trying to deliver the speech “correctly.” They rely on reading or ignore their audience. Even when they conquer some of these basic delivery strategies, they still revert back and sound like a generic speaker. They fall into vocal patterns and don’t choose the pacing for their material or audience. They sound fine on the surface, but they don’t sound like themselves. In an attempt to do the speech “right,” speakers end up not actually being effective because they are not making conscious choices with themselves and the audience in mind.

Even if you are nervous, keep working to channel the verbal and physical qualities that are unique to you. Audiences want personality. Do not be afraid to let yours come through. You do not need to sound scripted or robotic to be an effective speaker. In fact, most people prefer someone who they can tell is a person beyond the confines of the speaking moment. One thing that can help you relax into being your engaging self is to think of yourself as an audience member. What do you enjoy? How do you want to be talked to? If you don’t enjoy monotone speaking (and few do), then work to have vocal variety. If you don’t want to work to hear and understand the words, work to be loud enough.  If you prefer someone who is smiling, connected and engaging you, then work to be that person! You have the power to be entertaining! It takes practice, but you are capable of engaging the audience as yourself.

Audience participation

It is tempting to think of a speech as a speaker standing in front of an audience dumping information on them. But, as we have learned in this chapter, delivering a speech is an interactive performance that involves both the speaker and the audience. The level of audience participation may vary based on the speech and situation. For example, there may be times you ask questions to the audience that you actually want them to answer. Make sure you are patient and give them enough time to answer, as they may be used to answering a speaker’s questions.

Regulators ,  or gestures that control the flow of interaction can be used here. This may involve head nodding or moving your arms in a way to encourage your audience to participate. You may even find yourself in situations where there is a question and answer session as part of your speaking opportunity. The more you know about your topic, the more at ease you will be during this period. It is common to fear that an audience member might ask a question and you don’t know the answer. If this happens, there is no need to fake your way through an answer. Just explain how you don’t have that specific information and potentially discuss where they could find it.

Regulators  are gestures that control the flow of interaction.

Actively listening to the question posed will help you formulate an answer. Don’t be afraid to be short and sweet. Often by that time, the audience has sat through your whole speech. While there are certainly times and occasions for drawn-out answers and discussions, be aware of how long you take to answer. They may be looking for a short supplement to what you already covered.

You have the power!

In the end, remember you are in charge of your vocal and physical choices as a speaker. It doesn’t always feel that way, but with practice and exercises, you will gain more awareness of what your voice and body are doing during a speech. Then, you will be able to make conscious choices to control them in order to make your speech more impactful. By working on delivery alongside the construction of your speech, you ensure your audience with be engaged and listening to you. Your practicing will help get your audience interested in your topic, retain what you are saying, and think deeply about your concepts.

Stand up, Speak out Copyright © 2017 by Josh Miller; Marnie Lawler-Mcdonough; Megan Orcholski; Kristin Woodward; Lisa Roth; and Emily Mueller is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Chapter 6: Delivery

This chapter is adapted from  Stand up, Speak out: The Practice and Ethics of Public Speaking ,  CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 .

How do I effectively deliver my speech?

Wahoo! You have finally written your speech. You have carefully chosen just the right language, you’ve considered all listening styles, and you are confident that you have created a meaningful speech that will capture your audience’s attention. Now, it’s time to learn how to effectively deliver your speech.

How we deliver a speech is just as important, if not more so, than the message we want to convey. If you have worked hard on preparing the verbal part of your speech, you may feel that delivery is just an “extra” that requires much time or effort. After all, your speech is carefully planned, researched, and polished. It is committed safely to paper and hard drive. It’s a carefully constructed, logically crafted, ethical message. The words alone should engage your audience’s attention and interest—right?

After all the work you put into building such a message, you might wish that you could simply read it to the audience. However, reading a speech occurs in only a few circumstances—when the message is highly technical, complex, and extremely important, such as a new medical discovery; when international protocols and etiquette are crucially important and the world is listening; or when the speaker is representing a high-ranking person, such as a president or a king, who is unable to be present. For this public speaking class, you will not be encouraged to read your speech. Instead, you will be asked to give an extemporaneous presentation. We will examine what that means.

Delivering the nonverbal part of your speech as well as your message is a presentation of yourself. Through eye contact, vocal expression, body posture, gestures, and facial display, you enhance your message and invite your audience to give their serious attention to it—and to you. Your credibility, your sincerity, and your topic knowledge become apparent through your nonverbal behaviors.

The interplay between your speech’s verbal and nonverbal components can either bring the message vividly to life or confuse or bore the audience. Therefore, it is best that you neither overdramatize your delivery behaviors nor downplay them. This is a balance achieved through rehearsal, trial and error, and experience.

In this chapter, we are going to examine effective speech-delivery strategies. First, to help you enhance your delivery, we will explore speech delivery’s four basic methods. Second, we will discuss how to prepare your delivery for different environments. Third, we will talk about how to effectively use notecards to enhance your delivery. Finally, we will examine good delivery characteristics and give some effective practicing strategies for the day when you will deliver your speech.

The easiest approach to speech delivery is not always the best. Substantial work goes into carefully preparing an interesting and ethical message, so it is understandable that students may have the impulse to avoid messing it up by simply reading it word for word. But students who do this miss out on one of the major reasons for studying public speaking: to learn ways to connect with one’s audience and to increase one’s confidence in doing so. You already know how to read, and you already know how to talk. But public speaking is neither reading nor talking.

Public speaking is more formal than talking. During a speech, you present yourself professionally. This doesn’t mean you must wear a suit or dress up, unless your instructor asks you to, but it does mean making yourself presentable by being well-groomed and wearing clean, appropriate clothes. It also means being prepared to use language correctly and appropriately for the audience and the topic, to make eye contact with your audience, and to look like you know your topic very well.

While public speaking is more formal than talking, it is less formal than reading. Speaking allows for meaningful pauses, eye contact, small changes in word order, and vocal emphasis. Reading is more or less exactly replicating words on paper without using any nonverbal interpretation. Speaking—as you will realize if you think about excellent speakers who you have seen and heard—provides a more animated message.

The next sections introduce four delivery methods that can help you balance between too much and too little formality when publicly speaking.

Impromptu Speaking

Impromptu speaking means to present a short message without advance preparation. Impromptu speeches often occur when someone is asked to say a few words or give a toast on a special occasion. You have probably done impromptu speaking many times in informal, conversational settings. Self-introductions in group settings are examples of impromptu speaking: “Hi, my name is Steve, and I’m a volunteer with the Homes for the Brave Program.” Another example of impromptu speaking occurs when you answer a question such as, “What did you think of the documentary?”

The advantage of this kind of speaking is that it’s spontaneous and responsive in an animated group context. The disadvantage is that the speaker is given little or no time to contemplate his or her message’s central theme. As a result, the message may be disorganized and difficult for listeners to follow.

Here is a step-by-step guide that may be useful if you are called upon to give an impromptu public speech.

• Take a moment to collect your thoughts and plan your main point.
• Thank the person for inviting you to speak.
• Deliver your message, making your main point as briefly as you can while still covering it adequately and at a pace that your listeners can follow.
• Thank the person again for the opportunity to speak.
• Stop talking.

As you can see, impromptu speeches are generally most successful when they are brief and focus on a single point.

Extemporaneous Speaking

Extemporaneous speaking means to present a carefully planned and rehearsed speech, spoken in a conversational manner, and using brief notes. By using notes rather than a full manuscript, the extemporaneous speaker can establish and maintain eye contact with the audience and assess how well they are understanding the speech as it progresses. The opportunity to assess is also an opportunity to restate more clearly any idea or concept that the audience seems to have trouble grasping.

For instance, suppose you are speaking about workplace safety and you use the term “sleep deprivation.” If you notice your audience’s eyes glazing over, this might not be a result of their own sleep deprivation, but rather that they are uncertain about what you mean. If this happens, you can add a short explanation; for example, “Sleep deprivation is sleep loss serious enough to threaten one’s cognition, hand-to-eye coordination, judgment, and emotional health.” You might also, or instead, provide a concrete example to illustrate the idea. Then you can resume your message, having clarified an important concept.

Speaking extemporaneously has some advantages. It promotes the likelihood that you, the speaker, will be perceived as knowledgeable and credible. In addition, your audience is likely to pay better attention to the message because it is both verbally and nonverbally engaging. The disadvantage of extemporaneous speaking is that it requires a great deal of preparation for both the verbal and the nonverbal components of the speech. Adequate preparation cannot be achieved the day before you’re scheduled to speak.

Because extemporaneous speaking is the style used in most public speaking situations, most of the information in this chapter is targeted to this kind of speaking.

Manuscript Speaking

Manuscript speaking means to read a written message word-for-word. During a manuscript speech, the speaker maintains his or her attention on the printed page, except when using visual aids.

The advantage to reading from a manuscript is that you are reading the exact original words. As we mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, in some circumstances, this can be extremely important. For example, reading a statement about your organization’s legal responsibilities to customers may require that the original words be exact. In reading one word at a time, in order, the only errors would typically be mispronouncing a word or stumbling over complex sentence structure.

However, there are costs involved in manuscript speaking. First, it’s typically an uninteresting way to present. Unless the speaker has rehearsed the reading as a complete performance, animated with vocal expression and gestures—as poets do in a poetry slam and actors do in a reader’s theater—the presentation tends to be dull. Keeping one’s eyes glued to the script precludes eye contact with the audience. For this kind of straight manuscript speech to hold an audience’s attention, the audience must be already interested in the message before the delivery begins.

It is worth noting that professional speakers, actors, news reporters, and politicians often read from an autocue device, such as a TelePrompTer, especially when appearing on television where eye contact with the camera is crucial. With practice, a speaker can achieve a conversational tone and give the impression of speaking extemporaneously while using an autocue device. However, success in this medium depends on two factors: first, the speaker is already an accomplished public speaker who has learned to use a conversational tone while delivering a prepared script, and second, the speech is written in a style that sounds conversational.

Memorized Speaking

Memorized speaking means to recite a written message that the speaker has committed to memory. Actors, of course, recite from memory whenever they perform from a script in a stage play, television program, or movie scene. When it comes to speeches, memorization can be useful when the message needs to be exact and the speaker doesn’t want to be confined by notes.

The advantage of memorizing a speech is that it enables the speaker to maintain eye contact with the audience throughout the speech. Being note-free means that you can move freely around the stage and use your hands to make gestures. If your speech requires visual aids, this freedom is even more of an advantage. However, there are some real and potential costs. First, unless you also plan and memorize every vocal cue—the subtle but meaningful variations in speech delivery, which include using pitch, tone, volume, and pace—and you gesture and use facial expression, your presentation will be flat and uninteresting and even the most fascinating topic will suffer. You might end up speaking in a monotone or a sing-song repetitive delivery pattern. You might also present your speech in a rapid machine-gun style that fails to emphasize the most important points. Second, if you lose your place and start trying to ad lib, the contrast in your delivery style will alert your audience that something is wrong. More frighteningly, if you go completely blank during the presentation, it will be extremely difficult to find your place and keep going.

How do different speaking contexts affect my delivery?

You may be asked to speak in different contexts or venues. Do you use the same delivery gestures and vocal variation in each context?

The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial at a gigantic civil rights rally on an August afternoon in 1963. His lectern was bristling with microphones placed there for news coverage and for recording the historic event. His audience, estimated to number a quarter of a million people, extended as far as the eye could see. He was the last speaker of the day, delivering his speech after more than a dozen civil rights leaders and world-famous performers such as Joan Baez, Mahalia Jackson, and Charlton Heston had occupied the stage (Ross, 2007). King gave us his speech in the assertive ringing tones of inspired vision. Nothing less would have worked that day.

Most of us will never speak to so many people at once. Even a television appearance will probably command a much smaller audience than the crowd that heard King’s speech. Even though you don’t expect an audience of such size or setting or symbolic importance, you should still be prepared to adapt to the setting in which you will speak.

Our public speaking audiences, circumstances, and physical contexts will vary. At some point in your life, you may run for public office or rise to a leadership role in a business or volunteer organization. Or, you may be responsible for informing coworkers about a new policy, regulation, or opportunity. You may be asked to deliver remarks in the context of a worship service, wedding, or funeral. You may be asked to introduce a keynote speaker or simply to make an important announcement in some context. Sometimes, you will speak in a familiar environment, at other times, you may speak at an unfamiliar location with very little time to get used to speaking with a microphone. These are contexts and situations we address in the following subsections.

Using Lecterns

A lectern is a small raised surface, usually with a slanted top, where a speaker can place notes during a speech. While a lectern adds formality to the speaking situation, it allows speakers the freedom to do two things: to come out from behind the lectern to establish more immediate contact with the audience and to use both hands to gesture.

However, for new speakers who feel anxious, it is all too tempting to grip the lectern’s edges with both hands for security. You might even wish you could hide behind it. Be aware of these temptations so you can manage them effectively and present yourself to your audience in a manner they will perceive as confident. One way to achieve this is to use the lectern only as a place to rest your notes. Try stepping to the side or front of the lectern when speaking with free hands, only occasionally standing at the lectern to consult your notes. This will enhance your eye contact as well as free up your hands for gesturing.

Speaking in a Small or Large Physical Space

If you are accustomed to being in a classroom of a certain size, you will need to make adjustments when speaking in a smaller or larger space than what you are used to.

A large auditorium can be intimidating, especially for speakers who feel shy and exposed when facing an audience. However, the maxim that “Proper preparation prevents poor performance” is just as true here as anywhere. If you have prepared and practiced well, you can approach a large-venue speaking engagement with confidence. In terms of practical adjustments, be aware that your voice is likely to echo, so you will want to speak more slowly than usual and pause to mark the ends of phrases and sentences. Similarly, your facial expressions and gestures should be larger so that they are visible from farther away. If you are using visual aids, they need to be large enough to be visible from the back of the auditorium.

Limited space is not as disconcerting for most speakers as an enormous space, but it has the advantage of minimizing the tendency to pace back and forth while you speak. We have all seen dramatic soliloquies in movies and plays where an actor moves around the stage, but this is generally not good speech strategy. A small space also requires that you carefully manage your notecards and visual aids, as your audience will be able to see up close what you are doing with your hands. Do your best to minimize fumbling, including setting up in advance or arriving early to decide how to organize your materials in the physical space.

Speaking Outdoors

Outdoor settings can be charming, but they are prone to distractions. If you’re giving a speech in a setting that is picturesquely beautiful, it may be difficult to maintain the audience’s attention. If you know this ahead of time, you might plan your speech to focus more on mood than information and perhaps to make reference to the lovely view.

More typically, outdoor speech venues can pose weather challenges, sun glare, and uninvited guests, such as ants and pigeons. If the venue is located near a busy highway, it might be difficult to make yourself heard over the ambient noise. You might lack the usual accommodations, such as a lectern or table. Whatever the situation, you will need to use your best efforts to project your voice clearly without sounding like you’re yelling.

Using a Microphone

Most people today are familiar with microphones that are built into video recorders and other electronic devices, but they may be new at using a microphone to deliver a speech. One overall principle to remember is that a microphone only amplifies, it does not clarify. If you are not enunciating clearly, the microphone will merely enable your audience to hear amplified mumbling.

Microphones come in numerous styles and sizes. Generally, the easiest microphone to use is the clip-on style worn on the front of your shirt. If you look closely at many television personalities and news anchors, you will notice these tiny microphones clipped to their clothing. They require very little adapting. You simply have to avoid looking down—at your notes, for instance—because your voice will be amplified when you do so.

Lectern and handheld microphones require more adapting. If they’re too close to your mouth, they can screech. If they’re too far away, they might not pick up your voice. Some microphones are directional, meaning that they are only effective when you speak directly into them. If there is any opportunity to do so, ask for tips about how to use a particular microphone and practice with it for a few minutes. Ask someone to listen from a middle row in the audience and to signal whether you can be heard well. The best plan, of course, is to have access to the microphone for practice ahead of the speaking date.

Often a microphone is provided when it isn’t necessary. If the room is small or the audience is close to you, do not feel obligated to use the microphone. Sometimes an amplified voice can feel less natural and less compelling than a direct voice. However, if you forgo the microphone, make sure to speak loudly enough for all audience members to hear you—not just those in front.

Audience Size

A small audience provides an opportunity for a more intimate, minimally formal tone. If your audience has only eight to twelve people, you can generate greater audience contact. You do not have to revamp your speech just because the audience is small. When the presentation is over, there will most likely be opportunities to answer questions and to contact your listeners individually.

Your classroom audience may be as many as twenty to thirty students. The format for this size audience is still formal but conversational. Depending on how your instructor structures the class, you may or may not be asked to leave time after your speech for questions and answers.

Some audiences are much larger. If you have an audience that fills an auditorium, or if you have an auditorium with only a few people in it, you still have a clearly formal task. Despite the audience size, you should be guided as much as possible by your preparation.

How do I use notes effectively when I speak?

It’s much work to prepare a good speech, and you want to present it effectively so that your audience will benefit as much as possible. We’ve already said that extemporaneous speaking provides the best opportunity for speaker-audience contact and that speaking extemporaneously means you do not have your full manuscript or outline with you. Instead, you will use notecards, which should have notes, not the full text of your speech. This can also be done with an autocue device, such as the TelePrompTer, which does not provide a full word-for-word script.

We have developed a system for creating highly effective notecards. Our system has been used effectively both in public speaking courses and in freshman composition courses. Surprisingly, the system uses only five cards. For many people, this does not sound like nearly enough cards. However, we make the case that you can do a good job with five cards, and we have seen many students do just that.

The Purpose of Speaker Notes

First, using notes adds to a speaker’s credibility. If you depend on a full manuscript to get through your delivery, your listeners might believe you don’t know your speech’s content. Second, the temptation to read the entire speech directly from a manuscript is nearly overwhelming, even if you’re only carrying it as a safety net. Third, well-prepared cards are more gracefully handled than sheets of paper, and they don’t rattle if your hands tremble from nervousness. Finally, cards look better than paper. Five carefully prepared cards, together with practice, will help you more than you might think.

Key Tips for Using Notes

Plan on using just five cards, written on one side only. Get 4 × 6 cards. Use one card for the introduction, one card for each of your three main points, and one card for the conclusion.

Include Only Keywords

Your cards should include keywords and phrases, not full sentences. Arrange the words and phrases in order so that you can stay organized and avoid forgetting important points.

One exception to the keyword guideline is including an extended or highly technical quotation from an authoritative source. If it is critically important to present an exact quotation, you may add one additional card that will contain the quotation and its citation. If you plan to use such a quotation, make sure it has central importance in your speech.

Hold Your Notes Naturally

Using notes is a normal part of presenting. You do not need to conceal them from the audience; in fact, trying to hide and use your notes at the same time tends to be very awkward and distracting. Some instructors recommend that you avoid gesturing while holding your notes in your hand because nervous shaking is more noticeable. If this is the case for you, practice gesturing with your free hand, or put your cards down if you need to use both hands. Other instructors recommend treating notecards as a natural extension of your hand, as they believe it is distracting to put your notes down and pick them up again. Whichever rule you follow, remember that the reason to use notecards is to contribute to your overall appearance, confidence, and credibility.

Tips for Holding your Notecards:

• Try not to hold your notecards with both hands in front of your belly. This closes you off to the audience.
• Use only one hand.
• Relax your hand to your side when not gesturing.
• Raise your hand to your side when getting ready to read your notecard so it doesn’t block the front of your body.
• Raise your hand high enough to read the notecard without dropping your head.

Prepare Notecards to Trigger Recall

The trick to selecting the words to write on your cards is to identify the keywords that will trigger a recall sequence. For instance, if the word “Fukushima” brings to mind the nuclear power plant meltdown that followed the earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan in 2011, then that one word on your notecard should propel you through a sizable sequence of points and details. Once you have delivered that material, perhaps you’ll glance at your card again to remind yourself of the keyword or phrase that comes next.

You must discover what works for you and then select those words that tend to jog your recall. Having identified what works, make a preliminary set of five cards, and write on one side only. Number the cards, and practice with them. Revise and refine them the way you would an outline. If you must, rewrite an entire card to make it work better, and test it the next time you practice.

Always practice with your notecards—and with any visual aids you plan to use. Practicing is also the best way to discover what might go wrong with your notes and what steps to take to make things go smoothly.

Write in Large Letters

Write in large enough letters to read your cards by glancing, not peering at them. A few keywords and phrases, written in large, bold print with plenty of white space between them, helps. If the lighting in your speech location is likely to have glare, be sure to write your notes in ink, as pencil can be hard to read in poor lighting.

Using Notecards Effectively

If you use as much care in developing your five notecards as you do your speech, they should serve you well. If you lose your place or go blank during the speech, you will only need a few seconds to find where you were and get going again. For instance, if you know that you presented the introduction and the first main point, which centers on the Emancipation Proclamation, you can readily go to your second card and remind yourself that your next main point is about the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution.

In addition, using your notecards allows you to depart from the exact prepared wording in your manuscript. To recover from losing your place, you can transpose a word or phrase to make your recovery graceful. It allows you to avoid feeling pressured to say every single word in your manuscript.

Under no circumstances should you ever attempt to put your entire speech on cards in little tiny writing. You will end up reading words to your audience instead of telling them your meaning, and your speech’s visual aspect will be spoiled by you squinting to read your cards.

How do I practice to deliver a successful speech?

Now that you have your notecards prepared, you are ready to practice your speech.

There is no foolproof recipe for delivering a good speech. Each of us is unique and embody different experiences and interests. This means that each person has a delivery style or approach that is most effective for her or him. This further means that anxiety can accompany even the most carefully researched and interesting message. Even when we know our messages are strong and well-articulated on paper, it is difficult to know for sure that our delivery will also be good.

We are obligated to do our best out of respect for our audience and their needs. Fortunately, there are some tools that can help you improve even the very first time you present a speech. You will continue developing your skills each time you put them to use. Have fun, and experiment to find out which delivery elements are most effective for you.

What Is Good Delivery?

The more you care about your topic, the more motivated you are to present it well. Good delivery means to present a clear, coherent message in an interesting way. Communication scholar Stephen E. Lucas tells us the following:

Good delivery…conveys the speaker’s ideas clearly, interestingly, and without distracting the audience. Most audiences prefer delivery that combines a certain degree of formality with the best attributes of good conversation—directness, spontaneity, animation, vocal and facial expressiveness, and a lively sense of communication (Lucas, 2009).

Many people who write about delivery cite the findings of psychologist Albert Mehrabian, who asserts that the bulk of what an audience understands about your message is based on nonverbal communication. Specifically, Mehrabian is often credited with finding that when audiences decoded a speaker’s meaning, the speaker’s face conveyed 55 percent of the information, the vocalics conveyed 38 percent, and the words conveyed just 7 percent (Mehrabian, 1972). Although numerous scholars, including Mehrabian himself, have stated that his findings are often misinterpreted (Mitchell), scholars and speech instructors do agree that nonverbal communication and speech delivery are extremely important to effective public speaking.

In this section, we will explain six good delivery elements: conversational style, conversational quality, eye contact, vocalics, physical manipulation, and variety. And since delivery is only as good as the practice that goes into it, we conclude with some effective practicing tips.

Conversational Style

Conversational style is a speaker’s ability to sound expressive and spontaneous, which allows the audience to perceive the speaker as natural. It’s a style that approaches the way you normally express yourself in a much smaller group than your classroom audience. This means that you want to avoid having your presentation come across as didactic or overly exaggerated. You might not feel natural while you’re using a conversational style, but for your audience’s sake, do your best to appear natural. It might be helpful to remember that the two most important speech elements are the message and the audience. You are the conduit, and it is your role to effectively put the two together. Your audience should be thinking about the message, not the delivery.

Stephen E. Lucas defines conversational quality as the idea that “no matter how many times a speech has been rehearsed, it still sounds spontaneous” (Lucas, 2009). No one wants to hear a speech that is so well rehearsed that it sounds fake or robotic. One of the hardest parts of public speaking is rehearsing to the point where it can appear to your audience that the thoughts are magically coming to you while you’re speaking, but in reality, you’ve spent much time thinking through each idea. When you can sound conversational, people pay attention.

Eye Contact

Eye contact is a speaker’s ability to have visual contact with everyone in the audience. Your audience should feel that you’re speaking to them, not simply uttering main and supporting points. If you are new to public speaking, you may find it intimidating to look audience members in the eye, but if you recall speakers who did not maintain eye contact, you’ll realize why this speech-delivery element is so important. Without eye contact, the audience begins to feel invisible and unimportant, as if the speaker is just speaking to hear her or his own voice. Eye contact lets your audience feel that your attention is on them, not solely on the cards in front of you.

Sustaining eye contact with your audience is one of the most important effective delivery tools. O’Hair, Stewart, and Rubenstein note that eye contact is mandatory for speakers to establish a good relationship with an audience (O’Hair, Stewart, & Rubenstein, 2001). Whether a speaker is speaking before a group of five or five hundred, eye contact is an important way to bring an audience into your speech.

While eye contact is a powerful tool, it is not simply a sign of sincerity, of being well-prepared and knowledgeable, or a sign of confidence; it also has the power to convey meanings. Arthur Koch tells us that all facial expressions “can communicate a wide range of emotions, including sadness, compassion, concern, anger, annoyance, fear, joy, and happiness” (Koch, 2010).

If you find your audience’s gaze too intimidating, you might feel tempted to resort to faking eye contact with them by looking at the wall just above their heads or by sweeping your gaze around the room until it becomes easier for you to provide real eye contact. But, the problem with fake eye contact is that it tends to look mechanical. Another problem with fake eye contact is that you lose the opportunity to assess how well your audience understands your message. Still, fake eye contact is somewhat better than gripping your cards, staring at them, and only occasionally glancing quickly and shallowly at the audience.

This is not to say that you may never look at your notecards. On the contrary, one of the skills in extemporaneous speaking is the ability to alternate one’s gaze between the audience and one’s notes. Rehearsing your presentation in front of a few friends should help you develop the ability to maintain eye contact with your audience while referring to your notes. When you are giving a speech that is well-prepared and well-rehearsed, you will only need to look at your notes occasionally. You’ll develop this ability even further with practice. Your public speaking course is your best chance to get that practice.

Effective Use of Vocalics

Vocalics, also known as paralanguage, is the subfield of nonverbal communication that examines how we use our voices to communicate orally. This means that you speak loudly enough for all audience members to hear you clearly—even those in the back of the room, and that you enunciate clearly enough to be understood by all audience members—even those who may have a hearing impairment or who may be English-language learners. If you tend to be soft-spoken, practice using a louder volume level that may feel unnatural to you at first. For all speakers, good vocalic technique is best achieved by facing the audience with your chin up, looking away from your notecards, and setting your voice at a moderate speed. Using vocalics effectively also means that you use appropriate pitch, pauses, vocal variety, and correct pronunciation.

If you are an English-language learner and feel apprehensive about giving a speech in English, there are two things to remember: first, you can meet with a reference librarian to learn the correct pronunciations of any English words you are unsure of; and second, the fact that you have an accent means you speak more languages than most Americans, which is an accomplishment to be proud of.

If you are one of the many people with a stutter or other speech challenge, you undoubtedly already know that there are numerous techniques for reducing stuttering and improving speech fluency and that there is no one agreed-upon “cure.” The Academy Award–winning movie The King’s Speech did much to increase public awareness of what a person with a stutter goes through when it comes to public speaking. It also prompted some well-known individuals who stutter, such as television news reporter John Stossel, to go public about their stuttering (Stossel, 2011). If you have decided to study public speaking in spite of a speech challenge, we commend you for your efforts and encourage you to work with your speech instructor to make whatever adaptations work best for you.

Volume refers to how loud or soft a speaker’s voice is. As mentioned, public speakers need to speak loudly enough to be heard by everyone in the audience. In addition, volume is often needed to overcome ambient noise, such as the air conditioner hum or the dull traffic roar passing by. In addition, you can use volume strategically to emphasize your speech’s most important points. Select these points carefully; if you emphasize everything, nothing will seem important. You also want to be sure to adjust your volume to the presentation’s physical setting. If you are in a large auditorium and your audience is several yards away, speak louder. If you are in a smaller space, with the audience a few feet away, avoid overwhelming your audience with shouting or speaking too loudly.

Rate is the speed at which a person speaks. To keep your speech delivery interesting, your rate should vary. If you are speaking extemporaneously, your rate will naturally fluctuate. If you’re reading, your delivery is less likely to vary. Because rate is an important tool in enhancing your speech’s meaning, you do not want to give a monotone drone or a rapid machine-gun-style delivery. Your rate should be appropriate for your topic and your points. A rapid, lively rate communicates enthusiasm, urgency, or humor. A slower, moderated rate conveys respect, seriousness, or careful reasoning. By varying rapid and slower rates within a single speech, you emphasize your main points and keep your audience interested.

Pitch refers to how high or low a speaker’s voice is. Some speakers have deep voices and others have high voices. As with your singing-voice range, your speaking-voice pitch is determined mostly by physiology, specifically your vocal folds or cords’ length and your vocal tract size. We all have a normal speaking pitch where our voice is naturally settled—it is the pitch where we are most comfortable speaking and the pitch that feels most natural to you.

While our voices may be generally comfortable at a specific pitch level, we all modulate or move our pitch up or down. In fact, we do this all the time. When we change our voice’s pitch, we are using inflections. Just as you can use volume strategically, you can also use pitch inflections to make your delivery more interesting and emphatic. If you ordinarily speak with a soprano voice, you may want to drop your voice to a slightly lower range to call attention to a particular point. How we use inflections can even change the entire meaning of what we are saying. For example, try saying the sentence “I love public speaking” with a higher pitch on one of the words—first raise the pitch on “I,” then say it again with the pitch raised on “love,” and so on. “ I love public speaking” conveys a different meaning from “I love public speaking,” doesn’t it?

There are some speakers who don’t change their pitch at all while speaking, which is called monotone. While very few people are completely monotone, some speakers slip into monotone patterns because they are nervous. One way to ascertain whether you sound monotone is to record your voice and listen to how you sound. If you notice that your voice doesn’t fluctuate very much, you will need to intentionally alter your pitch to ensure that your speech’s emphasis isn’t completely lost on your audience.

Finally, resist the habit of pitching your voice up at the ends of sentences. It makes them sound like questions instead of statements. This habit can be disorienting and distracting, interfering with the audience’s ability to focus entirely on the message. The speaker sounds uncertain or sounds as though he or she is seeking the listener’s understanding or approval. It hurts the speaker’s credibility, so avoid doing it.

Effectively using pitch is one of the keys to delivering an interesting speech that will hold your audience’s attention.

Pauses are brief breaks in a speaker’s delivery that can show emphasis and enhance a message’s clarity. In terms of timing, using pauses effectively is one of the most important skills to develop. Some speakers become uncomfortable very quickly with the dead air that the pause causes. And if the speaker is uncomfortable, the discomfort can transmit itself to the audience. That doesn’t mean you should avoid using pauses; your ability to use them confidently will increase with practice. Some of the best comedians use the well-timed pause to powerful and hilarious effect. Although your speech will not be a comedy routine, pauses are still useful for emphasis, especially when combined with a lowered pitch and rate to emphasize the important point you do not want your audience to miss.

Vocal Variety

Vocal variety has to do with changes in the vocalics we have just discussed: volume, pitch, rate, and pauses. No one wants to hear the same volume, pitch, rate, or pauses used over and over again in a speech. Your audience should never be able to detect that you’re about to slow down or that your voice is going to get deeper because you’re making an important point. When you think about how you sound in a normal conversation, you use volume, pitch, rate, and pauses spontaneously. If you try to over rehearse your vocalics, your speech will end up sounding artificial. Vocal variety should flow naturally from your wish to speak with expression. In that way, it will animate your speech and invite your listeners to understand your topic the way you do.

Pronunciation

The last major category related to vocalics is pronunciation, or the conventional patterns of speech used to form a word. Word pronunciation is important for two reasons: first, mispronouncing a word your audience is familiar with will harm your credibility as a speaker; and second, mispronouncing a word they are unfamiliar with can confuse and even misinform them. If there is any possibility at all that you don’t know the correct pronunciation of a word, find out. Many online dictionaries, such as the Wiktionary , provide free sound files that illustrate how to pronounce words.

Many people have commented on how some highly educated public speakers, including US presidents, have mispronounced words such as nuclear and cavalry. There are classroom examples as well. For instance, a student giving a speech on the Greek philosopher Socrates mispronounced his name at least eight times during her speech. This mispronunciation created a very awkward and anxious situation for the audience. Everyone felt embarrassed, and the teacher, opting not to humiliate the student in front of the class, did not say anything out loud, but instead, provided a private written comment at the end of class.

One important aspect of pronunciation is articulation, or the ability to clearly pronounce each succession of syllables used to make up a word. Some people have difficulty articulating because of physiological problems that can be treated by trained speech therapists, but other people have articulation problems because they come from a cultural milieu where a dialect other than standard American English is the norm. Speech therapists, who generally guide their clients toward standard American English, use the acronym SODA when helping people learn how to more effectively articulate, which means substitutions, omissions, distortions, and additions.

• Substitutions occur when a speaker replaces one consonant or vowel with another consonant, for example, water becomes wudda ; ask becomes ax ; mouth becomes mouf .
• Omissions occur when a speaker drops a consonant or vowel within a word: Internet becomes Innet ; mesmerized becomes memerized ; probably becomes prolly .
• Distortions occur when a speaker articulates a word with nasal or slurring sounds, for instance, pencil sounds like mencil ; precipitation sounds like persination ; second sounds like slecond .
• Additions occur when a speaker adds consonants or vowels to words that are not there, for example, anyway becomes anyways ; athletic becomes athaletic ; black becomes buhlack ; interpret becomes interpretate .

Another aspect of public speaking pronunciation is to avoid using verbal surrogates. These are filler words used as placeholders for actual words, such as like er, um, uh , etc. You might be able to get away with saying um as many as two or three times in your speech before it becomes distracting, but the same cannot be said of like. We know of a student who trained herself to avoid saying like. As soon as the first speech was assigned, she began wearing a rubber band on her left wrist. Each time she caught herself saying like, she snapped herself with the rubber band. It hurt. Very quickly, she found that she could stop inflicting the snap on herself, and she had successfully confronted an unprofessional verbal habit.

Effective Self-Presentation

In addition to using our voices effectively, another key to great public speaking is using our bodies effectively. This means to use the body to emphasize or convey meanings during a speech. While we will not attempt to give an entire discourse on nonverbal communication, we will discuss a few basic aspects of physical manipulation: posture, body movement, facial expressions, and dress. These aspects add up to the overall physical dimension of your speech, which we call self-presentation.

“Stand up tall!” I’m sure we’ve all heard this statement from a parent or a teacher at some point in our lives. The fact is, posture is actually quite important. When you stand up straight, you communicate to your audience, without saying a word, that you hold a position of power and you take your position seriously. If, however, you are slouching, hunched over, or leaning on something, you could be perceived as ill prepared, anxious, lacking credibility, or not serious about your speaking responsibilities. While speakers often assume a more casual posture as the presentation continues, especially if it is a long one—such as a ninety-minute class lecture—it is always wise to start by standing up straight and putting your best foot forward. Remember, you only get one shot at making a first impression, and your body’s orientation is one of the first pieces of information audiences use to make that impression.

Body Movement

Unless you are stuck behind a podium because you are using a non-movable microphone, never stand in one place during a speech. However, moving during a speech should also not resemble pacing. For example, there was once a speaker who would walk around a small table where her speaking notes were located. She would walk around the table once, toss her chalk twice, and then repeat the process. Instead of listening to what the speaker was saying, everyone became transfixed by her walk-and-chalk-toss pattern. As speakers, we must be mindful of how we go about moving while speaking. One common method for easily integrating movement into your speech is to walk a few steps when you transition from one idea to the next. By only moving at transition points, you help focus your audience’s attention on the transition from one idea to the next, and you increase your nonverbal immediacy by getting closer to different segments of your audience.

Body movement also includes gestures. These should be neither overdramatic nor subdued. At one extreme, arm-waving and fist-pounding will distract from your message and reduce your credibility. At the other extreme, not gesturing at all is wasting an opportunity to suggest emphasis, enthusiasm, or another personal connection with your topic.

There are many ways to use gestures. The most obvious are hand gestures. Use gestures moderately at carefully selected times during your speech. If you overuse gestures, they lose meaning. Many late-night comedy parodies of political leaders include patterned, overused gestures or other delivery habits associated with a particular speaker. However, well-placed, simple, natural gestures that indicate emphasis, direction, or the size of something is usually effective. Normally, a gesture with one hand is enough. Rather than trying to use a gesture for every sentence, use only a few well-planned gestures. It is often more effective to make a gesture and hold it for a few moments than to begin waving your hands and arms around in a series of gestures.

Finally, just as you should avoid pacing, avoid other distracting movements when you are speaking. Many speakers have unconscious mannerisms such as twirling their hair, putting their hands in and out of their pockets, jingling their keys, licking their lips, or clicking a pen while speaking. As with other speech-delivery aspects, practicing in front of others will help you to be conscious of such distractions and help you to plan ways to avoid doing them.

Facial Expressions

Faces are amazing, and they convey much information. As speakers, we must be acutely aware of what our face looks like while speaking. While many of us do not look forward to seeing ourselves on video, often the only way to critically evaluate what your face is doing while you are speaking is to watch a recording of your speech. If video is not available, practice speaking in front of a mirror.

There are two extremes you want to avoid: no facial expression and over animated facial expressions. First, do not show a completely blank face while speaking. Some people just do not show much emotion with their faces naturally, but this blankness is often increased when the speaker is nervous. Audiences will react negatively to such a speaker’s message because they will sense that something is amiss. If a speaker is talking about the joys of Disney World, and his face doesn’t show any excitement, the audience is going to be turned off to the speaker and his message. The other extreme is the speaker whose face looks like that of an exaggerated cartoon character. Instead, your goal is to show a variety of appropriate facial expressions while speaking.

Like vocalics and gestures, use facial expression strategically to enhance meaning. A smile or pleasant facial expression is generally appropriate at the beginning of a speech to indicate your wish for a good transaction with your audience. However, you should not smile throughout a speech on drug addiction, poverty, or the Gulf of Mexico’s oil spill. An inappropriate smile creates confusion about your meaning and may make your audience feel uncomfortable. On the other hand, a serious scowl might look hostile or threatening to an audience and distract from the message. If you keep your speech’s meaning foremost in your mind, you will more readily find a facial-expression balance.

Another common problem some new speakers have is showing only one expression. For example, during a college speech competition, one speaker discussed how people die on amusement park rides. One of the judges pulled the speaker aside and informed him that his speech was creepy. Apparently, while speaking about death, the speaker smiled the entire time. The incongruity between the speech on death and dying and the speaker smiling left the judge a little creeped out. If you are excited in a part of your speech, show excitement on your face. On the other hand, if you are at a serious part of your speech, show a serious facial expression.

While there are no clear-cut guidelines for how to dress, it is still a very important part of how others will perceive you—again, it’s all about the first impression. If you want to be taken seriously, you must present yourself seriously. While we do not advocate dressing up in a suit every time you give a speech, there are definitely times when wearing a suit is appropriate.

One general rule to determine dress is the “step-above rule,” which states that you should dress one step above your audience. If your audience is going to be dressed casually in shorts and jeans, then wear nice casual clothing, such as a pair of neatly pressed slacks and a collared shirt or blouse. If, however, your audience is going to be wearing business casual attire, then wear a sport coat, a dress, or a suit. The goal of the step-above rule is to establish yourself as someone to be taken seriously. On the other hand, if you dress two steps above your audience, you may put too much distance between yourself and your audience and come across as overly formal or even arrogant.

Another general dressing rule is to avoid wearing something distracting. Overly tight or revealing garments, over-the-top hairstyles or makeup, jangling jewelry draw your audience’s attention away from your speech (unless your speech is about these items). Remember that your message is your speech’s most important aspect—keep that message in mind when you choose your clothing and accessories.

Remember…You are your visual aid.

Self-Presentation

When you present your speech, you are also presenting yourself. Self-presentation, sometimes also referred to as poise or stage presence, is determined by how you look, how you stand, how you walk to the lectern, and how you use your voice and gestures. Your self-presentation can either enhance your message or detract from it. Worse, a poor self-presentation can turn a good, well-prepared speech into a forgettable waste of time. You want your self-presentation to support your credibility and improve the likelihood that the audience will listen with interest.

Your personal appearance should reflect your carefully prepared speech. Your personal appearance is the first thing your audience will see, and from it, they will make inferences about the speech you’re about to present.

A big mistake that novice public speakers make is to use the same gesture over and over during a speech. While you don’t want your gestures to look fake, be careful to include various different nonverbal components while speaking. Make sure that your face, body, and words are all working in conjunction with each other to support your message.

Practice Effectively

You might get away with presenting a hastily practiced speech, but the speech will not be as good as it could be. To develop your best speech delivery, practice—and use your practice time effectively. Practicing does not mean reading over your notes, mentally running through your speech, or even speaking your speech aloud over and over. Instead, practice with the goal of identifying the weaknesses in your delivery, improving upon them, and building good speech-delivery habits.

When you practice your speech, place both your feet in full, firm contact with the floor to keep your body from swaying side to side. Some novice public speakers find that they don’t know what to do with their hands while speaking. Your practice sessions will help you get comfortable. When you’re not gesturing, rest your free hand lightly on a lectern, or simply allow it to hang at your side. Since this is not a familiar posture for most people, it might feel awkward; but during practice, you’ll begin to get used to it.

Seek Input from Others

Because we can’t see ourselves as others see us, one great way to improve your delivery is to seek constructive criticism from others. This, of course, is an aspect of your public speaking course, as you will receive evaluations from your instructor and possibly from fellow students. However, by practicing in front of others before speech time, you will learn to anticipate and correct problems so that you can receive a better evaluation when you give your speech for real.

Ask your practice observers to be honest about what you can improve upon. Sometimes, students create study groups just for this purpose. When you create a peer study group, everyone understands the entire creative process, and their feedback will thus be more useful to you than the feedback you might get from someone who has never taken the course or given a speech.

If your practice observers seem reluctant to offer useful criticisms, ask them questions; for example, how was your eye contact? Could they hear you? Was your voice well-modulated? Did you mispronounce any words? How was your posture? Were your gestures effective? Did you have any mannerisms that you should learn to avoid? Because peers are sometimes reluctant to say things that could sound critical, direct questions are often a useful way to help them speak up.

If you learn from these practice sessions that your voice tends to drop at the ends of sentences, make a conscious effort to support your voice as you conclude each main point. If you learn that you have a habit of clicking a pen, make sure you don’t have a pen with you when you speak or that you keep it in your pocket. If your practice observers mention that you tend to hide your hands in your shirt or jacket sleeves, next time, wear short sleeves, or roll your sleeves up before beginning your speech. If you learn through practice that you tend to sway or rock while you speak, consciously practice and build the habit of not swaying.

When it is your turn to give feedback to others in your group, assume that they are as interested in doing as well as you are. Give feedback in the spirit of helping them deliver the most engaging speech as possible.

Use Audio and/or Video to Record Yourself

Technology and the myriad electronic devices people are likely to own, has made it easier than ever to record yourself and others. Video, of course, allows you the advantage of being able to see yourself as others see you, while audio allows you to concentrate on your delivery’s audible aspects. As we mentioned earlier in the chapter, if neither video nor audio is available, you can always observe yourself by practicing your delivery in front of a mirror.

After you have recorded yourself, it may seem obvious that you will watch and listen to the recording. This can be intimidating, as you may fear that your performance anxiety will be so obvious that everyone will notice it in the recording. But students are often pleasantly surprised when they watch and listen to their recordings, as even students with very high anxiety find out that they come across in a speech much better than they expected.

A recording can also be a very effective diagnostic device. Sometimes, students believe they are making strong contact with their audiences, but their cards contain so many notes that they succumb to reading them. If you see in the video that you misjudged your eye contact, motivate yourself to rewrite your notecards in a way that doesn’t provide the opportunity to do so much reading.

It is most likely that in viewing your recording, you’ll discover your strengths and see weaknesses you can strengthen.

Good Delivery Is a Habit

Luckily, public speaking is an activity that, when done conscientiously, strengthens with practice. As you become aware of areas to improve, you will begin to develop a keen sense of what works and what audiences respond to.

Practice out loud in front of other people several times, spreading your rehearsals out over several days. To practice, of course, your speech needs to be finalized well ahead of your delivery date. During these practice sessions, time yourself to make sure your speech is the appropriate time length. For an example, during a classroom presentation in which each speech was to last thirty to forty-five minutes, the first student spoke for seventy-five minutes before the professor asked, “Can we speed this up?” The student said, “Yes,” and proceeded to continue speaking for another seventy-five minutes before finally concluding his speech. Although we might fault the professor for not stopping him sooner, clearly the student had not timed his speech in advance.

Your practice sessions will also enable you to make adjustments to your notecards to make them more effective in supporting your contact with your audience. This kind of practice is not just a strategy for beginners; it is practiced by many highly placed public figures with extensive experience in public speaking.

Your public speaking course is one of the best opportunities you will have to manage your performance anxiety, to build your extemporaneous speaking confidence, to develop your vocal skills, and to become adept at self-presentation. Through targeted practice, you’ll develop habits that build continuously on your strengths and that challenge you to find new areas for improving your delivery. By taking advantage of these opportunities, you will gain the ability to present a speech effectively whenever you may be called upon to speak publicly.

University of Minnesota. (2011).   Stand up, Speak out: The Practice and Ethics of Public Speaking . University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing. https://open.lib.umn.edu/publicspeaking/ .

Media References

Gray, D. (2006, May 16). Blank index card! [Image]. Flickr. https://www.flickr.com/photos/davegray/147874576/

Maryland GovPics. (2014, April 23). House of Ruth Luncheon [Image]. Flickr. https://www.flickr.com/photos/mdgovpics/13998836494/

Mou, M. (2012, September 22). Empty [Image]. Flickr. https://www.flickr.com/photos/39017338@N08/8010877703/

Pierret, C. (2009, October 1). Speech [Image]. Flickr. https://www.flickr.com/photos/christianpierret/5260307759/

Swigart, S. (2011, March 14). Egg delivery [Image]. Flickr. https://www.flickr.com/photos/smswigart/5611768370

Public Speaking Copyright © 2022 by Sarah Billington and Shirene McKay is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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14.3: Speech Delivery- Body Language and Voice

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• Page ID 106495

• Lisa Coleman, Thomas King, & William Turner
• Southwest Tennessee Community College

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Learning Objectives

• Explain the role of facial expressions and eye contact in speech delivery.
• Explain the role of posture, gestures, and movement in speech delivery.
• Explain the connection between personal appearance and credibility in speech delivery.
• Explain the connection between visual aids and speech delivery.
• Identify elements of vocal delivery that make a speech more engaging.
• Identify elements of vocal delivery that make a speech clearer.
• Discuss the relationship between vocal delivery and speaker credibility.

The interplay between the verbal and nonverbal components of your speech can either bring the message vividly to life or confuse or bore the audience. Therefore, it is best that you neither overdramatize your speech delivery behaviors nor downplay them. This is a balance achieved through rehearsal, trial and error, and experience. One way to think of this is in terms of the Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): Goldilocks Paradigm: you don’t want to overdo the delivery because you might distract your audience by looking hyper or overly animated. Conversely, someone whose delivery is too understated (meaning they don’t move their hands or feet at all) looks unnatural and uncomfortable, which can also distract. Just like Goldilocks, you want a delivery that is “just right.” This middle ground between too much and too little is a much more natural approach to public speaking delivery. This natural approach will be covered in more detail in the following sections where we discuss specific aspects of your delivery and what you need to think about while actually giving your speech.

Nonverbal Delivery

Many speakers are more nervous about physical delivery than vocal delivery. Putting our bodies on the line in front of an audience often makes us feel more vulnerable than putting our voice out there. Yet most audiences are not as fixated on our physical delivery as we think they are. Knowing this can help relieve some anxiety, but it doesn’t give us a free pass when it comes to physical delivery. We should still practice for physical delivery that enhances our verbal message. Audience members primarily take in information through their eyes and ears. Beyond the actual words of your speech, the nonverbal communication that accompanies your verbal messages affects your credibility.

Gestures are any arm and hand movements used during your speech . We all use hand gestures while we speak, but we didn’t even take a class in matching verbal communication with the appropriate gestures; we have just internalized these norms over time based on observation and put them into practice. By this point in your life, you have a whole vocabulary of hand movements and gestures that spontaneously come out while you’re speaking. Some of these gestures are emphatic and some are descriptive (Koch, 2007).

Emphatic gestures are the most common hand gestures we use, and they function to emphasize our verbal communication and often relate to the emotions we verbally communicate . Pointing with one finger or all the fingers straight out is an emphatic gesture. We can even bounce that gesture up and down to provide more emphasis. Moving the hand in a circular motion in front of our chest with the fingers spread apart is a common emphatic gesture that shows excitement and often accompanies an increased rate of verbal speaking. We make this gesture more emphatic by using both hands. Descriptive gestures function to illustrate or refer to objects rather than emotions. We use descriptive gestures to indicate the number of something by counting with our fingers or the size, shape, or speed of something . Our hands and arms are often the most reliable and easy-to-use visual aids a speaker can have. While it can be beneficial to plan a key gesture or two in advance, it is generally best to gesture spontaneously in a speech, just as you would during a regular conversation.

It may sound funny, but due to speech anxiety, we have seen more than one student unknowingly incorporate “jazz hands” (shaking your hands at your sides with fingers opened wide) at various points in their speech. While certainly an extreme example, this and behaviors like it can easily become distracting. At the other end of the scale, people who don’t know what to do with their hands or use the “too little” sometimes hold their arms stiffly at their sides, behind their backs, or in their pockets, all of which can also look unnatural and distracting.

However, with all that said, if you have nothing else to do with your hands, such as meaningful gestures, the default position for them is to be resting gently on the sides of the lectern (see Figure \(\PageIndex{3}\)). You don’t want to grip the lectern tightly, but resting them on the edges keeps them in a position to move your notes on if you need to or use them to gesture. As stated above, you want to practice this way beforehand so you are used to speaking this way when you come to class.

Sometimes the movement of the whole body, instead of just gesturing with hands, is appropriate in a speech. Just like your hands, a lot of nervous energy is going to try to work its way out of your body through your feet. On the “too much” end, this is most common when people start “dancing” behind the lectern Another variation is twisting feet around each other or the lower leg. On the other end are those who put their feet together, lock their knees, and never move from that position. Both of these options look unnatural, and therefore will prove to be distracting to your audience. Locking your knees can also lead to loss of oxygen in your brain, not a good state to be in because it can cause you to faint.

The default position for your feet, then, is to have them shoulder-width apart with your knees slightly bent (see Figure \(\PageIndex{4}\)). Again, you want to look and feel natural, so it is fine to adjust your weight or move out from behind the lectern, but constant motion (or perpetual stillness) will not lead to a good overall delivery.

These two sections on gestures and feet mention “energy.” Public speakers need to look energetic—not hyperactive, but engaged and upbeat about communicating their message. Slumping, low and unvarying pitch and rate, and lack of gestures telegraph “I don’t care” to an audience.

There is a very simple rule when it comes to what you should bring with you to the lectern when you give your speech: Only bring to the lectern what you absolutely need to give the speech . Anything else you have with you will only serve as a distraction for both you and the audience. For the purposes of this class, the only objects you should need to give your speech are whatever materials you are speaking from, and possibly a visual aid if you are using one. Beyond that, don’t bring pens, laptops, phones, lucky charms, or notebooks with you to the lectern. These extra items can ultimately become a distraction themselves when they fall off the lectern or get in your way. Some students like to bring their electronic tablet, laptop computer, or cell phone with them, but there are some obvious disadvantages to these items, especially if you don’t turn the ringer on your cell phone off. Cell phones are not usually large enough to serve as presentation notes; we’ve seen students squint and hold the phone up to their faces.

Not only do you need to be aware of what you bring with you, but you should also be aware of what you have on your person as well. Sometimes, in the course of dressing for a speech, we can overlook simple issues that can cause problems while speaking. Some of these can include:

• Jewelry that ‘jingles’ when you move, such as heavy bracelets;
• Uncomfortable shoes or shoes that you are not used to (don’t make speech day the first time you try wearing high heels);
• Anything with fringe, zippers, or things hanging off it. They might become irresistible to play with while speaking;
• For those with longer hair, remember that you will be looking down at your notes and then looking back up. Don’t be forced to “fix” your hair or tuck it behind your ear every time you look up. Use a barrette, hairband, or some other method to keep your hair totally out of your face so that the audience can see your eyes and you won’t have to adjust your hair constantly. It can be very distracting to an audience to watch a speaker pull hair from his face after every sentence.

The Lectern and Posture

Extra movements caused by anxiety are called nonverbal adaptors , and most of them manifest as distracting movements or gestures. These nonverbal adaptors, like tapping a foot, wringing hands, playing with a paper clip, twirling hair, jingling change in a pocket, scratching, and many more, can definitely detract from a speaker’s message and credibility. Conversely, a confident posture and purposeful gestures and movement can enhance both.

A lectern is a tool for you to use that should ultimately make your speech easier to give, and you need to use it that way. On the “too much” end, some people want to trick their audience into thinking they are not nervous by leaning on the podium in a relaxed manner, sometimes going so far as to actually begin tipping the podium forward. Your lectern is NOT part of your skeletal system, to prop you up, so don’t do this. On the “too little” end are those who are afraid to touch it, worried that they will use it incorrectly or somehow knock it over (you won’t!).

As always, you want the “Goldilocks” middle ground. Just rest your notes and hands on it, but don’t lean on the lectern or “hug” it. Practicing with a lectern (or something similar to a lectern) will eliminate most of your fears about using it.

Posture is the position we assume with our bodies, either intentionally or out of habit . The lectern use is related to posture. Most of us let gravity pull us down. One of the muscle memory tricks of public speaking is to roll your shoulders back. Along with making your shoulder muscles feel better, doing so with feet apart and knees bent, rolling your shoulders back will lead to a more credible physical presence—you’ll look taller and more energetic. You’ll also feel better, and you’ll have a larger lung capacity for breathing to support your tone and volume. In a formal speaking situation, it’s important to have an erect posture that communicates professionalism and credibility. However, a military posture of standing at attention may feel and look unnatural in a typical school or business speech. In informal settings, it may be appropriate to lean on a table or lectern, or even sit among your audience members.

Facial Expressions

Remember, it’s a good thing for audience members to look at you because it means they’re paying attention and interested. Audiences look for f acial expressions  of the speaker, or  cues about the tone and content of the speech seen on the face . Facial expressions can help bring a speech to life when used by a speaker to communicate emotions and demonstrate enthusiasm for the speech. We tend to use facial expressions naturally and without conscious effort when engaging in day-to-day conversations. Yet many speakers’ expressive faces turn “deadpan” when they stand in front of an audience. Some people naturally have more expressive faces than others—think about the actor Jim Carey’s ability to contort his face as an example. But we can also consciously control and improve on our facial expressions to be more effective speakers. As with other components of speech delivery, becoming a higher self-monitor and increasing your awareness of your typical delivery habits can help you understand, control, and improve your delivery. Although you shouldn’t only practice your speech in front of a mirror, doing so can help you get an idea of how expressive or unexpressive your face is while delivering your speech. 

Facial expressions help set the emotional tone for a speech, and it is important that your facial expressions stay consistent with your message. In order to set a positive tone before you start speaking, briefly look at the audience and smile. A smile is a simple but powerful facial expression that can communicate friendliness, openness, and confidence. Facial expressions communicate a range of emotions and are also associated with various moods or personality traits. For example, combinations of facial expressions can communicate that a speaker is tired, excited, angry, confused, frustrated, sad, confident, smug, shy, or bored, among other things. Even if you aren’t bored, for example, a slack face with little animation may lead an audience to think that you are bored with your own speech, which isn’t likely to motivate them to be interested. So make sure your facial expressions are communicating an emotion, mood, or personality trait that you think your audience will view favorably. Also, make sure your facial expressions match the content of your speech. When delivering something lighthearted or humorous, a smile, bright eyes, and slightly raised eyebrows will nonverbally enhance your verbal message. When delivering something serious or somber, a furrowed brow, a tighter mouth, and even a slight head nod can enhance that message. If your facial expressions and speech content are not consistent, your audience could become confused by the conflicting messages, which could lead them to question your honesty and credibility.

“Getting Competent”: Improving Facial Expressions

My very first semester teaching, I was required by my supervisor to record myself teaching and evaluate what I saw. I was surprised by how serious I looked while teaching. My stern, expressionless face was due to my anxiety about being a beginning teacher and my determination to make sure I covered the content for the day. I didn’t realize that it was also making me miss opportunities to communicate how happy I was to be teaching and how passionate I was about the content. I just assumed those things would come through in my delivery. I was wrong. The best way to get an idea of the facial expressions you use while speaking is to record your speech using a computer’s webcam, much like you would look at and talk to the computer when using Skype or another video-chat program. The first time you try this, minimize the video window once you’ve started recording so you don’t get distracted by watching yourself. Once you’ve recorded the video, watch the playback and take notes on your facial expressions. Answer the following questions:

• Did anything surprise you? Were you as expressive as you thought you were?
• What facial expressions did you use throughout the speech?
• Where did your facial expressions match with the content of your speech? Where did your facial expressions not match with the content of your speech?
• Where could you include more facial expressions to enhance your content and/or delivery?

You can also have a friend watch the video and give you feedback on your facial expressions to see if your assessment matches with theirs. Once you’ve assessed your video, re-record your speech and try to improve your facial expressions and delivery. Revisit the previous questions to see if you improved.

Eye Contact

We tend to look at a person’s face when we are listening to them. Again, this often makes people feel uncomfortable and contributes to their overall speaking anxiety. Many speakers don’t like the feeling of having “all eyes” on them, even though having a room full of people avoiding making eye contact with you would be much more awkward.

As we’ve said consistently throughout this book, your audience is the single biggest factor that influences every aspect of your speech. And since eye contact is how you establish and maintain a rapport with your audience during your speech, it is an extremely important element of your delivery. Your professor may or may not indicate a standard for how much eye contact you need during the speech, such as 50%, but he or she will absolutely want to see you making an effort to engage your audience by looking directly at them. Eye contact has the power to make people feel welcome/unwelcome, comfortable/uncomfortable, listened to / ignored, and so on. As a speaker, eye contact can also be used to establish credibility and hold your audience’s attention. We often interpret a lack of eye contact to mean that someone is not credible or not competent, and as a public speaker, you don’t want your audience thinking either of those things.

What is important to note here is that you want to establish genuine eye contact with your audience and not “fake” eye contact. There have been a lot of techniques generated for “faking” eye contact, and none of them look natural. For example, these are not good ideas:

• Three points on the back wall – You may have heard that instead of making eye contact, you can just pick three points on the back wall and look at those. What ends up happening, though, is you look like you are staring off into space and your audience will spend the majority of your speech trying to figure out what you are looking at. To avoid this, look around the entire room, including the front, back, left, and right sides of the space.
• The swimming method – This happens when someone is reading his or her speech and looks up quickly and briefly to try to make it seem like they are making eye contact, not unlike a swimmer who pops his head out of the water for a breath before going back under. Eye contact is more than just physically moving your head; it is about looking at your audience and establishing a connection. In general, your eye contact should last at least five seconds at a time and should be with individuals throughout the room.
• The stare down – Since you will, to some degree, be graded on your eye contact, some students think (either consciously or not), that the best way to ensure they get credit for establishing eye contact is to always and exclusively look directly at their professor. While we certainly appreciate the attention, we want to see that you are establishing eye contact with your entire audience, not just one person. Also, this behavior is uncomfortable for the instructor.

Eye contact holds attention because an audience member who knows the speaker is making regular eye contact will want to reciprocate that eye contact to show that they are paying attention. This will also help your audience remember the content of your speech better because acting like we’re paying attention actually leads us to pay attention and better retain information.

Norms for eye contact vary among cultures. Therefore it may be difficult for speakers from countries that have higher power distances or are more collectivistic to get used to the idea of making direct and sustained eye contact during a speech. In these cases, it is important for the speaker to challenge himself or herself to integrate some of the host culture’s expectations and for the audience to be accommodating and understanding of the cultural differences.

Tips for Having Effective Eye Contact

• Once in front of the audience, establish eye contact before you speak.
• Make slow and deliberate eye contact, sweeping through the whole audience from left to right.
• Despite what high school speech teachers or others might have told you, do not look over the audience’s heads, at the back wall, or the clock. Unless you are in a huge auditorium, it will just look to the audience like you are looking over their heads.
• Do not just make eye contact with one or a few people that you know or that look friendly. Also, do not just make eye contact with your instructor or boss. Even if it’s comforting for you as the speaker, it is usually awkward for the audience member.
• Try to memorize your opening and closing lines so you can make full eye contact with the audience. This will strengthen the opening and closing of your speech and help you make a connection with the audience.

Personal Appearance

Looking like a credible and prepared public speaker will make you feel more like one and will make your audience more likely to perceive you as such. This applies to all speaking contexts: academic, professional, and personal. Although the standards for appropriate personal appearance vary between contexts, meeting them is key. You may have experienced a time when your vocal and physical delivery suffered because you were not “dressed the part.” "Dressing the part" makes you feel more confident, which will come through in your delivery. Ideally, you should also be comfortable in the clothes you’re wearing. If the clothes are dressy, professional, and nice but ill-fitting, then the effect isn’t the same. Avoid clothes that are too tight or too loose. "Looking the part" is just as important as "dressing the part," so make sure you are cleaned and groomed in a way that’s appropriate for the occasion. The following “Getting Real” box goes into more detail about professional dress in a variety of contexts.

“Getting Real”: Professional Dress and Appearance

No matter what professional field you go into, you will need to consider the importance of personal appearance. Although it may seem petty or shallow to put so much emphasis on dress and appearance, impressions matter, and people make judgments about our personality, competence, and credibility based on how we look. In some cases, you may work somewhere with a clearly laid out policy for personal dress and appearance. In many cases, the suggestion is to follow guidelines for “business casual.” Despite the increasing popularity of this notion over the past twenty years, people’s understanding of what business casual means is not consistent (Cullen, 2008). The formal dress codes of the mid-1900s, which required employees to wear suits and dresses, gave way to the trend of business casual dress, which seeks to allow employees to work comfortably while still appearing professional (Heathfield, S. M., 2012). While most people still dress more formally for job interviews or high-stakes presentations, the day-to-day dress of working professionals varies. Here are some tips for maintaining “business casual” dress and appearance:

• Things to generally avoid. Jeans, hats, flip-flops, exposed underwear, exposed stomachs, athletic wear, heavy cologne/perfume, and chewing gum.
• General dress guidelines for men. Dress pants or khaki pants, button-up shirt or collared polo/golf shirt tucked in with belt, and dress shoes; jacket and/or tie are optional.
• General dress guidelines for women. Dress pants or skirt, blouse or dress shirt, dress, and closed-toe dress shoes; jacket is optional.
• Finishing touches. Make sure shoes are neat and polished, not scuffed or dirty; clothes should be pressed, not wrinkled; make sure fingernails are clean and trimmed/groomed; and remove any lint, dog hair, and so on from clothing.

Obviously, these are general guidelines and there may be exceptions. It’s always a good idea to see if your place of business has a dress code, or at least guidelines. If you are uncertain whether or not something is appropriate, most people recommend to air on the side of caution and choose something else. While consultants and professionals usually recommend sticking to dark colors such as black, navy, and charcoal and/or light colors such as white, khaki, and tan, it is OK to add something that expresses your identity and makes you stand out, like a splash of color or a nice accessory like a watch, eyeglasses, or a briefcase. In fact, in the current competitive job market, employers want to see that you are serious about the position, can fit in with the culture of the organization, and are confident in who you are (Verner, 2008).

• What do you think is the best practice to follow when dressing for a job interview?
• In what professional presentations would you want to dress formally? Business casual? Casual?
• Aside from the examples listed previously, what are some other things to generally avoid, in terms of dress and appearance, when trying to present yourself as a credible and competent communicator/speaker?
• In what ways do you think you can conform to business-casual expectations while still preserving your individuality?

Verbal Delivery

Vocal delivery includes components of speech delivery that relate to your voice. Incorporating vocal variety in terms of volume, pitch, rate, and pauses is key to being a successful speaker. Our voice is important to consider when delivering our speech for two main reasons. First, vocal delivery can help us engage and interest the audience. Second, vocal delivery helps ensure that our ideas are communicated clearly. We have all had the displeasure of listening to an unengaging speaker. Even though the person may care about his or her topic, an unengaging delivery that doesn’t communicate enthusiasm will translate into a lack of interest for most audience members. Although a speaker can be visually engaging by incorporating movement and gestures, a flat or monotone vocal delivery can be sedating or even annoying.

Volume refers to the relative softness or loudness of your voice . Like most of the other issues we’ve discussed in this section, the proper volume for a given speaking engagement usually falls on the scale in Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): The Goldilocks Paradigm of Delivery. If you speak too softly (“too little” volume), your audience will struggle to hear and understand you and may give up trying to listen. If you speak with “too much” volume, your audience may feel that you are yelling at them, or at least feel uncomfortable with you shouting. The volume you use should fit the size of the audience and the room.

When speaking in a typically sized classroom or office setting that seats about twenty-five people, using a volume a few steps above a typical conversational volume is usually sufficient. When speaking in larger rooms, you will need to project your voice. You may want to look for nonverbal cues from people in the back rows or corners, like leaning forward or straining to hear, to see if you need to adjust your volume more. Obviously, in some settings, a microphone will be necessary to be heard by the entire audience. Softer speakers are sometimes judged as meek, which may lead to lowered expectations for the speech or less perceived credibility. Louder speakers may be seen as overbearing or annoying, which can lead audience members to disengage from the speaker and message. Be aware of the volume of your voice and, when in doubt, increase your volume a notch, since beginning speakers are more likely to have an issue of speaking too softly rather than too loudly.

Public speaking relies on the voice for interest, credibility, audibility, and clarity. The British Prime Minister of the 19th century was quoted saying, “There is no greater index of character so sure as the voice.” While that seems exaggerated today, a public speaker at any level cannot ignore the energy, loudness, and clarity in their voice. There are four steps to voice production: breathing (produced by the lungs, which are largely responsible for the vocal characteristic of volume); phonation (the production of the sound in the vocal folds, which close and vibrate to produce sound for speaking as the air is exhaled over them; phonation creates pitch); resonation (a type of amplification of the sound in the larynx, oral cavity, and nasal cavity, which creates the characteristic of quality); and articulation, which produces the sounds of language others can understand and is responsible for rate and for being understood.

The visual in Figure \(\PageIndex{5}\) shows a cutaway of these parts of the anatomy. Your instructor may give you more directions on maximizing the power of your voice to achieve more variety and power. In section 11.6 we include a vocal exercise for doing so. We have all listened to a low-energy, monotone, monorate speaker and know how hard it is, so you should pay attention to your recording, perhaps by closing your eyes and just listening, to see if your voice is flat and lifeless.

Pitch  is  the relative highness or lowness of your voice , and like everything, you can have too much or too little (with regard to the variation of it). Too much pitch variation occurs when people “sing” their speeches, and their voices oscillate between very high pitched and very low pitched. While uncommon, this is sometimes attributed to nerves. More common is too little variation in pitch , which is known as being monotone .

Delivering a speech in a monotone manner is usually caused by reading too much; generally, the speaker’s focus is on saying the words correctly (because they have not practiced). They forget to speak normally to show their interest in the topic, as we would in everyday conversation. Changing our pitch is a good way to communicate enthusiasm and indicate emphasis or closure. In general, our pitch goes up when we are discussing something exciting. Our pitch goes down slightly when we emphasize a serious or important point. Lowering the pitch is also an effective way to signal transitions between sections of your speech or the end of your speech, which cues your audience to applaud and avoids an awkward ending.

For most people, changing pitch isn’t a major issue, but if you think it might be for you, ask the people in your practice audience what they think. You can also record yourself practicing your speech to help determine if the amount of pitch variety and enthusiasm you think you convey while speaking actually comes through. Generally, if we are interested in and passionate about communicating our thoughts, we are not likely to be monotone. We are rarely monotone when talking to friends and family about matters of importance to us, so pick topics you care about.

The rate of speaking refers to how fast or slow you speak . Too little rate (i.e. speaking too slowly) will make it sound like you may not fully know your speech or what you are talking about, and will ultimately cost you some credibility with your audience. It may also result in the audience being bored and lose focus on what you are saying. Speaking slowly may lead the audience to infer that the speaker is uninterested, uninformed, or unprepared to present his or her own topic. These negative assumptions, whether they are true or not, are likely to hurt the credibility of the speaker. Rate is one reason you should try to record yourself, even if just audio on your phone, beforehand and be mindful of time when you practice. Your voice’s rate will affect the time it takes to give the speech.

By contrast, too much rate (i.e. speaking too fast) can be overly taxing on an audience’s ability to keep up with and digest what you are saying. It sometimes helps to imagine that your speech is a jog or run that you and your friends (the audience) are taking together. You (as the speaker) are setting the pace based on how quickly you speak. If you start sprinting, it may be too difficult for your audience to keep up and they may give up halfway through. Some people naturally speak faster than others, which is fine, but we can all alter our rate of speaking with practice. If you find that you are a naturally fast speaker, make sure that you do not “speed talk” through your speech when practicing it. As always, recording and timing your speech during practice helps. You can also include reminders to “slow down” on your speaking outline.

You especially will want to maintain a good, deliberate rate at the beginning of your speech because your audience will be getting used to your voice. We have all called a business where the person answering the phone mumbles the name of the business in a rushed way. We aren’t sure if we called the right number. Since the introduction is designed to get the audience’s attention and interest in your speech, you will want to focus on clear delivery there. Regulating rate is another reason why video-recording yourself can be so helpful because we often do not realize how fast we speak.

The common misconception for public speaking students is that pausing during your speech is bad, but that isn’t necessarily true. You pause in normal conversations, so you shouldn’t be afraid of pausing while speaking. This is especially true if you are making a particularly important point or want for a statement to have a more powerful impact: you will want to give the audience a moment to digest what you have said.

For example, consider the following statement: “Because of issues like pollution and overpopulation, in 50 years the earth’s natural resources will be so depleted that it will become difficult for most people to obtain enough food to survive.” Following a statement like this, you want to give your audience just a brief moment to fully consider what you are saying. Hopefully, they will think something along the lines of What if I’m still alive then? or  What will my children do ? and become more interested in hearing what you have to say

Of course, there is such a thing as pausing too much, both in terms of frequency and length. Someone who pauses too often (after each sentence) may come off seeming like they don’t know their speech very well. Someone who pauses too long (more than a few seconds), runs the risk of the audience feeling uncomfortable or, even worse becoming distracted or letting their attention wander. We are capable of processing words more quickly than anyone can speak clearly, which is one of the reasons listening is difficult. Pauses should be controlled to maintain the attention of the audience.

Vocalized pauses

At various points during your speech, you may find yourself in need of a brief moment to collect your thoughts or prepare for the next section of your speech. At those moments, you will be pausing, but we don’t always like to let people know that we’re pausing. So what many of us do in an attempt to “trick” the audience is fill in those pauses with sounds so that it appears that we haven’t actually paused. These are known as vocalized pauses , or sometimes “fillers.” Another term for them is “nonfluencies.”

Everyone uses vocalized pauses to some degree, but not everyone’s vocalized pauses are problematic. This obviously becomes an issue when the vocalized pauses become distracting due to their overuse. We have little doubt that you can remember a time when you were speaking to someone who said the word “like” after every three words and you became focused on it. One of your authors remembers attending a wedding and (inadvertently) began counting the number of times the best man said “like” during his toast (22 was the final count). The most common vocalized pause is “uh,” but then there are others. Can you think of any?

The bad news here is that there is no quick fix for getting rid of your vocalized pauses. They are so ingrained into all of our speech patterns that getting rid of them is a challenge. However, there is a two-step process you can employ to begin eliminating them. First, you need to identify what your particular vocalized pause is. Do you say “um,” “well,” or “now” before each sentence? Do you finish each thought with, “you know?” Do you use “like” before every adjective (as in “he was like so unhappy”)?

After figuring out what your vocalized pause is, the second step is to carefully and meticulously try to catch yourself when you say it. If you hear yourself saying “uh,” remind yourself, I need to try to not say that. Catching yourself and being aware of how often you use vocalized pauses will help you begin the process of reducing your dependence on them and hopefully get rid of them completely. If you do lose your train of thought, having a brief silent pause is better than injecting a vocalized pause, because the audience may not even notice the pause or may think it was intentional.

Common Causes of Vocalized Pauses

• Lack of preparation. Effective practice sessions are the best way to prevent these.
• Not writing for speaking. If you write your speech the way you’ve been taught to write papers, you will have these vocalized pauses. You must translate the written words into something easier for you to present orally. To do this, read your speech aloud and edit as you write to make sure your speech is easy for you to speak.
• A poorly prepared speaking outline. Whether it is on paper or note cards, sloppy writing, unorganized bullet points, or incomplete/insufficient information on a speaking outline leads to these.
• Distractions. Audience members and the external environment are unpredictable. Hopefully, audience members will be polite and will silence their phones, avoid talking while the speaker is presenting, and avoid moving excessively. There could also be external noise that comes through a door or window. A speaker can also be distracted by internal noise such as thinking about other things.

Vocal Variety

Overall, the lesson to take away from this section on vocal delivery is that variety is key. Vocal variety includes changes in your rate, volume, and pitch that can make you look more prepared, seem more credible, and be able to engage your audience better. Employing vocal variety is not something that takes natural ability or advanced skills training. It is something that beginning speakers can start working on immediately and everyone can accomplish. The key is to become aware of how you use your voice when you speak, and the best way to do this is to record yourself. We all use vocal variety naturally without thinking about it during our regular conversations, and many of us think that this tendency will translate over to our speaking voices. This is definitely not the case for most beginning speakers. Unlike in your regular conversations, it will take some awareness and practice to use vocal variety in speeches. Since it’s something anyone can do, improving in this area will add to your speaking confidence, which usually translates into better speeches and better grades further on.

Articulation

Articulation refers to the clarity of sounds and words we produce . If someone is articulate, they speak words clearly, and speakers should strive to speak clearly. Poor articulation results when speakers do not speak clearly. For example, a person may say dinnt instead of didn’t , gonna instead of going to , wanna instead of want to , or hunnerd instead of hundred . Unawareness and laziness are two common challenges to articulation. As with other aspects of our voice, many people are unaware that they regularly have errors in articulation. Recording yourself speak and then becoming a higher self-monitor are effective ways to improve your articulation. Laziness, on the other hand, requires a little more motivation to address. Some people just get in the habit of not articulating their words well. Both mumbling and slurring are examples of poor articulation. In more informal settings, this type of speaking may be acceptable, but in a formal setting, it will be negatively received, which will hurt a speaker’s credibility. Perhaps the promise of being judged more favorably, which may help a person become more successful, is enough to motivate a mumbler to speak more clearly.

When combined with a low volume, poor articulation becomes an even greater problem. When you notice that you have trouble articulating a particular word, you can either choose a different word to include in your speech or you can repeat it a few times in a row in the days leading up to your speech to get used to saying it.

Pronunciation

Unlike articulation, which focuses on the clarity of words, pronunciation refers to speaking words correctly, including the proper sounds of the letters and the proper emphasis . Mispronouncing words can damage a speaker’s credibility, especially when the correct pronunciation of a word is commonly known. I have actually heard someone, presenting on the topic of pronunciation, mispronounce the word pronunciation , saying “pro-NOUN-ciation” instead of “pro-NUN-ciation.” In such a case, it would not be unwarranted for the audience to question the speaker’s expertise on the subject.

We all commonly run into words that we are unfamiliar with and therefore may not know how to pronounce. Here are three suggestions when faced with this problem. The first is to look the word up in an online dictionary. Many dictionaries have a speaker icon with their definitions, and when you click on it, you can hear the correct pronunciation of a word. Some words have more than one pronunciation—for example, Caribbean —so choosing either of the accepted pronunciations is fine. Just remember to consistently use that pronunciation to avoid confusing your audience. If a word doesn’t include audio pronunciation, you can usually find the phonetic spelling of a word, which is the word spelled out the way it sounds. There will occasionally be words that you can’t locate in a dictionary. These are typically proper nouns or foreign words. In this case, you can “phone-a-friend.” Call up the people you know who have large vocabularies or are generally smart when it comes to words, and ask them if they know how to pronounce them. If they do, and you find them credible, you’re probably safe to take their suggestion. The third option is to “fake it ‘til you make it” and should only be used as a last resort. If you can’t find the word in a dictionary and your smart friends don’t know how to pronounce it, it’s likely that your audience will also be unfamiliar with the word. In that case, using your knowledge of how things are typically pronounced, decide on a pronunciation that makes sense and confidently use it during your speech. Most people will not question it. In the event that someone does correct you on your pronunciation, thank him or her for correcting you and adjust your pronunciation.

The ten items listed above represent the major delivery issues you will want to be aware of when giving a speech, but it is by no means an exhaustive list. There is, however, one final piece of delivery advice we would like to offer. We know that no matter how hard you practice and how diligent you are in preparing for your speech, you are most likely going to mess up some aspect of your speech when you give it in class, at least a little. That’s normal. Everyone does it. The key is to not make a big deal about it or let the audience know you messed up. Odds are that they will never even realize your mistake if you don’t tell them there was a mistake. Saying something like “I can’t believe I messed that up” or “Can I start over?” just telegraphs to the audience your mistake. In fact, you have most likely never heard a perfect speech delivered in your life. It is likely that you just didn’t realize that the speaker missed a line or briefly forgot what they wanted to say.

As has been the driving maxim of this chapter, this means that you need to

Practice your speech beforehand, at home or elsewhere, the way you will give it in class .

Since you know you are likely going to make some sort of mistake in class, use your practice time at home to work on how you will deal with those mistakes. If you say a word incorrectly or start reading the wrong sentence, don’t go back and begin that section anew. That’s not what you would do in class, so just correct yourself and move on. If you practice dealing with your mistakes at home, you will be better prepared for the inevitable errors that will find their way into your speech in class.

A final thought on practice. We have all heard, “Practice makes perfect.” That is not always true. Practice makes permanent; the actions become habitual. If you practice incorrectly, your performance will be incorrect. Be sure your practice is correct.

Key Takeaways

• Facial expressions help communicate emotions and enthusiasm while speaking. Make sure that facial expressions are consistent with the content being presented. Record yourself practicing your speech in order to evaluate your use of facial expressions.
• Eye contact helps establish credibility and keep your audience’s attention while you’re speaking.
• Posture should be comfortable and appropriate for the speaking occasion.
• Emphatic and descriptive gestures enhance the verbal content of our speech. Gestures should appear spontaneous but be purposeful.
• Movements from the waist down should be purposefully used to emphasize a point or as a transition during a speech.
• Audience members will make assumptions about your competence and credibility based on dress and personal appearance. Make sure your outer presentation of self is appropriate for the occasion and for the impression you are trying to project.
• Visual aids can add to your speech but can also interfere with your delivery and negatively affect your credibility if not used effectively.
• Speakers should use vocal variety, which is changes in rate, volume, and pitch, to make a speech more engaging.
• Speakers should use proper articulation and pronunciation to make their message clear.
• Interruptions to the fluency of a speech, including fluency hiccups and verbal fillers, detract from the speaker’s message and can lessen a speaker’s credibility.
• Identify three goals related to delivery that you would like to accomplish in this course. What strategies/tips can you use to help achieve these goals?
• What nonverbal adaptors have you noticed that others use while speaking? Are you aware of any nonverbal adaptors that you have used? If so, what are they?
• Getting integrated: Identify some steps that speakers can take to ensure that their dress and physical appearance enhance their credibility. How might expectations for the dress and physical appearance vary from context to context (academic, professional, personal, and civic)?
• Record yourself practicing your speech. How does your speech sound in terms of vocal variety? Cite specific examples.
• Listen to your recorded speech again. How would you evaluate your articulation and pronunciation? Cite specific examples.
• Over the course of a day, take note of verbal fillers that you tend to use. List them here so you can be a higher self-monitor and begin to notice and lessen your use of them.

Cullen, L. T., “What (Not) to Wear to Work,” Time , June 9, 2008, 49.

Heathfield, S. M., “Dress for Success: A Business Casual Dress Code,” About.com , accessed February 7, 2012, http://humanresources.about.com/od/workrelationships/a/dress_code.htm .

Koch, A., Speaking with a Purpose , 7th ed. (Boston, MA: Pearson, 2007), 105.

Verner, A., “Interview? Ditch the Navy Suit,” The Globe and Mail , December 15, 2008, L1.

Tips for Effective Delivery

• Make a good set of notes you can follow at a glance, and PRACTICE your presentation.
• Dress for the occasion and tidy yourself up. Do something about hair that tends to fall into your face. Avoid wearing a hat or cap because it can obscure your face.
• Arrange the environment to suit your presentation and get rid of distractions; erase needless information from the boards, turn off equipment you’re not going to use, close or open windows, blinds and doors to aid audience visibility, hearing and comfort. Turn on enough light so people can adequately see you, your eyes and your facial expressions.
• Check the operation of audiovisual equipment before your presentation. Have a backup plan in case it fails.
• Make sure your notes and other materials are in proper order before you begin.
• Get rid of any gum or food you might have in your mouth. Don't hold a pen or paper clip or anything else that you might twiddle and distract your listeners.
• Stand or sit up straight with your weight balanced. Avoid slumping, twisting or leaning on the lectern, table, or computer console. Don't stand in the light from the projector.
• Make eye contact before you start to speak, as you normally do in beginning a conversation.
• Don't start with “um” or “OK.”
• Make plenty of genuine eye-to-eye contact with members of the audience.
• Avoid merely reading your presentation.
• Focus on sharing your ideas. Communicate.
• Minimize the uhs, ums, likes and y’knows.
• Enunciate words clearly. Don’t mumble or garble them.
• Speak with appropriate loudness and speed. Consider audience, place and topic.
• Use variations in speed, inflections, and force to enhance your meaning and hold audience attention. Avoid monotony.
• Look interested in your topic. Show your enthusiasm, sincerity, commitment.
• Minimize distracting mannerisms and aimlessly shifting weight or moving about.
• Use gesture and movement naturally to describe things, underscore transitions and emphasize points.

Remember the 3 Es of Effective Delivery: Energy, Eye Contact and Expression!

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14.1 Four Methods of Delivery

Learning objectives.

• Differentiate among the four methods of speech delivery.
• Understand when to use each of the four methods of speech delivery.

Maryland GovPics – House of Ruth Luncheon – CC BY 2.0.

The easiest approach to speech delivery is not always the best. Substantial work goes into the careful preparation of an interesting and ethical message, so it is understandable that students may have the impulse to avoid “messing it up” by simply reading it word for word. But students who do this miss out on one of the major reasons for studying public speaking: to learn ways to “connect” with one’s audience and to increase one’s confidence in doing so. You already know how to read, and you already know how to talk. But public speaking is neither reading nor talking.

Speaking in public has more formality than talking. During a speech, you should present yourself professionally. This doesn’t mean you must wear a suit or “dress up” (unless your instructor asks you to), but it does mean making yourself presentable by being well groomed and wearing clean, appropriate clothes. It also means being prepared to use language correctly and appropriately for the audience and the topic, to make eye contact with your audience, and to look like you know your topic very well.

While speaking has more formality than talking, it has less formality than reading. Speaking allows for meaningful pauses, eye contact, small changes in word order, and vocal emphasis. Reading is a more or less exact replication of words on paper without the use of any nonverbal interpretation. Speaking, as you will realize if you think about excellent speakers you have seen and heard, provides a more animated message.

The next sections introduce four methods of delivery that can help you balance between too much and too little formality when giving a public speech.

Impromptu Speaking

Impromptu speaking is the presentation of a short message without advance preparation. Impromptu speeches often occur when someone is asked to “say a few words” or give a toast on a special occasion. You have probably done impromptu speaking many times in informal, conversational settings. Self-introductions in group settings are examples of impromptu speaking: “Hi, my name is Steve, and I’m a volunteer with the Homes for the Brave program.” Another example of impromptu speaking occurs when you answer a question such as, “What did you think of the documentary?”

The advantage of this kind of speaking is that it’s spontaneous and responsive in an animated group context. The disadvantage is that the speaker is given little or no time to contemplate the central theme of his or her message. As a result, the message may be disorganized and difficult for listeners to follow.

Here is a step-by-step guide that may be useful if you are called upon to give an impromptu speech in public.

• Take a moment to collect your thoughts and plan the main point you want to make.
• Thank the person for inviting you to speak.
• Deliver your message, making your main point as briefly as you can while still covering it adequately and at a pace your listeners can follow.
• Thank the person again for the opportunity to speak.
• Stop talking.

As you can see, impromptu speeches are generally most successful when they are brief and focus on a single point.

Extemporaneous Speaking

Extemporaneous speaking is the presentation of a carefully planned and rehearsed speech, spoken in a conversational manner using brief notes. By using notes rather than a full manuscript, the extemporaneous speaker can establish and maintain eye contact with the audience and assess how well they are understanding the speech as it progresses. The opportunity to assess is also an opportunity to restate more clearly any idea or concept that the audience seems to have trouble grasping.

For instance, suppose you are speaking about workplace safety and you use the term “sleep deprivation.” If you notice your audience’s eyes glazing over, this might not be a result of their own sleep deprivation, but rather an indication of their uncertainty about what you mean. If this happens, you can add a short explanation; for example, “sleep deprivation is sleep loss serious enough to threaten one’s cognition, hand-to-eye coordination, judgment, and emotional health.” You might also (or instead) provide a concrete example to illustrate the idea. Then you can resume your message, having clarified an important concept.

Speaking extemporaneously has some advantages. It promotes the likelihood that you, the speaker, will be perceived as knowledgeable and credible. In addition, your audience is likely to pay better attention to the message because it is engaging both verbally and nonverbally. The disadvantage of extemporaneous speaking is that it requires a great deal of preparation for both the verbal and the nonverbal components of the speech. Adequate preparation cannot be achieved the day before you’re scheduled to speak.

Because extemporaneous speaking is the style used in the great majority of public speaking situations, most of the information in this chapter is targeted to this kind of speaking.

Speaking from a Manuscript

Manuscript speaking is the word-for-word iteration of a written message. In a manuscript speech, the speaker maintains his or her attention on the printed page except when using visual aids.

The advantage to reading from a manuscript is the exact repetition of original words. As we mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, in some circumstances this can be extremely important. For example, reading a statement about your organization’s legal responsibilities to customers may require that the original words be exact. In reading one word at a time, in order, the only errors would typically be mispronunciation of a word or stumbling over complex sentence structure.

However, there are costs involved in manuscript speaking. First, it’s typically an uninteresting way to present. Unless the speaker has rehearsed the reading as a complete performance animated with vocal expression and gestures (as poets do in a poetry slam and actors do in a reader’s theater), the presentation tends to be dull. Keeping one’s eyes glued to the script precludes eye contact with the audience. For this kind of “straight” manuscript speech to hold audience attention, the audience must be already interested in the message before the delivery begins.

It is worth noting that professional speakers, actors, news reporters, and politicians often read from an autocue device, such as a TelePrompTer, especially when appearing on television, where eye contact with the camera is crucial. With practice, a speaker can achieve a conversational tone and give the impression of speaking extemporaneously while using an autocue device. However, success in this medium depends on two factors: (1) the speaker is already an accomplished public speaker who has learned to use a conversational tone while delivering a prepared script, and (2) the speech is written in a style that sounds conversational.

Speaking from Memory

Memorized speaking is the rote recitation of a written message that the speaker has committed to memory. Actors, of course, recite from memory whenever they perform from a script in a stage play, television program, or movie scene. When it comes to speeches, memorization can be useful when the message needs to be exact and the speaker doesn’t want to be confined by notes.

The advantage to memorization is that it enables the speaker to maintain eye contact with the audience throughout the speech. Being free of notes means that you can move freely around the stage and use your hands to make gestures. If your speech uses visual aids, this freedom is even more of an advantage. However, there are some real and potential costs. First, unless you also plan and memorize every vocal cue (the subtle but meaningful variations in speech delivery, which can include the use of pitch, tone, volume, and pace), gesture, and facial expression, your presentation will be flat and uninteresting, and even the most fascinating topic will suffer. You might end up speaking in a monotone or a sing-song repetitive delivery pattern. You might also present your speech in a rapid “machine-gun” style that fails to emphasize the most important points. Second, if you lose your place and start trying to ad lib, the contrast in your style of delivery will alert your audience that something is wrong. More frighteningly, if you go completely blank during the presentation, it will be extremely difficult to find your place and keep going.

Key Takeaways

• There are four main kinds of speech delivery: impromptu, extemporaneous, manuscript, and memorized.
• Impromptu speaking involves delivering a message on the spur of the moment, as when someone is asked to “say a few words.”
• Extemporaneous speaking consists of delivering a speech in a conversational fashion using notes. This is the style most speeches call for.
• Manuscript speaking consists of reading a fully scripted speech. It is useful when a message needs to be delivered in precise words.
• Memorized speaking consists of reciting a scripted speech from memory. Memorization allows the speaker to be free of notes.
• Find a short newspaper story. Read it out loud to a classroom partner. Then, using only one notecard, tell the classroom partner in your own words what the story said. Listen to your partner’s observations about the differences in your delivery.
• In a group of four or five students, ask each student to give a one-minute impromptu speech answering the question, “What is the most important personal quality for academic success?”
• Watch the evening news. Observe the differences between news anchors using a TelePrompTer and interviewees who are using no notes of any kind. What differences do you observe?

Stand up, Speak out Copyright © 2016 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Speech delivery practice

A speech is not an assignment that can be done the night before; practice is essential.  Practicing a speech will boost your confidence as a speaker and ease potential anxiety.

Podium/lectern practice

Using or not using a podium does not make or break a speech. If using a podium, it should not be used to hide from the audience.  

• Stand tall—do not hold or lean on the podium
• Makes an impact especially at the conclusion of the speech
• Allows audience to see you as a person, not just a face behind the podium
• Be sure gestures can be seen
• It is easy with a podium to look down especially if you have notes or outlines
• Maintain eye contact with the audience

Notes can be helpful. Know your instructor’s preference as some allow notes and some don’t. 

• Make sure to look at the audience
• Know your notes well enough to find what you need
• Know at what point(s) in your speech you may need to look down at your notes
• Notes should be simple enough to keep the speech on track

A gesture is the movement of your hands to express an idea. When practicing your speech, do not practice gestures, let them occur naturally.

• Use natural gestures. Gestures should be relaxed and enhance your speech
• If the topic is exciting, then be excited
• Make gestures visible, even if using a podium/lectern
• Use gestures sparingly. Gestures should not be what the audience remembers about your speech

Vocal delivery

Your voice should be loud enough to be heard and have variation (not monotone). This occurs naturally in conversation with friends—so your speech should sound the same.

Try practicing the following to work on vocal variations and delivery.

• Tongue twisters
• Funny voices

 These will help you transition to a natural variation in volume and tone.

Adapt to length of the speech

In extemporaneous speaking, there are no ties to a manuscript, so there is flexibility in structure.

• Move to conclusion of the speech
• The audience doesn’t know what was planned—they just experience the speech as it is delivered
• Understands your topic
• Remembers your thesis and key points

Be direct in speaking

For clarity and time constraints, watch for places where phrases can be more concise. Practicing your speech will allow you to hear where phrases can be shortened and made more concise. For example, instead of “due to the fact” say “because”. 

Beebe, S. A., & Beebe, S. J. (2012). A concise public speaking handbook . Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Lucas, S. (2012). The art of public speaking . New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Sprague, J. & Stuart, D. (2013). The speaker's compact handbook, 4th ed . Portland: Ringgold, Inc.

Vrooman, S. S. (2013). The zombie guide to public speaking: Why most presentations fail, and what you can do to avoid joining the horde . Place of publication not identified: CreateSpace.

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Principles of Effective Speech Delivery

11th - 12th grade, english, world languages.

15 questions

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Which of the following statements about speech delivery is true?

Speech delivery is about pronouncing words perfectly.

Public speaking is a talent and cannot be learned.

Effective speech delivery means connecting with the audience and communicating the message.

Good delivery lies in the intellectual words used in the speech.

The following are different delivery situations except for one.

Speaking in different venues

Speaking in a concert

Speaking with a microphone

Speaking with a podium

If the speaker is very conscious on the way she pronounces the words, what principle in speech delivery is observed by the speaker?

articulation

facial expression

During the Question and Answer question of the Miss Universe Competition, the candidate is looking at the floor or sometimes on the ceiling. She is mumbling and cannot look at the audience. What is the candidate experiencing during that time?

Stage Presence

Stage Confidence

Stage Fright

Stage heart

As a speaker, you should know how to when to make your voice loud or soft. And you should know how to control your voice. What speech delivery principle should you observe?

Articulation

Facial Expression

If the audiences does Not understand the words of the speaker because it seems she is eating the words. What weakness of the speaker is that?

Which of the following does Not show the principle of ARTICULATION?

The speaker is careful with her diction

The speaker is pronouncing the words correctly

The speaker opens her mouth widely

The speaker observes the tone of her voice

Which of the following is an effective speech delivery technique?

Pause to emphasize words.

Rarely look the audience in the eye.

Always be formal and serious.

Use filler words to avoid dead air.

• 9. Multiple Choice Edit 30 seconds 1 pt A tool of vocal expression is Volume Rate Pitch All of These
• 10. Multiple Choice Edit 30 seconds 1 pt Loudness or softness of sound is called volume rate pitch all of these
• 11. Multiple Choice Edit 30 seconds 1 pt Keeping both feet flat on the floor and standing straight and tall demonstrate good _____________ while speaking. vocal expression articulation eye contact posture
• 12. Multiple Choice Edit 30 seconds 1 pt Leaving the final sound off of a word, like goin' instead of going, shows a lack of articulation volume intensity pitch
• 13. Multiple Choice Edit 30 seconds 1 pt Unnecessary words such as um, uh, like, you know, etc. are called nervous words irritating pauses verbal fillers
• 14. Multiple Choice Edit 30 seconds 1 pt Stopping at a moment in the speech, like between sentences or at a comma, is called a verbal filler vocal fry pause screw up

It helps establish the speaker's sincerity and the audiences' acceptability of the message being conveyed.

eye contact

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