Education Blog

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When faced with having to make a speech and you have little or no experience of speaking in public, it is inevitable that you will want to pick up as many tips on speech building and presentation as you can. In fact, if you could only discover those hints and tips that were able to convey some sort of ‘magic furmula’ you would be overjoyed!

Real life, however, is generally somewhat different.

No matter how much thought a person might put into their speech preparation, there are three mistaken assumptions that will make their public speaking task all the more difficult.

Assumption No.1:

That all audiences are hostile towards speakers and that in order for your speech to be successful, you will need to win their approval.

In fact, quite the opposite is frequently the case. Consider this:- your audience actually wants you to make a great speech! Our human nature is such that our natural empathy with another person means that we will feel that person’s embarrassment and discomfort when we see it. If you are experiencing nervousness or unease on stage, then your audience will be sharing in that experience too.

And nobody would actually want to feel uncomfortable on your behalf, so you can begin to see that, instead of being hostile towards you, your audience are actually willing you to make a speech that will make them feel good, not bad.

Assumption No.2:

That one of the biggest tips when building your speech is that you absloutely must include jokes or funny stories, otherwise your audience will not enjoy your presentation.

Wrong - although you will find this assertion high up on nearly every list of public speaking tips you might come across. A successful speech really does not depend on the inclusion of jokes and anecdotes.

After all, if you were an absolute ace at telling jokes and stories, you’d be a professional comedian, right? But most of us have great difficulty in even remembering a punchline, let alone be able to deliver it with style, so why make delivering your speech even more stressful than it already is by trying to carry off three or four ‘funny’ stories just for their own sake?

Assumption No.3:

That you need to be an expert on the topic you are speaking about or your audience will boo you off the stage

Again, this is a commonly held but completely erronious belief and is completely incorrect. In fact, you really don’t need to know much about your topic and still be able to deliver a really good and entertaining speech.

What is vital to know, however, is how to research your topic well, so that you are able to discover the best and most relevant material possible for your audience’s delight. If you can master this skill - and it is simply a matter of learning the correct research technique - you will soon be able to construct a speech on any topic and for any audience easily, successfully and for time after time.

So, before you begin your search for a list of ‘magic’ tips on public speaking, make sure you get rid of these three, completely misleading speech-making assumptions.

Remind yourself that your audience isn’t hostile towards you - they actively want you to succeed and deliver the best and most entertaining speech they have ever heard. After all, they want to feel good on your behalf - not bad.

Secondly, that there is no absolute requirement that you need to include jokes and stories in your speech. Unless you really do feel at ease telling anecdotes and can deliver punchlines faultlessly, don’t put yourself under extra stress trying to be a comedian as well as a speech-maker.

And finally, don’t become despondent believing that you need to be an expert on the subject you are to speak about. Your sole duty is to make your speech well and confidently. If you do this, your audience will naturally accept that you know your subject well. You can achieve this by thoroughly preparing and executing your research before actually writing your speech - a much more achievable task than attaining true, expert status, wouldn’t you agree?

So, when looking for tips on public speaking, first rid yourself of these three, common misconceptions and you will have already made good headway towards your goal of delivering a successful, entertaining and informative speech for your audience.