5 Ways to Jazz Up Your Speech
I was asked to speak at a college English Composition class specifically on oral presentations. The students were required to give an oral presentation as part of their final and needed a few tips.
So, I just hit a few highlights and in no particular order. One simple strategy bears repeating and maybe going into more detail (just a bit).
Tip #1 - Don’t start your talk, speech, audition, demonstration, presentation, PowerPoint, podcast, video, with an “Ummm…”.
Stand up there, in front of the class, at your desk, at the table, at the podium, on stage, in front of the camera, and say, “Hello,” “Good morning,” “My name is Bill,” “Thanks for coming in this snow storm,” “Turn off your cell phones,” whatever. Just don’t say “Umm….my name is Bill.”
If the first word out of your mouth is "Umm” or “Uhhh”, it sounds like you are not too sure of who you are, where you are, or what you are doing. This also gives the impression that you are totally uncertain of anything including the rest of your presentation.
Speakers, including professionals, can lose focus for a moment and find themselves saying. “Umm…uhh...” at the very beginning of their talk and sometimes in the middle.
“Umm, uhh….” and other fillers, as they are called, actually serve a linguistic function. They are called vocalizations as opposed to verbalizations. Verbalizations are real words. Vocalizations are just sounds. These sounds actually differ from culture to culture. These sounds keep the listener aware of the speaker, keep the listener listening.
If you overuse them, if you let these sounds start wandering around in your speech, you may lose the listener. I have seen audience members start counting how many times the unfortunate speaker said “uhh..ummm." If this happens, as a speaker, you have lost the audience, lost their attention, and perhaps lost your credibility.
It takes work to totally eliminate all fillers from your speech, but the place to start is right at the beginning of your talk.
Let that first word you say be a real word and not just a wandering vocal.
Stay tuned for Tip #2!
