The Art of Public Speaking: Your Originality Matters!

Public speaking is more than just the ability to speak in front of an audience; it is a process that requires research and critical thinking skills. How do you identify a topic, develop an engaging technique, and effectively communicate it? How can you make it unique? Your originality is particularly essential.

There are three critical components of public speaking: topic, structure, and delivery. The final step requires a lot of practice. The more you practice it, the better you will get. It could take months or years, depending on how you wish to progress. This article will focus on the topic and structure.

Topic Selection

A topic is a specific issue that is the focus of a paragraph, essay, report, or speech. A writer presents their story from a precise viewpoint or perspective, often recounting the same story from multiple perspectives. When choosing a topic, a speaker must consider who their audience is. This will assist them in finding a topic that is relevant to the audience. A speaker can choose a topic from a variety of sources, including the internet, books, social media, and personal experiences.

Begin with an outline

Don’t know where to begin? Why not try to use this fundamental approach when organizing your material:

1. Introduction: Tell them what you’re going to tell them. The first two minutes of a speech must be compelling enough that the audience is eager to hear more since it helps familiarize the audience with the topic and establishes the presenter as an authority on it.
2. Body: Tell them. Once the speaker has piqued the audience’s interest, they should focus on the presentation’s main theme by emphasizing the main idea or points and ensuring each one with supporting material, such as statistics, quotations, or other researched information.
3. Conclusion: Tell them what you’ve told them. Use the final moments of your allotted time.

Now, are you ready to organize the speech?

First, list the key points. State the speech’s central idea in one simple sentence. Follow this with three to five statements that support the sentence.

Arrange them in order. Organize the statements into a loose outline. The arrangement should be logical and sequential, reflecting the central idea of the speech.

Expand upon these points. Elaborate on each supporting statement. Use examples and anecdotes involving people or events. Convert statistics and ideas into familiar terms.

Review each supporting statement section. Is there a statistic, quote, or anecdote that would work well in the introduction should be considered.

Consider asking the audience to respond with a show of hands or posing a rhetorical question will encourage immediate focus on the topic. Incorporate the first part of the tell-them formula because listeners appreciate a preview of what they will hear.

Lastly, make sure to reinforce your ideas and leave a lasting impression on listeners. If you were informing the listeners, you could conclude with a summary of the ideas presented in the body of the speech. If you were persuading or motivating the audience to take some action, you could suggest a course of action listeners could take.

So, what are you waiting for? It’s time to make your ideas shine!