How to Be a Good Speaker

Being a good speaker requires planning, clarity of thought and a well constructed beginning, middle and end to your speech. It is important to avoid creating confusion or leaving your listeners feeling that you have wasted their time. Follow these steps and people will appreciate what you have to say.

Steps

1. Have a point and stick to it.

In some settings you must speak on a certain subject. Even in casual conversation, though, it is important to focus on a limited set of related ideas. If you drift from one tangentially related idea to the next your speech becomes a sort of bad poetry or misplaced filibuster that may quickly bore the listener.

2. Speak clearly.

It may be tempting to say, "El whooziwhatsit fonctionne bien in thinger teh other day." It may also not be worth the listener's time to try to figure out what you mean.

3. Adjust your speech for your audience.

A technical audience will appreciate your use of jargon and acronyms. If your audience has trouble grasping the concepts you are relating, it may be necessary to speak slowly and offer generally familiar examples.

4. Don't patronize.

When people are treated like idiots or little children they may become hostile and ignore what you're saying. You sound patronizing when you use sing-song tones in your speech or sigh loudly.

5. Be interesting.

6. Speak up.

People have to hear what you are saying even if they are sitting in the back row or there is a lot of noise.

7. Be honest.

Remember the story of the boy who cried, "Wolf!"

8. Organize what you're saying.

If there are several ideas or details related to your main point, speak about each one in a deliberate fashion. If you are trying to convey large amounts of information, you may need to outline what you will say at the outset and then summarize what you've said at the conclusion.

9.  Be an important person.

Have a lot of initials after your name. Be famous. Be beautiful. Work in a job where you wear a uniform and people are expected to listen to you.

10. Be polite, follow social conventions and be rational.

Obviously there are many speakers that do not follow this step and yet have large and dotting audiences. You probably aren't one of those speakers.

Tips

• Avoid monotony. Monotony is really a form of disorganization where the important information is not distinguished in any way from the unimportant information.
• Politicians follow many if not all of these steps and you may want to emulate them.

Warnings

• It is easy to get carried away when you speak up. If you find yourself yelling a lot or using all-caps text frequently, it is likely you are skipping many of the other steps listed.
• It is also easy to get carried away when you're being important. If you neglect many of the other steps and rely on your importance to command the audience's attention, the audience may become resentful. The audience may even work to undermine your authority.
• The worst speaker is the bore. Don't be a bore! Typically the bore fails at being interesting and overestimates the attention span of his audience.
• Using incendiary language and making analogies to WWII situations and figures (especially Hitler, facism, communism and Stalin) usually causes people to focus on the individual offensive statement or the character of your speech rather than the content of the speech.

Sources and Citations

• http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/html/icb.topic58703/winston1.html
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law
• http://www.wikihow.com/Be-a-Good-Speaker