How A Speech Can Impact The Audience English Language Essay

When a speaker wants to give a speech his main objective is to convey a message to the audience. And to do so, he must indeed emphasize on the method he uses to deliver the speech. He must take into considerate on his outlook and credibility (speaker), the channel (non-verbal, pictorial and aural) that he is using to convey his message as well as the message (content, style and structure). Hence he will be able to convey his speech effectively.

The message/speech delivering process.

Speaker

A speaker is the most important factor in delivering the speech effectively as he is the one that is communicating with the audience. Decent appearance and credibility is some of the aspects that a speaker must fulfill in order to deliver the message to the audience in an effective fashion.

Appearance

Han Sen was dressed too casually and somewhat messy. He wore a cap, messy hair, a t-shirt and jeans which was really inappropriate. The cap would not only come across a bit rude to the audience but it prevents him from giving eye contact to the audience. His hair also contributed to the loss of eye contact. His casual dressing showed that he had no respect to the audience and does not respect the presence of his audience as well as that he is not serious about his speech. Besides that his underwear was also revealed due to his messy dressing. Not only is it again disrespectful and indecent, it will also distract the audience’s attention; it will lead to unwanted comments by the audience during his speech. A speaker must have of decent appearance to give a speech to show the audience respect and as a sign that he is serious about his speech and that he appreciates his audience. Hence by failing to fulfill this aspect, Han Sen has showed the audience a degree of disrespect, indecency, lack of manners and gave the audience a reason to be distracted by his outlook in a negative manner. Not only that, he has also lost eye contact with his audience, which is very important for the delivery of speech by wearing a cap and wearing a messy hairdo. **

Channel

The method of transferring information to the audience is very important as good channels enable the audience to quickly understand the message. This includes non-verbal, pictorial and aural channels.

Body Language and gestures

Han Sen, being nervous from presenting, occasionally put his hand into his pockets. Although it is okay to put one hand in the pocket, it is recommended a speaker to prevent from doing so as the jingling sound from the coin or key in the pocket may distract the audience. However, a speaker that wants to look professional should empty his or her pocket before any speech.

Besides that, Han Sen starts to look up and down every time he tries to figure out an explanation during the speech. This causes him to lose the little eye contact he had with his audience. A professional speaker should remain eye contact with his audiences or better off, having eye contact with one person at a time. This is vital as a person focus is limited and thus by focusing on one person at any moment, the speaker can deliver his or her speech effectively. However, a speaker should not focus only on one person as others may feel left out.

In addition, Han Sen reads text straight from his laptop by turning his back on the audience. By doing this, not only will his point be unable to be delivered, his action is giving an impression that he is not respecting the audience. He also put his hand on the table as he speaks thus giving him a bad standing posture. A good speaker should also come with a good posture as it contributes to a good appearance. It also shows the others that the person is confident, happy and most of all approachable. It is important as a speaker would not want the audience to feel that he or she is a stranger.

Han Sen also shakes his hand a lot especially when he tries to push through a point and move on to another point. Not only will the audience get insufficient information from him, his hand movement did not help at all. Instead, a confident speaker should uses his hand to express his points as failure to good hand gestures make a speaker look boring and stiff. Not only a lively expression grabs the attention, it helps the audience in understanding what the speaker is delivering.

Picturial

The Powerpoint slides prepared by Han Sen were in full text instead of summarized point. This will confuse the audience as to read the text or listen to him speaking. According to J.Douglas Jeffreys, the principal at PublicSpeakingSkills.com, an international consulting firm specializing in training businesses, a good presentation must fulfill the 7 basic rules (N.D). Example of the rules includes maintaining paragraph integrity, having creative fonts and colorful background and most not to be excluded, a proper builds that draw attention but not more than the message itself. Slides should also fulfill the 7 times 7 rules which says that each slide should not have more than 7 lines with each not more than 7 words.

As if the slides were not ruining his presentation, Han Sen decided to present to his audience through his laptop instead of projecting it to bigger screen. If projection is not available, a prepared speaker should give out hand-outs to help the audience to better understand the speech given by him or her. Even so, the speaker should not read out from the hand outs. If the speaker do so, the audience will have a mindset that they are just wasting their time listening as they will have the knowledge or information from reading the hand outs later on.

Han Sen did some preparation by writing cue cards as he probably expected himself to forget his points. However, he did a big mistake as his cue cards were not written properly and were too big to be held in his hands. A good cue card should be able to fit perfectly in a person hand and fulfill the certain criteria: one idea per card, numbered and only written on one side of the card, are color coded to differentiate main idea from examples and most important, written in a big font to be read easily.

Aural

Throughout the whole presentation, Han Sen voice was soft and not clear. This causes the audience to be unable to listen to his points. A good speaker is supposed to be loud and clear during his or her presentation to show that the speaker is confident about the message he or she is giving out. The voice should also be lowered to draw the audience attention and raise to make a point.

To make things worse, he mumbles and stutters practically every time an explanation is given by him. This could indicate that he probably did not prepare the speech himself as he is not used to the words being used by himself. This clearly proves that before a speech, a speaker should rehearse and get used to the words or content of the speech.

Han Sen also speak as though he is speaking to himself or reading out loud but only for his own hearing as his voice his most of the time flat. An experienced speaker would have a tone that carries fear if he tends to frighten the audience or carries laughter if the message should result the audience to be feeling joy or happiness. Likewise, a tone that brings suspense is needed if a speaker wants the audience to start thinking or imagine something.

Besides that, Han Sen, losing his confidence due to him forgetting his point and lacking idea to support his own words, began to rush and speak (mumbles) too fast. The audience that could probably not get a single word he said would be losing interest in his presentation as they could no longer understand or catch on the speech. A speaker should vary his or her pace in presenting to maintain the audience interest while a pausing once in a while is good as the audience need time to fully understand a point to keep track of the speech (J.D Jeffreys, N.D).

Message

The most important aspect of the whole speech is the message itself. A speaker may be at his or her top look today, accompanied by proper presentation style but all that are useless unless the audience get the message being delivered and remember or do an action regarding the message given.

Content

A speaker should be prepared with few evidences (personal, statistics, example and analogy) to justify his or her points to ensure the audience believes in the speech. Statistics is the most effective but too much of it would only cause confusion in the audience. Han Sen misses out on this as he is lack of examples to support his own points. Moreover, not only was he lack of examples, the example or explanation given by him was not clear enough. Most of the time, he expects the audience to understand what is said by him and thus he move on.

Even when he give further details on his point, it is irrelevant to the speech itself. To ensure the audience to be interested in a speech, a speaker should give example that relate to most people as to get them to think how listening to the speech would benefit them. It is very important for a speaker to be on track on the speech and not drift away especially by questions from the audience. If not, the whole purpose of the speech could not be properly given out.

Han Sen also did a mistake when he contradicts his own points of the speech. This will directly cause the audience confidences on him to reduce as he no longer has a strong stance. A speaker should be fully prepared and make sure him or herself do not do this mistake as it would mean the end of the speech. Imagine a group of debaters agreeing on the opposition team point.

Style

Speaking in front of an audience and giving out message requires a speaker to fully understand his or her own points. However, Han Sen do not know about his own point as he searches around for his points in his cue cards and also the slides.

Besides, the audience probably did not pay much attention as Han Sen did not show much interest in his own topic as well. To create a passionate atmosphere on the topic, a speaker should first show his or her passion on the topic and share it with the audience.

Despite explaining some of the points, most of it is Han Sen own opinions. Although it is good to have one own opinion on a certain topic, having excessive or more than other supported opinion makes the speech less convincing.

Previously said, Han Sen do not explain his points and leave his audience wondering what he is speaking. A good speech should contain lots of information that is useful and worth listening instead of a bunch of questions. In Han Sen case, most audience would probably end up having more questions that the moment they start listening to his speech.

Structure

Han Sen started his speech by searching for his points and trying to remember what his topic is all about. Even after reading the cue cards, he is still blur and deliver a boring introduction. A good introduction should grab the audience attention and make them feel that it is beneficial for them to listen to speech. That way, the speaker could take command. And if the introduction given is not impressive enough, a speaker can always save him or herself by giving a superior conclusion.

A good speech should have just the right amount of information that the audience can absorb. It should also be arranged in sequential order or least important to the most important for a better impact on the audience. And if ever a problem is said, a solution must be presented and classified. Han Sen clearly did not arrange his points as his points are jumbled up and he skip some of his slides just to realize the slides he looking for is not available.

Points should not be repeated unless delivered with other points and it serves as a reminder to the audience. Metaphor could also be used to create interest and to make the audience imagine and think.

Referrence

Jeffreys, J.D. (n.d.). Public speaking skills. Retrieved from http://publicspeakingskills.com/