The Important Parts Of Giving A Speech

Firstly, the most important part of presenting a speech that cannot be done wrongly is the preparation for the speech which the speaker is about to deliver. There are a few mistakes made by the speaker that obviously shows that he is not prepared for his speech. One of the most obvious mistakes done by him was he did not rehearse his slides before his presentation. He even forgot the title of the speech he is delivering and had to refer back to the slides to see what his title was. As part of his preparation, he should rehearse his slides at least 7 times before he starts presenting his speech. He should stand in front of the mirror and practice presenting his speech so he can analyze what his presentation is lacking. With that tried, he could improve his speech delivery. Based on the text book written by Stephen E. Lucas, he quoted that a powerful speech could have genuine impact on the listeners and as a speaker he should have an ethical responsibility to consider that impact and to make sure he is fully prepared so as he do not convey misleading information to the audience (Lucas, 2008). Misleading information could have cause tragic result to the audience as they trust the speaker for what they say. No matter what the topic is, the speaker should do extensive research to avoid any misleading or inappropriate information. Besides that, the title of the speech was too broad as well. This shows that he did not narrow down the topic. This part of his preparation is vital, as his topic should not be too broad and should be more focused before delivering to the audience. Otherwise, audience will not pay attention to what he is saying. Another mistake by the speaker was that his goals are not ethically sound. Based on the textbook, a speaker’s goal should be strong on its ground (Lucas, 2008). In his book, Stephen E. Lucas also mentioned that a responsible public speaker can’t escape the ethical soundness of their goals. The speaker should also prepare cue cards so that he can refer and also to remind him about his points when he is delivering his speech. Cue cards should contain the key words which reminds the speakers of their points and explanations. No audiences want to see their speaker stutter on stage, because this shows the lack of confidence and lack of preparations for the speech. Thus, the preparation before a speech is a vital process in giving a speech.

Secondly, another important part on presenting a speech is that cannot be done wrongly is the delivery to the audiences. The speaker made a few mistakes on the delivery aspects of his speech. To start off, he pauses frequently when delivering his ideas or thoughts due to the lack of preparations. Therefore, there are many awkward silences in the middle of his speech. Moreover, the speaker always filled the silence with the sound “erm” “ah” and so on and this is actually a very crucial mistake for a speaker. A speaker should not do that while delivering a speech because it will give the audience a negative perception or thoughts on that particular speaker’s intelligence. A good speaker should pauses his speech at the right time which means he should pauses in the end of his thoughts or ideas but not in the middle of it because it will confuse the audience. Secondly, the speaker’s voice is not clear and he likes to babble when he delivering the speech. These will actually make it difficult for the audiences to listen to his points. As a result, the audience may not able to get full and precise information from the speaker. Therefore, voice clarity is actually an important factor in order to have an ideal speech delivery. Therefore, the speaker should speak and pronounce the word by word clearly to the audience regardless whether it is slow or fast.(Lucas, 2008) Besides that, another mistake the speaker made is that he did not use transitional devices or connectors in his speech. As a result, this could make the speech delivered ineffective because normally, connectors or transitional devices are used to signal the beginning and the end of the ideas, thoughts and sentence. In addition, the speaker also has problems with his body gestures when he is delivering his speech. To begin with, his body gesture throughout the speech delivery seems to be unnatural. As a result, the audience will feel that the speaker is not well-prepared or confident enough in delivering his speech. As we all know, body gestures normally appears naturally because it helps to clarify and reinforce the speaker’s idea. On the other hand, the speaker has a problem with his eye contact. He seems to not have eye contact with his audiences mainly because he is always looking back at the slides because he is not sure whether which point he should deliver next. Therefore, he loses his eye contact with his audience so he failed to analyze the audiences’ reactions and feelings while he was delivering his speech. He should prepare well and focus more on his eye contact with the audience because it is crucial to know what the feelings and reactions of the audience are while he is delivering his speech and identify his mistakes if he feels that audience is not comfortable with his speech delivery. Other than that, he is also having problems with his body movement when he gave the speech. From the video, we can see some of the body movement he likes to do. For instance, he likes to put his hand inside his pocket, lean forward, and shift his weight from one foot to another. This actually shows that he was nervous during the speech delivery. Moreover, there is also a disadvantage when a speaker leans forward because when a person leans forward, his head will look down to the floor so it will affect his voice projection. As a result, the voice is not projected straight to the audience instead the voice is projected to the floor. He should instead stand straight up while delivering the speech as to project his sound towards the audiences.( Lucas, 2008) To conclude, the delivery of a speech is a very important criteria. If done wrongly, it could cause mislay and inaccuracy of information.

Thirdly, another important part of presenting a speech that cannot be done wrongly is the visual aids used. The mistakes that were made by the speaker while using visual aids can be categorized into two different categories, which is under the preparation of visual aids, and the presentation of visual aids. The first mistake that the speaker made from the category of preparations of visual aids is that the points in PowerPoint slides is not well organized and is complicated. Visual aids should be simple, clear, and straight to the point. Besides that, the points should be narrowed down and limit to a manageable amount of information. The basic rule is to include in your visual aid on only what you need to make your point. The second mistake is that the visual aids are too small for the audiences to see. There is no point for a visual aid if no one can see it. So bear in mind the size of the room in which you will be speaking and make sure your aid is big enough to be seen easily by everyone. The third mistake is the use of unsuitable fonts. Not all fonts are suitable for visual aids. The speaker should avoid decorative fonts. He should try to use a limited number of fonts. Some variety of fonts in a visual aid is appealing, but can be distracting. (Lucas, 2008) Using two types of fonts as per heading and per content is sufficient for a visual aid as suggested by experts. The second category, presentation of visual aids, under which the speaker made a mistake, is that he actually talks to his visual aid instead of the audience. The speaker should talk to the audience and not to the visual aid. When explaining the visual aid, it is easy to break eye contact with audience and speak to the aid. Of course, the listeners are looking at the aid, and will need to glance at it time after time as the speaker talk. He may lose his audience if u keeps his eyes on his visual aids during the speech. By having eye contact with the audiences he may benefit from the feedbacks by the audience on the visual aid he is using. Another mistake the speaker made is that the explanation is insufficient, not clear and not concise. Everyone knows visual aids do not explain it selves; the speaker needs to explain his visual aid to the audience. But sadly, all he does is reading from it. It is a fundamental knowledge of giving a speech that explaining the points on a visual aid is a must. The speaker should explain in detail what he included in the visual aid as it is vital information on his speech and it is important for the audience to understand it as it is the whole point of using a visual aid. The speaker should remember that a visual aid is useful only if the explanations come with it. (Lucas, 2008) Therefore, to fully utilize the visual aid, the speaker should avoid making these fundamental mistakes as it will cost him the audiences’ attention.

Last but not least, another important aspect of giving a speech that cannot be done wrongly is the method of usage of the PowerPoint slides. The mistakes that the speaker made when he was using the PowerPoint slides can be divided into two categories, which is the format of the slides, and the delivery of the speech with the slides. The format of the PowerPoint slides consists of color, text, fonts, images, space, and animation of the slides. The first mistake the speaker made in the format of the slides is including too much texts in she slides. He should not include too much text in a single slide; including too much text will cause the font size to decrease, thus causing difficulty in reading for the audiences. He should instead limit himself to a few lines per slide and make it brief. The second mistake the speaker made is that he failed to give enough spaces for the contents in the slides due to the overload of texts per slide. This causes the slide to lack visual balance and could be hard for the audiences to read. According to textbook by Lucas, one must make sure that one’s slide is provided with adequate amount of visual balance no matter what kind of element was included in a slide.( Lucas, 2008) Subsequently, the speaker also made a number of mistakes in delivering his speech using the PowerPoint slides. As we know, to deliver a speech using the slides needs good timing and careful planning. It will be disastrous if the slides went wrong during the presentation. The first mistake the speaker made in the delivery of the speech with the slides is that he could not find the slide he was looking for during the presentation. This means that he did not recheck his slides after doing them and may have left out some vital information. What he should do is to always double-check his slides for mistakes or in this case, left-out information. (Lucas, 2008) The second mistake that the speaker made is that he did not prepare and rehearse with his slides. This can be seen during which he had trouble linking his hand notes with his slides. The speaker abandoned the notes and read from the PowerPoint slides instead. He should have rehearse with his slides before presenting because using PowerPoint in presentation needs good timing and careful planning. Another mistake the speaker made is that he did not check the room and equipments provided before the speech. Judging by the fact that he did not use a projector to project is slide could mean two scenarios; either the room does not have a projector or the fact that his computer’s port is not compatible with the projector port. One way or the other, he should have checked the room and equipments and make necessary preparations or adjustment before deciding on doing a PowerPoint presentation. (Lucas, 2008) Thus, the mistakes that the speaker made in using the PowerPoint slides is very fundamental and should be avoided at all cost because it will gravely affect the outcome of the presentation.

In conclusion, these four aspects, preparations, delivery, visual aids, and methods of using PowerPoint slides are of utmost importance and shouldn’t be taken lightly by the speaker if he wants to give a good speech. Delivering a good speech is not a natural talent but a talent nurtured by the speaker themselves. Everyone can be a good speaker; all you need is sufficient preparation, proper delivery, easy to understand PowerPoint and also attractive visual aids. We believe that if all of these aspects were properly done then the speech delivered by the speaker will be convincing and attracting to the audiences. Good preparations for the speech will help the speaker so that he won’t be nervous when he is delivering his speech and also to prevent him from forgetting his point. When delivering the speech the speaker should improve on his body gesture so that they don’t look dull and unnatural to the audience. This is very important to prevent the audiences from losing attention to the speaker. Attractive visual aids will further enhance the speakers point and help the audience to understand the speech better. Lastly the PowerPoint slides used to help the audience to understand the speech better should not have too many words so that it will not confuse the audience. It should be kept simple. With all that above done in by the speaker, the speech delivered by the speaker will be interesting and the messages will be conveyed successfully.