On Preparing to Give a Speech

Its all about Pavlov. That is to say, attaching a stimulus to your practice session.

If its a speech you yourself wrote, then the language should be more or less natural for you. What won't be natural are the pauses, the place finding etc.

If you are allowed to have it in front of you, bold the sentances that provide the main topic, so if you get a brain freeze, you can easily find what you are supposed to be talking about. A written speech should be practiced no less than ten times. Use a mirror to test the effectiveness of your facial expressions. Read it out loud, in a moderately toned voice, to hear exactly what it will sound like, and give you a heads up on when you need to breathe, and how you will wrap your tounge around the words. Too many amateurs think that practice is simply reading and re-reading thier speech; most people dont realize that thier mental narrative voice is different from thier speaking voice, in that it will use or skip or difficult to pronouce words, and insert an understanding of that word, rather than its actual pronounciation. It is only by speaking a written work aloud that you can appreciate and use all of its inflections properly. A good practice is to run through it three times, then take a fifteen to twenty minute break. DCome back to it, read it over once mentally, then practice three more times. Dont be afraid to make small mark on your sheet to tell you when to breath or pause for effect. After the third time, start going over especially difficult sentances, until they flow like water. after about ten minutes of this, return to reading it from the top.

If you have the time, or merely wish to go for the gold, read from the top everytime you make an error or mispronounce a word. By the time you finish the piece in its entirity without error, you will have read it out loud many many many times. Do the same thing starting from the middle, and when you get to the end, read it from the top. This is to ensure that the last part gets practiced as much as the intro part. When you have polished the last section perfectly, take a ten/twenty minute break, and return to your speech. Read slowly and deliberately from the top, all the way through. Once this has been completed, execute your speech flawlessly three times in a row. Practice one final time in the morning before your presentation, and speak quietly to yourself to limber up the muscles in your mouth and throat.Stay away from coffee for that morning, soft drinks work out okay.

What I mean by attaching your stimulus, is that by setting a physical mark, you can return in your mind to your practice session. Wearing a rubber band on the wrist is classic. Snap it lightly just before you begin each full run of your speech. Then, as you step up to your podium, or front of the classroom, and start to feel nervous like everyone is watching you (because they are) snap it lightly just before you begin. Blank out the people in front of you, seeing through them instead of looking at them, and remember back to a good run in front of the mirror. If you have practiced diligently, you can pretty much just imagine yourself back in your practice area, and the audience dissappears.

Being afraid is natural if you are unprepared, you are facing the unknown monster without any weapons of your own. Being properly prepared takes away a lot of the unknown variables, thus limiting the power social fear and anxiety has over your performance.

Good luck.