What will make your next speech really stick in your audience’s mind? If you have amazing content and stunning visuals, these are all going to help. However, all too often we don’t have new information that will really rock our audience’s world with the importance of public speaking. Yes, what we are going to be telling them is important; however, we need to find a way to make our words really stand out. It turns out that there is a simple way to make this happen: use some vocal variety. We all understand that delivering a speech in a monotone is never a good idea, but we may not know what we have to do to make things more interesting just by using our voice.
Put Your All Into Your Speech
When we start to talk about the vocal variety that you will be using in your next speech, the first thing that we want to discuss is just exactly how much of yourself you will be putting into the speech. If you are like most of us, when you prepare to give a speech, you focus on trying to get your words correct. What most of us don’t really spend a lot of time thinking about is how we are actually going to be delivering our speech. This is where we can add some zest.
What you are going to want to do when you make your presentation is to find a way to go over the top. All too often we give a speech in our standard speaking tone. What we really should be doing is kicking things up a notch. We want to add some energy to our words and really share that with our audience. They’ll be able to fee the energy that is coming across in our words and that will start to get them excited about what we are saying.
Use Natural Emphasizing
Not every word in your next speech is going to have the same level of importance. In fact, there will be words that encapsulate the true meaning of your speech and these will be the words that you want your audience to remember. Many speakers understand that the volume that we use in a giving a speech matters; however, they then do the wrong things. What they end up doing is emphasizing words that are really not all that important.
Instead of making this mistake, what you are going to want to do is to take the time to study your speech. In your speech, there will be words that will be especially important. These are going to be the words that you’ll want to take the time to emphasize. When you do this, the words that get your special attention will be the ones that stick in your audience’s minds.
Stop Swallowing Ending Words
One of the things that speakers learn early on when we are first getting started giving speeches is that our pitch will change during a speech. What seems to happen is that our pitch will go up after we ask a question and it will go down at the end of a statement. All too often when someone is giving a speech they will drop their pitch when they reach the end of a statement. This is a big mistake because often the last word in a statement is the most important word.
What you are going to want to do is to realize that when you are giving a speech, the last words in your statements are going to be the most important words in your speech. This means that you are going to want to take special care and not swallow them. Instead, make sure that you are able to provide them with the importance that they truly deserve by increasing your pitch as you deliver them.
What All Of This Means For You
As speakers, we really don’t have that many different things that we can do to make our next speech be a special event for our audience and share the benefits of public speaking. However, we do have our voice and its how we use this tool that can have a big impact on how our audience is impacted by our speech. The challenge is that if we don’t know how to add some vocal variety to our next speech, it can come across as flat and dull.
The first thing that we need to do is to make sure that when we are delivering our speech is to make that we take the time to give it all that we have. We want to kick our level of excitement up a notch and our voice will follow us. Our audience will be able to feel our excitement in how we are delivering our words and that will make them excited also. We also have to realize that we have the ability to emphasize certain words in our speech. We don’t want to do this randomly. Instead, take a careful look at your speech and pick out which words to emphasize. When you give them the attention that they deserve, your audience will be able to remember them. Finally, we need to be careful to not swallow the words that come at the end of our statements. Instead, we want to increase our pitch as we deliver our last words in order to make sure that everyone knows how important they are.
Every speech that we give is special. We need to understand how our most important speech giving tool, our voice, can be used to make our next speech our best yet. Taking the time to appreciate the power of vocal variety and finding ways to work it into our speech is what is going to make our speeches unforgettable.
– Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Public Speaking Skills™
Question For You: Do you think that it is possible to try to emphasize too many words in a speech?
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Note: What we talked about are advanced speaking skills. If you are just starting out I highly recommend joining Toastmasters in order to get the benefits of public speaking. Look for a Toastmasters club to join in your home town by visiting the web site www.Toastmasters.org. Toastmasters is dedicated to helping their members to understand the importance of public speaking by developing listening skills and getting presentation tips. Toastmasters is how I got started speaking and it can help you also!
What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time
I’d like to be able to tell you that because of the importance of public speaking, every speech that you give will be a big success. The reality is that this is not the case. In fact, some speeches that you end up giving might even be classified as being a failure. What’s a speaker to do when this tragic event happens? It turns out that giving a speech that turns out to be a failure may be one of the most important learning experiences that you will ever have.