Mechanical Calling of Words Scoops

This matter of the effect in a speech of the inner man upon the outer needs a further word here, particularly as touching concentration.

"What do you read, my lord?" Hamlet replied, "Words. Words. Words." That is a world-old trouble. The mechanical calling of words is not expression, by a long stretch. Did you ever notice how hollow a memorized speech usually sounds? You have listened to the ranting, mechanical cadence of in efficient actors, lawyers and preachers. Their trouble is a mental one--they are not concentratedly thinking thoughts that cause words to issue with sincerity and conviction, but are merely enunciating word-sounds mechanically. Painful experience alike to audience and to speaker! A parrot is equally eloquent. Again let Shakespeare instruct us, this tune in the insincere prayer of the King, Hamlet's uncle. He laments thus pointedly:

My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: Words without thoughts never to heaven go.

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It is this same principle of suspense that holds you in a Sherlock Holmes story--you wait to see how the mystery is solved, and if it is solved too soon you throw down the tale unfinished. Wilkie Collins' receipt for fiction writing well applies to public speech: "Make 'em laugh; make 'em weep; make 'em wait." Above all else make them wait; if they will not do that you may be sure they will neither laugh nor weep.

Thus pause is a valuable instrument in the hands of a trained speaker to arouse and maintain suspense. We once heard Mr. Bryan say in a speech:"It was my privilege to hear"--and he paused, while the audience wondered for a second whom it was his privilege to hear--"the great evangelist"--and he paused again; we knew a little more about the man he had heard, but still wondered to which evangelist he referred; and then he concluded: "Dwight L. Moody." Mr. Bryan paused slightly again and continued: "I came to regard him"--here he paused again and held the audience in a brief moment of suspense as to how he had regarded Mr.Moody, then continued--"as the greatest preacher of his day." Let the dashes illustrate pauses and we have the following:

"It was my privilege to hear--the great evangelist--Dwight L. Moody.--I came to regard him--as the greatest preacher of his day."

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We see here that a change of tempo often occurs in the same sentence--for tempo applies not only to single words, groups of words, and groups of sentences, but to the major parts of a public speech as well.

The canary in the cage before the window is adding to the beauty and charm of his singing by a continual change of tempo. If King Solomon had been an orator he undoubtedly would have gathered wisdom from the song of the wild birds as well as from the bees. Imagine a song written with but quarter notes. Imagine an auto with only one speed.

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Professional Presentation Skills Helpful Hints

Read the following selection in a nonchalant manner, never pausing to think what the words really mean. Try it again, carefully studying the thought you have assimilated. Believe the idea, desire to express it effectively, and imagine an audience before you. Look them earnestly in the face and repeat this truth. If you follow directions, you will note that you have made many changes of pitch after several readings.

It is not work that kills men; it is worry. Work is healthy; you can hardly put more upon a man than he can bear. Worry is rust upon the blade. It is not the revolution that destroys the machinery but the friction.

--HENRY WARD BEECHER.

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Using Emphasis in a Speech Blog

When a great battle is reported in the papers, they do not keep emphasizing the same facts over and over again. They try to get new information, or a "new slant." The news that takes an important place in the morning edition will be relegated to a small space in the late afternoon edition. We are interested in new ideas and new facts. This principle has a very important bearing in determining your emphasis.

Do not emphasize the same idea over and over again unless you desire to lay extra stress on it; Senator Thurston desired to put the maximum amount of emphasis on "force" in his speech . Note how force is emphasized repeatedly. As a general rule, however, the new idea, the"new slant," whether in a newspaper report of a battle or a speaker's enunciation of his ideas, is emphatic.

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It is useless to shoe a dead horse, and all the sound principles inChristendom will never make a live speech out of a dead one.

So let it be understood that public speaking is not a matter of mastering a few dead rules; the most important law of public speech is the necessity for truth, force, feeling, and life. Forget all else, but not this.

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Death Phobia

The second principle in public speaking lies close to the first: The man must enthrone his will to rule over his thought, his feelings, and all his physical powers, so that the outer self may give perfect, unhampered expression to the inner. It is futile, we assert, to lay down systems of rules for voice culture, intonation, gesture, and what not, unless these two principles of having something to say and making the will sovereign have at least begun to make themselves felt in the life.

The third principle in public speaking will, we surmise, arouse no dispute: No one canlearn _how_ to speak who does not first speak as best he can. That mayseem like a vicious circle in statement, but it will bear examination.

Public Speaking Classes News

It is not enough to be absorbed by your subject--to acquire self-confidence during a public speech, you must have something in which to be confident. If you go before an audience without any preparation, or previous knowledge of your subject, you ought to be self-conscious--you ought to be ashamed to steal the time of your audience.

Prepare yourself for your speech. Know what you are going to talk about, and, in general, how you are going to say it. Have the first few sentences worked out completely so that you may not be troubled in the beginning to find words. Know your subject better than your hearers know it, and you have nothing to fear.

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EFFECTIVE Public Speaking News

CHAPTER XXXI--MAKING CONVERSATION EFFECTIVE

The father of W.E. Gladstone considered conversation to be both an art and an accomplishment. Around the dinner table in his home some topic of local or national interest, or some debated question, was constantly being discussed. In this way a friendly rivalry for supremacy in conversation arose among the family, and an incident observed in the street, an idea gleaned from a book, a deduction from personal experience, was carefully stored as material for the family exchange.Thus his early years of practise in elegant conversation prepared the younger Gladstone for his career as a leader and speaker.

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INFLUENCING BY NARRATION Updates

CHAPTER XXI--INFLUENCING BY NARRATION

The art of narration is the art of writing in hooks and eyes. The principle consists in making the appropriate thought follow the appropriate thought, the proper fact the proper fact; in first preparing the mind for what is to come, and then letting it come.


--WALTER BAGEHOT, _Literary Studies_.

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Public Speaking Helpful Hints

CHAPTER I--ACQUIRING CONFIDENCE BEFORE AN AUDIENCE

CHAPTER II--THE SIN OF MONOTONY

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