Concentration in a Speech

Whatever is the psychological truth of this contention in your speech it is undeniable that the mind measurably loses grip on one idea the moment the attention is projected decidedly ahead to a second or a third idea.

You must concentrate by resolutely withdrawing your attention from everything else. If you concentrate your thought on a pain which may be afflicting you, that pain will grow more intense. "Count your blessings" and they will multiply. Center your thought on your strokes and your tennis play will gradually improve. To concentrate is simply to attend to one thing, and attend to nothing else. If you find that you cannot do that, there is something wrong--attend to that first. Remove the cause and the symptom will disappear. Read the chapter on "Will Power."Cultivate your will by willing and then doing, at all costs. Concentrate--and you will win.

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Inflections in Public Speaking News

In general, then, we find that a bending upward of the voice will suggest doubt and uncertainty, while a decided falling inflection will suggest that you are certain of your ground.

Students dislike to be told that their speeches are "not so bad," spoken with a rising inflection. To enunciate these words with a long falling inflection would indorse the speech rather heartily.

Say good-bye to an imaginary person whom you expect to see again tomorrow; then to a dear friend you never expect to meet again. Note the difference in inflection.

Public Speaking Pauses Blog

In the following selections dashes have been inserted where pauses maybe used effectively. Naturally, you may omit some of these and insert others without going wrong--one speaker would interpret a passage in one way, one in another; it is largely a matter of personal preference. A dozen great actors have played Hamlet well, and yet each has played the part differently. Which comes the nearest to perfection is a question of opinion. You will succeed best by daring to follow your own course--if you are individual enough to blaze an original trail.

A moment's halt-- a momentary taste of being from the well amid the waste-- and lo! the phantom caravan has reached-- the nothing it set out from--Oh make haste!

The worldly hope men set their hearts upon-- turns ashes-- or it prospers;-- and anon like snow upon the desert's dusty face-- lighting a little hour or two-- is gone.

The bird of time has but a little way to flutter,-- and the bird is on the wing.

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Presentation Skills News Blog

... pause ... has a distinctive value, expressed in silence; in other words, while the voice is waiting, the music of the movement is going on ... To manage it, with its delicacies and compensations, requires that same fineness of ear on which we must depend for all faultless prose rhythm. When there is no compensation, when the pause is inadvertent ... there is a sense of jolting and lack, as if some pin or fastening had fallen out.

--JOHN FRANKLIN GENUNG, _The Working Principles of Rhetoric_.

Pause, in public speech, is not mere silence--it is silence made designedly eloquent.

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Emphasis in Public Speaking Blog

The foregoing order of pitch-change might be reversed with equally good effect, though with a slight change in seriousness--either method produces emphasis when used intelligently, that is, with a common-sense appreciation of the sort of emphasis to be attained.

In attempting these contrasts of pitch it is important to avoid unpleasant extremes. Most speakers pitch their voices too high. One of the secrets of Mr. Bryan's eloquence is his low, bell-like voice.Shakespeare said that a soft, gentle, low voice was "an excellent thing in woman;" it is no less so in man, for a voice need not be blatant to be powerful,--and _must_ not be, to be pleasing.

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Public Speaking Fundamentals Blog

You must understand that there are no steel-riveted rules of emphasis.It is not always possible to designate which word must, and which must not be emphasized. One speaker will put one interpretation on a speech,another speaker will use different emphasis to bring out a different interpretation. No one can say that one interpretation is right and the other wrong. This principle must be borne in mind in all our marked exercises. Here your own intelligence must guide--and greatly to your profit.

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Monotony During a Speech Blog

The technical principles that we lay down are not arbitrary creations of our own. They are all founded on the practices that good speakers and actors adopt--either naturally and unconsciously or under instruction--in getting their effects.

It is useless to warn the student that he must be natural. To be natural may be to be monotonous. The little strawberry up in the arctics with a few tiny seeds and an acid tang is a natural berry, but it is not to be compared with the improved variety that we enjoy here. The dwarfed oak on the rocky hillside is natural, but a poor thing compared with the beautiful tree found in the rich, moist bottom lands. Be natural--but improve your natural gifts until you have approached the ideal, for we must strive after idealized nature, in fruit, tree, and speech.

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Experience in Public Speaking Blog

Experience in public speaking, then, is not only the best teacher, but the first and the last. But experience must be a dual thing--the experience of others must be used to supplement, correct and justify our own experience; in this way we shall become our own best critics only after we have trained ourselves in self-knowledge, the knowledge of what other minds think,and in the ability to judge ourselves by the standards we have come to believe are right. "If I ought," said Kant, "I can."

An examination of the contents of this volume will show how consistently these articles of faith have been declared, expounded, and illustrated.The student is urged to begin to speak at once of what he knows. Then heis given simple suggestions for self-control, with gradually increasing emphasis upon the power of the inner man over the outer. Next, the wayto the rich storehouses of material is pointed out. And finally, all the while he is urged to speak, _speak_, _SPEAK_ as he is applying to his own methods, in his own _personal_ way, the principles he has gathered from his own experience and observation and the recorded experiences of others.

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Tips For Public Speaking Daily News

Humility is not the personal discount in a speech that we must offer in the presence of others--against this old interpretation there has been a most healthy modern reaction. True humility any man who thoroughly knows himself must feel; but it is not a humility that assumes a worm-like meekness; it is rather a strong, vibrant prayer for greater power for service--a prayer that Uriah Heep could never have uttered.

Washington Irving once introduced Charles Dickens at a dinner given in the latter's honor. In the middle of his speech Irving hesitated, became embarrassed, and sat down awkwardly. Turning to a friend beside him here marked, "There, I told you I would fail, and I did."

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Public Speaking Anxieties Info

Students of public speaking continually ask, "How can I overcome self-consciousness and the fear that paralyzes me before an audience?"

Did you ever notice in looking from a train window that some horses feed near the track and never even pause to look up at the thundering cars,while just ahead at the next railroad crossing a farmer's wife will be nervously trying to quiet her scared horse as the train goes by?

How would you cure a horse that is afraid of cars--graze him in a back-woods lot where he would never see steam-engines or automobiles, or drive or pasture him where he would frequently see the machines?

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Using Arguments in Public Speaking

CHAPTER XXIII--INFLUENCING BY ARGUMENT

Common sense is the common sense of mankind. It is the product of common observation and experience. It is modest, plain, and unsophisticated. It sees with everybody's eyes, and hears with everybody's ears. It has no capricious distinctions, no perplexities, and no mysteries. It never equivocates, and never trifles. Its language is always intelligible. It is known by clearness of speech and singleness of purpose.


--GEORGE JACOB HOLYOAKE, _Public Speaking and Debate_.

VOICE CHARM Helpful Hints

CHAPTER XIII--VOICE CHARM

"A cheerful temper joined with innocence will make beauty attractive, knowledge delightful, and wit good-natured."

--JOSEPH ADDISON, _The Tattler_.


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Speaking With Emphasis

CHAPTER III--EFFICIENCY THROUGH EMPHASIS AND SUBORDINATION

The gun that scatters too much does not bag the birds. The same principle applies to speech. The speaker that fires his force and emphasis at random into a sentence will not get results. Not every word is of special importance--therefore only certain words demand emphasis.

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