Speech 1: Beginning of the training
Time: 4-6 minutes
Goals: introduce yourself and find out which presentation skills you already have and what you should
work on
The best topic for the beginning of the training is the one you know the best – yourself. Obviously, this
topic is very broad to be covered in 4-6 minutes. Your task is to narrow it down and choose only 3-4
interesting aspects of your life. Be careful about choosing the main points of your speech – too much
information will overload your audience. You can talk for instance about:
 The place, where you were born
 The school you attended
 Your family
 How you got to the place, where you are now (metaphorically or even literally)
 Your ambitions and dreams
 An important event in your life
Base your speech on the main points you want to share – similarly to a storyteller who connects single
events in his story. Like every story, your speech should have clear beginning and ending. If a listener
isn’t sure whether you said what you wanted to be said, your ending probably wasn’t successful (bad
example: “….and that’s all I wanted to tell you.”).
 Write down the very first sentence of your speech – it should be such a sentence that will catch
your audience’s attention. Remember this sentence! Do the same thing about last sentence
and remember it as well. It is important, as it enables you to begin and end your speech with
confidence and easiness.
 Sort out and organize your main points and prepare examples, stories or anecdotes that will
sufficiently illustrate them. If you say your point out loud and you will continue immediately,
your audience probably won’t notice it. It is therefore useful to demonstrate it in some
example, repeat it in other words and say the original information one more time. By doing
this you can raise your chances that your audience will understand it and remember it.
 If you need notes, write the outline of your speech on small cards, which you can easily hold
in your hands. Look to your notes only when you really need it – you train spoken word not
the written one. Many speakers first write down their whole speech word by word and then
cut it into pieces. They formulate a key word for each part and write only the key words on
cards.
Preparation for the speech:
 You don’t have to remember your speech word by word, as you know the topic of your speech
very well. It is enough to remember the first and last sentence.
 If you want to get the most out of your speech, try to say it to your friend or somebody from
your family first. His or her observation may be very useful. Taking a record of your voice is
another good idea.
During your speech:
 Stage fright before a speech is common for every speaker regardless his or her experience. To
overcome it, it is usually enough to say first few sentences. Once you get to the topic,
nervousness usually disappears.
 While speaking keep eye contact with your audience and try to keep the contact between you.
 Look at the time keeper once in a while, so you know he or she doesn’t show you your time is
up. Don’t worry about the movement of your arms. You can even let them stay down next to
your body. We will focus on intentional involvement of body language later.
Speech 1: Outline for feedback
An observer should primarily answer these questions in their evaluation:
1) What are speaker’s strengths?
2) How much did the speaker introduce himself/herself to the audience?
3) Did the speech reflect adequate preparation?
4) Was the speech loud and clear enough?
5) Were all three parts of the speech – introduction, main part and conclusion – obvious and
clearly embedded?
6) Did the speaker use notes? How did he or she use them?
7) What could the speaker have done better? How could he or she have improved the speech?