By Olga Smith, 12 May 2020
6 rules of public speaking are:
1. Good posture.
Stand in a good centred position with feet firmly on the floor, slightly apart, relaxing the knees and hips, and keeping the shoulders down, free from any tension. Feel your spine straightening with your head balanced on the neck, as if it was attached to the ceiling by a piece of elastic coming from the top of it. This posture is good for making you look and feel confident.
2. Correct breathing
The basis for all speech is breath. In normal everyday speech, we use a small volume of breath to pass through the vocal chords to create a sound. When we need to increase the volume and produce louder speech, we need to increase the breath capacity in the lungs, allowing the voice to be projected forward with energy and attack. Correct breathing will help you relax during your speech.
3. Use pauses effectively
The use of pause can be a very effective means of engaging with the audience for the public speaker. “Less is more”, say less with more pauses. There is nothing worse, when trying to impart a great deal of information to your audience, than discovering that because you are speaking quickly and without pauses, very little of this information is being listened to.
4. Stress your key points
To convey the meaning in a sentence, native English speakers usually stress important words and throw away small, unimportant words. “Throwing away” means these unimportant words are not given the same length and vocal energy.
5. Change your voice to show different emotions
The pitch of the voice changes with different emotions. For example, when a speaker is expressing anger, excitement or surprise the pitch will rise, but when expressing deep, sensitive, sorrowful feelings the pitch will fall.
6. Know your audience and engage with it
The purpose of public speaking is to have a certain effect on the audience. Learn about your audience and adjust your speech accordingly. Show a real interest in your audience. Engage with your audience by asking them appropriate questions.
7. Make sure that your speech is crisp, clear and easy to understand. Record your speech several times and see how others can hear it. Download the app Get Rid of your Accent to master your speech clarity.
You can learn and practice public speaking skills with the app Power, Pitch, Pace, Pause and from the book Get Rid of your Accent Part Two Advanced Level.
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