Structuring A Speech for Oral Presentation
Identify Key Words:
In your speech, identify the key word in each sentence: if you could speak only one word in each sentence, which would carry the most meaning? Underline those words. Practice pronouncing each one clearly, exploring the musicality of consonants and vowels. Practice your speech speaking ONLY the key words. Then reassemble your speech with enhanced awareness of the key words.
Structure Each Series:
Most speeches included words or phrases in series of three or more. Identify the series in your speech. The parts of the series may be as small as a single word or as long as a paragraph. Here are two examples:
From Lincoln's Gettysburg Address:
" We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."
From "A 12-Step Program for Regime Change":
Environmentalists alone cannot ensure clean air and water; union members alone cannot protect the right to organize; civil libertarians alone cannot defend the Constitution and the Bill of Rights; seniors on their own cannot protect Social Security; feminists alone cannot defend Roe v. Wade; and African-Americans and Latinos alone are not going to ensure fairness and equality and stop a wide range of cruel budget cuts.
Use pitch, tempo, and volume to build the pieces of each series. Remember that you can build both by ascending and descending (e.g., both louder and softer, higher and lower, slower and faster.). Remember also that, if you hit the end of your range, you have nowhere to go but in the other direction. That is, if you choose to build by lowering the pitch of each item in the series and you get to the bottom of your pitch range before you reach the end of the series, use ascending pitches for the rest of the series rather than continuing in a low monotone.
Practice on the examples above. Then find and practice using a series in your own speech.
Create Temporal Phrasing:
Stories, plays, and speeches all make use of a common dramatic structure that includes a definite beginning, a climax (at about 2/3 through the length of the piece), and a conclusion. You can imagine it as a curved line:
Climax
Beginning
End
This can be called a temporal phrase: a phrase in time. Temporal phrasing is a kind of fractal system. Individual pieces of the whole also use this structure.
Your oral presentation will be most effective if you make each sentence and each movement as a temporal phrase, adding up to a bigger temporal phrase. Even subtle gestures of voice and body can serve as definite beginnings and endings.
When you first learn to use temporal phrasing, the parts of the phrases can seem forced and obvious. As you develop skill, they become more reflexive and subtle.
PRACTICE:
Part 1: voice
Use this short poem to practice creating temporal phrases. First, use your voice to make each line a separate temporal phrase. Then, use these smaller phrases to make the whole stanza a temporal phrase.
Christmas is coming, the geese are getting fat
Please put a penny in the old man's hat
If you haven't got a penny, a ha'penny will do
If you haven't got a ha'penny, God bless you
Remember that you can use pitch, speed, tempo, and volume to create phrasing.
Part 2: movement
Repeat the poem, using gestures or movements that outline your temporal phrases. Practice manipulating simple objects at hand--a cup, a pencil and paper, etc--in rhythm with the poem.
Look for the temporal phrases in your own speech. Allow your gestures and movements to be part of the phrases. Be sure to clearly begin and end each phrase.