Missoula-Public-Speaking-Tips: June 2011

Fluent Speech And How To Achieve It

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There a literally millions of people all around the world that have benefited from a membership in a Toastmasters club, and we trust that you will also consider visiting our club and joining. Visit our site at Shootin The Bull

You will find that Toastmasters is a wonderful place to not just learn to speak but to also make friends and meet new people. As one of the top Networking Organizations in the world it is a great place to meet other professionals and local people that want to become better speakers. Also you will find that Toastmasters supportive atmosphere assists even further in making new friends easily. I have met many people through Toastmasters, including many people I might not have otherwise had the chance to meet.

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This article is all about how to achieve fluency and looks at the specific speech impediment known as stammering/stuttering. My name is Steve Hill, I suffered with a stutter from the age of four and despite regular conventional speech therapy, continued stuttering until the age of twenty-two.

I found life with a stutter extremely frustrating as at times I could speak very well. For example when I spoke to what is now my ex-girlfriend I very rarely had a problem, however when attempting to speak to her parents I struggled quite badly.

When I was drunk my fluency level also would improve to a level where I would be shocked if I stuttered at all.

I could not understand why I could talk to one person but not to another and why I could speak when I was drunk but not when I was sober.

I read many books about speech imediments, achieving fluency and stuttering and spoke to many speech therapists. From what I read and from what I was told, I was made to believe that I was unable to live a stuttering-free life as it suggested you are unable to eradicate a stutter.

This is a very negative attitude, however I could not really believe what I was hearing and reading as I knew I could talk very well at times.

I then was fortunate enough to watch Bruce Willis being interviewed on the television. He stated that he had had a stutter which had started when he was a young boy, however he had managed to achieve fluency when he was a late teenager. This was a huge inspiration to me and I then decided that I would attempt to overcome my own speech impediment.

After nearly a year of working very hard by reading books about positive thinking and mind over matter and by basically studying people who I thought were great speakers, I also managed to beat the stutter. As a career I now help other people to achieve fluency.

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Easy Ways to Remember Your Material

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Join Us any Tuesday at Noon -Lunch Time for a 1 hour get together at the Elk Foundation on Grant Creek. Shootin' The Bull Toastmasters Club
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One of the most common reasons people fear public speaking is that they blank out and forget their entire speech. You can practice and practice and practice and when the moment comes that you need to remember your presentation, everything goes blank! There are ways that you can fool proof your message so that the parts you actually have to memorize are minimal if at all.

This means that you incorporate the use of triggers in your presentation. These triggers can be things like power point slides, props, and story telling that you'll scatter throughout your speech. What the triggers do is prompt you to talk about the next point your trying to make. The triggers can also serve as a trigger to help you remember what to say next.

There are four primary ways to remember your presentation.

1. The first one is memorizing. This can work for presentations less than an hour, but if you're teaching a six hour seminar course, you're going to have to find some other way other than memorizing. This is actually one of the worst ways to remember your presentation because there are no safe guards that protect you once you forget.

2. The next way to remember your presentation is to read a full written version. People write out their speeches, but reading from the full written text can cause you to sound stiff and unnatural.

Most commonly occurring in business settings (i.e. - at board meetings or company meetings), reading your speech may be necessary. If you have to read your speech, there are things you can do to help you sound natural. Keep in mind the business tone may be necessary, but there may also be parts in your presentation that require the monotony to be broken!

3. The third way to remember your presentation is to use notes - a condensed outline form of your presentation. Have your notes on a single page sheet or on note cards. Highlight key points to make in a way that you can easily understand the emphasis that the points need. Having notes does not mean that you do not need to work with your presentation!

4. The last way to remember your presentation is to use visual aids (props) as your notes. Let your visuals and images prompt you to speak. Tell your audience a story about the image you're showing. You can also let your visuals and images do the talking for you. You can post your outline on the screen and say that it's because it will help your audience stay on track with you!

Work with creating mental images of the points you are trying to make. This will help you sound more natural and more "impromptu" with your audience. When you sound natural, you sound genuine.

Utilize one or more of these ways to remember your presentation. Use various ways to "trigger" your memory to say what needs to be said. Use overheads to lead you through your speech as you place keywords on the screen.

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Achieving Success in Professional Speaking

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Join Us any Tuesday at Noon -Lunch Time for a 1 hour get together at the Elk Foundation on Grant Creek. Shootin' The Bull Toastmasters Club
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The real success of every presentation is leaving your audience with something of value. What do they get out of spending time in your presentation? Many people believe that they need natural brilliance in speaking well and presenting well. The believe that they need to be polished, smart, witty and charming all before they actually start to build a speech. Those attributes can come naturally, but most often, they come as a result of passion, knowledge and practice of the speaker's material.

One of the most important factors in having a successful presentation is serving the needs of your audience. Going back to the idea that you need to leave your audience with something of value, caring for your audience's needs doesn't require perfection. You can make mistakes with speaking and it's going to be okay. The projector equipment can fail and it's still going to be okay. You don't have to include humor in order to be a success. With that in mind, real perfection is more like being successful at reaching your audience.

Give your audience two or three gold nuggets of information. No one expects you to be a walking encyclopedia concerning your subject matter. No one expects you to speak for hours on end about your topic. It's too much for you and for your audience to handle. Find two or three heavy hitting points to make and work with those points so that they become exciting to hear.

To give your audience something of value, focus on them not on you. Telling your personal testimony is great, but eventually during your presentation, you've got to find a way to relate your presentation back to your audience. One rule of thumb concerning this area is to use 10 "you's" for every one "I". That means you'll talk less about yourself and talk more about your audience.

Realize you don't have to control every situation in your audience. You don't have to emerge as the victor over negative audience members. The audio/video equipment does not have to be perfectly functioning. You simply don't have enough time to combat situations in your audiences (I.e. - like them falling asleep, talking or cell phones ringing) and still communicate your message effectively. Remember that your whole goal is to give your audience something of value.

Give your audience something of value by becoming their friend. Sometimes you may need to stop thinking of yourself as a professional speaker and start thinking of yourself a close personal friend of the audience member. You'll teach them something and give them advice. You'll sound more natural in our speech and you'll be more relatable to your audience. People often associate those on stage as automatically having knowledge and wisdom on the topic covered. While this thought is great to establish you as a leader, the points you make in your presentation may be better received if you came across from a more personal standpoint.

Your whole goal as a professional speaker is to leave your audience with something of value. This means creating a solid bond between your audience and your material. This means you think about the needs of your audience. Give your audience something of value today!

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Join Us any Tuesday at Noon -Lunch Time for a 1 hour get together at the Elk Foundation on Grant Creek. We are the Lunchtime Missoula Toastmasters Club