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1. Introduction This paper offers suggestions for more effective ways to plan the talk, and a checklist of points you should consider from the moment you know you will give a talk. Careful preparation and effective delivery are the keys to giving quality speeches or presentations. Without sufficient preparation, you may find yourself unable to respond to questions raised by the audience, which will lessen the impact of what you have to say. No matter how much time you have to prepare a talk, it never seems to be enough. Yet, before you can begin to work on the talk itself, or even start to prepare any visual aids, there are four points you need to consider: duration of the talk, audience, subject and objective.
In this paper these four points are discussed. Let us deal with them one by one in the order they appear above. 2. Duration of the talk The shorter the talk has to be; the more difficult it will be to do it well. Giving a brief talk requires proportionally more preparation time than longer talk. You have less time to search for the right words, less time to receive feedback from your audience, less time to work through theory and to give illustrations. If you want to be effective, do not underestimate the time it will take you to prepare yourself for a short five to twenty minutes) talk.
The time allowed for the talk also determines the scope and the level of detail you can go into. A brief talk will necessarily be less complicated and will deal with fewer points. The duration of the talk can roughly be estimated as follows: studies in reading have found that an average person speaks at more or less 150 words per minute. A ten-minute talks therefore cannot be much longer than 1500 spoken words. If you are going to read your speech (something which you should avoid doing) you can prepare about three and a half A 4 pages (12 font and single spaced), which will give you about 1250 words. You will need additional time to get on stage, say the opening words and tell the audience what you will be talking about, and to get off stage at the end with a short recap.
In this figures give you an idea of time spend in talking, nevertheless you are still advised to rehearse and rehearse in advance until you are sure of the exact amount of time you will need. Instead of reading the talk you may decide to talk from power point slides you prepared in advance. Talking from notes has advantages that you will sound much more natural and that your message will come across more persuasively. However, you should take into consideration that speaking from notes s not as efficient as reading the talk. In talking from notes, you may dabble and mumble there and there and sometimes be at loss for the right words. Sometimes you may pause or need to explain a concept in detail.
In talking from power point slides the only way to determine whether you will meet target time is to rehearse and rehearse aloud. It is not enough to read through your power point slides silently; statistics show that on average people can read about twice as fast as they can talk. Go into a room alone and visualise the audience in front of you, feel the audience looking at you and start talking with the visual aids, introduction s, illustrations and so on. Rehearse the entire presentation this way will give you a good idea of the actual duration of the talk. It will also save you from panic on the day itself. A short talk of less than ten minutes can be given without the use of visual aids (though even then one simple visual aid may be helpful).
Longer talks will definitely need the support of visual aids e. g. power point slides video or film. All visual aids you are going to use will eat your time. 3. Rehearsing To be concise, talks must be carefully planned and rehearsed. It is impossible to overemphasize the importance of rehearsing.
No actor would walk onto a stage without having rehearsed; no athlete would play without having practiced. The more times you go over your talk, the more confident you will feel when you stand up in front of an audience, and the more convincing and informative you will sound. Rehearse for your colleagues, your room-mates or friends, your cat or dog, yourself. Rehearse until you are tired of the talk; the adrenaline that comes from standing up in front of a group will make you feel and sound animated when you actually come to deliver your talk, even if numerous repetitions have led you to feel bored by the talk before you actually begin to speak. Avoid circulating materials around the audience while you are talking as people will be distracted and end up loosing you and you loosing them. Finally, be aware that after the talk you may be required to wait for questions and discussions from the audience.
This can take a considerable amount of your time. 3. Audience You need to find out who your audience are and how much they know about the subject matter already. The nature and interests of the audience determine for the greatest part the scope and content of the presentation. Your job as the speaker is to interest your audience. You need to know as much as possible or guess about the people who will form the audience. You need to think about their expectations, background knowledge and their attitudes.
The size of the audience determines your speaking strategy. Obviously a meeting with five people needs a different approach than a meeting with hundred people. In general a small audience (four or five people seated around a table) implies an informal, seemingly casual and conversational approach. This kind of talk will have more of the features of a meeting or discussion with frequent interruptions Probably, most people you will speak will be medium size groups of between ten and thirty persons.
Although larger groups are usually seated in a traditional fashion, with rows of chairs facing the stage where you are, you can also find seating arrangements around a large table or an open square. As participants can see each other as well as the speaker, discussions are possible and the atmosphere is less formal than in a large hall. Boards, chars and overhead projectors can all be used without major difficulty. Nevertheless you need to check ahead of time whether the size of the lettering that you use is large enough for the persons sitting the furthest away. You should also make sure that all participants can see you, the board and / or screen.
Make sure also that all the equipments are working and that you know how to operate them. You should arrive early enough on the day of the talk to organise the visuals. 4. Subject The subject matter of the talk must be appropriate to the audience. The subject is also a factor of the time available, and your own grasp of the topic. Time places constraints on what you can reasonably convey to an audience. As was said earlier, the shorter the time available, the less you can say and the more you will have to select and omit.
Some things are simply too complex to be explained to a general audience in a short period of time. In such cases you will have to redefine your objectives, or select and omit some of your points. Your own grasp of the subject determines whether or not the talk is likely to be a success. It is very difficult to give an effective talk, reading up on the script while preparing the visual aids. 5. Objective Finally, there is your objective or aim of giving the talk.
This objective needs to be phrased in terms of the behaviour you hope to see in your audience if the talk is a success. This is fairly concrete goal. Your aim or objective is the touchstone against which you can test all your options in selection and / or omission of material, the organisation and structuring of the talk, the choice of a slide or other visual aid, etc. Without a clear objective it will be all too easy to wander off the point, to prepare irrelevant materials or to organise the talk in a way that confuses the listener. It is always worthwhile to try out different ways of phrasing the overall objective of the talk, as small differences in phrasing may lead you to new insights on the content and structure of the presentation. At this stage you lay the groundwork for the many hours of preparation that will follow.
It is therefore well worthwhile spending a little extra time in the planning stage, attempting to be specific and concrete in phrasing the objectives as possible.
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