Real Communication An Introduction

Chapter 14  Delivering Presentations 411

WILL FERRELL and his
costars ad-libbed much of
Anchorman, not unlike what
you will do when speaking
extemporaneously. Dreamworks/
c Prepare well in advance. You can begin preparing for an extemporaneous Photofest

speech as soon as you decide on a topic. Think about some possible points

you want to make and how you might support them.

c Don’t forget the outline! As mentioned in Chapter 13, your key-word or phrase
outline keeps you focused but gives you lots of flexibility with your word choice.

c Practice truly makes perfect. Actors or musicians don’t always give the exact

same performance, but they do practice a lot. When you get really familiar

with a script or a musical composition (or a speech), you may indeed memo-

rize parts of it, but a little bit of it will change each and every time, allowing

for a more natural delivery.

Guidelines for Effective Delivery

Everything from selecting a topic and researching information to outlining your
presentation is a prerequisite to the big moment: actually delivering your speech.
In this section, we’ll take a fresh look at a point that we’ve emphasized through-
out this book: how you say something is as important as what you say. That is,
audiences receive information not only from the actual words that you speak but