428 Part 4 Public Speaking
c Have a backup plan. What will you do if something malfunctions during
your speech? If a video clip won’t play, can you tell it as a story? You might
have a handout prepared for your audience members, just in case your soft-
ware doesn’t work.Simulate the Situation
You already know that few people can simply walk up to a podium for the first
time and deliver a perfect speech. Seasoned public speakers often look and sound
great in large part because they’ve done it before and done it often. Exposing
yourself to some of the more unnerving aspects of public speaking—for example,
an audience or a self-recording—through simulation can help you become more
comfortable. For example:c Create similar conditions. Think about the room in which you’ll deliver your
speech: what is its size, space, and layout? Keep these things in mind as you
rehearse—or even better, arrange to rehearse in the room where you will be
speaking. Awareness of these conditions will help you practice eye contact,
movement, gestures, and your use of notes.
c Practice in front of someone. Try practicing in front of someone or, preferably,
a few people. One method for getting over anxiety about speaking in front
of an audience is to “practice upward”: practice first in front of one friend,
then two, then three, and so on, until you are comfortable speaking before a
fairly large group.
c Keep an eye on your time. Use the timer on your phone to stay on target with
your allotted speech time. You might even keep track of how much time you
spend on each point, particularly if you have a tendency to go into a lot of
detail early on or to rush at the end.Practice Your Delivery
In any speech, your objective should be to communicate a message to an audi-
ence. If your message is clear, the audience will connect with it; if it’s buried in a
sea of mumbling or if it’s forced to compete with distracting body movements,
the audience will miss your point. As you practice, you can improve the aspects
of delivery you studied in this chapter and concentrate on your message.c Focus on your message. Concentrate on the way that you express an argument,
paraphrase a quotation, or explain a statistic. If you focus on your message,
the right delivery will usually follow naturally.
c Use mirrors cautiously. Conventional wisdom has advocated rehearsing in
front of a mirror in order to practice eye contact, maximize facial expres-
sions, and assess gestures and movement. But you won’t have mirrors when
you deliver the speech; they can also make you feel self-conscious, distract-
ing you from your message.