262 13.3 Delivering Your Speech
Although these concerns might seem daunting, being confident about your ability
to present a well-prepared and well-rehearsed speech is the best antidote for jitters
about delivery. Practice and a focus on communicating your message to your au-
dience are vital for effective communication and great for your confidence.
To help answer specific questions about presenting a speech, consider seven
major categories of nonverbal behavior that affect delivery. Specifically, we will
help you improve your eye contact, use appropriate gestures, move meaning-
fully, maintain an appropriate posture, use facial expressions to communicate
emotion, use your voice both to be understood and to maintain interest, and
ensure that your personal appearance is appropriate. The ancient Roman orator
Cicero, author of De Oratore, called these behaviors the “language of the body.”^15Eye Contact
Of all the aspects of delivery discussed in this chapter, the most important one
in a public-speaking situation for North Americans is eye contact. Eye contact
with your audience opens communication, keeps your audience interested, and
makes you more believable. Each of these functions contributes to the success
of your delivery. Eye contact also provides you with feedback about how your
speech is coming across.
Making eye contact with your listeners clearly shows that you are ready to
talk to them. Most people start a conversation by looking at the person they are
going to talk to. The same process occurs in public speaking.
Once you have started talking, continued eye contact lets you gauge how
audience members are responding to your speech. You don’t need to look at
your listeners continuously. As the need arises, you should certainly look at your
notes, but also look at your listeners frequently, just to see what they’re doing.
Most listeners will think that you are capable and trustworthy if you look
them in the eye. Several studies document a relationship between eye contact and
increased speaker credibility.^16 Speakers who make eye contact for less than
50 percent of the length of their presentations are considered unfriendly, uninformed,
inexperienced, and even dishonest by their listeners. Eye contact may also make
your speech more effective. Another study showed that those audience members
who had more than 50 percent eye contact with their speaker performed better in
postspeech tests than did those who had less than 50 percent eye contact.^17
However, not all people from all cultures prefer the same amount of direct
eye contact when listening to someone talk. In interpersonal contexts, people
from Asian cultures, for example, expect less direct eye contact when communi-
cating with others than do North Americans.
Most audiences in the United States prefer that you establish eye contact
with them even before you begin your speech with your attention-catching in-
troduction. When it’s time to speak, calmly walk to the lectern or to the front of
the audience, pause briefly, and look at your audience before you say anything.
Eye contact nonverbally sends the message “I am interested in you; tune me in; I
have something I want to share with you.”