Practising Your Speech or Presentation

Practice is an essential part of public speaking, the difference between failure and success.

If you’re nervous about speaking in public, having practised will give you confidence and make the experience a great deal less traumatic.

If you’re a confident public speaker, do not be tempted to skimp on the practice! It can be easy to think that, because speaking is something we do all the time, we don’t need to practise it. Somehow, it seems obvious that we’d need to rehearse before performing in public in any other way – singing, dancing, playing an instrument, doing magic or reciting other people’s words in a play. And yet, when we’re faced with making a speech, we can fall into the trap of thinking we can improvise it. Do not make this mistake! If you practise and hone your speech, you’ll improve your performance, depending on the occasion and how experienced you are, by 75-100%.

Once you’ve written your speech or presentation (see Preparation), make a bullet-point summary of it. If you leave it as a full script, it will be almost impossible for you, when the time comes, not to read it. Bullet points remind you what you want to say but force you to say it rather than read it.

Then deliver it out loud, using your bullet points as prompts. If you find you’re not saying it as well as you prepared it, read through your full script a few more times, to help you memorise it.

What you’re aiming at is a delicate balance between reciting and improvising that requires all your acting skills. You should sound as if you’re saying this for the first time, though you should also be saying it in the best, most honed way, as you scripted it.

The holy grail of public speaking is rehearsed spontaneity.

Achieve that and you'll never look back!

Use of notes in public speaking

Put your bullet points on to some cards, with each section of what you want to say on a new card. Cards are much less obtrusive than papers and it’s much easier to see at a glance where you’re up to. Number your cards, in case you drop them.

As you gain in confidence, you may feel you can dispense with the cards altogether. If your speech has a logical order, it should be easy to see this in your mind’s eye and follow it internally. However, even if you manage this well in rehearsal, until you’re reasonably experienced at public speaking, I recommend you take your notes along on the day, just in case. It’s so much better to have a quick look and then carry on than to be fine for a while without notes and then dry up altogether.

Use of visual aids in public speaking

If you’re planning to use slides or any other props to support your presentation, make sure you practise with them. Nothing you do on the day should be new; you need to have run through everything exactly as it’s going to be in ‘performance’.

Use of voice in public speaking

Speak up!
Make sure you’re projecting your voice loudly enough that everyone will be able to hear you. This is quite hard to gauge in rehearsal but, as you address the four walls of your practice room, visualise a crowd and practise making your voice carry. The more people there are in the room, the more their clothes will be absorbing the sound you make and the more loudly you need to speak.

Of course, I don’t mean you should shout; you need to project. This isn’t always easy to start with so, if you’re inexperienced at it, practise.

If you really haven’t got the sort of voice to reach the back, use a microphone. People can’t possibly listen to you if they can’t even hear you.

Slow down!
The speed at which you speak in public needs to be two-thirds to half as fast as you speak normally. The more people there are in the room, the longer it takes for sound to travel across the space. If you speak too quickly, people will have to strain to keep up.

Nervous speakers tend to speak too fast because they want to get through it as quickly as possible. Unless you’re deliberately being silly, you virtually can’t speak too slowly in public, so take a deep breath and practise speaking at half the speed.

Vary your speed, pitch and tone
Although in general you need to be speaking much more slowly than you normally would, it’s important to give some variety to the speed of your delivery. Anything that is obvious or that you’ve already told them, you can say more quickly. The new stuff needs to be fed to the audience more slowly, partly because of the sound-travel issue and you want to be sure everybody has heard, and partly because, naturally, people need more time to digest something they’ve never heard before.

Equally with pitch and tone, if you allow yourself to be natural and enthusiastic, your voice will automatically become more intense in some places and more relaxed in others. All this gives your speech texture and makes it more interesting to listen to.

Remember to pause
Impart your information in bite-sized chunks and pause between them. People need time to digest what they’re learning, so don’t rush them on too quickly. A pause of five seconds may feel like an eternity to you but to the audience it’s a welcome breather (if they even notice you’ve stopped).

Use of eye contact in public speaking

If your audience is of a size where it’s feasible, you need to be making eye contact with its members. When you’re talking to one person, you look at him or her and this is what keeps him or her engaged with what you’re saying. Eye contact makes the communication personal and therefore memorable.

Move your eyes around the group randomly and aim to give each person a message. Of course, don’t stare at one person for longer than feels comfortable for both of you – but don’t whisk away too soon either or you’ll just appear shifty.

If your audience is too big for you to be able to see individuals beyond the front row, you won’t really be able to make eye contact. However, you should still behave as though you can. Make sure you address the whole audience and not just those sitting close enough that you can see their reactions.

At first, you may feel a bit apprehensive about making eye contact. If this is the case, start by looking at the audience members you feel safest with. But do remember that eye contact makes your speech or presentation a much more worthwhile experience for the audience so, if you can make yourself do it, you’ll be on an upward spiral.

It is, of course, difficult to practise making eye contact when you’re rehearsing in an empty room. However, keep it constantly in mind and role-play looking at people as you speak.

Use of movement and gestures in public speaking

When you’re concentrating on what you want to say, it’s easy to forget about what your body is doing. Shuffling, fiddling, pacing… all these things can be very distracting for the audience.

Be natural. Don’t feel inhibited and stand like a soldier on guard duty but, equally, don’t drift around your space because you’re too nervous to stay still. Stand firm unless you want to move to another part of the room, in which case, move. Feel free to gesture, in a meaningful way, as you would normally.

Practise moving naturally as you practise your talk and get yourself into good habits.

If possible, make a video recording of yourself in rehearsal. This will give you enormous insight into where your problem areas are (too quiet, too quick, too static/too manic, etc). It will also show up any annoying mannerisms, either physical or verbal, so you can work on eradicating them.

If you can’t record yourself, try rehearsing in front of a mirror or ask a trusted friend to be your audience and give you feedback.