Public Presentation News Blog

Observation! Most men are blind. There are a thousand times as many hidden truths and undiscovered facts about us to-day as have made discoverers famous--facts waiting for some one to 'pluck out the heart of their mystery.' But so long as men go about the search with eyes that see not, so long will these hidden pearls lie in their shells. Not an orator but who could more effectively point and feather his shafts were he to search nature rather than libraries. Too few can see 'sermons in stones' and 'books in the running brooks,' because they are so used to seeing merely sermons in books and only stones in running brooks. Sir Philip Sidney had a saying, 'Look in thy heart and write; 'Massillon explained his astute knowledge of the human heart by saying, 'I learned it by studying myself;' Byron says of John Locke that 'all his knowledge of the human understanding was derived from studying his own mind.' Since multiform nature is all about us, originality ought not to be so rare."

Public Delivery Daily Info Blog

If you extemporize you can get much closer to your audience. In a sense,they appreciate the task you have before you and send out their sympathy. Extemporize, and you will not have to stop and fumble around amidst your notes--you can keep your eye afire with your message and hold your audience with your very glance. You yourself will feel their response as you read the effects of your warm, spontaneous words, written on their countenances.

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Speech News Blog

There are motives that can move a man to read his address orsermon:

1. Laziness is the commonest. Enough said. Even Heaven cannot make a lazy man efficient.

2. A memory so defective that he really cannot speak without reading. Alas, he is not speaking when he is reading, so his dilemma is painful--and not to himself alone. But no man has a right to assume that his memory is utterly bad until he has buckled down to memory culture--and failed. A weak memory is oftener an excuse than a reason.

3. A genuine lack of time to do more than write the speech. There are such instances--but they do not occur every week! The disposition of your time allows more flexibility than you realize. Motive 3 too often harnesses up with Motive 1.

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Good Presentation Gestures Bulletin

The muscles of your face,the light of your eyes, should respond to the slightest change of feeling. Emerson says: "Every man that I meet is my superior in some way. In that I learn of him." Illiterate Italians make gestures so wonderful and beautiful that Booth or Barrett might have sat at their feet and been instructed. Open your eyes. Emerson says again: "We are immersed in beauty, but our eyes have no clear vision." Toss this book to one side; go out and watch one child plead with another for a bite of apple; see a street brawl; observe life in action. Do you want to know how to express victory? Watch the victors' hands go high on election night. Do you want to plead a cause? Make a composite photograph of all the pleaders in daily life you constantly see. Beg, borrow, and stealthe best you can get, _BUT DON'T GIVE IT OUT AS THEFT_. Assimilate it until it becomes a part of you--then _let_ the expression come out.

Toastmasters Daily Blog

Facial Expression is Important

Have you ever stopped in front of a Broadway theater and looked at the photographs of the cast? Notice the row of chorus girls who are supposedto be expressing fear. Their attitudes are so mechanical that the attempt is ridiculous. Notice the picture of the "star" expressing the same emotion: his muscles are drawn, his eyebrows lifted, he shrinks, and fear shines through his eyes. That actor _felt_ fear when the photograph was taken. The chorus girls felt that it was time for a rarebit, and more nearly expressed that emotion than they did fear. Incidentally, that is one reason why they _stay_ in the chorus.

Presentation Skills Helpful Hints

Only when gesture is subordinated to the absorbing importance of the idea--a spontaneous, living expression of living truth--is it justifiable at all; and when it is remembered for itself--as a piece of unusual physical energy or as a poem of grace--it is a dead failure as dramatic expression. There is a place for a unique style of walking--it is the circus or the cake-walk; there is a place for surprisingly rhythmical evolutions of arms and legs--it is on the dance floor or the stage. Don't let your agility and grace put your thoughts out of business.

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Public Presentation Bulletin

Compare the _u_ sound in _few_ and in _new_. Say each aloud, and decide which is correct, _Noo York_, _New Yawk_, or _New York_?

Pay careful heed to the directions of this chapter in reading the following, from Hamlet. After the interview with the ghost of his father, Hamlet tells his friends Horatio and Marcellus that he intends to act a part:

_Horatio_. O day and night, but this is wondrous strange!

_Hamlet_. And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
But come; Here, as before, never, so help you mercy,
How strange or odd so'er I bear myself,--
As I perchance hereafter shall think meet
To put an antic disposition on,--
That you, at such times seeing me, never shall,
With arms encumber'd thus, or this head-shake,
Or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase,
As "Well, well, we know," or "We could, an if we would,"
Or "If we list to speak," or "There be, an if there might,"
Or such ambiguous giving-out, to note
That you know aught of me: this not to do,
So grace and mercy at your most need help you,
Swear.

Toastmasters Daily Blog

The children at play on the street, glad from sheer physical vitality, display a resonance and charm in their voices quite different from the voices that float through the silent halls of the hospitals. A skilled physician can tell much about his patient's condition from the mere sound of the voice. Failing health, or even physical weariness, tells through the voice. It is always well to rest and be entirely refreshed before attempting to deliver a public address. As to health, neither scope nor space permits us to discuss here the laws of hygiene. There are many excellent books on this subject. In the reign of the Roman emperor Tiberius, one senator wrote to another: "To the wise, a word is sufficient."

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Bell-tones of the Voice Blog

Reading joyous prose, or lyric poetry, will help put smile and joy of soul into your voice. The following selections are excellent for practise.

FROM MILTON'S "L'ALLEGRO"

Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee
Jest, and youthful Jollity,
Quips and Cranks and wanton Wiles,
Nods and Becks, and wreathed Smiles,
Such as hang on Hebe's cheek,
And love to live in dimple sleek,--
Sport that wrinkled Care derides,
And Laughter holding both his sides.

Power of the Voice Blog

How to Develop the Carrying Power of the Voice

Many methods for deep breathing have been given by various authorities. Get the air into your lungs--that is the important thing.

The body acts as a sounding board for the voice just as the body of the violin acts as a sounding board for its tones. You can increase its vibrations by practise.

Place your finger on your lip and hum the musical scale, thinking and placing the voice forward on the lips. Do you feel the lips vibrate? After a little practise they will vibrate, giving a tickling sensation.

Repeat this exercise, throwing the humming sound into the nose. Hold the upper part of the nose between the thumb and forefinger. Can you feel the nose vibrate?

Placing the palm of your hand on top of your head, repeat this humming exercise. Think the voice there as you hum in head tones. Can you feel the vibration there?

Breathing Fundamental Requisite Blog

All the activity of breathing must be centered, not in the throat, but in the middle of the body--you must breathe from the diaphragm. Note the way you breathe when lying flat on the back, undressed in bed. You will observe that all the activity then centers around the diaphragm. This is the natural and correct method of breathing. By constant watchfulness make this your habitual manner, for it will enable you to relax more perfectly the muscles of the throat.

The next fundamental requisite for good voice is openness.

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Professional Presentation Skills Helpful Hints

You have doubtless been adjured to "forget everything but your subject."This advice says either too much or too little. The truth is that while on the platform you must not _forget_ a great many things that are not in your subject, but you must not _think_ of them. Your attention must consciously go only to your message, but subconsciously you will be attending to the points of technique which have become more or less_habitual by practise_.

A nice balance between these two kinds of attention is important.

You can no more escape this law than you can live without air: Your platform gestures, your voice, your inflection, will all be just as good as your _habit_ of gesture, voice, and inflection makes them--no better.Even the thought of whether you are speaking fluently or not will have the effect of marring your flow of speech.

QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES BLOG

In your own words define (a) cadence, (b) modulation, (c) inflection,(d) emphasis.

Name five ways of destroying monotony and gaining effectiveness in speech.

What states of mind does falling inflection signify? Make as full a list as you can.

Do the same for the rising inflection.

How does the voice bend in expressing (_a_) surprise? (_b_) shame?(_c_) hate? (_d_) formality? (_e_) excitement?

Reread some sentence several times and by using different inflections change the meaning with each reading.

Note the inflections employed in some speech or conversation. Were they the best that could be used to bring out the meaning? Criticise and illustrate.

Pauses in Public Speaking News Blog

_1. Pause Enables the Mind of the Speaker to Gather His Forces Before Delivering the Final Volley_

It is often dangerous to rush into battle without pausing for preparation or waiting for recruits. Consider Custer's massacre as an instance.

_2. Pause Prepares the Mind of the Auditor to Receive Your Message_

_3. Pause Creates Effective Suspense_

_4. Pausing After An Important Idea Gives it Time to Penetrate_

Variations in Pitch Daily Helpful Hints Blog

Speak the following lines with as marked variations in pitch as your interpretation of the sense may dictate. Try each line in two different ways. Which, in each instance, is the more effective--and why?

What have I to gain from you? Nothing.

To engage our nation in such a compact would be an infamy.

Note: In the foregoing sentence, experiment as to where the change in pitch would better be made.

Once the flowers distilled their fragrance here, but now see the devastations of war.

He had reckoned without one prime factor--his conscience.

Presentation Skills Scoops Blog

When Sarah Bernhardt plays a difficult role she frequently will speak to no one from four o'clock in the afternoon until after the performance. From the hour of four she lives her character. Booth, it is reported,would not permit anyone to speak to him between the acts of his Shakesperean roles, for he was Macbeth then--not Booth. Dante, exiled from his beloved Florence, condemned to death, lived in caves, half starved; then Dante wrote out his heart in "The Divine Comedy." Bunyan entered into the spirit of his "Pilgrim's Progress" so thoroughly that he fell down on the floor of Bedford jail and wept for joy. Turner, who lived in a garret, arose before daybreak and walked over the hills nine miles to see the sun rise on the ocean, that he might catch the spirit of its wonderful beauty. Wendell Phillips' sentences were full of "silent lightning" because he bore in his heart the sorrow of five million slaves.

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Public Speaking Fundamentals Blog

We lie on softbeds, sit near the radiator on a cold day, eat cherry pie, and devote our attention to one of the opposite sex, not because we have reasoned out that it is the right thing to do, but because it feels right. No one but a dyspeptic chooses his diet from a chart. Our feelings dictate what we shall eat and generally how we shall act. Man is a feeling animal, hence the public speaker's ability to arouse men to action depends almost wholly on his ability to touch their emotions.

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Beauty of Utterance Daily News

A familiar, homely idiom, if not worn by much use, is more effective than a highly formal, scholarly expression.

Consider well the relative value of different positions in the sentence so that you may give the prominent place to ideas you wish to emphasize.

"But," says someone, "is it not more honest to depend the inherent interest in a subject, its native truth, clearness and sincerity of presentation, and beauty of utterance, to win your audience? Why not charm men instead of capturing them by assault?"

Conviction in Public Speaking Info

Growing out of this conviction-tension comes _resolve to make the audience share that conviction-tension_. Purpose is the backbone of force; without it speech is flabby--it may glitter, but it is the iridescence of the spineless jellyfish. You must hold fast to your resolve if you would hold fast to your audience.

Finally, all this conviction-tension-purpose is lifeless and useless unless it results in _propulsion_. You remember how Young in his wonderful "Night Thoughts" delineates the man who

Pushes his prudent purpose to resolve, Resolves, and re-resolves, and dies the same.

Let not your force "die a-borning,"--bring it to full life in its conviction, emotional tension, resolve, and propulsive power.