Public speaking is the act of speaking to a large group of people in a highly organized manner. Knowing the art of public speaking is very important. The ability to speak confidently and convincingly in public not only will make you stand out while in college, but also will enable you to play an active role in your workplace and community in the future. There are many occasions where you will likely be asked to give a speech, such as in a classroom presentation, at school meetings, graduation ceremonies, awards ceremonies, receptions, or wedding parties.
Public speaking often involves two major stages of work: preparation and delivering. As for the preparation, you should start with an audience analysis and decide on a speech topic and purpose. The more you know and understand about your audience, the better you will choose a topic and prepare the speech. After you analyze your audience and set a speech objective, you need to gather materials to support your idea. Examples, stories, statistics, and testimony (证明) are four major types of supporting materials. You can gather these materials from the Internet, journals, magazines, books, newspapers, or your personal experience. After you gather enough materials about the topic, you then need to organize them clearly and logically.
The language of a speech tends to be different from that of writing. In a speech, shorter and simpler words and sentences are preferred to long and complex ones so that the listening audience will understand well. Besides, in order to bring emotional responses in the audience, various kinds of rhetorical devices (修辞手法) are often employed to add power to the speech language.
To successfully deliver a speech, you need to do a lot of work as well. For example, you need to make effective use of your voice and body so as to convey your message clearly and vividly. Maybe you also need to prepare some visual (视觉的) aids such as PowerPoint to help your audience understand you well.
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