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11: Delivery

  • Page ID
    17802
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    Learning Objectives

    After reading this chapter the student will be able to:

    • Identify the different methods of speech delivery;
    • Identify key elements in preparing to deliver a speech;
    • Understand the benefits of delivery-related behaviors;
    • Utilize specific techniques to enhance speech delivery.

    Good delivery is meant to augment your speech and help convey your information to the audience. Anything that potentially distracts your audience means that fewer people will be informed, persuaded, or entertained by what you have said. Practicing your speech in an environment that closely resembles the actual situation that you will be speaking in will better prepare you for what to do and how to deliver your speech when it really counts.

    • 11.1: The Importance of Delivery
      While speaking has more formality than talking, it has less formality than reading. Speaking allows for flexibility, meaningful pauses, eye contact, small changes in word order, and vocal emphasis. Reading is a more or less exact replication of words on paper without the use of any nonverbal interpretation. Speaking, as you will realize if you think about excellent speakers you have seen and heard, provides a more animated message.
    • 11.2: Methods of Speech Delivery
      What follows are four methods of delivery that can help you balance between too much and too little formality when giving a speech. Each has its own strengths and weaknesses, but you will most likely want to focus on the extemporaneous approach, since that is probably what your instructor will want from you.
    • 11.3: Preparing For Your Delivery
      Your audiences, circumstances, and physical contexts for public speaking will vary. At some point in your life you may run for public office or rise to a leadership role in a business or volunteer organization. Or you may be responsible for informing coworkers about a new policy, regulation, or opportunity. You may be asked to deliver remarks in the context of a worship service, wedding, or funeral. You may be asked to introduce a keynote speaker or simply to make an important announcement in so
    • 11.4: Practicing Your Delivery
      There is no foolproof recipe for good delivery. Each of us is unique, and we each embody different experiences and interests. This means each person has an approach, or a style, that is effective for her or him. This further means that anxiety can accompany even the most carefully researched and interesting message. But there are some techniques you can use to minimize that anxious feeling and put yourself in the best possible position to succeed on speech day.
    • 11.5: What to do When Delivering Your Speech
      The interplay between the verbal and nonverbal components of your speech can either bring the message vividly to life or confuse or bore the audience. Therefore, it is best that you neither overdramatize your speech delivery behaviors nor downplay them. This is a balance achieved through rehearsal, trial and error, and experience.
    • 11.6: Expert Advice on the Voice from an Acting Instructor
      Breath and voice connection comes directly from a consistent practice, which involves warming up and exercising the voice. This work should involve the whole body: First finding where tension is living within the body, then releasing that tension through breathing, stretching, and the creation of sound. Tension is an enemy to the voice, so this work is doubly important to novice speakers because of nerves and inexperience.


    This page titled 11: Delivery is shared under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Kris Barton & Barbara G. Tucker (GALILEO Open Learning Materials) via source content that was edited to the style and standards of the LibreTexts platform.