Writing a speech should make you think. It shouldn’t be something that you rattle off from the top of your head. If it’s a wedding speech, for instance, you should think about how you can enhance the day for the couple with loving words. If you are speaking in a debate, of course, you should think about the points the other side will use and undermine them with your clever rhetoric. If you are speaking at a parent teacher meeting you should consider why parents send their children to that particular school and slant your speech accordingly. Whatever the occasion you should study the audience and what will be relevant to them. It’s no good giving a dynamic speech on nuclear policies to
a group of people who are only interested in sport. That is not to say, though, that you shouldn’t be able to stimulate your audience by making your topic interesting and riveting. So if you can talk about a nuclear plant being built on the local football pitch you could use that topic but from a different angle. So think about your audience, think about how you will approach your speech and think of the standing ovation you will get if you get it right.

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School may be out but educators everywhere are already preparing speeches for upcoming parent/teacher meetings in the new term. University deans are practising their welcome to the faculty speeches at the beginning of the academic year. Then of course there is the need for head teachers to say a few words in their induction speeches for new staff. Teachers everywhere have the need to give welcoming speeches to their pupils at the re-opening of school. They may be deciding on how to motivate their pupils by addressing such words of wisdom as telling them to improve their concentration or telling them to say “No” and have the courage of their convictions. They may be explaining how much good grades matter or giving the age old advice that breakfast is the way to kick start your life. No matter what age the pupils are, or how they word it, teachers will always be getting across the same message to every student “Be yourself you are special”.

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Our first orders were not, as we had expected, for ready-to-go wedding speeches. We had a request from an English teacher in Asia who wanted sample speeches to teach his children public speaking. English was not their mother tongue so the speeches would have to take that into account. They would have to be suitable for 9 year olds and the topics would have to be of interest to them. We gave him a list of suggestions on topics such as pets and holidays and he choose the ones he wanted, ordered them and we were in business. He acknowledged the speeches, said they were very suitable but never let us know how the children managed them. So perhaps somewhere in Asia there are fluent public speakers who started with very simple speeches on their dogs or their holidays! Maybe, by now, there is yet another generation of children learning the same speeches.

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In our final year of publics speaking we were brought to a local school hall to learn how to use a microphone and even walking onto the stage gave us the shivers. However our teacher stood at the end of the all shouting “Can’t hear, Can’t hear” until we had mastered the art of using the microphone without deafening ourselves and everyone else. She explained that our final examination would be held in this hall before an invited audience of 500 people. We would speak in groups of four giving four different sides to a topic. Mary was more agitated then the rest of us but the teacher had chosen as her subject “Gypsies” and she spoke passionately and caringly about them and brought the roof down. Only her classmates knew that her knees were knocking. Evidently all the hard work had paid off because the night was a huge success.

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Year three in our public speaking class was harder in every way. Our teacher pushed us harder and harder and made us read more papers and listen to more items on the radio. We were all totally afraid that our impromptu subject would be something topical we hadn’t heard about. So we listened, read and discussed everything topical and a lot of things that weren’t… One impromptu speech lingers in my memory. The teacher gave our politician the subject! Christ is dead, Christ is risen” The rest of us gasped but, and we then understood why he was a politician, when he said very simply,” Is he? I hadn’t heard but then the newspapers are on strike today.” It was true, they were. That’s what is called thinking on your feet!

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In the second year of public speaking our speeches got longer and more ambitious. The teacher invited other groups to come in and we would have discussions on all sorts of topics. What would you say about cutlery for instance? She taught us how to chair meetings and debates although she still didn’t approve of them. All the time she was pushing the boundaries of what we knew and how we should express it. We met groups from Toastmasters and the local seminary and it was good for us to meet public speakers who had been taught differently, and we truly believed, not as well. All this was in preparation for our first official public speaking exam.

That night there were adjudicators in our classroom and we all gave our prepared speeches and, quivering, waited for them to give us an impromptu subject. Mine was “Spies” and to this day I don’t know what I said but I know James Bond did come into it. We were given marks for content, tone, diction speed and variety. We had to wait a few months for our results but it was quite interesting to see the comments of the various adjudicators about our chosen topics and our performances in general. My chosen topic was public speaking itself and I finished with a poem about it and evidently the adjudicators liked it because I got first class honours. Finally, the fact that I was a writer had paid off!

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At the end of the first year of public speaking classes she gave us a little test. We had to give a two minute speech on a prepared subject and a one minute impromptu speech. Most of us were shaking that night but, strangely, we remembered to do our breathing exercises and we all clapped and cheered each other on. Now I know why footballers like supporters on the sideline. It does make a difference. We were all in awe at our genius though whose impromptu subject was tax. He said he felt that it was like the tithe the Christ said we should give the church and he told us that he felt it was his way of helping the widowed and the orphan. Somehow tax has never felt the same. Our teacher liked his speech but had some brusque words to say about his jacket. It was flopping open and, she said, a distraction to his audience. So he was told to button up.

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Our public speaking teacher didn’t like debates. She said they taught people to think on their feet but they didn’t really express feelings. She said good public speakers felt passionately about their subject. I was doubtful about this at first but she was right. When people loved their subject their speeches were so much better. She then went on to say we couldn’t always speak about something we loved but we could take an angle about something, develop it and then begin to feel strongly about it. We spent hours between classes looking up subjects in the library, this was in the days before the internet, and asking people their opinion on topics.
She insisted that we listened to the radio too. So, as a city based group, we dutifully listened to agricultural reports in case she asked us to speak about the market for pigs. We listened to religious programmes and topical programmes. She made us criticise those speakers we heard, telling her how and why they made mistakes. In other words she opened up our minds and told us listen and learn.

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Our public speaking teacher started giving us impromptu speeches and how we dreaded these at first. We never knew if we were going to be asked to speak about the men on the moon or mirrors. Baffled by the latter subject I asked my father, a skilled public speaker, what he would say about mirrors. He said the mistake I was making was that I assumed that people knew what mirrors were before I spoke about them. So there was little I could add beyond that they were on the wall and you could see yourself in them… Explain what they are to people who have never seen one he told me and that was another lesson learned.

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Our public speaking teacher gave us exercises to do and we felt so silly shaking our hands and doing deep breathing exercises that we began to relax with each other. She then asked us to read short sentences until we got used to the sound of our own voices. One week she asked us all to bring in our favourite book and read from it. You would be very surprised at the choices people made. Mary, for instance, loved a blood and guts thriller while our genius went in for what most men would consider as rather soppy poetry. Little by little we were beginning to understand each other and become friends rather than classmates.

Soon the teacher had us speaking about subjects she chose for us. Being a writer I thought I would have no problem at all in writing my speeches. I soon discovered, however, that reading to be said and read are two completely different things. People who are reading can take in more or look back over something you write. When you are speaking your audience has to understand immediately. It is, if you like, a more immediate type of writing.

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