Speech Topics

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If leadership is your destiny, delivering a good speech to help you win the election for President of your high school is crucial.

Follow these tips to deliver the speech to help you win at the ballot box.

Steps:

1. Start by becoming your audience. As president, you should speak to your audience, not down to your audience. It is essential to remember that a leader is not one who controls followers, but someone who is of the people. A leader is one who serves and through their actions produces many more leaders.

2. Be honest. There’s nothing peers like more than straight honesty. Open your heart and tell them the truth about you, your goals, and what you hope to do for and with them.

3. Be realistic. Set good goals in your speech and clearly outline how you will achieve them. If you have strong goals and a good plan for accomplishing them, others will perceive you as an excellent leader.

4. Be welcoming. Always emphasize how approachable you are and how much you want to work for them. People want a leader that works to involve them in decisions and ideas. Everyone wants a voice, make sure your speech says that you will give them that voice.

5. Be yourself. If you try to be someone else, the audience will know in an instant. Trust that they will want the real you as their leader.

6. Be funny. Most of your peers couldn’t care less who wins, so make note of that. You’ll earn their respect and feel they can relate to you.

Sample Speech Structure:

• Paragraph 1: Introduce yourself. Tell about the most important issues/things in life to you as a person and which personality strengths would make you right for the position.
• Paragraph 2: Set your goals and briefly discuss how you will go about achieving them.
• Paragraph 3: Let your audience know you intend to lead through service to them and want them to be actively involved. Let them know that leadership to you means getting your hands dirty right along side them and not being locked away in some room making decisions for them. Let them know you understand them and will always welcome their input.
• Paragraph 4: Finish with honesty. Tell them what the position means to you and why you hope they will give you the opportunity to lead and serve them.
• Paragraph 5: Add your slogan or catch phrase for election(this is optional).

Tips:

• Being creative also helps. Always remember, “if you make them laugh, you make them listen.” If you make them listen, your ideas will be heard. This gives you a better chance of winning.
• Don’t promise anything you can’t do. People will be very disappointed and may not vote for you again if you run for something else.
• Use plenty of body language such as hand gestures; however, don’t do too many gestures as this distracts from your speech.
• Also change the tone of your voice otherwise it will make people want to go to sleep and they obviously won’t listen

OK, so you’ve chosen a subject, written your speech, and right away you’re ready to speak, or are you?

This article will help you to prepare mentally and physically for giving a speech so that you can do your best!

Steps:

1. Exercise your speech using your draft. Do this a few times and each time use your outline less and less.

2. Digest your outline into 15 words that you are able to put on your note card. As you become familiar with the flow of your speech this will become simpler. These should be keywords that can help you to remember the flow of the presentation. Do not learn the speech but memorize the flow.

3. Exercise your speech using your notecard. If you are practicing any visual aids add those as well.

4. Time yourself. When exercising, time yourself to make sure that you are close to your time goal. At this point, your presentation better be a little too long (few minutes or so for a 10 minute speech) because once you actually present you will do faster than when you exercise (This won’t happen as much as you increase experience).

5. Animate the place where you will give your speech and exercise there, as realistically as possible. This will allow you to draw a realistic picture in your head as to what your speech will look like. Bring in some friends to listen as well. Feedback is always fine.

6. Do not overdo it! You do not want your speech to look rehearsed, it should be really natural and conversational, so do not exercise too much.

7. Have a good night’s sleep. You want to be fresh when it comes time to speak!

8. Have a good meal, but do not overeat. You do not want your stomach grumbling, but you also do not want to be groggy.

9. Deal with those nerves. The tips below might help you to deal with your nervousness. Remember though, a bit of nerves is good, it helps you to present with excitement and passion.

Tips:

Visualize success. Keep in mind, you care about what you’re saying, you’ve put in the time and effort and you’ll do fine!

Think truthfully. If you’re giving a controversial speech or one that the audience perhaps doesn’t want to hear, think realistically do not picture roaring applause but do picture them respecting what you have to tell.

Be comfortable in silence. There’s no need to say “hm” or extra filler words. Pauses are to your advantage. Use them to emphasise crucial points or if you need time to think, just keep in mind that no one is speeding you, they have given you time to speak, do it well.

Release nervous energy. If you’re really anxious before presenting, bend your calves or ball up your fists. This will help to abolish the adrenaline going through your body because of your excitement. If you begin to shake while presenting make a couple steps, whenever possible, this will as well get rid of some of that energy and give you a chance to regain control of those muscles.

Tips concerning presentation style. As you comply the above steps, not only will you get into a rhythm in speaking, but you’ll as well become more and more aware of what your body is doing when you speak. Here are some basic tips regarding presentation style.

Stand strong! To spread your weight out equally, your feet should be a couple of inches apart (a bit less than shoulder width). This will help you to stop shaking from side to side and allow you to stand with confidence.

Dress to impress! It’s very important what you’re wearing. You should dress in an appropriate style for the occasion and for your subject.

Start with a deep breath. Before starting to speak, look at your notes, look at the audience, make a deep breath (but not a loud one), and begin!

Speak so that everybody can hear and understand! You need to speak with a good pace that displays your excitement and heat about your subject, but do not speak too fast! You also will want to speak so that everyone in the room can hear, but don’t deafen them!

Use your style to your advantage! Be yourself. Formulas of presentation are tools that you have to your advantage and disposal, you can decide to use them to emphasise your points and enthusiasm or they can use you to emphasise your nervousness and lack of self-confidence!

[Via WikiHow]

Related:

How To Write A Speech

5 Phrases You Never Want To Hear In A Speech

Best Informative Speech Topics

Giving a good speech can be difficult but writing a good speech is probably the biggest hurdle most people have difficulty overcoming.

Not only in your writing should you show you know what you’re talking about, but bad habits and lack of training and knowing your topic well will show.

Those things are what bring on the “butterflies”: lack of experience speaking before a group, lack of coherency and good information in your speech to make it memorable, and just plain lack of knowledge in knowing what NOT to say.

Here are some things to be sure to keep OUT while you are giving your speech:

Read the rest of this entry »