How to Sound Like You Are Not Reading a Script
Recently I came across a great post by fellow presentation skills trainer Cordelia Ditton. Information technology covers the thorny topic of how to deliver a oral communication from a script. I loved Her step by footstep have on how to brand the speech sound like it was yours and I thought yous might notice it useful too. Thanks to Cordelia for assuasive me to republish it in full.
Imagine the scenario: a friend is taken ill, it'due south imperative that their speech is delivered at an important conference, they implore you to evangelize information technology for them. Just… you don't know the cloth, you take a full workload and you'd take to get in that location. What would you do?
Leaving bated a natural inclination to decline pointblank, to invent a wedding to go to in Alaska or a pressing date with your manicurist… how to make it piece of cake on yourself?
You don't have time to re-invent the wheel, you have to work with what you lot've got.
Marking up your script in accelerate, when you're feeling at-home, so that you lot have a code to follow when y'all are in front of the audience. This way, yous can follow your own directions when/if the nerves kick in. Of grade, this is a technique you can also employ whatsoever fourth dimension you lot want to follow a written speech.
When might you lot do this?
– Every time you speak in public because annihilation else is besides horrible to contemplate.
– When you take little time
– When you have little fourth dimension and you want the security of a full script, so that you are certain yous are getting over the precise data you've chosen to relate.
– When yous have footling fourth dimension and you want the security of a total script, so that you are sure yous are getting over the precise data you lot've chosen to chronicle plus you don't want to audio as if you're reading something
– To help you make sense of the textile. (Particularly helpful if you lot have not written the concluding draft yourself, or if y'all've written it with others)
Two things you lot need to expect out for:
Where do thought changes occur?
What are the key words in this phrase?
Get yourself a pencil and a highlighter
Read the text.
Is it in the best format?
Nope. Far too small and squashed together. Easy to lose your place when reading this.
Get for large font, well spaced, create space betwixt each judgement. Justify to the left only. Reprint the speech in a ameliorate format if necessary. (This will help your encephalon, and therefore your voice, differentiate between the thoughts you're expressing. Information technology doesn't all expect the aforementioned.)
2. Read the text out loud.
iii. Now go back and read sentence by sentence. When you can hear a change in your vocalisation, this is indicating where your brain has decided at that place is a (slight) change of thought. These too always happen on a punctuation mark. Take your pencil and mark the text with a large, assuming frontward slash.
4. When yous have completed this, throughout the text, become dorsum to the kickoff and read it aloud again.
This fourth dimension you are listening for where your voice is placing particular emphasis in the phrase. Are at that place any words which your vocalization is picking out? If there are, mark them with a highlighter. If not, leave well alone. The last thing you lot want is a page covered in highlighter.
NB The temptation here is to mark words which you feel your voice should be emphasizing, rather than what your voice actually is emphasizing. Trust your voice. Your brain has already worked out how to speak this text. If you change the style your brain has chosen for you to read the material you lot are likely to stumble over the text. Trust yourself and simply listen.
v. When you have finished marker the forward slashes and keywords read through the whole passage over again. Yous will hear how intelligent, clear and natural you sound.
If y'all are not sure what your voice is doing, simply read the text again and mind. If it'south still not articulate, don't marker the script for the sake of information technology. Leave it a infinitesimal or 2 and attempt over again. You volition find that you do start to hear the changes, once you let go of preconceptions and listen to your ain phonation. Your voice might emphasize unlike words to the adjacent person. Fine. This is considering all our voices have a unique rhythm and this is a way to listen to yours.
Once you get the hang of this it becomes really quick and unproblematic to do. All you take to practise is read the whole thing through once, and your brain has already made sense of it. Allow become and trust yourself. This technique helps you lot focus in the present – or 'play the moment' as nosotros'd say in the theatre.
Check out Cordelia's ain web log here.
Source: https://www.inter-activ.co.uk/presentation-skills/how-to-sound-really-natural-when-delivering-a-fully-scripted-speech/
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