18.6: Delivery Methods and Practice Sessions

Impromptu Delivery

When using impromptu delivery, a speaker has little to no time to prepare for a speech. This means there is little time for research, audience analysis, organizing, and practice. For this reason, impromptu speaking often evokes higher degrees of speaking anxiety than other delivery types. Although impromptu speaking arouses anxiety, it is also a good way to build public speaking skills. Using some of the exercises for managing speaking anxiety that were discussed earlier in this chapter can help a speaker better manage the challenges of impromptu speaking. Only skilled public speakers with much experience are usually able to “pull off” an impromptu delivery without looking unprepared. Otherwise, a speaker who is very familiar with the subject matter can sometimes be a competent impromptu speaker (expertise can compensate for the lack of research and organizing time).

When speaking impromptu, be brief, stick to what you know, and avoid rambling. Quickly organize your thoughts into an introduction, body, and conclusion. Try to determine three key ideas that will serve as the basis of your main points.

Most of our day-to-day interactions involve impromptu speaking, but in what situations would impromptu speaking be required at work? If you participate in a meeting as the representative of the public relations department, a colleague may ask you to say a few words about a recent news story involving a public relations misstep of a competing company. In this case, you are expected to speak on the spot because of your expertise. A competent communicator should anticipate instances like this and be prepared. If, at any point, you are asked to comment on something entirely unfamiliar to you, do not pretend to know something you don’t, as that may come back to hurt you later. You can usually mention that you do not have the necessary background information at that time but will follow up later with your comments.

Salespeople are generally good at impromptu speaking. They obviously have sales training and have built up a repertoire of adjectives and sayings that entice audiences to buy. Their ability to remain animated and fluent in their delivery with little time to prepare comes from much experience. Politicians, lawyers, teachers, journalists, and spokespeople also regularly engage in impromptu speaking.

Manuscript Delivery

Speaking from a written or printed document that contains the entirety of a speech/ presentation is known as manuscript delivery. Manuscript delivery can be the best choice when a speech/ presentation has complicated information and/or the contents are going to be quoted or published. Despite the fact that most novice speakers are not going to find themselves in that situation, many are drawn to this delivery method because of the security they feel with having everything they are going to say in front of them. Unfortunately, the security of having every word you want to say at your disposal translates to a poorly delivered and unengaging speech/ presentation. Even with every word written out, speakers can still have fluency hiccups and verbal fillers as they lose their place in the manuscript or get tripped up over their words. The alternative, of course, is that a speaker reads the manuscript the whole time, effectively cutting himself or herself off from the audience. One way to make a manuscript delivery more engaging is through the use of a teleprompter. Almost all politicians who give televised addresses use teleprompters (see Figure 18.6.1 “President Obama’s Teleprompter System”).

Figure 18.6.1 President Obama’s Teleprompter System

You may not even notice the presence of teleprompters, as the technology has improved to give the illusion that a speaker is engaged with the audience and delivering a speech from memory. The Plexiglas sheets on poles that surround the president during the inauguration and State of the Union addresses are cleverly hidden teleprompters. Even these useful devices can fail. A quick search for “teleprompter fail” on YouTube will yield many examples of politicians and newscasters who probably wish they had a paper backup of their speech. Since most of us will likely not have opportunities to speak using a teleprompter, great care should be taken to ensure that the delivery is effective. To make the delivery seem more natural, print the speech out in a larger-than-typical font, triple-space between lines so you can easily find your place, use heavier-than-normal paper so it’s easy to pick up and turn the pages as needed, and use a portfolio so you can carry the manuscript securely. (This is recommended for, say, conference presentations, if you have to speak for 20 minutes or more — not for short presentations in college or at work.)

Memorized Delivery

Completely memorizing a speech and delivering it without notes is known as memorized delivery. Some students attempt to memorize their speech because they think it will make them feel more confident to not have to look at their notes; however, when their anxiety level spikes at the beginning of their speech and their mind goes blank for a minute, many admit they should have chosen a different delivery method. When using any of the other delivery methods, speakers still need to rely on their memory. An impromptu speaker must recall facts or experiences related to their topic, and speakers using a manuscript have some of their content memorized so they do not read their entire time and miss the opportunity for eye contact. The problem with memorized delivery overall is that it puts too much responsibility on our memory, which we all know from experience is fallible.

When memorizing, most people use rote memorization techniques, which entail reading and then reciting something over and over until it is committed to memory. One major downfall of this technique is its effect on speaking rate. When we memorize this way, we end up going over the early parts of a speech many more times than the later parts. As you memorize one sentence, you add on another, and so on. By the time you’re adding on later parts of your speech, you are likely speed talking through the earlier parts because you know them by heart. To prevent bad habits from practice from hurting our delivery, we should practice speeches/ presentations the exact way we want to deliver them to our audience. Fast-paced speaking during practice will likely make its way into the actual delivery. Delivery also suffers when speaking from memory if the speaker sounds like he/she is flatly “reciting.” Rote memorization tasks that many of us had to do in school have left their mark on our memorized delivery.

Memorized delivery may be a good idea only if the speech/presentation is short (only one to two minutes), is personal (like a brief toast), or will be repeated numerous times (like a tour guide’s spiel) — and even in these cases, it may be perfectly fine to have notes. Many students think that their anxiety and/or delivery challenges will be fixed if they just memorize their speech only to find that they are more anxious and have more problems.

Extemporaneous Delivery

Extemporaneous delivery entails memorizing the overall structure and main points of a speech/presentation and then speaking from keyword/key-phrase notes. This delivery mode brings together many of the strengths of the previous three methods. Since you internalize and memorize only the main structure, you don’t have to worry as much about the content and delivery seeming stale. Extemporaneous delivery brings in some of the spontaneity of impromptu delivery but still allows a speaker to carefully plan the overall structure and incorporate supporting materials that include key facts, quotations, and paraphrased information. You can also more freely adapt your speech/presentation to fit various audiences and occasions, since every word and sentence isn’t predetermined. This can be especially beneficial when a speech/presentation will be delivered multiple times. Your professors’ lectures are good examples of extemporaneous delivery. Even though they may have presented the basic content of each lesson dozens of times over the years, each presentation has been different, because they vary the examples and amount of elaboration added to the (memorized) core content. For instance, while COMM 6019 is offered in most graduate certificates at Fanshawe, professors teaching two or more sections in different programs would likely change the examples they use to illustrate certain points, so they can make the content more relevant for specific groups. They might also change the examples they use from one semester to the next, based on relevant local and global events and news coverage.

When preparing a speech/ presentation that you will deliver extemporaneously, start practicing early and then continue to practice as you revise your content. Investing quality time and effort into the outlining process helps with extemporaneous delivery. As you put together your outline, you are already doing the work of internalizing the key structure of your speech. Read parts of your outline aloud as you draft them to help ensure they are written in a way that makes sense and is easy for you to deliver. By the time you complete the formal, full-sentence outline, you should have already internalized much of the key information in your speech. Now, you can begin practicing with the full outline. As you become more comfortable with the content of your full outline, start to convert it into your speaking outline. Take out information that you know well and replace it with a keyword or key phrase that prompts your memory. Leave key quotes, facts, and other paraphrased information, including your verbal source citation information, on your delivery outline so you make sure to include it in your delivery. Once you’ve converted your full outline into your speaking outline, practice it a few more times, making sure to take some time between each practice session so you don’t inadvertently start to memorize everything word for word. The final product should be a confident delivery of a well-organized and structured speech/presentation that is conversational and adaptable to various audiences and occasions.