The audience needs to be engaged and thinking about what you’re talking about. A good way to do this is to ask a question the audience hadn't considered, and force them to think of the only obvious answer. This is called a rhetorical question. Rhetorical questions aren't meant to be answered, but still allow the audience to think about the question and relate to what you’re talking about. These questions are great to use as an introduction to your speech and can never be overused throughout the rest of your speech.
Using complicated language in essays is fine. If the reader misreads or doesn't understand, they can just track back a few words or do a quick Google search of the phrase in question. This is the opposite in a speech. Hammering your audience with a few clauses in one sentence can cause you to lose your audience very quickly. Use simple language that you can read and the audience will understand well.
This can be achieved by reading your speech aloud a few times before presenting it. Reading speeches aloud allow you to filter out those confusing statements. It helps a lot if you have a test audience to tell you when there is something a bit too tricky for them. It’s a good idea to replace the trouble sentence with one or two extra sentences, spreading the information out giving the audience more time to think.
Don’t drag the speech on for too long. It’s good to end when your information starts to seem irrelevant or repetitive. If possible, don’t just keep the most interesting or important information at the beginning of the speech. If the audience thinks that your information is unnecessary or repetitive, they’ll stop paying attention to what you’re saying.
Don’t include a personal introduction or farewell in the written speech. For instance don’t include “Hi, my name is Ashneil and I’ll be talking about soup standards across Australia”. You should always introduce yourself on the spot because this prevents reading line by line of your speech.
Basically, to write a great speech, it’s important to use rhetorical questions to engage the audience, avoid complicated language and lengthy speeches to keep the audience’s attention, and not include a personal introduction in your written speech to keep yourself from reading line-by-line.
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