Barronforcongress

Your clothing and grooming affect how you are perceived. These factors also influence how you see yourself and how you behave. A police officer out of uniform may not act as authoritatively as when dressed in blue. A doctor without a white jacket may behave like just another person. You may have a certain type of clothing that makes you feel comfortable and relaxed. You may even have a special “good luck” outfit that raises your confidence. When you are scheduled to speak, you should dress in a way that puts you at ease and makes you feel good about yourself. Since your speech is a special occasion, you should treat it as such. By dressing a little more formally than you usually do, you emphasize both to yourself and to the audience that your message is important. As we noted in Chapter 9, your appearance can serve as a presentation aid that complements your message. Like any other aid, it should never compete with your words for attention or be distracting. Always dress in good taste for the situation you anticipate.

It takes a lot of practice to sound natural. Although this statement may seem contradictory, it should not be surprising. Speaking before a group is not your typical way of communicating. Even though most people seem spontaneous and relaxed when talking with a small group of friends, something happens when they walk to the front of a room and face a larger audience of less familiar faces. They often freeze or become stilted and awkward. This blocks the natural flow of communication.
The key to overcoming this problem is to practice until you can respond fully to your ideas as you present them. Your voice, face, and body should express your feelings as well as your thoughts. On the day of Four speech, you become a model for your listeners, showing them how they should respond in turn.
To develop an effective extemporaneous style, practice until you feel that the speech is part of you. During practice you can actually hear what you have been preparing and try out the words and techniques you have been considering. What looked like a good idea in your outline may not seem to work as well when it comes to life in spoken words. It is better to discover this fact in rehearsal than before an actual audience.
You will probably want privacy the first two or three times you practice. Even then you should try to simulate the conditions under which the speech will be given. Stand up while you practice. Imagine your listeners in front of you. Picture them responding positively to what you have to say. Address your ideas to them, and visualize your ideas having impact.
If possible, go to your classroom to practice. If this is not possible, find another empty room where the speaking arrangements are similar. Such on-site rehearsal helps you get a better feel for the situation you will face, reducing its strangeness when you make your actual presentation. Begin practicing from your formal outline. Once you feel comfortable, switch to your key-word outline, then practice until the outline transfers from the paper to your head.
Keep material to be read to a minimum. Type or print quotations in large letters so that you can see them easily. Put each quotation on a separate index card or sheet of paper. If you will be using a lectern, position this material so that you can maintain frequent eye contact while reading. If you will speak from beside or in front of the lectern, hold your cards in your hand and raise them when it is time to read. Practice reading your quotations until you can present them naturally while only glancing at your notes. If your speech includes presentation aids, practice handling them until they are smoothly integrated into your presentation. They should seem a natural extension of your verbal message.

The word communication stems from the Latin word for common. An effective presentation allows a speaker and audience to hold ideas and feelings in common, even when they come from different cultural backgrounds. Such a presentation makes use of a verbal and nonverbal system of symbols that should work together to create meaning.
An effective presentation begins with your attitude. You must be committed to your topic and want to share this commitment. The way you speak should bring your ideas to life. In brief, you should want to communicate. This may seem obvious, but we remember another student in whom this desire to communicate seemed oddly missing. She had done well in high school speaking contests, and in her first speech she told her listeners that she thought of herself as a good speaker. And in a technical sense, she was correct. Her voice was pleasant and expressive, her manner direct and competent. But there was a false note, an overtone of artificiality. In consequence, her listeners gave her a rather chilly reception. It was clear that for her, speaking was an exhibition. She was more important than her ideas. Her listeners sensed that she had her J priorities wrong.
Beyond the right attitude, any good presentation has certain requirements. Your presentation must be loud enough to be heard easily in the back of the room where you are speaking. It should not call attention to itself or distract from your message. Consequently, you should avoid pompous pronunciations, artificial vocal patterns, and overly dramatic gestures. An effective presentation sounds natural and conversational—as though you v. talking with listeners, not at them. This helps reduce the psychological distance between you and your audience.