Alcazarista’s Manual for the elaboration of oral speeches in English
PROLOGUE At the moment of deciding which research project would we do, doubting about all the ideas that come to mind is inevitable; but what we always had on our minds was that we has to create a transcendent project, one that with luck would help other students of our beloved school. According to this, we decided that creating a manual that eases the making process of speeches in English would be the most appropriate, that’s why we were so dedicated during our last three school years, so the creation of a useful academic tool could be used by our classmates. We thank to every student and teacher who consider that this manual could be really helpful to improve their second-language skills, because, in fact, that has always been our main motivation. Â
My teacher asked me to do an oral speech, but‌ what is that? An oral speech is a new genre of communication which allow you to express ideas and opinions about a topic in front of a group of people (audience). Usually it is elegant, credible and integral.
When you want to do an oral speech, is necessary to have a clear idea of what would you like to say, what are the main points of it, how long would it be and who is the audience‌ is not the same talking to your family than talking to your classmates. To do all the above you need to know, what kind of speech the teacher wants you to do? So, taking into account our experience studying english in GSMA, we are going to describe the most common types of academic high school speeches as follows:
oINFORMATIVE SPEECH Its purpose is to provide the audience interesting and useful information about a determined topic. To reach this purpose it is necessary to have a previous research and organization of that information. TIP: you can choose a strange topic, something unusual, that will encourage the audience to pay attention of what you are talking about.
oPERSUASIVE SPEECH Its purpose is to convince the audience about your point of view or at least, one part of it. To aim this purpose is necessary to take into account who is going to be the audience and which is going to be your point of view; not all the people have the same willingness in front of a specific topic. TIP: It is important to identify the possible objections that could be said by the audience, in this way you could be ready to answer any of them with excellent arguments.
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AGAINST – FOR SPEECH
Its purpose is to support and/or criticize different arguments about a determined controversial topic. There have to be at least three “against” arguments and other three “for” arguments. TIP: Try to look for an interesting and innovative topic; it is TOTALLY boring when a classmate is doing an against – for speech about drugs, abortion, teenage pregnancy, among others.
A teaching tool is a resource used by a teacher to enrich the classroom experience and to provide the students better strategies to learn a specific concept or procedure concerning the cathedra. We, as students of GSMA, know that in ninth, tenth and eleventh grade, we have to develop the ability to speak in english, taking into account that we are supposed to have a B1 level according to the National Ministry of Education and well… that is very difficult, it is not easy to remember all the grammar structures to try to say something that we want in english. So, GSMA’s english teachers implemented the speeches modality for us to have a clearer structure of what we want to say to other people and to evaluate in an easier way all the criteria which has to be taken into account when we are doing an oral presentation in front of an audience. The speeches modality is a teaching tool because gives the students a framework to organize and develop an oral presentation effectively. We as eleventh graders advise other students to take advantage of this tool because, believe it or not, it is very useful to make oral presentations in spanish and english, and help us to develop ourselves better in these kind of activities.
HOW TO DO A SPEECH? Next, we are going to explain how to do a speech from the elaboration of an outline, we are going to describe each one of the parts of a speech and additionally we are going to give you essential tips to prepare an speech and to write the corresponding outline. Â Outline An outline is a writen scheme of the speech, it helps the teacher and the student to follow the order and it has the same parts of it: title, introduction, body and conclusion. Here are the explanations of each part:
o Title: Is the word or group of words that gives the reader/audience a notion of what is the presentation going to be about. Â o Introduction: An introduction is the part of a speech when you tell the audience what are you going to talk about, you have to catch their attention. You write a summary of the topic describing the approach that you are going to give to it. Generally we catch the audience's attention through a retorical question; it is a question that you do not expect to be answered and help the audience to be more confident with you and with what you are going to say. All what we have said until now about the introduction includes only the outline, REMEMBER! THE OUTLINE IS JUST A SCHEME OR GUIDE OF YOUR PRESENTATION, THE EVALUATOR AND YOU ARE GOING TO BE THE ONLY ONES WHO HAVE IT, so, from now on we are going to give you some advices to develop your introduction, not on the outline but talking.
It is important to introduce yourself, that will establish authority and in this way the audience can identify you. After that you could tell them the title and the three main points of your presentationi, followed by the retorical question. Then, it would be interesting if you tell them why did you choose the topic and your objective with that (in this point take into account the types of academic speeches). Finally it is important to link the last part of the introduction with the first one of the body, for that you could use a expression like: "As I said earlier, the first point of my speech is..." TIP: You can start talking using one of these sentences: “Shall we start”, “Let’s get the ball rolling”, “Let’s begin”, “Good morning ladies and gentlemen”…
o Body: Â It is the part of the speech in which you develop the points established in the introduction. This development on the outline should be an opening of each one of the points, that is, writing only one sentence like if we were starting to talk followed by suspension points(see the example below). When you start talking, you describe each one of them with enough information to be clear and understandable for the audience. It is also important to have an order when we are developping the body, for example: from the specific to the general/from the general to the specific; chronological order, etc. Taking into account the order, you can separate each one of the points making transitions, for example: "Now that we have seen... Let's turn on..." There are some parts of the presentation that need to be explained with more emphasis; to do that you can summarize, give examples, ilustrate the concept or situation, show a video or a computer graphic, be creative Â
o Conclusion: It is the last part of the speech. There you give a personal opinion, moral or famous qoute about the topic that you talked about. It is important for you to make the audience remind the objective of the presentation and the points that you explained; for that, you can summarize your speech by means of a list, for example. On the outline you have to write a short summary of your presentation including your personal touch through the options given before, during the speaking part of the speech you say the three main points developped in the presentation and what you wrote on the outline. In this part is really important to be prepared for any kind of question from the audience, there you should solve all their doubts about the topic and sometimes you should also defend the arguments given during a persuasive speech. Make sure you understand the question that they are doing, sometimes we misunderstand the question and answer things that have no relation with the context. TIP: Avoid saying "In conclusion..." in this part of the speech, it is boring and does not sound very proper to finish a speech Next we are going to give you an example of an outline made to do a descriptive speech, be observant and notice the little details explained before.
EVALUATION SCHEME We have already explained what is a speech, which are the types of speech and which are the parts of a speech. The previous information is the base to make an excellent speech, but... Do you know how are you going to be evaluated? Next is the scheme of the rubric, it is an evaluation based on criteria that has to be rated from poor to excellent. This rubric has five parts: introduction, body, conclusion, delivery and overall evaluation; each one of them has between 3 and 9 items to evaluate the development of the speech. Take a look!
WA IT! WHICH A RE THE MOSTC OMMON FAILINGS C OMMITTED DUR ING A SPE E C H?
By means of a poll we determined that the most common failings committed during a speech, for you, the students, are related with intonation and pronunciation. Next we are going to explain and give you some recommendations not only for this, but also for other failings that we discovered helped by the rubric.
PRONUNCIATION AND INTONATION Pronunciation is a phonetic element that helps us to produce correct sounds in our mouth during a conversation, speech, monologue, etc, taking into account stress and articulation of the words. Intonation refers to the rises and falls of the voice when we are speaking. We think that the best way to improve these elements of phonetics is to PRACTICE! If someone in your family speaks english, speak with h er/him, that will help you to speak fluently and clearly. Besides, it is adviseable to listen to music in english to identify the correct pronunciation of the words, you can also watch american or english TV shows to listen how is the intonation of determined words according to the context. Practice in front of the mirror what you have to say, especially the key technical words that you repeat the most during the presentation.
INTRODUCTION Taking into account the results and the analysis of results of the poll, we determined that the most common failings committed during this part of the speech are related with the following criterias: “related to the audience”, “established credibility” and “previewed body”. As we have already said, these three points are part of the introduction and if we do not pay attention to the good development of them probably our speech would be really boring and not interesting at all for the audience… so, to avoid this is necessary: • To have at least a vague idea of WHO IS GOING TO BE YOUR SPEECH’S AUDIENCE, knowing this is going to be easier for you to be prepared for a certain kind of questions or to determined if some of them is an expert in the field that you are going to explain, in this point is also important to relate the audience with your speech topic through examples and/or stories that are common for them. And obviously help their understanding with visual aids.
• To study and practice a lot what you are going to say. The most you know about what you are going to say, the most selfconfident you are because you are going to be prepared for any question or comment of the audience and/or the evaluator. It is also important to show the audience evidence that they find credibly, for example if you are talking about the consequences of contracting HIV, you can show a video of an interview made to a person who has this dissease. Other point that helps is the body lenguage, your voice, gestures, character and facial expressions; these aspects say a lot of you, but REMEMBER! HOW IT HELPS, ALSO CAN HANDICAP. Some positions/attitudes that you should do to show yourself selfconfident are:
To have your back straight Be relaxed and calm before and during the speech Smile Stand with legs and arms stretched wide open Avoid to check your text messages, check your watch, or check out how the other participants are reacting
• Not to preview the body is a common mistake, sometimes we are so very focus on what we are saying that we forget to prepare the audience for the rest of the presentation. Our advice for this point is very related with an attitude that we said before, BE RELAXED! If you are doing the speech as fast as you can it would not be understandable for the audience and it would not be interesting either. So, if it is necessary write on a paper the structure of your presentation, so it could be a guide for you. You can also drink a couple of drops of valerian, it will calm you down.
BODY According to the results obtained in the rubrics, the most common mistakes in this part of the speech are: “Language accurate”, “Language appropiate” and “Connectives effective”. So, we are going to discuss and advise you about the language ones first and then about the connectives. • When you are doing a speech it is necessary to have a clear, technical and respectful language, in such a way that the audience and the evaluator can understand what you are saying. Yes, you can use some colloquial expressions and/or words to brake the ice, but not always, you must use technical words related to your topic, that would give the audience credibility about what you are saying and they will think that the speech is important for you and that you took time to prepare it.
• Connectives! Most of the time we do not use them very well because we do not know when to use each one of them. First of all, as its name says, its function is to connect or link words and paragraphs. But, we cannot use the same connective always, there are specific connectives for specific situations and next we are going to show you some of them. It is also important to say that this mistake is also common when you write any kind of text, in this case, it would be your outline; we use a lot of commas because for us these are connectors when they are not. To correct this mistake you could write text about any topic, just to practice, additionaly you can use this chart:
CONCLUSION The most common mistakes found in this part of the speech are in the three sections of it, it means: “Prepared audience for ending”, “Reinforced central idea” and “Vivid ending”. There were no more than one group in “Prepare audience for ending” but it is necessary to feedback this criteria because in this way that group could improve its performance. • At the moment of concluding your speech, we don’t recommend to say “The conclusion is that…” or “in conclusion…” because it might be a little redundant. But, you can use some words or connectors that let the audience know you are concluding, such as finally, in summary, to sum up (see the connectives chart). Additionally, the fact of preparing a vivid ending can make your speech way more memorable, so you can use some quotes, humor phrases, personal opinions or experiences to make the audience remember your speech.
• According to the structure given by the teacher, at the conclusion you must rename the central idea of the speech, and also expose the points you have talked about. So if you know that probably you will forget it at the moment of the presentation, write it on your paper guide to remember or put some signal on your visual aids.
DELIVERY In this part of the speech we find an average, fair and poor development in the next five criterias: “Avoided distracting mennerisms”, “Articulated words clearly”, “Began without rushing”, “Mantained eye contact”, “Used pauses effectively” “Used vocal variety”. Take into account the following tips to correct the previous mistakes. • Relax: Is normal to feel anxious or nervous before presenting an speech, but for some people those nerves lead to distracting mannerisms, such as fillers or even some movements of arms or hands that can distract the audience from the speech. For this, we recommend to relax, take it easy, if you know about the topic and practice a lot, it will be easier for you.
• Pronunciation and intonation: As said before, nerves can affect your speech in many different ways, and at the moment of talking you can mispronounce some words, talk too fast, or even talk without vocal variety. For this, we recommend again to practice, search for the pronunciation of the words, repeat your speech as times as necessary. • Be enthusiastic: If the audience notice your enthusiasm for the topic you talk about, they will pay more attention, but don’t exaggerate, if you do, it will seem acted. Also, don’t confuse enthusiasm with rush, talk normally, as you do in a normal conversation, not fast but neither slow.
OVERALL EVALUATION The only two mistakes that we found in this part of the speech are related with the following criterias: “Held interest of audience” and “Speech completed withing time limit”, to improve your development in this part of the speech read this: • When you think about what your audience might interest, it’s easier to set a specific purpose. Thinking about general topics your audience could like can also help them to hold their attentions on your speech. Generally, we suggest to focus on specific characteristics of your public and also adapt the speech to them, it would be easier for you and for them to finish the speech succesfully.
Thanks for reading! Vivian páez – sofía sánchez once