In this video, we will start our discussion on speech delivery. And the one concept that needs to be remembered throughout the next several lectures is this. Speech delivery is an art rather than a science. It's wrong to assume that what works for one speaker will work for another. As a matter of fact, most of the time that's not necessarily the case.
There are four different delivery styles from which a speaker has to choose. I'll list them for you. They are the impromptu delivery style, that's I-M-P-R-O-M-P-T-U, the extemporaneous delivery style, E-X-T-E-M-P-O-R-A-N-E-O-U-S, the manuscripted delivery style, and the memorized delivery style.
Let's talk about these four different styles. styles of delivery. Impromptu first.
Impromptu delivery means you have a speech being delivered with very little or no preparation at all. Some of you might be saying to yourself, hey, I just did that, but that's not the lack of preparation that I'm referring to. That's procrastination. That's someone who knew a speech was coming and they just didn't do the work necessary to prepare themselves for that presentation.
In real life, most impromptu settings are concocted with a speaker, a politician maybe, someone who speaks for a living, finds themselves giving a presentation that was never on the schedule for that moment. Maybe they are passing through town and some scenario develops where they say, hey, can you stop and give a stump speech here? That's not on the agenda, but they decide to go ahead and do it anyway. That's an impromptu speech setting.
Believe it or not, it happens more often than most people think. thing. It's happened to me on several occasions.
Most recently, I went back to my office, I checked my voicemail around 10 30 in the morning, and the local Rotary Club had called and wanted to know if I would be willing to go give a speech for them 20 minutes long during their luncheon hour. That would be 12 o'clock, all right, an hour and a half to prepare a 20-minute presentation. That is known as an impromptu situation, but in real life, life, well, it's not actually a moment that you are not prepared for.
What had happened in the Rotary situation was they had a speaker, somebody from Little Rock, who was a member of the Senate, was going to be in Pocahontas that day, and they had slated for him to have lunch with the Rotary Club and to give a presentation on the activities, you know, happening in Little Rock. Well, there was a close vote on the floor, and that senator couldn't make it. He called that morning and said, I'm sorry, I won't be flying. into town that day. Maybe I'll have to postpone that presentation for another day."That was fine, but Rotary had a dilemma on their hands. They didn't have a presenter for their luncheon. Well, they knew that I was very involved with Downtown Playhouse here in Pocahontas and that I was trying to get the word out about some of the activities and the fundraising that we were doing there. I got a call and they called me because they knew I had already given such presentation several times. throughout the region. In other words, I had a presentation delivered already. What I didn't have prepared was, you know, the time slotted to give that thing in an hour and a half. So in an impromptu setting, what you find yourself doing is not really working on a speech, you know, in that hour and a half or in that 10 minutes or in that two hours or whatever it is that you have from the moment you were invited to the moment that you deliver. You're really just working on an introduction that kind of ties in what you've already done. prepared to their agenda. So on the day that I accepted that offer to that invitation to give a presentation I took an hour and a half actually I didn't even take that long I took a little bit of time to develop an introduction that tied the message that I had already been delivering throughout the region in with their agenda and it didn't take long at all and once I got through the introduction I was back on course with something that I had prepared and delivered thoroughly. over and over again. That's a real impromptu setting. The next one is an extemporaneous speech. And an extemporaneous speech delivery means that you have a speech that is prepared thoroughly, but it is adaptable to the message. I should say it's adaptable to certain circumstances in certain situations. You know, you can take the message and maybe expand certain seconds. Maybe reduce certain segments. Maybe you'll leave certain portions of the message out. Maybe you will rearrange the main points because it serves a certain audience better. Most speakers, most teachers, most people who present actually present with an extemporaneous speech delivery style. The word sounds fancy. We say extemp. for short, but it's really nothing more than an outline format that most presenters follow in delivering their material. You look down and basically the outline says, oh, I'm supposed to address this at that point. Oh, I'm supposed to discuss this now. I'm supposed to discuss this. Also, it gives you the opportunity to adapt to the audience. If you see confusion or boredom, or if you see something going on with the audience that prompts you to elaborate more, you can stop and do it. do that because it's an extemporaneous delivery style. It allows for that flexibility. That's why teachers love it so much. Even though the lecture material is the same from one class to the next, you know, this one class might be a little bit more ahead than another. So, hey, we can reduce this or they might be a little bit more advanced than the other. I don't have to talk about this at all. Or maybe this class is asking a lot more questions. Fine. I have room and flexibility in in my extemporaneous format, to allow for that. It is the one format that allows that kind of flexibility, and that's why most presenters use it. The third type of delivery style that I want to mention to you is manuscript. Manuscript delivery is called for when the situation requires precise timing and exact wording. most of us don't have to worry about speaking scenarios where a manuscript delivery is called precise wording and exact timing that's like when leaders might be declaring war or when you have local officials you know giving out an amber alert or taking questions you know from audiences who want to know about a certain, you know, the coronavirus update or something like this. So with a manuscripted delivery style, the presenter, before they open the floor to questions, they want to make sure they get the message exactly right. Because in certain diplomatic circles, if you use the wrong word or the wrong insinuation or something that sounds a little flip or humorous and something that should sound far more serious, it can get the, in a nonverbal context, it can get the presenter in a lot of trouble. So what... they do is they write this thing word for word and because the situation is so dire most all of the things that we talked about in oral comm class like eye contact and humor and focus and conversational style are out the window audience members understand this person is going to stare at the notes because every word matters in what is being said and the speaker does just that looks down at a prepared manuscript does not veer from it at all or maybe looks at a teleprompter does not fear from it at all and gives that information I ask in my traditional classrooms, I ask the question, I say, what do you think seems to be more from the heart? Someone who speaks extemporaneously, where the ideas are coming from them in real time as they're addressing the audience, or someone who looks down and reads every word in full detail, word for word? Most of the time, my students will think, well, the extemporaneous speaking delivery seems more for the heart because it's coming from the heart. from the heart in real time. But the truth is a manuscripted speech delivery style is one that guarantees that all of your sentiment makes it to the message. Think about this. Think about you having prepared yourself for a job interview or to ask someone out for a date or something like this and your nerves are rattling, you're building up a lot of courage and going to face that situation and you didn't write it down or maybe you just jotted down a simple note or two. You get in, you suffer through that moment and you leave and you go to the car out in the parking lot and the first thing you do is go, doggone it. Why didn't I talk about this? I forgot to talk about this and it was the most important thing I wanted to deliver. That happens to people all the time. If your message is manuscripted, you're guaranteeing that that message gets in there. When our political leaders look through a teleprompter and read, they're not being phony. They are guaranteeing that their sentiment is not the same as the other person's. reaching us in the presentation. That's the value of a manuscripted delivery. When precise wording, exact timing are required, and if we're in a diplomatic scenario where we want to get to the point and not use any jargon or any terminology that can be interpreted in any way other than the one that is desired by the presenter. Finally, of the four delivery styles, we have the memorized speech delivery. Memorized speech is in some ways no different than a manuscripted delivery because memorized speech is also word for word. But there's a problem with memory. And even though memorized speech delivery style is a taught style, and it's not something that your textbooks will tell you doesn't exist, I will tell you that every speech teacher in the land will advise that you never commit a speech to memory. Students often think, well, if I commit it to memory, I'm going to impress the teacher. I'm going to let them know that I worked really hard. That might be the case, but what it's really doing is letting the instructor know that you worked hard for no reason. and maybe put something at risk. Here's the problem with memory. The obvious is we can forget. You're in the middle of a presentation, you get to a point and there's that moment. You're like a deer in the headlights, you can't remember where you were going, the audience recognizes that awkward pause and maybe even see the angst on your face. And then a second passes and another second passes and another second passes and before you know it, there's been dead silence. forever. It's called a pregnant pause. It's an awkward pause, an awkward moment in the presentation. And what they say is that if at least four seconds pass from the time that you lose that spot to the end of that four seconds, then you're probably not going to remember. Think about it. Yeah, you're talking to someone and you say, oh, what is the name of the group that plays that song? And you go, oh, I know it. It's... And then all of a sudden you realize it's on the tip... tip of your tongue, but you can't find it. Oh, give me a second. It'll come. It'll come. And the more you do that, the more you're pushing that memory away. And it might not be till a day or so later when you hear it on the radio and it clicks and all of a sudden you're texting people and you're saying, hey, guess who it was? Guess who it was? You don't want that to happen during a formal presentation. One, they see the awkwardness. They know you're lost. And what's even worse is most of the time what speakers do is they jump further down in the speech. find someplace that they're familiar with, not on paper, but in their mind, someplace that they're familiar with, and they take off from there, and guess what happens? Your audience has now lost a segment of that message, and in a lot of speeches, that segment is a precursor to understanding the stuff that you jumped down to. So now you're back on track, but you're telling them a bunch of stuff that they can't possibly understand because they missed a segment. It's kind of like missing the first five or six minutes. of a sitcom and you walk into the room and you ask everybody, well, why is he doing that? Why is he doing that? And the room is getting all frustrated with you because you weren't here when the premise was established. If you jump that much time because you've lost your memory, you're going to confuse that audience. They won't be able to follow a great deal of the rest of your speech. Another problem with memory as a speech delivery style is even though it's your own words, because you're... delivering from memory, you have a hard time being comfortable and relaxed and conversational. Most presenters who speak with a memorized speech delivery style usually sound fake. They usually sound like maybe a beginning actor in a high school play or something like that. They're very rigid. You can see in their eyes that they're searching for thought, and even though it's their own words, it's hard for them to apply their own sentiment to it because they're delivering dialogue. rather than delivering a message. So yeah, you should try to avoid at all costs giving a memorized speech. If it's that important, write it down and deliver from manuscript. If not, put it in an extemporaneous format so there's some flexibility between you and the audience in real time. And that's usually the best way for a presentation to take place.