How to Give An Extemporaneous Speech

Let us learn a method of public speaking that gives professional speakers that comfortable conversational sound. It's called extemporaneous speaking which is a misunderstood word. The key reason to use extemporaneous speaking is that it gives you the most versatility and it's a flexible approach and it's the one that most listeners prefer. There are other speaking styles that audiences do not tend to enjoy that many speakers often use when they should not, so let's look at some options to put extemporaneous speaking in context. For example, most audiences don't wanna listen to speakers who are reading word for word directly from a manuscript. This is called manuscript speaking and it usually sounds dry and robotic. The speaker barely makes eye contact and stands motionless at a podium as they read. It can be done well but some speakers can read a teleprompter, for example, and you can't even tell they're reading. They sound natural, but that takes talent and practice. Those are typically professional politicians or TV personalities who do this for a living and they have speech writers who write as they talk but when the average speaker reads right from their notes and looks down, most of the time listeners don't like that. You might remember what it sounds like when a student is reading their paper assignment in front of the class. That's what most speakers sound like when they use the manuscript style of speaking. If you wanna lose your audience, as I say, this is a great approach, but it is a useful point of comparison for a video like this. Another style that listeners tend not to enjoy is memorization. A memorized speech means that the speaker memorizes literally every word, which can sound just as mechanical as reading. You can even hear that the speaker uses a deliberate or calculated intonation and even uses maybe the same exact gestures that they practiced but total memorization does have some uses, for example, actors memorize dialogue. Performance artists might memorize a poem or a portion of a poem, but memorization is really difficult and it has almost no payoff for your average professional presentation. The method I'm recommending is extemporaneous speaking. This works best for almost all public speaking in professional settings. Big picture, this usually involves a detailed outline at least at first, not a word-for-word manuscript, and you would practice your presentation numerous times beforehand. You would eventually reduce those detailed outlines to what we call speaking notes, just keywords or phrases only about three to five words per line. Your speaking notes would end up looking like a bulleted list of items you planned to talk about. You put those on a note card or a small pad of paper and you just refer to them when you need to during the speech. That's the big picture. Now, there are some advantages to this approach, lots. Through that preparation process, the speaker gets to know his or her stuff well enough to speak conversationally without relying on their notes. Extemporaneous speaking allows you to adapt your message to your listeners as you go. You can expand some illustrations if you need to. You can compress or cut other parts depending upon the situation. If you prepared a 30 minute presentation and you end up being told you only have 25 minutes to do it, an extemporaneous approach allows you to cut that five minutes or even more and nobody's gonna know the difference. At it's best, extemporaneous speaking sounds like a structured conversation. You have maximum flexibility like this 'cause you're totally prepared. You can't do those things with a manuscript or a fully memorized speech. For extemporaneous speaking, your notes are there mostly to keep you on track. They're like a safety net in case you lose your place or draw a blank. Ideally, you might just glance down at your notes every 30 or 60 seconds as a reminder but you have notes and that still allows for some specifics. Of course, like I always write out my most important direct quotations word for word so I don't misquote somebody important. I write out important names or exact statistics but overall I don't need to frame those isolated specifics in a larger word-for-word style outline. I'll show you an example of how to prepare your notes and practice this in a moment, but first I wanted to clarify a very common misunderstanding that I referred to earlier. Sometimes people refer to this extemporaneous style as speaking impromptu. In everyday conversation, I've heard people interchange these words often but that's not accurate when it comes to specific styles of public speaking. Impromptu speaking and extemporaneous speaking are two different styles, and this is not my opinion. In speaking competitions in college, for example, there are two different categories. I used to judge and coach speaking competitions when I was in graduate school. Impromptu means speaking in the spur of the moment, what some people call "Off the cuff," or "On the fly." Impromptu speaking involves little or no time to prepare beforehand and it's usually done with no notes or maybe just a couple of scribbles on a scrap of paper. You might have just seconds to gather your thoughts. In speaking competitions, for example, impromptu speakers might be given a topic or quotation to react to and they have two minutes to prepare a five to seven-minute speech, for example. In a professional setting, your boss might say to you unexpectedly in a meeting, "Julie, tell us how your high-priority projects are going," and Julie has just a few seconds to think about what to say. In essence, she'll be thinking as she's speaking, that's impromptu or maybe she'll have the benefit of a couple of minutes to prepare because her boss says, "In a couple of minutes, I'd like to hear from you all about your high priority projects." That gives Julie a minute or so right there in the room to jot down a few bullet points but she still has no time to practice or gather materials or anything that compares to an extemporaneous speech approach. Now they do have a couple of things in common. Ideally, both impromptu and extemporaneous speaking sounds conversational, that's why they're sometimes confused, and neither of them in the end involve extensive speaking notes. The key difference is that extemporaneous presentations have the benefit of lots of time for behind-the-scenes research, preparation, and practice. Let's get even more hands-on and I'll show you how to adjust your notes as you prepare and practice in the days leading up to an extemporaneous presentation. There are essentially two ways to end up with very basic speaking notes with just keywords or phrases. I don't recommend the first approach but some speakers I know insist that they have to do it this way as part of their creative process. The first approach is to start with a full word-for-word draft of your entire message. Essentially, this is like a really rough draft of a manuscript speech. Some speakers like to go through this because they want to get all of their ideas on paper just to figure out what it is they really wanna say. They know they're not gonna read these notes when they present, the draft is just part of the process. From there, they revise their notes by shaping them into a detailed outline that's structured around an introduction, body, conclusion, and the body of the presentation then usually has just three or four main points. This draft outline will be almost as long as their original rough draft manuscript but the structure will be more clarified I don't recommend starting with a full word-for-word manuscript because it's too easy to lead to a speaker wanting to just read a cleaned-up version of these notes like they're reading a paper. I recommend the second method which is essentially skipping that word-for-word rough draft and beginning with that extremely detailed outline of the entire message. This outline usually has lots of full sentences at first. This type of outline is superior to what you would've come up with in a word-for-word draft of a message because it's usually stuffed with all of the quotations, research, and citations. The first outline is usually much more detailed and longer than your final presentation will be because you're not cutting anything just yet at this stage. I always view my first detailed outline as an organized curated database of material I can use as a jumping-off place. I give myself permission to put anything and everything I want in my first outline. Now, let's say you're at the point where you have that first big outline researched and prepared and you're ready to practice and read through it. Let's call this day one. We'll pretend we are three days away from your actual presentation. On day one, I'm not really concerned about how it sounds as a speech or a presentation yet. It won't sound smooth. I just talk through the outline to myself. I just mutter through it a few times to make sure all of the big pieces are in the right place and everything I'd potentially like to include is there. I read through it a few times like this. I cut and revise as I go and then I put it aside and sleep on it. On day two, the next day, I would make the first big cut, so start cutting the pieces that you can already tell don't work or don't need to be there. This will make the message clearer and easier to follow. You keep the best off and toss anything that's not working well. You cut extra words that you don't need. That means you'd be rewriting your notes and cleaning them up by cutting about 50% from your original outline. Each full page of notes now becomes about a half page of notes with more space and your sentences are getting shorter then you talk through it a few more times and you edit as you go on day two. You're not trying to say anything perfectly or memorize exactly how you'd say it as you practice, don't try to repeat sentences the same way each time as you talk through it, keep it conversational as you practice. You're just learning how to talk about the ideas and becoming more fluent with the specifics of the information. This is the process of internalizing the material so you know your stuff. I usually make small changes deliberately each time I tell a story or share an example so I'm not tempted to memorize exact sentences. As long as I hit the key ideas along the way, I consider that a victory. I usually time myself on day two to make sure that I'm at least in the general ballpark of what the time limit is. If I'm over time, I look for ways to simplify, find ways to compress what I'm saying. As much as you can, you look up from your notes as you practice, stretch yourself to recall what comes next instead of looking down every chance you get. I practice a few times like this on day two and then I put it aside and sleep on it again. On day three, this is the day before the presentation, you repeat the process. This is your second big cut where you cut another 50% of the words from your outline. This second cut might involve cutting examples and illustrations from the notes if you're still over time but will more likely mean you're cutting down from full sentences in your notes so they are getting closer and closer to phrases or even single keywords. Your original full page of notes is now just about a quarter of a page of line spaces and in terms of words, is really just a skeleton outline. It should look like a bulleted list of items you'll talk about but the actual content hasn't disappeared. You've just absorbed it to the point where one bullet of notes will keep you talking for 30 seconds or more because you know the rest of the story. A goal at this point is to have one nicely spaced notecard for about every minute you'd like to speak. So a 10-minute presentation would have just 10 note cards with keywords only. You'd again talk through your outline a few more times on day three, you'd end up making small edits and revisions each time to your notes. This is the day before the actual presentation. It's like a dress rehearsal, so I stand up as I practice, I gesture as I talk, take it comfortably. I pretend I'm talking to an audience essentially. I recommend timing yourself each time you practice the day before, so you sound concise. Make every effort not to look at your notes. You have to fight that urge and this should be getting easier. Many speakers look at their notes out of a nervous habit by this point, not because they really need to look down. So practice with your eyes up and if you truly forget what you're gonna say next, just glance at your notes and look right back up and pretend to make eye contact. I practice it about three times like this on the day before and then I put it aside and sleep on it. The next day is speech day. Here we are and I always make one last cut to my notes. The morning of a presentation, I wake up early, I rewrite my notes on cards one last time to make sure they're clean and clear and easy to see when I glance down. I make even more cuts to words and phrases. A story that used to be a long paragraph on a full page now can show up on the notes just as a key phrase or even a single word. In the morning, I always practice my introduction and conclusion a few extra times to make sure I go through them. Also, any tricky parts I go through one more time. In total, these three days of practice usually mean that you'll mutter through or actually practice your presentation about 10 times, let's say three times each day, and then one extra rep through the tricky parts the morning of the speech. This is usually what it takes to get that confident, conversational sound that professional speakers have. This may sound like a lot of work but the good news is this, if you prepare like this, you'll be automatically in about the top 5% of speakers in your context. Most speakers practice just one or maybe two times. All of your behind-the-scenes efforts will make your presentation sound effortless on the day. As mentioned, you can use the extemporaneous style in almost any and all professional situations. That's not true for manuscripts, memorized, or impromptu speaking. Feel free to take a look at the free resources on my website, including these seven tips to instantly make you a more confident speaker. Thanks, God bless, see you soon.

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