12 How Do I Recite?
Beth hadn’t expected to be called on her first day of college, in her very first class. Beth even guessed later on that the instructor, standing in the well of the theater-style classroom filled with a couple-hundred students, had deliberately picked out the shyest-looking student on whom to call, who just happened to be Beth. And sure enough, Beth had promptly blushed and stammered, barely able to speak. Fortunately, no one laughed at her. Instead, Beth sensed only pity or sympathy, which was bad enough. Yet from that moment on, Beth resolved to gain greater confidence in speaking before others. She simply regarded it as part of growing up.
Recitation
Students speak before groups and classes in school at all levels. Their speaking may be to ask or answer questions in class, present class projects or reports, or participate in school assemblies and theater. Instructors also occasionally assign or invite students to lead class or group discussions or work. Instructors at the college and graduate level may also retain student teaching assistants, assigning them roles that may include leading smaller recitation classes or study groups. Many individuals have natural fears of, or other negative reactions to, speaking before groups. Yet public speaking of one form or another is a relatively common skill, not only in schools but also in the workplace, in church, at neighborhood or other community gatherings, and even before gatherings in the home. Schools should thus generally introduce students to recitation before groups as part of their educational experience. Public speaking and thinking on one’s feet can be useful skills.
Rhetoric
Courses in rhetoric once combined forms of argumentation with public speaking, helping students learn both to think on their feet and to present their positions articulately and with poise and confidence. But gone are the days of rhetoric courses. The art and science of oral or even written persuasion are not often significant curriculum components. At most, you might stumble across a course in communication, styled more to communicate ideas and build relationships than to question, reason, analyze, justify, and persuade. Yet thinking clearly and speaking confidently if not also persuasively remains a helpful skill on school campuses and elsewhere, opening doors to significant opportunities. Teaching positions, leadership positions, management positions, business, communications and media, sales, and many professions can all require strong oral presentation skills. Value your skill at oral persuasion. Seek opportunities for practice in instructional programs before you find that you need the skill.
Content
A first step toward effective oral persuasion involves mastering the content. Your public speaking, whatever it entails, may be mostly or entirely scripted. You may literally have little more to do than to read what you wrote in advance. Even so, in scripted presentations, you’ll often find the need or opportunity to speak off script. You may have a questioner to answer. You may learn of something of peculiar interest at the event, calling on you to drop or supplement your script. You may even have inspiration strike you, causing you to abandon your script for something better, although beware such last-minute inspiration. Changing your script wholesale at the last minute can cause you to substitute something less appropriate, thoughtful, and well-crafted than you took great pains in advance to prepare. In any event, learn the content of your talk just as thoroughly as you would if preparing for a rigorous examination. In that way, you will have both the knowledge and confidence of an authority on the topic, even if you mostly stick to a script.
Preparation
Learning the topic on which you will speak isn’t the same as preparing for the talk. You likely won’t show up to simply speak off the cuff, even if you do know the topic inside and out. Instead, public speakers tend to prepare at least an outline and often a full script. An outline of your talk ensures that you hit the high points. If you are a confident and glib speaker, an outline may be all you want, so that your talk has an extra degree of spontaneity and naturalness. Yet preparing a full script can help you craft specific phrases that you want to use, while avoiding awkward expressions especially on sensitive points. An alternative is to use an outline for those parts of your talk that you know stone cold and can deliver without hesitation but to script the delicate points that you want to be sure to get exactly right. Preparing involves projecting, as far as able, what you are going to say. It’s usually best to do that in writing to have it in hand rather than purely in mind. The mind has a strange way of forgetting, especially under the stress and stimulus of public speaking.
Responding
Some talks aren’t speeches. Some talks, like a debate, public forum, or question-and-answer session, involve responding to queries or topics as they come up. Preparing for forums in which you do not control the topics involves anticipating the topics, as far as you are able, and then preparing for what you believe may be coming. Outlining or even scripting answers for questions you are sure that you’ll encounter can be a good idea, especially if your answers to those questions are critical to your talk’s success. Consider using a flow-chart or diagram outline so that you can readily move through your outline to locate the appropriate response. Moot practice or mock arguments with classmates, family members, or friends, and use of artificial intelligence queries, can help you anticipate the likely questions. And don’t necessarily restrict your preparation to the obvious questions. Prepare for obvious, likely, and somewhat likely questions. Consider preparing, too, for a couple of off-the-wall questions. Think of the craziest thing someone could ask, and prepare an answer, even a humorous answer. Those sorts of memorable responses can win a debate.
Practice
Having an outline or script for your talk is preparation. It’s not practice. Once you have a clear idea of what you are going to say, practice saying it. Don’t just subvocalize your talk while seated behind a computer screen. Stand up and rehearse it in full voice. Changing your posture from the seated position in which you write and read your script can alone throw you off. Get used to standing, using a lectern, or taking the other position in which you’ll give your talk. And get used to hearing your own voice. Practice until you can give your talk with the confidence that meets your own standard. Try giving the talk in front of a family member or friend, too. They can help you learn to look at your audience and get used to audience faces, movements, and expressions. If your talk requires that you hold a microphone, then practice doing so. A poorly or inconsistently positioned hand-held microphone can make a mess of a talk.
Memorizing
Depending on the forum and stakes of your talk, you may want to fully memorize your script. Reciting your script aloud without looking directly at it, while only glancing at it for reminders, should gradually get it firmly in your mind. After enough rehearsals, you should be able to recite from memory without even having it around. Once you have it firmly in mind, rehearsing it now and then, such as when walking, driving, or doing another activity that does not require concentration, can keep it fresh in mind and solidify the memory of it. One benefit of memorizing is that you can then use full eye contact with your audience and even move around, away from the lectern where you may have a copy of your script or outline. Having a copy of your script handy, even though you’ve memorized it, can help ease your jitters and ensure that you can resort to it if conditions throw you off course. That’s the way skilled presenters often use an outline or script, without reference but as a reference aid in a pinch.
Physiology
One of the most important ways to prepare for your talk is to anticipate the natural physiological responses you will likely feel during your first several talks or with higher-stakes talks in front of larger audiences. If you anticipate your body’s natural responses, those responses won’t alarm you or throw you off so much as they would if taking you entirely by surprise. Novice speakers may feel stomach upset, ringing ears, pounding heart, shortness of breath, and shaking hands just before beginning their talk, related to adrenaline and elevated blood pressure. These conditions can not only affect your hearing and balance but also make your voice sound different when you begin to speak and leave you short of breath or with shallow breath. Don’t let the onset of these symptoms make you think that something is seriously wrong with you, compounding your concern. Instead, recognize that they are normal responses for a novice preparing to give a challenging talk. Control what you can control. For instance, clasp your hands together or hide them to conceal their shaking, both from the audience and from you. Take a deep breath or two if you feel faint, but also don’t hyperventilate. Manage your physiologic response as best you can until it gradually disappears, usually partway into your talk. Future talks should ease until you feel no unusual response.
Techniques
Speakers use various techniques to control, reduce, or mask their physiologic response. One technique is to admit your nerves, certainly to yourself but perhaps even to your audience. A small acknowledgment, perhaps that it’s your first talk (humbly) or that you didn’t expect to see so many people (humorously), can steady your nerves and draw some audience sympathy, or at least explain to the audience your slightly rattled condition, which should soon pass. Another and better technique may be to ignore how you’re feeling and instead lean into how you feel about the topic, presumably passionately. Your passion should quickly displace your nerves. Another technique is to steady yourself with one hand on each side of the podium. A firm grip on the podium can subtly translate into a firm grip on yourself and your topic. Even an extra-hard squeeze on the notes or microphone you hold in your hand can remind you that you’ve got a good grip on the topic and on yourself. Another technique is to visit the venue in advance of your talk, even taking the stage or podium if the venue is vacant. Accustoming yourself to the venue can substantially ease a first fright or shock. Having these few techniques in mind can give you positive steps to take when feeling out of control, minimizing that alarming sense.
Posture
Be deliberate about your posture when speaking publicly. Prefer standing to sitting. Sitting for a public talk can be awkward to position yourself comfortably while also projecting. Prefer standing behind a lectern where you can place your outline or script and on which you can steady yourself with a hand or two hands. If the lectern is larger than you are comfortable standing behind and looking over, then move to its side where you can still have your notes on the lectern and steady yourself with one hand but look directly at the audience, unimpeded by the lectern. If you reach a degree of comfort with your talk and don’t need your outline on the lectern, then consider moving slowly about in a natural manner to address the audience left, right, and center. But don’t pace back and forth. Also, avoid overuse of the hands. Audiences pick up quickly on repetitive hand motions, which can badly distract from your talk. If you can’t naturally control your hands, then grip the lectern with them. Watch yourself in a mirror as you stand and talk, to pick up on and correct unnatural movements or slovenly posture.
Voice
While your posture and motion can affect your talk, your voice is generally the most significant potential contributor to or detractor from your talk. The right volume is critical. Your audience needs to hear. If you are speaking without amplification, then speak to the individuals furthest away from you, not the ones in front. If you are speaking with amplification, then ensure that your mouth is the right distance from the microphone, as the individual running the sound system instructs. Don’t wander or turn away from the microphone so that your voice goes in and out. The individual running the sound system should adjust volume to your voice but cannot do so if you are inconsistent in your use of the microphone. If you are speaking in a large hall or arena with amplified sound, expect your voice to reverberate. Ignore the echo as far as you are able. You are the only one hearing it. Everyone else hears only your amplified voice, while you hear both your own voice and the amplification echoing back.
Pace
The pace of your talk can also influence how well your audience receives it. Rehearse your pace. And definitely time your talk when practicing, to ensure that it’s the right length. Time yourself to just barely fill the allotted time, definitely not to go over, nor to leave your talk significantly shorter than expected. A little shorter is alright, while a little longer than expected is generally not alright. Finish on time or a little before; don’t finish late. Speaking quickly to get everything in that you want to say is a bad choice because your audience may not keep pace. Instead, if you talk is running long when you rehearse, reduce your script, prioritizing what you must retain. Doing so will make for a better and harder-hitting talk. But also don’t speak extra deliberately, so that you bore your audience. Move along at a better pace if you see signs of impatience in your audience.
Articulation
The one thing that you may wish to do more than anything in your talk is to speak articulately. For the novice, public speaking can be sufficiently disarming as to cause your words to come out jumbled, as if you didn’t know how to pronounce certain words or how to speak with sound grammar. If that happens to you, don’t just rush on ahead, at the risk of the problem getting worse. Instead, stop, back up, slow down, and correct yourself. Poise and eloquence would be nice. But at a minimum, your audience needs to know that you can properly pronounce words in complete sentences using proper grammar. They won’t hold it against you if you have to correct yourself a time or two, especially if you do so swiftly and with a little humor. You may need to correct yourself only once to steady your articulation and proceed without further errors. Your articulation is one thing you can generally control. Don’t give it up to your jitters. Instead, claim it right back.
Attitude
In recitation, as in other things having to do with education and life, attitude can go a long way. Don’t go into a recitation fearing the worst. Instead, approach any opportunity for public speaking with anticipation and excitement. Public speaking is a privilege, not a burden, for others to respectfully hear your voice. You may find that public speaking is the one place where you can truly be yourself, where you find your most authentic voice. In public speaking, your stance is often more significant than your relationships. Indeed, you may be speaking to a group of perfect strangers whom you will never meet again. Seize those opportunities to speak truth, things of significance and eternal value. In life, your every word can be significant, one way or the other, for better or worse. Recitation calls on you to make your words count for the better. Doing so can be tremendously freeing, inspiring, and encouraging, despite whatever little stress it takes. The inherent value of public speaking is well worth its small cost.
Reflection
On a scale from one to ten, how comfortable are you with speaking in front of others? On the same scale, how skilled are you at speaking in front of others? What is your biggest fear about public speaking? What is your greatest challenge with public speaking? When you have spoken publicly in the past, was your preparation adequate? What did you do to prepare? After reading this chapter, what would you now add to your preparation? Was your practice adequate for your prior public speaking? How would you improve your practice for your next opportunity? Did you memorize your last speech or presentation? How, if at all, did you use your outline, script, or notes? Could you do better with your use of an outline or script next time? What would you change? What was your physiologic response last time you spoke publicly? How well or poorly did you manage it? What technique might you adopt next time to get past your physiologic response more smoothly and quickly? Have you seen a video of yourself speaking? What, if anything, would you improve about your posture? Your use of your hands? Your demeanor? Your voice? Your pace? Your articulation? What is your attitude toward public speaking? Should you change that attitude for the better?
Key Points
Instruction can entail some form of public speaking or recitation.
Schools don’t generally offer rhetoric instruction, leaving it to you.
Thoroughly master the content of your talk before attempting it.
Prepare an outline or script, and memorize the outline or script.
Prepare for questions as far as you are able to predict them.
Practice your talk in front of a mirror or others for feedback.
Expect stress reactions when you begin your talk, until they wear off.
Steady yourself, concentrating on your passion for the talk’s subject.
Adopt a confident and stable posture without excessive hand use.
Use a well-paced voice of adequate volume for all audience members.
Correct any pronunciation or grammar mistakes you notice.
Look forward to your talk with anticipation and excitement.