Public Speaking – How to Rehearse Your Speech

When I was a child my piano teacher taught me several different ways to practice and they are equally applicable to public speaking. Whenever I made a mistake she got me to start from a few notes before the mistake and carry on a few notes after the mistake, rather than going back to the start each time. This meant that the area of the piece of music that needed the most practice got it, rather than me becoming excellent at the first part of the piece and then gradually getting worse as it went on. She also encouraged me to practice in different styles such as fast, slow, loud, soft etc. This helped to stop me from getting stuck in a rut of playing it in exactly the same way each time which is one of the things which can make it sound over-rehearsed.

It is a good idea to aim to memorize your speech and have notes or cue cards to refer to when needed. As you get more confident you should aim to become less reliant on your notes and to leave the script behind at times and just go with the flow. You may find yourself with a different audience to what you prepared for and they may appreciate a different angle on your material. Being able to adapt and leave your script behind so that you can present your material in a way that is more meaningful to your audience is a great skill to develop.

I have a friend who usually speaks without any notes. He speaks on topics that he is very knowledgeable about and prefers to get a feel for his audience and then cover the things that seem most appropriate for them. He happens to be an extremely inspiring speaker, but the ability to do this didn’t happen overnight, it is the result of many years of experience.

As well as the actual words you’ll say you should also rehearse the technical side of your speech. For example, are you going to use a wireless microphone so that you are free to roam around? Or is the microphone fixed to a lectern which means you’ll have to stay behind it to be heard? If you’re taking your own equipment such as a laptop and so on then make sure you know how to set it up properly.

Once you are happy with your speech you should do a full rehearsal. By this I mean shut yourself in a room and actually perform your speech as you would to an audience, even get someone to be your audience if possible. Stand up, look around at your audience, smile and so on. This is how you’ll be presenting it when you do it for real so try and make your rehearsals as realistic as possible. Even say the speech out loud rather than just mouthing the words. You may find that something that looked good written down doesn’t sound so great when you say it out loud.

If you’re going to take questions at the end of your presentation then give some thought to what sort of questions you might get so you’re not caught off guard.

One final word, whilst practicing your speech is very important you shouldn’t practice every single word and hand gesture until the whole thing becomes robotic. A natural speaker who makes the odd mistake will be better received by an audience than a robotic one.