A long-time reader asks:
What’s the average speaking rate? Is it better to speak faster or is is better to speak slower?
In this article, we answer these questions and look at the factors which influence your speaking rate, a critical component of your delivery.
We are so happy that 280 readers participated in our 2012 reader survey. As promised, we’ve chosen three participants randomly to receive speaking books of their choice.
In this article, we summarize a few survey results, and discuss how we’ll try to improve Six Minutes for you based on this feedback.
A rhetorical question is a common rhetorical device where a question is asked by a speaker, but no answer is expected from the audience. This distinguishes it from explicit verbal audience interaction where a speaker asks a question, and then waits for a response or calls on someone to answer it.
You are certainly aware of this technique, but are you aware that you can use a rhetorical question in at least nine different ways? No? Read on!
This article identifies nine ways to use rhetorical questions, and provides examples throughout.
The Naked Presenter: Delivering Powerful Presentations With or Without Slides is the latest in a series of best-selling presentation books by Garr Reynolds (of Presentation Zen fame). While his previous books inspired his readers to craft better visuals, this book teaches readers how to deliver more naturally.
This article is the latest of a series of public speaking book reviews here on Six Minutes.
Six Minutes began 5 years ago, with a speech critique about a novel presentation style. Hundreds of articles, thousands of subscribers, and millions of visitors later, we’re still going strong thanks to you, our readers.
To celebrate our 5-year anniversary, we have compiled our 50 most popular speaking articles.
Please share this article with others, and save or bookmark it to return again and again to enjoy the best of Six Minutes. Thanks for reading!
[…] an iron curtain has descended across the continent.
On March 5, 1946, at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, Winston Churchill delivered one of his most famous speeches. Though he was not the first to use the phrase “iron curtain”, this speech brought the phrase into common usage and is thought by some to mark the beginning of the Cold War.
In Lend Me Your Ears: Great Speeches in History, William Safire writes:
This is a Beethoven symphony of a speech. […] this is the most Churchillian of Churchill’s speeches.
This speech analysis article examines how to use charisma tactics in speech writing. It is the latest in a series of speech critiques here on Six Minutes.
The reader survey and book contest mentioned below are closed, and we are busy studying the results to learn how we can make Six Minutes better. Some of the key insights are shared here.
Though the survey is closed, we are always interested in feedback from our readers. Please tell us what you like and what you don’t about Six Minutes via our contact form, anytime.
We want to make Six Minutes more relevant to your speaking needs.
To do that, we need your help.
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When you think about charisma, who do you think about? Bill Clinton? Martin Luther King Jr.? Steve Jobs?
What about you? Do you have charisma?
Many speakers and non-speakers hold the belief that charisma is an innate gift — either you are born with it, or you aren’t.
But can you learn charisma? Recent research suggests that you can!
Six Minutes weekend reviews bring the best public speaking articles to you.
This review features topics including:
Full-day training courses offer many challenges for speakers, including:
If you can overcome these challenges, you can provide significant value for your audience.
This past week, I was fortunate to attend a series of full-day training courses (Usability Week 2012 in San Francisco, offered by the Nielsen Norman Group). While my focus was building my usability knowledge, it was also a great opportunity to learn from people who speak regularly around the world. One of these speakers was Marieke McCloskey, who taught my first session of the week.
This article offers 28 tips for designing and presenting training courses inspired by Marieke’s strengths and areas for improvement.
Every speech does not need quotations, but every speaker needs to know why, how, and when to use quotations in their speeches.
In this article, we examine eight benefits of using quotations in your speech, and then discuss twenty-one tips for superpowering your speech with effective quotes.
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