Articles tagged: speech outline

1. You’re delivering a 1-hour keynote address on pursuing your dreams to high school graduates.
2. You’re teaching a full-day corporate course on quality assurance processes.
3. You’re giving a 10-minute pitch at your local service club to partner with Habitat for Humanity.

How many slides would you prepare for each presentation?

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Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address is one of the most famous, most quoted, and most recited speeches of all time. It is also one of the shortest among its peers at just 10 sentences.

In this article, we examine five key lessons which you can learn from Lincoln’s speech and apply to your own speeches.

This is the latest in a series of speech critiques here on Six Minutes.

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Previously, we learned how the rule of three improves speeches when used at the micro-speech level, to craft memorable triads of words, phrases, and sentences.

In this article, we will learn how the rule of three improves speeches at the macro-speech level when applied to speech stories or to entire speech outlines.

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Some will argue that Barack Obama’s Inauguration speech was not his most electric speech, or that it failed to deliver on unreasonably high expectations.

Nonetheless, studying the speech provides five key speechwriting lessons that can help us all be better communicators.

This article is the latest in a series of video speech critiques which help you analyze and learn from excellent speeches.

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An open letter to the PowerPoint programming team with public speaking inspired ideas for future PowerPoint features…

Dear PowerPoint Programmers:

Thank you for creating such a wonderful presentation aid. PowerPoint is like a Swiss Army knife in a presenter’s visual aid toolbox. It is a tool with tremendous power.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of people cannot control this power. Hour after hour, dreaded presentation after dreaded presentation, I continue to be amazed at the horrible presentations that speakers are able to create with PowerPoint at the core.

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When you speak, does your audience get it?

If your audience doesn’t grasp your message (even though your topic is one you know they are interested in), you need to rethink the way you present it. You need to organize your ideas to promote understanding.

The second Toastmasters speech project addresses organizing your speech. This article of the Toastmasters Speech Series examines the primary goals of this project, provides tips and techniques, and links to numerous sample speeches.

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The previous article in the Speech Preparation Series described how to select your speech topic and your core message.

This article describes how to support your core message with a speech outline, and provides numerous examples. This is the second step in the six-step speech preparation process.

Writing an outline is, unfortunately, a step that many skip. The most common excuse is simply “No time.” This is unfortunate because time spent on an outline is time well spent. It is necessary to ensure that you craft a coherent and focussed presentation.

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