Monthly Archive for August, 2013

When listening to a speech, have you ever:

• wondered “how does this relate to that?”
• felt the speaker jumped randomly from one point to the next?
• gotten totally lost?

If you’ve experienced any of these, there’s a very good chance that the speaker failed to use appropriate speech transitions.

In this article, we define speech transitions and learn why they are so critical. In addition, we provide dozens of speech transition examples that you can incorporate into your speech.

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I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

That’s my favorite quotation from one of the most famous speeches of all time: Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream“. I love not only the line’s message, but also the alliteration of the “k” sound: color, skin, content, character.

This week marks the 50th anniversary of Dr. King’s speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963.

See our previously published speech analysis where you can watch the video, study the speech transcript, and learn five lessons in speechwriting.

For decades, popular opinion pegged Bill Gates as a mediocre presenter.

That all changed on February 5, 2009, when he unleashed one of the most memorable props ever on his audience: live mosquitos.

In this article, we discuss:

• key benefits of props,
• how to choose a prop, and
• how to use it effectively in a speech.

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If you give a great speech, but nobody can hear you, does it really count?

Before your message can transform your audience, the sound of your voice must be heard by your audience. It sounds really simple, but I’m shocked by how often I have to strain to hear a presenter.

In this article, we examine strategies for being heard and varying speech volume to improve your effectiveness.

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Do you ever find yourself wishing that your audience understood you better? Do you have difficulty conveying your great ideas clearly?

One of the most important writing techniques I ever learned was parallelism. Parallelism leads to clear writing, and clear writing leads to clear speaking.

In this article, we define parallelism, study numerous examples, and discuss how you can incorporate it into your speeches.

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