SpeechTraining

Posts Tagged ‘speaking to a class’

You visit a school and are called upon to speak to the students in their assembly.

There is no more critical audience in the world than an audience of children.

If you can interest and hold an audience of school children you can interest and hold any audience anywhere.

Here is a list of “Don’ts” that you should observe:

1. Don’t speak in such a low voice that only those in the front part of the room can hear you.

The others, who can not hear easily, will whisper or move about. The disorder will spread as you continue to talk.

2. Don’t put your hands into your pockets, lean on a reading desk, or assume any other undignified position. Students are quick to see such actions, and equally quick to draw uncomplimentary inferences from them.

8. Don’t say “Your Principal has invited me to speak.”

4. In general, don’t make any apology for your speaking.

5. Don’t say “scholars.” Say “students” or “pupils.”

6. Don’t read from any manuscript.

7. Don’t use words, or express thoughts the pupils can not understand.

8. Don’t use slang, or vulgarity of any kind.

9. Don’t find fault with anything.

10. Don’t talk as if you were talking to little children, unless your audience is really composed of little children.

Here are a few suggestions what to do:

1. Begin by telling a story that rises to a climax. The effect will be better if the story is humorous.

In any case, tell a story that rises to a surprising conclusion.

2. Speak on some great ideal.

Boys and girls are lovers of goodness of all sorts. The great virtues—honor, loyalty, truth, justice, sympathy, and charity—are close to their hearts.

They will hear you gladly on such topics so long as you avoid “preachiness” and make your talk “human.”

3. Give specific examples whenever you talk about the abstract.

Children are quick to understand any abstract idea when you present it in the form of a definite incident or story.

4. Exhibit, if possible, some object, drawing, or picture to add to interest and clearness.

5. Show the students how to carry your thought into practical application.

6. Speak briefly.

7. Speak with emphasis.

8. Connect your remarks, when possible, with actual school interests, such as athletic games, and championship contests.

PROBLEM.

Think out a speech that you might give to pupils in a public high school. Make the speech one of patriotic nature.

You are called upon to teach. You may teach one pupil at a time, or an audience of fifteen hundred. You may teach Sunday School work, music, art, language, science, mechanical work—anything, in fact, that the human mind has ever learned.

In every subject there is a special method so far as details are concerned.

In all subjects there are certain common principles that should direct the teacher’s speech.

Follow these and you will be successful:

1. Awaken interest in your particular work for the day. You can do this in a great variety of ways.

A particularly good way is to show the practical value of the work, by telling what good it is, how it can be used in making for health, or for happiness, or for any other good purpose.

2. Make a strong point of contact with knowledge already possessed by your pupils.

That is, find a foundation on which you can build. There is certain to be some sort of previous knowledge possessed by your pupils that will serve as a step-stone for the new. Thus, if you should begin to teach chemistry to persons who had never studied it before, the proper approach could be made through what they already know about chemistry-—that is, about iron, salt, gases, acids, dyes, oils, coal, sulphur, and scores of other items. Proceed from this familiar knowledge to something new. There is no possible subject that can be taught that does not have its point of contact in ordinary information.

Your success as a teacher depends upon your finding, not one point of contact, but numerous points of contact; not occasionally, but habitually, in your teaching. This is one of the very greatest secrets of successful teaching.

3. Make every step so clear that your dullest pupil can understand it if he pays attention.

This will keep you from two of the greatest faults of teaching:

1. Teaching over the heads of your pupils.

2. Teaching too rapidly.

4. Teach in a “spiral system.”

That is, come back again and again to points already taught, but add something new at every return.

Thus you give constant reviews, and constant examinations without seeming to do so. Your pupils remember all that you teach because you use it all every day.

5. Teach in accordance with a preconceived written plan.

This acts as a guide to your work. You know where your teaching is leading. Make your pupils conscious of your plan.

6. At the close of every lesson summarize the results. Emphasize exactly what you have taught.

7. Compliment your pupils on the progress they make.

Even a horse goes better for a friendly pat of the hand now and then.

8. Teach principles, methods, or processes, rather than details.

It is quite impossible to include all details, but it is possible to teach principles, methods, or processes that will include all details.

9. Avoid impatience, or fault finding.

Expect your pupils to be slow and to make errors, and judge yourself by your skill in meeting difficulties.

10. Ask your pupils to put into immediate practical use whatever you teach them.
“Practice makes perfect.”

PROBLEM.

You are master of certain knowledge. Think how you would speak if you were called upon to impart this knowledge to an audience of 500 people.