Manner Exercises
Delivery Warm-Ups
Purpose
The purpose of these activities is to help you loosen up, lose some inhibitions and practice speaking in a deliberate and controlled manner.
Instructions
As with any activity, it can take a bit of warming-up before you can perform at your peak, and public speaking is no exception. Here are some exercises that people have found useful in order to loosen themselves up and focus on speaking audibly, fluently and engagingly:
Horse noises: force air between your closed lips in order to make a horse-like noise as your lips vibrate together. This is a way to loosen the muscles around the mouth.
Speed-drills: read something aloud at various speeds (slow, normal, fast) in order to get the eyes and the tongue used to working together.
Face-stretches: try to get your mouth, nose, and eye-brows as close-together as possible, then as far apart as possible (for added stretching, stick out your tongue at the same time) as a way to loosen the face-muscles.
General stretching: since tension can cause stumbling and shaking, any body stretching is good, in particular neck-rolls (in which the head is brought toward one shoulder, then to the front, then to the other shoulder) are a common speaking warm-up.
Word Economiser
Purpose
The purpose of this exercise is to help you identify your own personal ‘filler’ behaviours, eliminate those annoying umms and filler words, and instead consciously deliver your ideas in a more fluent and eloquent manner.
Instructions
Give a debater a topic on which to speak and two minutes to prepare a response. Examples of topics may be:
- Money is the root of all evil.
- Dogs are man’s best friend.
- Poverty is everyone’s problem.
- Christmas should come twice a year.
- Nature is the greatest muse.
The topic does not have to be argumentative, and the speaker’s response does not have to be persuasive. However, what they say should be relevant, engaging and fluent.
After two minutes of preparation the debater then has to speak for at least three minutes.
While a debater is speaking, ring a bell every time the student uses a filler phrase, ‘likes’, ‘umms’ or ‘ahhs’. Alternatively, you can squirt water at the debater. Another alternative is to require the debater to start the speech over every time he or she uses a filler word, but this can take a long time.
Emphasis Drill: Poetry
Purpose
This activity helps to develop your manner though exploring and practicing how tone, inflection and emphasis can be used to engage an audience and communicate emotion.
Instructions
Reading poetry aloud is a fantastic way to build up an understanding of how pacing and emphasis can be used to convey emotion.
Read aloud a piece of poetry that requires emphasis and inspires feeling. Debaters are encouraged to vary pitch, rate, volume and inflection in order to convey the meaning and importance of various phrases.
In addition, debaters should underline key words and phrases which should receive special stress. While the emotional component of poetry is often clear, any speech has at least the potential for a more emotional or emphatic presentation.
There are several poetry anthologies in the library under the 821 call-numbers.
You can also find some online poetry collections at the following websites:
- poetryoutloud.org
- poetryfoundation.org
- poetryarchive.org
- allpoetry.com
Emphasis Drill: Speeches
Purpose
This activity helps you to apply knowledge about emphasis, pauses, volume and stresses to your own speeches and to play around with the impact that they have on your delivery.
Instructions
Bring in several copies of a written speech (either your own or someone else’s) and then underline key words and mark potential places for pauses (for example by drawing in a bold line under words that you want to emphasis, or an ‘X’ in a different colour where there needs to be a pause). Share the copies around, and have different people annotate the speeches in the manner they feel works best.
Debaters can then deliver the passages and comment on the differences in emphasis revealed by different presentations.
If commenting on someone else’s speech, have the debater return it to the original author, who can then deliver it in accordance with the directions relating to stressed words and pauses.
Alternatively, you could complete this exercise with the famous speech extracts included below in the ‘Words of the Greats, Style of your Own’ activity.
Words of the Greats, Style of your Own
Purpose:
The purpose of this exercise is to focus on the effect that delivery has on making a speech engaging and persuasive. Use the speech extracts below as material to develop your own delivery.
Instructions:
Below are extracts from some famous speeches from history. These are words which carry power: they are designed to inspire others, and have successfully done so in the past.
Your job is to select an extract and present the speech in the most engaging, dynamic and inspiring way possible. You are not expected to merely say the speech word-for-word (this is not an exercise in recitation!). Rather, you are expected to put your own spin on things, and use this as an opportunity to develop your manner and delivery style.
- Sir Winston Churchill, excerpt from ‘We shall fight them on the beaches.’
Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender…
- Martin Luther King Jr, excerpts from ‘I have a dream.’
I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. And some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering… And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” I have a dream that our children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today!
- Mohandas Gandhi, excerpt from ‘There is no salvation for India.’
I have turned the searchlight all over, and as you have given me the privilege of speaking to you, I am laying my heart bare. Surely we must set these things right in our progress towards self-government. I now introduce you to another scene. His Highness the King who presided yesterday over our deliberations spoke about the poverty of India. Other speakers laid great stress upon it. But what did we witness in the great ceremony that was performed by the Viceroy? Certainly a most gorgeous show, an exhibition of jewellery, which made a splendid feast for the eyes of the greatest jeweller who chose to come from Paris. I compare with the richly bedecked noble men the millions of the poor. And I feel like saying to these noble men, “There is no salvation for India unless you strip yourselves of this jewellery and hold it in trust for your countrymen in India.”
- John F. Kennedy, excerpts from ‘Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.’
Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty. … To those old allies whose cultural and spiritual origins we share, we pledge the loyalty of faithful friends. United, there is little we cannot do in a host of cooperative ventures. Divided, there is little we can do – for we dare not meet a powerful challenge at odds and split asunder. Can we forge against our enemies a grand and global alliance, North and South, East and West, that can assure a more fruitful life for all mankind? Will you join in that historic effort? … And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.
- Nelson Mandela, excerpts from ‘I am the First Accused.’
Africans want a just share in the whole of South Africa; they want security and a stake in society. Above all, we want equal political rights, because without them our disabilities will be permanent. I know this sounds revolutionary to the whites in this country, because the majority of voters will be Africans. This makes the white man fear democracy. But this fear cannot be allowed to stand in the way of the only solution which will guarantee racial harmony and freedom for all… During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.