The Entertaining Speaker
People like to be entertained and the entertaining speaker offers listeners a pleasant
diversion from their demanding lives. This manual offers five projects that
will help you develop your skills as an entertaining speaker.
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1. The Entertaining Speech
| Time: |
5-7 minutes |
| Objectives: |
• |
Entertain the audience through use of humor and/or drama drawn from
your personal experience.
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• |
Organize an entertaining speech for maximum audience impact.
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2. Resources for Entertainment
| Time: |
8-10 minutes |
| Objectives: |
• |
Draw humorous and/or dramatic material from sources other than your
own personal experience.
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• |
Adapt your material to suit your topic, your own personality and
the audience. Use entertaining material as a means of conveying a
serious message.
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3. Make Them Laugh
| Time: |
8-10 minutes |
| Objectives: |
• |
Prepare a humorous speech drawn from your own experience.
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Strengthen the speech by adapting and personalizing humorous material
from outside sources.
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Deliver the speech in a way that makes the humor effective.
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4. A Dramatic Talk
| Time: |
10-12 minutes |
| Objectives: |
• |
Develop an entertaining dramatic talk about an experience or incident,
or give a dramatic reading.
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Include vivid imagery, characters and dialogue.
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Deliver the talk in an interpretative manner.
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5. Speaking After Dinner
| Time: |
13-15 minutes |
| Objectives: |
• |
Prepare an entertaining after-dinner talk on a specific theme.
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Deliver the talk extemporaneously, using the skills developed in
the preceding entertainment projects.
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Note: For some speech
projects, the presentation time may also include additional segments for such
activities as question-and-answer periods, depending on the project.