Rehearsing Your Speech: Best Practices
Rehearsing your speech is one of the hardest things to do for a lot of people. It is weird going over your own writing and even more awkward watching yourself in a mirror while you rehearse.
But there are some great things that you can do before your speech in order to be as prepared as possible so you can give a great speech when the time comes.
First, the best thing is to make sure your note cards or rehearsal material is easy to read and follow. It is really hard to give a speech from one giant run-on paragraph, as you can easily lose your place. I recommend breaking your speech up into one liners or “summary points” so that when you see your notes you can simply grab the information and go.
The next thing is to practice every part of the speech until you have it right. Sounds pretty basic right? Well not really, most people actually practice the entire speech all the way through instead of breaking it down into bite-size pieces of content.
For example, practice your introduction until you have it down completely. Then practice your first part of the speech after your introduction — depending on the length of your speech this could be 30 seconds or 5 minutes. Then, after you get that part, go back and do the introduction until the end of the first segment, complete that until you are comfortable then move on until you can do the whole speech through two times completely with a satisfactory result.
The last tip I have for you today is to practice in front of the mirror. I personally have never tried this before myself, but I have heard it can do wonders to help your body language and to increase your comfort. Stand in front of a full length mirror (if possible) and practice your speech, look down at your notes and be conscience of how long you are taking on each part, how long you can maintain eye contact and scan the audience, etc. Work on your hand placement and looking relaxed in the mirror.
If you use all of these tips while practicing for your speech you will be well ahead of your fellow speakers. Take some time the night before for 1-2 hours and just practice the fundamentals.
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